The river was a splendor of Christmas sunshine. A flurry of snow had
lightly powdered the brown sod beneath the double rows of elms. Few
people were abroad. Sometimes a little group of children, eyes and feet
a-dance, and cheeks nipped red, went tripping past the Bishop. Older
folk passed with hearty, careless greeting, for the stooping figure
in the cape overcoat was as familiar and unnoted as the river itself
with all its mystery of light. The Bishop had known Westbury so long
and so well that he felt that the homes by which he was passing, all
bright with holly, were his homes, that he might have stopped anywhere
to share the Christmasing. His slowly pacing feet, however, were bent
on the old way toward St. John’s Rectory. In the old days the Bishop
had always called at the Rectory to greet Barty Judd and his household
before church-time, and he still kept to the habit, even though it was
so different now at the Rectory.
A flock of sparrows came swooping down through the wintry silence
with much chatter, and at the same time there came scudding across
the street a little Italian newsboy as shrill and brown as the birds.
The Bishop bought a paper, and made the youngster’s smile flash as he
paused for a few words in his own tongue. Presently, as he went on, the
newspaper dropped from the Bishop’s fingers, as he fell to thinking of
that alien colony down below there, where the river curved, Westbury’s
strangers. They had come so recently, the factories had sprung up so
quickly, that the workers were still the strangers. It is true that the
Bishop was well known to those teeming streets as the old man who spoke
Italian and who loved babies, but he felt that he had done nothing for
these others, really. Eighty years! How barren of accomplishment they
looked beneath the searchlight of Christmas! But perhaps there was
still time! His step quickened.
As the Bishop passed beneath the shadow of St. John’s church, the
chimes clanged forth the ten o’clock hour. He glanced toward the door,
thinking how calm and gentle and familiar everything was within. After
all, his headache had melted away and nothing was to prevent his
presence by the altar on this morning. The quiet of the chancel was
restful to his fancy, lying beyond the visit immediately before him.
As he turned up the Rectory steps, tugging slightly on the handrail,
the door was flung open, and a tall boy came hurrying out. His thin,
fine face was set and black, but a smile played across its frown when
he saw the Bishop.
“Good morning, Harry,” said the visitor, “and good Christmas.”
“There’ll be no good Christmas here,” answered the low taut voice,
“unless you’ve brought it, Bishop!”
“No trouble here to-day, I hope?”
“Trouble every day, now!” Then remembering dignity, Harry shut his
lips, adding more calmly, “Father is not well this morning, Bishop. I
am just going out to tell Mr. Edgerton that he does not feel able to be
at church.”
“I am very sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,--sorry for mother and Lois! I am glad you’ve come. It
will do them good to see you.”
“And may I see your father, too?”
“I think so, if you wish it. I shouldn’t wish it!” Harry murmured
darkly, as he turned about to unlock the door he had slammed, calling
in a low note of warning to his mother, and then leaving the Bishop
with her in the drawing-room. The shades had been pulled down, the
holly wreaths looked dull. A little mouse of a girl came out of a
shadowy corner, and the mother’s arm went about the child’s shoulders
as the two greeted the Bishop. They both had thin dark faces and
intense brown eyes. The girl’s hair was dusky and the mother’s silver,
above a forehead worn but unwrinkled. The girl’s dress was white and
the mother’s clinging gray, and both wore sprays of blood-red holly.
“Christmas joy to you both,” smiled the Bishop.
“And happy Christmas to you, too, Bishop,” said the mother, while Lois
took his hat and cane. He tugged helplessly at his overcoat so that
they each sprang to pull at a sleeve.
“Thank you. There! Don’t let yourself be eighty, Lois. It’s a sad thing
to be older than your overcoat.” Then, seating himself, he continued,
“Harry tells me his father is not well to-day. I am very sorry. I have
been worried lately about him.”
“We have all been worried. It is hard to understand. I suppose,” Mrs.
Newbold smiled wanly, “it is just another case of ministerial nerves,
but he suffers very much at times. I wish I could shield him from all
worry, but I cannot always anticipate what is going to disturb him. We
try, the children and I, but I fear we are very stupid. This morning,
for instance--” she broke off, “this morning he felt quite unequal to
the Christmas service, yet he is worried at not being there.”
