Produced by Kentuckiana Digital Library, David Garcia, Martin Pettit
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE MILITANTS
_"The sword of the Lord and of Gideon."_
BOOKS BY MARY R.S. ANDREWS
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
The Militants. Illustrated $1.50
Bob and the Guides. Illustrated $1.50
The Perfect Tribute. With Frontispiece $0.50
Vive L'Empereur. Illustrated $1.00
[Illustration: "I took her in my arms and held her."]
THE MILITANTS
STORIES OF SOME PARSONS, SOLDIERS
AND OTHER FIGHTERS IN THE WORLD
BY
MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1907
Published, May, 1907
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF A MAN WHO WAS WITH HIS
WHOLE HEART A PRIEST AND WITH HIS WHOLE STRENGTH A SOLDIER OF THE
CHURCH MILITANT.
JACOB SHAW SHIPMAN
CONTENTS
_I. The Bishop's Silence_
_II. The Witnesses_
_III. The Diamond Brooches_
_IV. Crowned with Glory and Honor_
_V. A Messenger_
_VI. The Aide-de-Camp_
_VII. Through the Ivory Gate_
_VIII. The Wife of the Governor_
_IX. The Little Revenge_
ILLUSTRATIONS
_"I took her in my arms and held her"_
_"Many waters shall not wash out love", said Eleanor_
_He stared into the smoldering fire_
_"Look!" he said, and Miles swung about toward the ridge behind_
_"I got behind a turn and fired as a man came on alone"_
_"I reckon I shall have to ask you to not pick any more of those
roses," a voice said_
_"You see, the boat is very new and clean, Miss," he was saying_
_I felt myself pulled by two pairs of hands_
THE BISHOP'S SILENCE
The Bishop was walking across the fields to afternoon service. It was a
hot July day, and he walked slowly--for there was plenty of time--with
his eyes fixed on the far-off, shimmering sea. That minstrel of heat,
the locust, hidden somewhere in the shade of burning herbage, pulled a
long, clear, vibrating bow across his violin, and the sound fell lazily
on the still air--the only sound on earth except a soft crackle under
the Bishop's feet. Suddenly the erect, iron-gray head plunged madly
forward, and then, with a frantic effort and a parabola or two,
recovered itself, while from the tall grass by the side of the path
gurgled up a high, soft, ecstatic squeal. The Bishop, his face flushed
with the stumble and the heat and a touch of indignation besides,
straightened himself with dignity and felt for his hat, while his eyes
followed a wriggling cord that lay on the ground, up to a small brown
fist. A burnished head, gleaming in the sunshine like the gilded ball
on a church steeple, rose suddenly out of the waves of dry grass, and a
pink-ginghamed figure, radiant with joy and good-will, confronted him.
The Bishop's temper, roughly waked up by the unwilling and unepiscopal
war-dance just executed, fell back into its chains.
"Did you tie that string across the path?"
"Yes," The shining head nodded. "Too bad you didn't fell 'way down. I'm
sorry. But you kicked awf'ly."
"Oh! I did, did I?" asked the Bishop. "You're an unrepentant young
sinner. Suppose I'd broken my leg?"
The head nodded again. "Oh, we'd have patzed you up," she said
cheerfully. "Don't worry. Trust in God."
The Bishop jumped. "My child," he said, "who says that to you?"
"Aunt Basha." The innocent eyes faced him without a sign of
embarrassment. "Aunt Basha's my old black mammy. Do you know her? All
her name's longer'n that. I can say it." Then with careful, slow
enunciation, "Bathsheba Salina Mosina Angelica Preston."
"Is that your little bit of name too?" the Bishop asked, "Are you a
Preston?"
"Why, of course." The child opened her gray eyes wide. "Don't you know
my name? I'm Eleanor. Eleanor Gray Preston."
For a moment again the locust had it all to himself. High and insistent,
his steady note sounded across the hot, still world. The Bishop looked
down at the gray eyes gazing upward wonderingly, and through a mist of
years other eyes smiled at him. Eleanor Gray--the world is small, the
life of it persistent; generations repeat themselves, and each is young
but once. He put his hand under the child's chin and turned up the baby
face.
"Ah!" said he--if that may stand for the sound that stood for the
Bishop's reverie. "Ah! Whom were you named for, Eleanor Gray?"
"For my own muvver." Eleanor wriggled her chin from the big hand and
looked at him with dignity. She did not like to be touched by
strangers. Again the voices stopped and the locust sang two notes and
stopped also, as if suddenly awed.
"Your mother," repeated the Bishop, "your mother! I hope you are worthy
of the name."
"Yes, I am," said Eleanor heartily. "Bug's on your shoulder, Bishop! For
de Lawd's sake!" she squealed excitedly, in delicious high notes that a
prima donna might envy; then caught the fat grasshopper from the black
clerical coat, and stood holding it, lips compressed and the joy of
adventure dancing in her eyes. The Bishop took out his watch and looked
at it, as Eleanor, her soul on the grasshopper, opened her fist and
flung its squirming contents, with delicious horror, yards away. Half an
hour yet to service and only five minutes' walk to the little church of
Saint Peter's-by-the-Sea.
"Will you sit down and talk to me, Eleanor Gray?" he asked, gravely.
"Oh, yes, if there's time," assented Eleanor, "but you mustn't be late
to church, Bishop. That's naughty."
"I think there's time. How do you know who I am, Eleanor?"
"Dick told me."
