Black Rock by Ralph Connor (top non fiction books of all time TXT) 📕

We entered the church by the back door, and saw at once that even yet the battle might easily be lost.

Some miners had just come from Slavin’s, evidently bent on breaking up the meeting, in revenge for the collapse of the dance, which Slavin was unable to enjoy, much less direct. Craig was gallantly holding his ground, finding it hard work to keep his men in good humour, and so prevent a fight, for there were cries of ‘Put him out! Put the beast out!’ at a miner half drunk and wholly outrageous.

The look of relief that came over his face when Craig caught sight of us told how anxious he had been, and reconciled me to Mrs. Mavor’s singing. ‘Thank the good God,’ he said, with what came near being a sob, ‘I was about to despair.’

He immediately walked to the front and called out—

‘Gentlemen, if you wish it, Mrs. Mavor will sing.’

There was a dead silence. Some one began to applaud, but a miner said savagely, ‘Stop that, you fool!’

There was a few moments’ delay, when from the crowd a voice called out, ‘Does Mrs. Mavor wish to sing?’ followed by cries of ‘Ay, that’s it.’ Then Shaw, the foreman at the mines, stood up in the audience and said—

‘Mr. Craig and gentlemen, you know that three years ago I was known as “Old Ricketts,” and that I owe all I am tonight, under God, to Mrs. Mavor, and’—with a little quiver in his voice—‘her baby. And we all know that for two years she has not sung; and we all know why. And what I say is, that if she does not feel like singing tonight, she is not going to sing to keep any drunken brute of Slavin’s crowd quiet.’

There were deep growls of approval all over the church. I could have hugged Shaw then and there. Mr. Craig went to Mrs. Mavor, and after a word with her came back and said—

‘Mrs. Mavor, wishes me to thank her dear friend Mr. Shaw, but says she would like to sing.’

The response was perfect stillness. Mr. Craig sat down to the organ and played the opening bars of the touching melody, ‘Oft in the Stilly Night.’ Mrs. Mavor came to the front, and, with a smile of exquisite sweetness upon her sad face, and looking straight at us with her glorious eyes, began to sing.

Her voice, a rich soprano, even and true, rose and fell, now soft, now strong, but always filling the building, pouring around us floods of music. I had heard Patti’s ‘Home, sweet Home,’ and of all singing that alone affected me as did this.

At the end of the first verse the few women in the church and some men were weeping quietly; but when she began the words—

‘When I remember all The friends once linked together,’

sobs came on every side from these tender-hearted fellows, and Shaw quite lost his grip. But she sang steadily on, the tone clearer and sweeter and fuller at every note, and when the sound of her voice died away, she stood looking at the men as if in wonder that they should weep. No one moved. Mr. Craig played softly on, and, wandering through many variations, arrived at last at

‘Jesus, lover of my soul.’

As she sang the appealing words, her face was lifted up, and she saw none of us; but she must have seen some one, for the cry in her voice could only come from one who could see and feel help close at hand. On and on went the glorious voice, searching my soul’s depths; but when she came to the words—

‘Thou, O Christ, art all I want,’

she stretched up her arms—she had quite forgotten us, her voice had borne her to other worlds—and sang with such a passion of ‘abandon’ that my soul was ready to surrender anything, everything.

Again Mr. Craig wandered on through his changing chords till again he came to familiar ground, and the voice began, in low, thrilling tones, Bernard’s great song of home—

‘Jerusalem the golden.’

Every word, with all its weight of meaning, came winging to our souls, till we found ourselves gazing afar into those stately halls of Zion, with their daylight serene and their jubilant throngs. When the singer came to the last verse there was a pause. Again Mr. Craig softly played the interlude, but still there was no voice. I looked up. She was very white, and her eyes were glowing with their deep light. Mr. Craig looked quickly about, saw her, stopped, and half rose, as if to go to her, when, in a voice that seemed to come from a far-off land, she went on—

‘O sweet and blessed country!’

The longing, the yearning, in the second ‘O’ were indescribable. Again and again, as she held that word, and then dropped down with the cadence in the music, my heart ached for I knew not what.