“Edgerton and I will manage the service. Dr. Newbold may be quite at
ease about that. I hope--”
A summoning bell from above rang sharply.
Mrs. Newbold started, “Oh, Katie is at church,” she exclaimed. “Run,
Lois! No, I’ll go myself!” With fingers upon the portière, however, she
paused.
The Bishop rose, an odd little flicker in his eyes. “Suppose I go,” he
said, moving toward the hall.
The wife looked at him, fighting for a tremulous smile. “There is
nothing the matter really, of course. I shouldn’t let you go up. I know
I ought to go. But--” she drew quick breath, concluding, “he’s in the
study, Bishop.”
Once again as earlier in the day, the Bishop paused before a closed
door. An instant he stood there, hesitant, with bowed head, deeply
thoughtful, then he knocked with firm hand.
“Come in, of course,” a voice thundered. “Why else should I ring except
for you to come in!”
The Bishop was standing quietly in the doorway. At sight of him, the
bulky form flung upon the couch sprang up.
“I--I--beg your pardon. I thought it was the maid, or my wife.”
“It is merely your bishop.”
The Bishop’s quiet length sank into a deep chair. His long slim hands
rested calmly upon the leather arms.
Dr. Newbold sat bolt upright upon the couch, darting furtive glances at
the Bishop from eyes too blue for his reddened face. His right hand,
strong and square, clutched a cushion tensely. The nervous twitching of
his lips redeemed from heaviness a face clean-shaven but always bearing
the blue-black shadow of a heavy growth of beard. There was a pleasant
sweep of brow beneath jet hair.
“I am sorry you find me so upset this morning, Bishop. They perhaps
told you downstairs--” then he paused, remembering what they might well
have told the Bishop downstairs!
“Harry told me you were ill. I met him going out.”
“I judged that he had gone out. Harry’s sole comment on his father’s
headaches is slamming the front door!”
“The youngsters know so little about headaches,” answered the Bishop;
“that is the trouble, then, this morning, headache?”
“The headache is constant, back here, incessant. But this morning the
trouble is,--a case of everything, as the doctor says.”
“What does the doctor say? We must find some way of setting straight
this case of everything.”
“What they all say--nerves, rest, less work, less worry, fewer diocesan
committees, fewer dinner parties--in Westbury where dining is a cult,
and as venerable and as sacred as the church steeple! I might as well
toss over one as the other! Suppose I did turn heretic, and refuse
Mrs. Hollister’s invitation for Thursday! Could I preach beneath her
withering glances next Sunday?
“Or suppose I gave up my bridge with my Senior Warden. The Church needs
more card-playing clergy, he says quite frankly. And I’m inclined to
think, Bishop, that it does. A little more humoring of men of our good
warden’s type, and perhaps Dr. Judd’s experiences would be less often
repeated. Doctors and dinners be what they will--” mockery and worry
both played about the heavy flexible lips, “I have the unfortunate
close of that rectorate ever before me.”
“You forget!” said the Bishop’s voice, low and keen. There was a tiny
fleck of red upon his cheek bones. Dr. Judd’s forced resignation had
been a matter of disagreement between the congregation of St. John’s
and the Bishop. There was perhaps no connection between the action
of the vestry and the fact that Dr. Newbold, immediately called to
the parish, had been for years a friend of the Senior Warden, and a
prominent co-worker with him in diocesan affairs; the wires of diocesan
politics sometimes presented a strange network for feet like the
Bishop’s.
The Bishop was silent a moment, for the Rector’s hand, lying square
upon the cushion, had recalled to him the days when he had sometimes
involuntarily closed his eyes against the sight of his young
secretary’s finger nails. It was an exquisitely kept hand nowadays, yet
one that looked unhealthily inactive rather than sleek.
“Well,” mused the Bishop, at last, “if one can’t cut out any of these
social obligations, how about the committees?”
Pity for the quick start and the flush of hurt pride, made him add
instantly, “Not that the committees can spare _you_. The church needs
you, and we should only be sparing you for a little while to save you
for bigger service afterwards.”
“I should regret,” replied Dr. Newbold firmly, while glancing down in
some embarrassment, “withdrawing from any service to the diocese,--just
now.”
“Why just now?”