The Bishop had walked away from the throbbing sunshine into the
green-black shadows of a tree, and seated himself with a boyish
lightness in piquant contrast with his gray-haired dignity--a lightness
that meant athletic years. Eleanor bent down the branch of a great bush
that faced him and sat on it as if a bird had poised there. She smiled
as their eyes met, and began to hum an air softly. The startled Bishop
slowly made out a likeness to the words of the old hymn that begins
Am I a soldier of the Cross,
A follower of the Lamb?
Sweetly and reverently she sang it, over and over, with a difference.
Am I shoulder of a hoss,
A quarter of a lamb?
sang Eleanor.
The Bishop exploded into a great laugh that drowned the music.
"Aunt Basha taught you that, too, didn't she?" he asked, and off he
went into another deep-toned peal.
"I thought you'd like that, 'cause it's a hymn and you're a Bishop,"
said Eleanor, approvingly. Her effort was evidently meeting with
appreciation. "You can talk to me now, I'm here." She settled herself
like a Brownie, elbows on knees, her chin in the hollows of small, lean
hands, and gazed at him unflinchingly.
"Thank you," said the Bishop, sobering at once, but laughter still in
his eyes. "Will you be kind enough to tell me then, Eleanor, who is
Dick?"
Eleanor looked astonished, "You don't know anybody much, do you?" and
there was gentle pity in her voice. "Why, Dick, he's--why, he's--why,
you see, he's my friend. I don't know his uvver names, but Mr. Fielding,
he's Dick's favver."
"Oh!" said the Bishop with comprehension. "Dick Fielding. Then Dick is
my friend, too. And people that are friends to the same people should
be friends to each other--that's geometry, Eleanor, though it's
possibly not life."
"Huh?" Eleanor stared, puzzled.
"Will you be friends with me, Eleanor Gray? I knew your mother a long
time ago, when she was Eleanor Gray." Eleanor yawned frankly. That might
be true, but it did not appear to her remarkable or interesting. The
deep voice went on, with a moment's interval. "Where is your mother? Is
she here?"
Eleanor laughed. "Oh, no," she said. "Don't you know? What a funny man
you are--you know such a few things. My muvver's up in heaven. She went
when I was a baby, long, _long_ ago. I reckon she must have flewed," she
added, reflectively, raising clear eyes to the pale, heat-worn sky that
gleamed through the branches.
The Bishop's big hands went up to his face suddenly, and the strong
fingers clasped tensely above his forehead. Between his wrists one could
see that his mouth was set in a hard line. "Dead!" he said. "And I never
knew it."
Eleanor dug a small russet heel unconcernedly into the ground.
"Naughty, naughty, naughty little grasshopper," she began to chant,
addressing an unconscious insect near the heel. "Don't you go and crawl
up on the Bishop. No, just don't you. 'Cause if you do, oh, naughty
grasshopper, I'll scrunch you!" with a vicious snap on the "scrunch."
The Bishop lowered his hands and looked at her. "I'm not being very
interesting, Eleanor, am I?"
"Not very," Eleanor admitted. "Couldn't you be some more int'rstin'?"
"I'll try," said the Bishop. "But be careful not to hurt the poor
grasshopper. Because, you know, some people say that if he is a good
grasshopper for a long time, then when he dies his little soul will go
into a better body--perhaps a butterfly's body next time."
Eleanor caught the thought instantly. "And if he's a good butterfly,
then what'll he be? A hummin'-bird? Let's kill him quick, and see him
turn into a butterfly."
"Oh, no, Eleanor, you can't force the situation. He has to live out his
little grasshopper life the best that he can, before he's good enough to
be a butterfly. If you kill him now you might send him backward. He
might turn into what he was before--a poor little blind worm perhaps."
"Oh, my Lawd!" said Eleanor.
The Bishop was still a moment, and then repeated, quietly:
Slay not the meanest creature, lest thou slay
Some humble soul upon its upward way.
"Oughtn't to talk to yourself," Eleanor shook her head disapprovingly.
"'Tisn't so very polite. Is that true about the grasshopper, Bishop, or
is it a whopper?"
The Bishop thought for a moment. "I don't know, Eleanor," he answered,
gently.
"You don't know so very much, do you?" inquired Eleanor, not as
despising but as wondering, sympathizing with ignorance.
"Very little," the Bishop agreed. "And I've tried to learn, all my
life"--his gaze wandered off reflectively.
"Too bad," said Eleanor. "Maybe you'll learn some time."
"Maybe," said the Bishop and smiled, and suddenly she sprang to her
feet, and shook her finger at him.
"I'm afraid," she said, "I'm very much afraid you're a naughty boy."
The Bishop looked up at the small, motherly face, bewildered. "Wh--why?"
he stammered.
"Do you know what you're bein'? You're bein' late to church!"
The Bishop sprang up too, at that, and looked at his watch quickly. "Not
late yet, but I'll walk along. Where are you going, waif? Aren't you in
charge of anybody?"
"Huh?" inquired Eleanor, her head cocked sideways.
"Whom did you come out with?"
"Madge and Dick, but they're off there," nodding toward the wood behind
them. "Madge is cryin'. She wouldn't let me pound Dick for makin' her,
so I went away."
"Who is Madge?"
Eleanor, drifting beside him through the sunshine like a rose-leaf on
the wind, stopped short. "Why, Bishop, don't you know even Madge? Funny
Bishop! Madge is my sister--she's grown up. Dick made her cry, but I
think he wasn't much naughty, 'cause she would _not_ let me pound him.
She put her arms right around him."
