Westways: A Village Chronicle Part 60

"Send your son, Pole, before you talk nonsense," said McGregor. "My boy got a ball in his leg at Malvern Hill."

"My son's going along with the Squire," returned Pole, "leaves me short of help, and my wife's about crazy over it."

"What about Mrs. Penhallow?" said Mrs. Crocker. "I guess she's the kind that don't show what she feels."

"Oh, money's a great comforter," returned the butcher. "What I'm to do, I don't know."

"Well, I'm going too," said Joe Grace, "and father says I'm right."

"Oh, here's the parson," said Pole, as Rivers approached. "He's like the rest of them-all for war."

"Well, Pole," said Rivers, "how are you and Mrs. Crocker? I think you are getting thin this hot weather."

"Am I? No such good luck. We are talking war, Mr. Rivers. I do hear that what with the mill-boys and country fellows there's some thirty going into the Colonel's regiment."

"So I hear. On Sunday I mean to talk to them after service. You might say so."

"I will. If I had a boy, he should go," said Mrs. Crocker.

"It's easy talking when you haven't none," said Pole. "We are gettin' licked, and some day Lee will be over the border. It's just useless to spend money and cripple men."

There was a moment of silence, when Mrs. Crocker spoke. "Pole, you aren't ever sure of your legs. You were all for Buchanan, and then all for Lincoln. Now you're uneasy on the top rail of the fence and the rail ain't round." The parliament broke into laughter, and with more talk dissolved after some critical wisdom about the war.

It was July 30th, after ten at night, the day before the final Sunday of the month. The Colonel of the 129th stood with Leila before a big war map. "This fight at Malvern Hill"-he put a pin on the place-"was a mistake on the part of Lee, and yet he is a master of the game. He was terribly beaten-an aggressive general would have attacked at once."

"Would he have won, uncle?"

"I think so-but after a defeat these armies are as dangerous as a cornered cat."

"But, dear Uncle Jim, what is the matter with us?-We have men, money and courage."

"Well, this is how I see it. Neither side has a broad-minded General in command of the whole field of war. Every day sees bits of fights, skirmishes, useless loss of life. There is on neither side any connected scheme of war. G.o.d knows how it will end. I do not yet see the man. If Robert Lee were in absolute command of all the effective force of the South, we would have trouble."

"But if he is so good a soldier, why did he make what you call a frontal attack on entrenched troops at Malvern?"

"My dear, when two men spar and neither can quite end the fight, one gets angry or over-confident and loses his head, then he does something wild-and pays for it."

"I see. You leave on Monday?"

"Yes-early."

"Mr. Rivers means to talk after service to the men who are enlisting."

"So he told me. I begged him to be moderate."

"He asked me for a text, uncle."

"Well!"

"I gave him the one about Caesar and G.o.d."

"What put that into your head-it does not seem suitable?"

"Oh, do you think so? Some one once mentioned it to me. I could preach on it myself, but texts grow wonderfully in his hands. They glow-oh, they get halos about them. He ought to be in a great city."

"Oh, my dear, Mark Rivers has his limitations like all of us. He would die. Even here he has to be watched. McGregor told him last year that he was suffering from the contagion of other people's wickedness with occasional acute fits of over-conscientiousness. Rivers said it was incomprehensible nonsense; he was almost angry."

"And yet it is true, Uncle Jim."

"I'm glad I haven't the disease. I told McGregor as much. By George! he said my variety of the disorder was about other folk's stupidity. Then, when I said that I didn't understand him, he laughed. He makes me furious when he only laughs and won't answer-and won't explain."

"Why, uncle! I love to see him laugh. He laughs all over-he shakes. I told him it was a mirthquake. That set him off again. Was Tom McGregor badly hurt?"

"No, not badly."

"Will aunt go to church to-morrow?"

"No."

"I thought she would not. I should love to see you in uniform."

"Not here, my dear, but I will send you a daguerreotype."

When on this Sunday long remembered in Westways, the tall figure of Mark Rivers rose to open the service, he saw the little church crowded, the aisles filled, and in the front pews Penhallow, his niece, and behind them the young men who were to join his regiment. Grace had asked his own people to be present, and here and there were the mothers and sisters of the recruits, and a few men on crutches or wasted by the fevers of the Virginia marshes. Mark Rivers read the morning service as few men know how to read it. He rarely needed the prayer-book-he knew it all. He gave to it the freshness of a new message of love and helpfulness. More than ever on this Sunday Leila felt a sense of spiritual soaring, of personally sharing the praises of the angel choir when, looking upwards, he said: "Therefore with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we laud and magnify Thy glorious name." She recalled that John had said, "When Mark Rivers says 'angels and archangels' it is like the clash of silver cymbals."