The Rector lifted his lids for a quick glance, then dropped his eyes
again to his uneasy foot, “The affairs of the diocese, as well as those
of the church at large, are passing through a critical period.”
“Sufficient to justify the loss of your health?”
“I feel that the diocese needs me, Bishop.”
“It needs us all.”
“Particularly now,” repeated the Rector.
A curious subtlety crossed the cameo clearness of the Bishop’s face,
“But do you not feel that perhaps the need for your activity might be
even greater later on?”
“You mean--,” Newbold faltered, for simple folk like the Bishop were
hard to fathom sometimes, even after twenty years of study.
The Bishop’s smile showed, disarming, “I mean simply, lad--if I may
call you that sometimes, on Christmas, say,--that the diocese can’t
afford to have you break down. It needs, and will need you, too much
for that. Therefore,--let the diocese take care of itself a little
while.”
“It’s been doing that too long,” the other broke forth, with the
brutality of overwrought nerves.
A shadow passed over the Bishop’s clear, gray face. Quick words caught
with odd puckering upon his lips. He leaned his silver head against the
high, dark chairback, long silent.
“Is it really so bad as that, Newbold?” he asked at last. “What is it
that is wrong?”
“Our finances, for one thing. The treasurer’s last report--”
“There must be finances, I suppose.”
The other smiled his cynical, twitching smile, “If there’s to be a
church at all there must be finances.” He spoke with the irritation
belonging to many a former discussion.
The Bishop’s inscrutable gaze rested long upon the Rector. “You are
thinking, and rightly, that I am saved much because I have good
laborers in the field to count the sheaves and the shekels? Believe me,
Newbold, I know the value of your work to the diocese and I am sorry
for the weariness of it.”
The other’s face cleared in still uneasy relief. “I do not feel that
I can withdraw from any office in the diocese, in the church, however
small my service.”
“It is not small. You are the most prominent man in the diocese. The
most active. The most influential.”
The other flushed with pleasure, yet regarded his guest enigmatically.
“Those are cheering words, Bishop, for a day like this, of
discouragement and--of pain.” His hand went to the throbbing disc at
the back of his neck, as he added abruptly, “If what you say is true,
Bishop, I am perhaps paying the price.”
“I am afraid,” answered the Bishop gently, “that you are.”
“One doesn’t expect the strings to snap at forty-five!” Newbold said
querulously. “I could have swung a sledge once! I could still! Yet--it
makes me wonder--I have wondered lately--what is the secret of your
vitality, Bishop.”
The flicker of a smile on the Bishop’s lips, “Yet I had thought,
Newbold, that you did not think so highly of my vitality--that you
thought it an ebbing flood, a year or two ago.”
The other flushed to the brow.
“It was for your own sake, Bishop, to save you the wear and tear of
constant travel, constant work, that I urged upon the convention the
election of a coadjutor.”
“I wish you had done it not merely for my sake, but for the sake of the
diocese and of the church.”
“It was for that, too,” Newbold murmured.
“It was at any rate not for my own sake that I refused to have an
assistant,” the Bishop went on. “If I could have trusted the choice of
my clergy! It is easy and natural, to choose the most popular, the most
prominent. A bishop’s diocese is dearer than perhaps any one of his
clergy can understand. It is my little piece of God’s world, it is my
Westbury in large.
“And my ways are the old ways. My assistant’s might have been the new.”
He paused a moment chin on hand, then looked up quickly, “What are the
new ways?” he asked. “For I suppose my successor will introduce them.”
Newbold warmed instantly, moistening his twitching lips, “The ways
first of all of economical administration. The church must show itself
a good business if we want business men to respect it.”
“Do we?”
“Do we _not_?” Nervous lightnings leaped to Newbold’s eyes. “These are
not days of sentimental idealism, of faiths that float in air. To-day a
man wants to see his money’s worth in the church as well as out of it.
The church,” he brought a tense fist down upon the cushion, “has become
a business proposition!”
The Bishop’s face was intent on Newbold, yet inward and remote. Then
the blue eyes smiled, “Oh, but not in Westbury!” he pleaded. “We are
not money-mad in Westbury!”