"Oh!" said the Bishop, and there was silence for a moment. "You mustn't
tell me any more about Madge and Dick, I think, Eleanor."
"All right, my lamb!" Eleanor assented, cheerfully, and conversation
flagged.
"How old are you, Eleanor Gray?"
"Six, praise de Lawd!"
The Bishop considered deeply for a moment, then his face cleared.
"'Their angels do always behold the face of my Father,'" and he smiled.
"I say it too, praise the Lord that she is six."
"Madge is lots more'n that," the soft little voice, with its gay,
courageous inflection, went on. "She's twenty. Isn't that old? You
aren't much different of that, are you?" and the heavy, cropped,
straight gold mass of her hair swung sideways as she turned her face up
to scrutinize the tall Bishop.
He smiled down at her. "Only thirty years different. I'm fifty,
Eleanor."
"Oh!" said Eleanor, trying to grasp the problem. Then with a sigh she
gave it up, and threw herself on the strength of maturity. "Is fifty
older'n twenty?" she asked.
More than once as they went side by side on the narrow foot-path across
the field the Bishop put out his hand to hold the little brown one near
it, but each time the child floated from his touch, and he smiled at the
unconscious dignity, the womanly reserve of the frank and friendly
little lady. "Thus far and no farther," he thought, with the quick
perception of character that was part of his power. But the Bishop was
as unconscious as the child of his own charm, of the magnetism in him
that drew hearts his way. Only once had it ever failed, and that was the
only time he had cared. But this time it was working fast as they walked
and talked together quietly, and when they reached the open door that
led from the fields into the little robing-room of Saint Peter's,
Eleanor had met her Waterloo. Being six, it was easy to say so, and she
did it with directness, yet without at all losing the dignity that was
breeding, that had come to her from generations, and that she knew of as
little as she knew the names of her bones. Three steps led to the
robing-room, and Eleanor flew to the top and turned, the childish figure
in its worn pink cotton dress facing the tall powerful one in sober
black broadcloth.
"I love you," she said. "I'll kiss you," and the long, strong little
arms were around his neck, and it seemed to the Bishop as if a kiss that
had never been given came to him now from the lips of the child of the
woman he had loved. As he put her down gently, from the belfry above
tolled suddenly a sweet, rolling note for service.
When the Bishop came out from church the "peace that passeth
understanding" was over him. The beautiful old words that to churchmen
are dear as their mothers' faces, haunting as the voices that make home,
held him yet in the last echo of their music. Peace seemed, too, to lie
across the world, worn with the day's heat, where the shadows were
stretching in lengthening, cooling lines. And there at the vestry step,
where Eleanor had stood an hour before, was Dick Fielding, waiting for
him, with as unhappy a face as an eldest scion, the heir to millions,
well loved, and well brought up, and wonderfully unspoiled, ever carried
about a country-side. The Bishop was staying at the Fieldings'. He
nodded and swung past Dick, with a look from the tail of his eye that
said: "Come along." Dick came, and silently the two turned into the path
of the fields. The scowl on Dick's dark face deepened as they walked,
and that was all there was by way of conversation for some time.
Finally:
"You don't know about it, do you, Bishop?" he asked.
"A very little, my boy," the Bishop answered.
Dick was on the defensive in a moment. "My father told you--you agree
with him?"
"Your father has told me nothing. I only came last night, remember. I
know that you made Madge cry, and that Eleanor wasn't allowed to punish
you."
The boyish face cleared a little, and he laughed. "That little rat! Has
she been talking? It's all right if it's only to you, but Madge will
have to cork her up." Then anxiety and unhappiness seized Dick's buoyant
soul again. "Bishop, let me talk to you, will you please? I'm knocked up
about this, for there's never been trouble between my father and me
before, and I can't give in. I know I'm right--I'd be a cad to give in,
and I wouldn't if I could. If you would only see your way to talking to
the governor, Bishop! He'll listen to you when he'd throw any other chap
out of the house."
"Tell me the whole story if you can, Dick, I don't understand, you see."
"I suppose it will sound rather commonplace to you," said Dick, humbly,
"but it means everything to me. I--I'm engaged to Madge Preston. I've
known her for a year, and been engaged half of it, and I ought to know
my own mind by now. But father has simply set his forefeet and won't
hear of it. Won't even let me talk to him about it."
Dick's hands went into his pockets and his head drooped, and his big
figure lagged pathetically. The Bishop put his hand on the young man's
shoulder, and left it there as they walked slowly on, but he said
nothing.
"It's her father, you know," Dick went on. "Such rot, to hold a girl
responsible for her ancestors! Isn't it rot, now? Father says they're a
bad stock, dissipated and arrogant and spendthrift and shiftless and
weak--oh, and a lot more! He's not stingy with his adjectives, bless
you! Picture to yourself Madge being dissipated and arrogant and--have
you seen Madge?" he interrupted himself.
The Bishop shook his head. "Eleanor made an attempt on my life with a
string across the path, to-day. We were friends over that."
"She's a winning little rat," said Dick, smiling absent-mindedly, "but
nothing to Madge. You'll understand when you see Madge how I couldn't
give her up. And it isn't so much that--my feeling for her--though
that's enough in all conscience, but picture to yourself, if you please,
a man going to a girl and saying: 'I'm obliged to give you up, because
my father threatens to disinherit me and kick me out of the business. He
objects because your father's a poor lot.' That's a nice line of conduct
to map out for your only son. Yet that's practically what my father
wishes me to do. But he's brought me up a gentleman, by George," said
Dick straightening himself, "and it's too late to ask me to be a beastly
cad. Besides that," and voice and figure drooped to despondency again,
"I just can't give her up."