The audience were sitting as in a trance. The grimy faces of the miners, for they never get quite white, were furrowed with the tear-courses. Shaw, by this time, had his face too lifted high, his eyes gazing far above the singer’s head, and I knew by the rapture in his face that he was seeing, as she saw, the thronging stately halls and the white-robed conquerors. He had felt, and was still feeling, all the stress of the fight, and to him the vision of the conquerors in their glory was soul-drawing and soul-stirring. And Nixon, too—he had his vision; but what he saw was the face of the singer, with the shining eyes, and, by the look of him, that was vision enough.

Immediately after her last note Mrs. Mavor stretched out her hands to her little girl, who was sitting on my knee, caught her up, and, holding her close to her breast, walked quickly behind the curtain. Not a sound followed the singing: no one moved till she had disappeared; and then Mr. Craig came to the front, and, motioning to me to follow Mrs. Mavor, began in a low, distinct voice—

‘Gentlemen, it was not easy for Mrs. Mavor to sing for us, and you know she sang because she is a miner’s wife, and her heart is with the miners. But she sang, too, because her heart is His who came to earth this day so many years ago to save us all; and she would make you love Him too. For in loving Him you are saved from all base loves, and you know what I mean.

‘And before we say good-night, men, I want to know if the time is not come when all of you who mean to be better than you are should join in putting from us this thing that has brought sorrow and shame to us and to those we love? You know what I mean. Some of you are strong; will you stand by and see weaker men robbed of the money they save for those far away, and robbed of the manhood that no money can buy or restore?

‘Will the strong men help? Shall we all join hands in this? What do you say? In this town we have often seen hell, and just a moment ago we were all looking into heaven, “the sweet and blessed country.” O men!’ and his voice rang in an agony through the building—‘O men! which shall be ours? For Heaven’s dear sake, let us help one another! Who will?’

I was looking out through a slit in the curtain. The men, already wrought to intense feeling by the music, were listening with set faces and gleaming eyes, and as at the appeal ‘Who will?’ Craig raised high his hand, Shaw, Nixon, and a hundred men sprang to their feet and held high their hands.

I have witnessed some thrilling scenes in my life, but never anything to equal that: the one man on the platform standing at full height, with his hand thrown up to heaven, and the hundred men below standing straight, with arms up at full length, silent, and almost motionless.

For a moment Craig held them so; and again his voice rang out, louder, sterner than before—

‘All who mean it, say, “By God’s help I will.”’ And back from a hundred throats came deep and strong the words, ‘By God’s help, I will.’

At this point Mrs. Mavor, whom I had quite forgotten, put her hand on my arm. ‘Go and tell him,’ she panted, ‘I want them to come on Thursday night, as they used to in the other days—go—quick,’ and she almost pushed me out. I gave Craig her message. He held up his hand for silence.

‘Mrs. Mavor wishes me to say that she will be glad to see you all, as in the old days, on Thursday evening; and I can think of no better place to give formal expression to our pledge of this night’

There was a shout of acceptance; and then, at some one’s call, the long pent-up feelings of the crowd found vent in three mighty cheers for Mrs. Mavor.

‘Now for our old hymn,’ called out Mr. Craig, ‘and Mrs. Mavor will lead us.’

He sat down at the organ, played a few bars of ‘The Sweet By and By,’ and then Mrs. Mavor began. But not a soul joined till the refrain was reached, and then they sang as only men with their hearts on fire can sing. But after the last refrain Mr. Craig made a sign to Mrs. Mavor, and she sang alone, slowly and softly, and with eyes looking far away—

‘In the sweet by and by, We shall meet on that beautiful shore.’

There was no benediction—there seemed no need; and the men went quietly out. But over and over again the voice kept singing in my ears and in my heart, ‘We shall meet on that beautiful shore.’ And after the sleigh-loads of men had gone and left the street empty, as I stood with Craig in the radiant moonlight that made the great mountains about come near us, from Sandy’s sleigh we heard in the distance Baptiste’s French-English song; but the song that floated down with the sound of the bells from the miners’ sleigh was—

‘We shall meet on that beautiful shore.’

‘Poor old Shaw!’ said Craig softly.

When the last sound had died away I turned to him and said—

‘You have won your fight.’

‘We have won our fight; I was beaten,’ he replied quickly, offering me his hand. Then, taking off his cap, and looking up beyond the mountain-tops and the silent stars, he added softly, ‘Our fight, but His victory.’

And, thinking it all over, I could not say but perhaps he was right.