“Because you have so much money! Have always had! Yet the purse-strings
are the heart-strings in Westbury as elsewhere. Instance my vestry and
the Southside Mission. Closed, three weeks ago. Westbury is wealthy but
not wasteful. The mission was unsuccessful, therefore to be eliminated
from the items of our expenditure. The need of St. John’s, economical
organization, is merely an example of the needs of the diocese, and of
the church at large.”
“I think I was not, was I, officially told of the action of the church,
in closing the mission?”
The Rector stirred uneasily, then looked up with boyish directness, “I
was remiss, Bishop, and I acknowledge it. But I knew the matter would
need full explanation for you, and to be frank, I’ve postponed a good
many things of late, simply because I felt paralysed before them. I’m
all out of sorts, not myself at all. I can’t tell what’s the matter
with me.”
The Bishop, noting the sudden hysterical flabbiness of the whole face,
recalled the man to firm thought.
“The mission is permanently closed, then? That seems to me sad news for
Christmas morning.”
“Believe me, Bishop, I understand your feeling about it. I, too, regret
the closing of the mission. I’ve positively enjoyed my work down there.”
“I should think that you might have found the mission work almost
restful after the other sort.”
“It was restful. Strangely! They speak out down there, act out, too.
The Southside caused me no night-long guessing, like my neighbors here.
Yet I had no time for the mission, and lately no money either, for the
work has become unpopular, quite naturally.”
“Naturally?”
“I mean the factories and the foreigners have obscured the native
population for whom the mission was organized. Social conditions were
different a few years ago. It was perfectly possible then for prominent
members of St. John’s to work at the mission and yet preserve all the
decencies of class distinction. The church would hardly expect a man
of my Senior Warden’s type to organize clubs and classes for his own
factory hands!”
“Yet might not Christianity expect it?”
“In these days, Bishop, I fear, Christianity and the church are two
totally different propositions!”
“You have not lost your power of frankness, Newbold!”
A sudden shadow dropped over Newbold’s face. “Have I not?” he
questioned himself darkly, then louder, “With you, Bishop, it is always
curiously hard not to say what one thinks. Yet I don’t wish you to
misunderstand me. I seem to want to be understood this morning. And
you’re the only person in the universe, I believe, who’d take the
trouble. It’s not, then, that I don’t myself believe the principles of
the Christian religion.”
A smile, infinitely sad and subtle, passed over the Bishop’s lips.
“Since you are a minister of the Gospel,” he said gently, “one might
hope that you believe it.”
“I have come to believe a good bit of it.”
“To believe enough, lad?”
The Christmas bells had begun again. The voices of the churchgoers
sounded on the clear air, but the Christmas visitor sat unheeding.
The Rector’s voice was rasped with the tension of self-defense.
“Unfortunately for his health and happiness, a minister of the Gospel
has much more to think about than what he believes. He has to think
what his own congregation is going to allow him to say and to do; he
has to think what the church at large is going to allow him to say and
to do. He has to think of the success of his own parish, and of the
church, and of himself. All three must please the public or fail. Now
my policy--”
“Yes,” the Bishop commented quietly, “your policy? A man of growing
influence, like yours, would naturally have outlined for himself his
creed and his conduct.”
“My conduct, assuredly, yes. It has been my endeavor ever since I
entered the priesthood, and will always be my aim, to establish respect
for the church, and its clergy, in the community, and in the world at
large.”
“And by what methods?”
“The same that prevail in other organizations, sound business system,
and the establishment of social dignity. We can’t expect our young men
to be attracted to the ministry unless we can show them something in
it worth getting,--they naturally want to get out of it reputation,
success, social recognition, as in other professions.”
“You have found those things yourself,” the Bishop’s tone was half
comment, half question.
“Yes,” answered Newbold, straightening, “I believe I can say that I
have found those things. I started at least without them, as you must
well remember--I was a raw enough youngster when I first came to you in
Westbury--it is humorous to recall--” he laughed a sharp nervous laugh,
then grew instantly grave, “I didn’t have much in those days, but I did
have health.”
“Yes,” the Bishop answered, “you did have,” he paused oddly--“health!”
“I suppose, if the term had not been so much abused that I might
truthfully call myself a self-made man. The church has done much for
me. I am grateful,--with reservations! That is why I feel that in spite
of these diabolic nerves of mine I must go on, must serve the church,
the diocese, in its need.”