The Bishop's keen eyes were on the troubled face, and in their depths
lurked a kindly shade of amusement. He could see stubborn old Dick
Fielding in stubborn young Dick Fielding so plainly. Dick the elder had
been his friend for forty years. But he said nothing. It was better to
let the boy talk himself out a bit. In a moment Dick began again.
"Can't see why the governor's so keen against Colonel Preston, anyway.
He's lost his money and made a mess of his life, and I rather fancy he
drinks too much. But he's the sort of man you can't help being proud
of--bad clothes and vices and all--handsome and charming and
thorough-bred--and father must know it. His children love him--he can't
be such a brute as the governor says. Anyway, I don't want to marry the
Colonel--what's the use of rowing about the Colonel?" inquired Dick,
desperately.
The Bishop asked a question now: "How many children are there?"
"Only Madge and Eleanor. They're here with their cousins, the Vails,
summers. Two or three died between those two, I believe. Lucky, perhaps,
for the family has been awfully hard up. Lived on in their big old
place, in Maryland, with no money at all. I've an idea Madge's mother
wasn't so sorry to die--had a hard life of it with the fascinating
Colonel." The Bishop's hand dropped from the boy's shoulder, and shut
tightly. "But that has nothing to do with my marrying Madge," Dick went
on.
"No," said the Bishop, shortly.
"And you see," said Dick, slipping to another tangent, "it's not the
money I'm keenest about, though of course I want that too, but it's
father. You believe I think more of my father than of his money, don't
you? We've been good friends all my life, and he's such a crackerjack
old fellow. I'd hate to get along without him." Dick sighed, from his
boots up--almost six feet. "Couldn't you give him a dressing down,
Bishop? Make him see reason?" He looked anxiously up the three inches
that the Bishop towered above him.
At ten o'clock the next morning Richard Fielding, owner of the great
Fielding Foundries, strolled out on his wide piazza, which, luxurious in
deep wicker chairs and Japanese rugs and light, cool furniture, looked
under scarlet and white awnings, across long boxes of geraniums and
vines, out to the sparkling Atlantic. The Bishop, a friendly light
coming into his thoughtful eyes, took his cigar from his lips and
glanced up at his friend. Mr. Fielding kicked a hassock aside, moved a
table between them, and settled himself in another chair, and with the
scratch of a match, but without a word spoken, they entered into the
companionship which had been a life-long joy to both.
"Father and the Bishop are having a song and dance without words," Dick
was pleased sometimes to say, and felt that he hit it off. The breeze
carried the scent of the tobacco in intermittent waves of fragrance, and
on the air floated delicately that subtle message of peace, prosperity,
and leisure which is part of the mission of a good cigar. The
pleasantness of the wide, cool piazza, with its flowers and vines and
gay awnings; the charm of the summer morning, not yet dulled by wear and
tear of the day; the steady, deliberate dash of the waves on the beach
below; the play and shimmer of the big, quiet water, stretching out to
the edge of the world; all this filled their minds, rested their souls.
There was no need for words. The Bishop sighed comfortably as he pushed
his great shoulders back against the cool wicker of the chair and swung
one long leg across the other. Fielding, chin up and lips rounded to let
out a cloud of smoke, rested his hand, cigar between the fingers, on the
table, and gazed at him satisfied. This was the man, after Dick, dearest
to him in the world. Into which peaceful Eden stole at this point the
serpent, and, as is usual, in the shape of woman. Little Eleanor,
long-legged, slim, fresh as a flower in her crisp, faded pink dress,
came around the corner. In one hot hand she carried, by their heads, a
bunch of lilac and pink and white sweet peas. It cost her no trouble at
all, and about half a minute of time, to charge the atmosphere, so full
of sweet peace and rest, with a saturated solution of bitterness and
disquiet. Her presence alone was a bombshell, and with a sentence or two
in her clear, innocent voice, the fell deed was done. Fielding stopped
smoking, his cigar in mid-air, and stared with a scowl at the child; but
Eleanor, delighted to have found the Bishop, saw only him. A shower of
crushed blossoms fell over his knees.
"I ran away from Aunt Basha. I brought you a posy for 'Good-mornin','"
she said. The Bishop, collecting the plunder, expressed gratitude. "Dick
picked a whole lot for Madge, and then they went walkin' and forgot 'em.
Isn't Dick funny?" she went on.
Mr. Fielding looked as if Dick's drollness did not appeal to him, but
the Bishop laughed, and put his arm around her.
"Will you give me a kiss, too, for 'Good-morning,'" he said; and then,
"That's better than the flowers. You had better run back to Aunt Basha
now, Eleanor--she'll be frightened."
Eleanor looked disappointed, "I wanted to ask you 'bout what dead
chickens gets to be, if they're good. Pups? Do you reckon it's pups?"
The theory of transmigration of souls had taken strong hold. Mr.
Fielding lost his scowl in a look of bewilderment, and the Bishop
frankly shouted out a big laugh.
"Listen, Eleanor. This afternoon I'll come for you to walk, and we'll
talk that all over. Go home now, my lamb." And Eleanor, like a pale-pink
over-sized butterfly, went.
"Do you know that child, Jim?" Mr. Fielding asked, grimly.
"Yes," answered the Bishop, with a serene pull at his cigar.
"Do you know she's the child of that good-for-nothing Fairfax Preston,
who married Eleanor Gray against her people's will and took her South
to--to--starve, practically?"