He gave out at the close his favourite hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." It was well and sweetly sung by the girl-choir. As the music closed he rose-a figure of command, his spare frame looking larger for his robes. For a silent moment his eloquent eyes wandered over the crowd, gathering the attentive gaze of young and old, then he said: "I want to talk on this unusual occasion for a little while, to you who are answering the call of a man who is like a father calling his sons to a task of danger. My text is: 'Render, therefore, unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto G.o.d the things that are G.o.d's.' The wonder of the great texts is that they have many applications as time runs on. You know the familiar story. Payment of the tax meant obedience to the Government, to law, to order. I would that I had the power to make you see with me the scene. It is to me so very distinct. The Pharisees desire to tempt him, a Jew, into a statement treasonable to the Roman rule they had accepted. Was it right for the Jew to pay the tax which sustained this Government? He had, as you may remember, already paid it for Peter and himself. He asks for the penny bearing Caesar's head and answers them in the words of the text, 'Render unto Caesar, therefore, the things which are Caesar's.' He returns the penny. I wonder where that little coin is to-day? It has gone, but the lesson it read remains forever; nor even today is the Pharisee gone with his invidious temptations. You are to-day obeying a greater than Caesar. You are meeting the material obligations of a day of discouragement-and for some a day of doubt.

"The n.o.bler applications which lie within the meaning of the latter part of the text He answers more fully than was asked: 'Render unto G.o.d the things which are G.o.d's.' What are these things which are at need to be rendered to Him? What larger tax? Ease-comfort-home-the strong bodies which make work safe and pleasant. He asks of you the exercise of unusual qualities-the courage which looks death in the face and will not take the bribe of safety, of life, at the cost of dishonour. Ah! not in battle is my fear for you. In the long idleness of camps will come your hours of temptation. Think then of those at home who believe in you. It is a great thing to have an outside conscience-wife, mother, sister. Those are hours when it is hard to render unto G.o.d what he gave.

"We are now, as I said, at a time of discouragement. There are cowards who would yield-who would compromise-men who want peace at any cost. You answer them n.o.bly. Here, in this sacred cause, if He asks it, we render life or the easy competencies of youth in its day of vigour."

The man paused. The strange power of the eyes spoke to them in this moment of silence. "Oh! I said the cause was sacred-an unbroken land. He gave you that, just for wide-world uses. Keep it! Guard it!-with all that Union of the States meant and still means to-day. You are not to blame for this necessity-war. The man who bends unpaid over the master's cotton-field is the innocent cause of all this bloodshed. If there were no slavery, there would have been no war. But let there be no hatred in the brave hearts you carry. G.o.d did not slay Saul, the earnest-I might say-the honest persecutor. He made him blind for a time. The awful charity of G.o.d is nowhere else so wonderful. These gallant people you are going to meet will some day see that G.o.d was opening their eyes to better days and n.o.bler ways. They too are honest in the belief that G.o.d is on their side. Therefore, let there be no bitterness.

"Some of you are what we call religious. Do not be ashamed of it. The hardest fighters the world has known were men who went to battle with arms invisible to man. A word more and I have done. I have the hope-indeed the certainty-that I shall be sent to the field on errands of mercy and helpfulness. We may meet again. And now, take with you the earnest will to render unto G.o.d what things He gave for His highest uses. Now let us offer the prayer for the volunteers our great Bishop desires the Church to use. Let us pray."

In unusual silence the congregation moved away, a silence shared by Leila and her uncle. At last she said, "Uncle Jim, I wish Aunt Ann could have heard that sermon-it could not have hurt her."

"Perhaps not."

"I wonder why she has so great a respect for him, so real a friends.h.i.+p. He thinks slavery the sin of sins. He has very little charity about it-oh, none-and Aunt Ann is as sure it is a divinely appointed relation."

"They fought it out, my dear, in his early days at Westways, and when they both found that they were clad in the armour of changeless beliefs no arguments could penetrate, they gave up and took of two fine natures what was left for life's uses and became friends. At least, that is how McGregor put it. He sometimes states things well."

"I see," said Leila thoughtfully, and set herself to thinking whether if she had radical differences of opinion with some one, she could settle into a condition of armed neutrality. Then she wondered if war made changes in the character of a man.