“Yet you feel,” asked the Bishop wistfully, “that you cannot serve the
Southside Mission?”
Sharp sagacity instantly controlled Newbold’s garrulous nerves, “That
was a principle of simple common sense, such as might well be applied
to other die-away mission chapels in many a parish.”
Very low the other voice, and far away, “Yet the poor are to have the
Gospel preached to them.”
“The parent church is open to them,” Newbold answered almost with
petulance, “here as elsewhere.”
“You mean,” the tone was strange, “that it would be your policy to
close other missions, in other churches, throughout the diocese?”
“It would be my policy,” replied Newbold, setting his heavy jaw, “to
cut off all waste until we get our diocesan treasury out of debt. The
church’s one foundation,” he added with that daring cynicism that
delighted St. John’s in his sermons, “is at present sound finance.”
It was a buffet across the Bishop’s face, making Newbold instantly
protest, “It is not the mere money. It is the deep unpopularity of such
missions as the Southside with such congregations as St. John’s. Am I
to go against my vestry and retain my position? Am I to be a Dr. Judd?”
“You are afraid?”
“Afraid! Impossible! For a man of my make-up,” he smiled in honest
amusement, wetting his lips, “I merely have the sense not to become
voluntarily unpopular. What can a man do in the face of unpopularity?
His hands are tied. He is helpless.”
The room and the man before him sank like a picture curtained from
the Bishop’s sight. With wide strange eyes he saw another picture. He
was unconscious of his words, “_His_ hands were tied, in the face of
unpopularity! Yet He preached the Gospel to the poor,--and to the rich,
to the poor rich!”
There was a long uncomfortable silence, during which the Bishop rested
his head against the chair-back, waxen eyelids closed. Newbold studied
the silent, sculptured face so long that at last for pure uneasiness he
faltered, “I own, Bishop, that I’m no idealist.”
The Bishop opened far, clear eyes, “What are you?”
There was a long pause, then still in that far, clear voice, speaking
quite to himself the Bishop said, “Yet you will be--”
The room, embrowned, closed against the Christmas sun, dusky with many
books, held the two men, who faced each other as once in a lifetime men
may.
The Bishop completed his own sentence, “You will be--my successor!”
It was quite silent now, for the bells had ceased and the chat of
church-goers. The chancel of St. John’s was only a stone’s throw from
the chair where the Bishop sat, yet it was far from him, the chancel
with its peace. But he could still get to church, although late, in
time for the communion. One more Christmas sacrament was before him, if
only he could hold his brain clear and his body taut, through one short
hour more, against the sudden blurring pain in his head.
The silence of the study still quivered with the Bishop’s last words,
“My successor!”
Newbold sat facing the fact never before so clearly stated by anyone,
not even by himself, but clear to him now as the goal of his clumsy,
forceful youth, of his anxious, successful ministry, a goal almost
near enough now to touch, perhaps. He could not take his eyes from
the Bishop’s face, transparent as porcelain, now turned into a mask,
impenetrable.
“I would not be your choice, Bishop?”
The straight line of the Bishop’s lips formed a quiet, “No!”
“And likely enough, I may be nobody else’s choice either--in spite
of--services rendered!” Then querulous before that intent, gray face
that gave no sign, “It’s small odds what happens, with this head of
mine! Yet I have served and would gladly serve--”
“God?” the Bishop lifted level eyes.
Newbold’s thick lips formed for a quick reply, worked oddly, then were
oddly dumb a moment before they twisted into a cynic curve from the
large teeth. “Harry spoke to me with some frankness this morning. He
had just left me when you came, Bishop, a different visitor, it seemed
to me. A curious Christmas, verily, if you, too, like all the rest,
think strange things of me!”
“Strange things! Are they not true?”
A rush of anger had swept the color to the Bishop’s cheeks and shot
lightnings to his eyes. The years had fallen from his face like a
veil snatched aside. Yet with a torrent of words upon his tongue, the
Bishop, looking at Newbold, turned silent. There are some men to whom
the sight of one who cringes before a blow deserved is humiliating
to their own inmost manhood. The sight of Newbold seated there, from
his bowed, brute head, with its too-blue, watching eyes, to his big
foot that never ceased to tap the rug raspingly, had caused the
Bishop a recoil for which he hated himself. Yet his anger was just,
just! The Christ Himself had cried out against the hypocrite, against
commercialism in spiritual places. The Bishop, of fine frail fiber as
he was himself, remembered the charm for him of the youthful Newbold’s
provincial crudity and heartiness,--but now, the Bishop thought
bitterly, if one wished to make a minister of the gospel, one had
better take a gentleman to start with!