The Bishop drew a long breath, and then he turned and looked at his old
friend with a clear, wide gaze. "She's Eleanor Gray's child, too, Dick,"
he said.
Mr. Fielding was silent a moment. "Has the boy talked to you?" he asked.
The Bishop nodded. "It's the worst trouble I've ever had. It would kill
me to see him marry that man's daughter. I can't and won't resign myself
to it. Why should I? Why should Dick choose, out of all the world, the
one girl in it who would be insufferable to me. I can't give in about
this. Much as Dick is to me I'll let him go sooner. I hope you'll see
I'm right, Jim, but right or wrong, I've made up my mind."
The Bishop stretched a large, bony hand across the little table that
stood between them. Fielding's fell on it. Both men smoked silently for
a minute.
"Have you anything against the girl, Dick?" asked the Bishop, presently.
"That she's her father's daughter--it's enough. The bad blood of
generations is in her. I don't like the South--I don't like
Southerners. And I detest beyond words Fairfax Preston. But the girl is
certainly beautiful, and they say she is a good girl, too," he
acknowledged, gloomily.
"Then I think you're wrong," said the Bishop.
"You don't understand, Jim," Fielding took it up passionately. "That man
has been the _bête noir_ of my life. He has gotten in my way
half-a-dozen times deliberately, in business affairs, little as he
amounts to himself. Only two years ago--but that isn't the point after
all." He stopped gloomily. "You'll wonder at me, but it's an older feud
than that. I've never told anyone, but I want you to understand, Jim,
how impossible this affair is." He bit off the end of a fresh cigar,
lighted it and then threw it across the geraniums into the grass. "I
wanted to marry her mother," he said, brusquely. "That man got her. Of
course, I could have forgiven that, but it was the way he did it. He
lied to her--he threw it in my teeth that I had failed. Can't you see
how I shall never forgive him--never, while I live!" The intensity of a
life-long, silent hatred trembled in his voice.
"It's the very thing it's your business to do, Dick," said the Bishop,
quietly. "'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you'--what do you
think that means? It's your very case. It may be the hardest thing in
the world, but it's the simplest, most obvious." He drew a long puff at
his cigar, and looked over the flowers to the ocean.
"Simple! Obvious!" Fielding's voice was full of bitterness. "That's the
way with you churchmen! You live outside passions and temptations, and
then preach against them, with no faintest notion of their force. It
sounds easy, doesn't it? Simple and obvious, as you say. You never loved
Eleanor Gray, Jim; you never had to give her up to a man you knew
beneath her; you never had to shut murder out of your heart when you
heard that he'd given her a hard life and a glad death. Eleanor Gray! Do
you remember how lovely she was, how high-spirited and full of the joy
of life?" The Bishop's great figure was still as if the breath in it had
stopped, but Fielding, carried on the flood of his own rushing feeling,
did not notice. "Do you remember, Jim?" he repeated.
"I remember," the Bishop said, and his voice sounded very quiet.
"Jove! How calm you are!" exploded the other.
"You're a churchman; you live behind a wall, you hear voices through it,
but you can't be in the fight--it's easy for you."
"Life isn't easy for anyone, Dick," said the Bishop, slowly. "You know
that. I'm fighting the current as well as you. You are a churchman as
well as I. If it's my _métier_ to preach against human passion, it's
yours to resist it. You're letting this man you hate mould your
character; you're letting him burn the kindness out of your soul. He's
making you bitter and hard and unjust--and you're letting him. I thought
you had more will--more poise. It isn't your affair what he is, even
what he does, Dick--it's your affair to keep your own judgment unwarped,
your own heart gentle, your own soul untainted by the poison of hatred.
We are both churchmen, as you put it--loyalty is for us both. You live
your sermon--I say mine. I have said it. Now live yours. Put this
wormwood away from you. Forgive Preston, as you need forgiveness at
higher hands. Don't break the girl's heart, and spoil your boy's
life--it may spoil it--the leaven of bitterness works long. You're at a
parting of the ways--take the right turn. Do good and not evil with your
strength; all the rest is nothing. After all the years there is just one
thing that counts, and that our mothers told us when we were little
chaps together--be good, Dick."
The magnetic voice, that had swayed thousands, the indescribable trick
of inflection that caught the heart-strings, the pure, high personality
that shone through look and tone, had never, in all his brilliant
career, been more full of power than for this audience of one. Fielding
got up, trembling, and stood before him.
"Jim," he said, "whatever else is so, you are that--you are a good man.
The trouble is you want me to be as good as you are; and I can't. If you
had had temptations like mine, trials like mine, I might try to follow
you--I would try. But you haven't--you're an impossible model for me.
You want me to be an angel of light, and I'm only--a man." He turned
and went into the house.
The oldest inhabitant had not seen a devotion like the Bishop's and
Eleanor's. There was in it no condescension on one side, no strain on
the other. The soul that through fulness of life and sorrow and
happiness and effort had reached at last a child's peace met as its like
the little child's soul, that had known neither life nor sorrow nor
conscious happiness, and was without effort as a lily of the field. It
may be that the wisdom of babyhood and the wisdom of age will look very
alike to us when we have the wisdom of eternity. And as all the colors
of the spectrum make sunlight, so all his splendid powers that patient
years had made perfect shone through the Bishop's character in the white
light of simplicity. No one knew what they talked about, the child and
the man, on the long walks that they took together almost every day,
except from Eleanor's conversation after. Transmigration, done into the
vernacular, and applied with startling directness, was evidently a
fascinating subject from the first. She brought back as well a vivid
and epigrammatic version of the nebular hypothesis.