He had trusted Newbold at the first, as he might have trusted a son;
he had forced himself to trust him afterwards, until this very day.
Yet the Bishop now acknowledged that he had known well enough whose
influence was at work in the diocese against his own, why certain
motions he had desired were tabled in the convention, or if passed,
only half-heartedly carried out. How hard the Bishop had fought not to
be aware of a growing evil undercurrent in the spirit of diocesan work!
He was far too sensitive not to have felt, as he talked with some of
his prominent clergy and laity, his own great simple enthusiasm fall
like a baffled flood against a politely concealed embarrassment he
refused to understand! But he had understood! He knew now that he had.
Oh, there were powers of evil militant against the faith, the work, to
which he had given his life! He had tried not to see them, to believe
each man good, especially this man. Yet in this moment it seemed to
him that this Newbold, seated there, was the very cause of it all, of
this dark Judas spirit that everywhere throughout the diocese mocked
the loveliness of Christ within His very church! Again denunciation
trembled like a lash, then again was restrained because of a certain
dignity in the soul gazing so grimly from the bright-blue eyes, testing
the Bishop. It was a face the Bishop had loved and it was haggard as a
face in a fever picture.
With all the power of vision innate in him the Bishop saw the facts of
his failure. This was the man with whom, more than with any other, he
had sought to share his service and his soul. They wore both of them
the badge of God’s ministry, they were both of them the stewards of
Christ’s mysteries; they sat now, after twenty years of friendship,
two men girt in by four brief walls, yet far apart as two who do not
speak each other’s tongue.
The Bishop’s brow grew tense at the hard thought that it must have
been all his own fault! He had walked, as he had thought, beside the
Christ, the Friend, yet a man close to him as Newbold had perceived in
the Bishop himself no reflection of that Beauty! Oh, it could not be!
Newbold must understand! For the very loneliness of it, the Bishop’s
face grew all wistfulness, as if a child, lost on a city street, should
lift its face to a stranger, hungry for kinship. But for all his
seeking the Bishop could not find the lad Newbold in the face before
him, grown steel-tense with scrutiny.
There was worse than this, too, as the Bishop looked, clear-eyed, on
his failure. He must one day leave to this man his Westbury, if not, as
chance and choice might direct, his diocese. It had been the Bishop’s
comfort to believe, sensitive as he had been to the great currents
of unrest and indifference in the world at large, that Westbury
had remained exquisitely old-fashioned. Yet it was by the will of
the congregation of St. John’s that the Southside Mission had been
closed, the mission the Bishop had seen their fathers found, with free
outpouring of themselves and their purses. Had the Westbury of to-day
grown Judas-jealous of squandering both self and money? The Bishop must
one day go forth from Westbury leaving it--nothing! And whose could be
the fault but his own?
And his failure with Newbold, his failure with Westbury, they were
but typical of the failure of his work at large. Of all the gifts of
mystery that God gives to man, surely the greatest is the mystery of
failure! Wisdom inscrutable that commands work, yet enjoins failure!
Mystery of mysteries, that a burning love for that Love Incarnate born
at Bethlehem, could not break through the flesh to solace a world
a-thirst! The Bishop had loved, yet he had failed to serve. He did not
even know how to give peace, as from a chalice, to this harried soul
before him.
The worn gray face, intent, gave small clue to the thoughts within.
Always Newbold watched, watched, waiting for a word. Which way would
it swing, that word? His soul also was poised, waiting.
The Bishop bowed his head upon his hand. He had never felt so utterly
alone. Involuntarily, from sheer force of habit belonging to all his
moments of unbearable solitude, the Bishop’s thought turned to the
Friend. He had always understood, would He understand now, despair at
failure to God’s trust?
Suddenly the Bishop’s eyes opened wide and strange. He saw a
storm-scourged hill, a mob. Understand failure? What man had ever
loved like the Nazarene? What man had ever failed in such transcendent
loneliness?