"Did you hear 'bout what the world did?" she demanded, casually, at the
lunch-table. "We were all hot, nasty steam, just like a tea-kettle, and
we cooled off into water, sailin' around so much, and then we got crusts
on us, bless de Lawd, and then, sir, we kept on gettin' solid, and
circus animals grewed all over us, and then they died, and thank God for
that, and Adam and Evenin' camed, and Madge _can't_ I have some more
gingerbread? I'd just as soon be a little sick if you'll let me have
it."
The "fairyland of science and the long results of time," passing from
the Bishop's hands into the child's, were turned into such graphic
tales, for Eleanor, with all her airy charm, struck straight from the
shoulder. Never was there a sense of superiority on the Bishop's side,
or of being lectured on Eleanor's.
"Why do you like to walk with the Bishop?" Mrs. Vail asked, curiously.
"Because he hasn't any morals," said the little girl, fresh from a
Sunday-school lesson.
Saturday night Mr. Fielding stayed late in the city, and Dick was with
his lady-love at the Vails; so the Bishop, after dining alone, went down
on the wide beach below the house and walked, as he smoked his cigar.
Through the week he had been restless under the constant prick of a duty
undone, which he could not make up his mind to do. Over and over he
heard his friend's agitated voice. "If you had had temptations like
mine, trials like mine, I would try to follow you," it said. He knew
that the man would be good as his word. He could perhaps win Dick's
happiness for him if he would pick up the gauntlet of that speech. If he
could bring himself to tell Fielding the whole story that he had shut so
long ago into silence--that he, too, had cared for Eleanor Gray, and had
given her up in a harder way than the other, for the Bishop had made it
possible that the Southerner should marry her. But it was like tearing
his soul to do it. No one but his mother, who was dead, had known this
one secret of a life like crystal. The Bishop's reticence was the
intense sort, that often goes with a frank exterior, and he had never
cared for another woman. Some men's hearts are open pleasure-grounds,
where all the world may come and go, and the earth is dusty with many
feet; and some are like theatres, shut perhaps to the world in general,
but which a passport of beauty or charm may always open; and with many,
of finer clay, there are but two or three ways into a guarded temple,
and only the touchstone of quality may let pass the lightest foot upon
the carefully tended sod. But now and then a heart is Holy of Holies.
Long ago the Bishop, lifting a young face from the books that absorbed
him, had seen a girl's figure filling the narrow doorway, and dazzled by
the radiance of it, had placed that image on the lonely altar, where the
flame waited, before unconsecrated. Then the girl had gone, and he had
quietly shut the door and lived his life outside. But the sealed place
was there, and the fire burned before the old picture. Why should he,
for Dick Fielding, for any one, let the light of day upon that
stillness? The one thing in life that was his own, and all these years
he had kept it sacred--why should he? Fiercely, with the old animal
jealousy of ownership, he guarded for himself that memory--what was
there on earth that could make him share it? And in answer there rose
before him the vision of Madge Preston, with a haunting air of her
mother about her; of young Dick Fielding, almost his own child from
babyhood, his honest soul torn between two duties; of old Dick Fielding,
loyal and kind and obstinate, his stubborn feet, the feet that had
walked near his for forty years, needing only a touch to turn them into
the right path.
Back and forth the thoughts buffeted each other, and the Bishop sighed,
and threw away his cigar, and then stopped and stared out at the
darkening, great ocean. The steady rush and pause and low wash of
retreat did not calm him to-night.
"I'd like to turn it off for five minutes. It's so eternally right," he
said aloud and began to walk restlessly again.
Behind him came light steps, but he did not hear them on the soft sand,
in the noise of a breaking wave. A small, firm hand slipped into his was
the first that he knew of another presence, and he did not need to look
down at the bright head to know it was Eleanor, and the touch thrilled
him in his loneliness. Neither spoke, but swung on across the sand, side
by side, the child springing easily to keep pace with his great step.
Beside the gift of English, Eleanor had its comrade gift of excellent
silence. Those who are born to know rightly the charm and the power and
the value of words, know as well the value of the rests in the music.
Little Eleanor, her nervous fingers clutched around the Bishop's big
thumb, was pouring strength and comfort into him, and such an instinct
kept her quiet.
So they walked for a long half-hour, the Bishop fighting out his battle,
sometimes stopping, sometimes talking aloud to himself, but Eleanor,
through it all, not speaking. Once or twice he felt her face laid
against his hand, and her hair that brushed his wrist, and the savage
selfishness of reserve slowly dissolved in the warmth of that light
touch and the steady current of gentleness it diffused through him.
Clearly and more clearly he saw his way and, as always happens, as he
came near to the mountain, the mountain grew lower. "Over the Alps lies
Italy." Why should he count the height when the Italy of Dick's
happiness and Fielding's duty done lay beyond? The clean-handed,
light-hearted disregard of self that had been his habit of mind always
came flooding back like sunshine as he felt his decision made. After
all, doing a duty lies almost entirely in deciding to do it. He stooped
and picked Eleanor up in his arms.
"Isn't the baby sleepy? We've settled it together--it's all right now,
Eleanor. I'll carry you back to Aunt Basha."
"Is it all right now?" asked Eleanor, drowsily. "No, I'll walk," kicking
herself downward. "But you come wiv me." And the Bishop escorted his
lady-love to her castle, where the warden, Aunt Basha, was for this half
hour making night vocal with lamentations for the runaway.
"Po' lil lamb!" said Aunt Basha, with an undisguised scowl at the
Bishop. "Seems like some folks dunno nuff to know a baby's bedtime.
Seems like de Lawd's anointed wuz in po' business, ti'in' out chillens!"
"I'm sorry, Aunt Basha," said the Bishop, humbly. "I'll bring her back
earlier again. I forgot all about the time."
"Huh!" was all the response that Aunt Basha vouchsafed, and the Bishop,
feeling himself hopelessly in the wrong, withdrew in discreet silence.
Luncheon was over the next day and the two men were quietly smoking
together in the hot, drowsy quiet of the July mid-afternoon before the
Bishop found a chance to speak to Fielding alone. There was an hour and
a half before service, and this was the time to say his say, and he
gathered himself for it, when suddenly the tongue of the ready speaker,
the _savoir faire_ of the finished man of the world, the mastery of
situations which had always come as easily as his breath, all failed him
at once.
"Dick," he stammered, "there is something I want to tell you," and he
turned on his friend a face which astounded him.
"What on earth is it? You look as if you'd been caught stealing a hat,"
he responded, encouragingly.
The Bishop felt his heart thumping as that healthy organ had not
thumped for years. "I feel a bit that way," he gasped. "You remember
what we were talking of the other day?"
"The other day--talking--" Fielding looked bewildered. Then his face
darkened. "You mean Dick--the affair with that girl." His voice was at
once hard and unresponsive. "What about it?"
"Not at all," said the Bishop, complainingly. "Don't misunderstand like
that, Dick--it's so much harder."
"Oh!" and Fielding's look cleared. "Well, what is it then, old man? Out
with it--want a check for a mission? Surely you don't hesitate to tell
me that! Whatever I have is yours, too--you know it."
The Bishop looked deeply disgusted. "Muddlehead!" was his unexpected
answer, and Fielding, serene in the consciousness of generosity and good
feeling, looked as if a hose had been turned on him.
"What the devil!" he said. "Excuse me, Jim, but just tell me what you're
after. I can't make you out."
"It's most difficult." The Bishop seemed to articulate with trouble.
"It was so long ago, and I've never spoken of it." Fielding, mouth and
eyes wide, watched him as he stumbled on. "There were three of us, you
see--though, of course, you didn't know. Nobody knew. She told my
mother, that was all.--Oh, I'd no idea how difficult this would be," and
the Bishop pushed back his damp hair and gasped again. Suddenly a wave
of color rushed over his face.
"No one could help it, Dick," he said. "She was so lovely, so exquisite,
so--"
Fielding rose quickly and put his hand on his friend's forehead, "Jim,
my dear boy," he said gravely, "this heat has been too much for you. Sit
there quietly, while I get some ice. Here, let me loosen your collar,"
and he put his fingers on the white clerical tie.
Then the Bishop rose up in his wrath and shook him off, and his deep
blue eyes flashed fire.
"Let me alone," he said. "It is inexplicable to me how a man can be so
dense. Haven't I explained to you in the plainest way what I have never
told another soul? Is this the reward I am to have for making the
greatest effort I have made for years?" And after a moment's steady,
indignant glare at the speechless Fielding he turned and strode in angry
majesty through the wide hall doorway.
When he walked out of the same doorway an hour later, on his way to
service, Fielding sat back in a shadowy corner and let him pass without
a word. He watched critically the broad shoulders and athletic figure as
his friend moved down the narrow walk--a body carefully trained to hold
well and easily the trained mind within. But the careless energy that
was used to radiate from the great elastic muscles seemed lacking
to-day, and the erect head drooped. Fielding shook his own head as the
Bishop turned the corner and went out of his view.
"'_Mens sana in corpore sano_,'" he said aloud, and sighed. "He has
worked too hard this summer. I never saw him like that. If he should--"
and he stopped; then he rose, and looked at his watch and slowly
followed the Bishop's steps.
The little church of Saint Peter's-by-the-Sea was filled even on this
hot July afternoon, to hear the famous Bishop, and in the half-light
that fell through painted windows and lay like a dim violet veil against
the gray walls, the congregation with summer gowns and flowery hats, had
a billowy effect as of a wave tipped everywhere with foam. Fielding,
sitting far back, saw only the white-robed Bishop, and hardly heard the
words he said, through listening for the modulations of his voice. He
was anxious for the man who was dear to him, and the service and its
minister were secondary to-day. But gradually the calm, reverent,
well-known tones reassured him, and he yielded to the pleasure of
letting his thoughts be led, by the voice that stood to him for
goodness, into the spirit of the words that are filled with the beauty
of holiness. At last it was time for the sermon, and the Bishop towered
in the low stone pulpit and turned half away from them all as he raised
one arm high with a quick, sweeping gesture.
"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen!"
he said, and was still.
A shaft of yellow light fell through a memorial window and struck a
golden bar against the white lawn of his surplice, and Fielding, staring
at him with eyes of almost passionate devotion, thought suddenly of Sir
Galahad, and of that "long beam" down which had "slid the Holy Grail."
Surely the flame of that old vigorous Christianity had never burned
higher or steadier. A marvellous life for this day, kept, like the
flower of Knighthood, strong and beautiful and "unspotted from the
world." Fielding sighed as he thought of his own life, full of good
impulses, but crowded with mistakes, with worldliness, with lowered
ideals, with yieldings to temptation. Then, with a pang, he thought
about Dick, about the crisis for him that the next week must bring, and
he heard again the Bishop's steady, uncompromising words as they talked
on the piazza. And on a wave of selfish feeling rushed back the old
excuses. "It is different. It is easy for him to be good. Dick is not
his son. He has never been tempted like other men. He never hated
Fairfax Preston--he never loved Eleanor Gray." And back somewhere in the
dark places of his consciousness began to work a dim thought of his
friend's puzzling words of that day: "No one could help loving her--she
was so lovely--so exquisite!"
The congregation rustled softly everywhere as the people settled
themselves to listen--they listened always to him. And across the hush
that followed came the Bishop's voice again, tranquilly breaking, not
jarring, the silence. "Not disobedient to the heavenly vision," were the
words he was saying, and Fielding dropped at once the thread of his own
thought to listen.
He spoke quickly, clearly, in short Anglo-Saxon words--the words that
carry their message straightest to hearts red with Saxon blood--of the
complex nature of every man--how the angel and the demon live in each
and vary through all the shades of good and bad. How yet in each there
is always the possibility of a highest and best that can be true for
that personality only--a dream to be realized of the lovely life,
blooming into its own flower of beauty, that God means each life to be.
In his own rushing words he clothed the simple thought of the charge
that each one has to keep his angel strong, the white wings free for
higher flights that come with growth.
"The vision," he said, "is born with each of us, and though we lose it
again and again, yet again and again it comes back and beckons, calls,
and the voice thrills us always. And we must follow, or lose the way.
Through ice and flame we must follow. And no one may look across where
another soul moves on a quick, straight path and think that the way is
easier for the other. No one can see if the rocks are not cutting his
friend's feet; no one can know what burning lands he has crossed to
follow, to be so close to his angel, his messenger. Believe always that
every other life has been more tempted, more tried than your own;
believe that the lives higher and better than your own are so not
through more ease, but more effort; that the lives lower than yours are
so through less opportunity, more trial. Believe that your friend with
peace in his heart has won it, not happened on it--that he has fought
your very fight. So the mist will melt from your eyes and you will see
clearer the vision of your life and the way it leads you; selfishness
will fall from your shoulders and you will follow lightly. And at the
end, and along the way you will have the glory of effort, the joy of
fighting and winning, the beauty of the heights where only an ideal can
take you."
What more he said Fielding did not hear--for him one sentence had been
the final word. The unlaid ghost of the Bishop's puzzling talk an hour
before rose up and from its lips came, as if in full explanation, "He
has fought your very fight." He sat in his shadowy, dark corner of the
cool, little stone church, and while the congregation rose and knelt and
sang and prayed, he was still. Piece by piece he fitted the mosaic of
past and present, and each bit slipped faultlessly into place. There was
no question in his mind now as to the fact, and his manliness and honor
rushed to meet the situation. He had said that where his friend had gone
he would go. If it was down the road of renunciation of a life-long
enmity, he would not break his word. Complex problems resolve themselves
at the point of action into such simple axioms. Dick should have a
blessing and his sweetheart; he would do his best for Fairfax Preston;
with his might he would keep his word. A great sigh and a wrench at his
heart as if a physical growth of years were tearing away, and the
decision was made. Then, in a mist of pain and effort, and a surprised
new freedom from the accustomed pang of hatred, he heard the rustle and
movement of a kneeling congregation, and, as he looked, the Bishop
raised his arms. Fielding bent his gray head quickly in his hands, and
over it, laden with "peace" and "the blessing of God Almighty," as if a
general commended his soldier on the field of battle, swept the solemn
words of the benediction.
Peace touched the earth on the blue and white September day when Madge
and Dick were married. Pearly piled-up clouds, white "herded elephants,"
lay still against a sparkling sky, and the air was alive like cool wine,
and breathing warm breaths of sunlight. No wedding was ever gayer or
prettier, from the moment when the smiling holiday crowd in little Saint
Peter's caught their breath at the first notes of "Lohengrin" and
turned to see Eleanor, white-clad and solemn, and impressed with
responsibility, lead the procession slowly up the aisle, her eyes raised
to the Bishop's calm face in the chancel, to the moment when, in showers
of rice and laughter and slippers, the Fielding carriage dashed down the
driveway, and Dick, leaning out, caught for a last picture of his
wedding-day, standing apart from the bright colors grouped on the lawn,
the black and white of the Bishop and Eleanor, gazing after them, hand
in hand.
Bit by bit the brilliant kaleidoscopic effect fell apart and resolved
itself into light groups against the dark foliage or flashing masses of
carriages and people and horses, and then even the blurs on the distance
were gone, and the place was still and the wedding was over. The long
afternoon was before them, with its restless emptiness, as if the bride
and groom had taken all the reason for life with them.
There were bridesmaids and ushers staying at the Fieldings'. The
graceful girl who poured out the Bishop's tea on the piazza, some hours
later, and brought it to him with her own hands, stared a little at his
face for a moment.
"You look tired, Bishop. Is it hard work marrying people? But you must
be used to it after all these years," and her blue eyes fell gently on
his gray hair. "So many love-stories you have finished--so many, many!"
she went on, and then quite softly, "and yet never to have a love-story
of your own!"
At this instant Eleanor, lolling on the arm of his chair, slipped over
on his knee and burrowed against his coat a big pink bow that tied her
hair. The Bishop's arm tightened around the warm, alive lump of white
muslin, and he lifted his face, where lines showed plainly to-day, with
a smile like sunshine.
"You are wrong, my daughter. They never finish--they only begin here.
And my love-story"--he hesitated and his big fingers spread over the
child's head, "It is all written in Eleanor's eyes."