The room fell quiet as a sanctuary. Awed with understanding, the Bishop
closed his eyes, to be alone. His thought said, “All other things He
has shared with me. He shares also this.”
Quiet, long quiet, that at last grew a-throb with pulses. So many the
mountains of Transfiguration, and at the bottom always the tumult and
the faithlessness. The mental habit of many years steadied the Bishop
as he drew slowly back to the actual: when some sorrow of his own grew
too poignant to be borne, he always forced himself to go forth to the
person nearest at hand, compelling his mind to the other’s affairs.
Such effort, although at first it might be so perfunctory that he was
ashamed, ended in full sincerity. Too tired to speak now, he smiled
over to Newbold his old sunny smile, meaning that all was well between
them.
The tension of Newbold’s watching snapped like a spent cord. There was
a change upon his face, a change in his voice, “Bishop, why did you
come to me this morning? They must have told you downstairs that I did
not wish to see anyone. Yet you came.”
“I had a gift to bring.”
“For me?”
“Not now, I am afraid. Still I have no one else, lad, to leave it with.
It is for Westbury.”
“What gift?”
“One I have been thinking of for a long time. You see Christmas always
sets me dreaming, and in these last weeks I’ve been much shut in, so
that I’ve had a good deal of time to look out of my window and to
send my thoughts up and down the streets. I suppose it is because I
have been about so little of late that I failed to hear of the closing
of the mission, although I knew you were worried about the funds. So
I’ve been happy with my plan. You’ve listened to my dreams before,”
the Bishop smiled his little quick, appealing smile, “even though you
haven’t always--” he broke off, a wistful twinkle of remembrance in
his eyes. “I’m still an incorrigible visionary, you think, lad?” The
twinkle died. “Perhaps I am!”
“No!” cried Newbold, “No! I--I would have helped to carry out all
your dreams, Bishop, if I could, if they’d been practical. Why,
Bishop,” Newbold smiled the first real smile of the morning, “you’re
irresistible as my Lois when you want things. Even Mrs. Hollister has
to do what you want!”
“Even Mrs. Hollister!” repeated the Bishop wonderingly. “But, of
course, for she is my friend.”
“You understand Mrs. Hollister better than I do, Bishop,” Newbold
murmured darkly, then could have bitten his lip, for he saw on the
Bishop’s face the fine, controlled recoil that told Newbold he had once
again said something no real Westburian would have said. Clumsy again,
when he was watching himself all the time! Oh, if there was one thing
Newbold envied the Bishop, it was his inalienable social grace!
The Bishop’s smile was strangely wrought of sun and sadness. “To go
back to my dream,” he suggested, “so far from being prepared for the
closing of the mission, I had actually been planning its enlargement.”
He grew a little hesitant and shy, “You see I have a small private
fortune, not very much, some sixty thousand. I have, as you know, no
near relatives. I’m not much of a business man, as you are well aware,
and I have also perhaps a foolish reluctance to leaving anything in
the shape of a memorial, anything bearing my name,--yet it was here
in Westbury, in St. John’s, and at the founding of the mission in the
Southside sixty years ago, that there first came to me--the meaning of
the Christian ministry.” A moment his eyes grew dream-bright, as he
continued, “I’m so in the habit of trusting all money matters to you
that I have simply had my will made out to you, without any stipulation
as to the object--”
“To me?”
“In trust,” said the Bishop, “for Westbury.”
“To me!”
“I _must_ trust you, lad!”
Newbold’s eyes, round with amazement, dropped before the pure flame of
the Bishop’s.
“I had thought,” the clear voice went on, “that you would be glad to
have the management of this money for Westbury, because it was here in
Westbury, and in St. John’s, and in work for the Southside, that you,
too, twenty years ago, came to your first thoughts of the Christian
ministry.”
“Yes,” muttered Newbold, “twenty years ago!” His foot ceased to tap
the floor. He sat straight, motionless, “What, Bishop, was your idea,
exactly, for the use of this sixty thousand?”
“My idea--I--I suppose it’s impractical now--was what I called it in my
mind, the House of Friendship. Not, of course, that I want it called
that in reality. That’s, of course,” he said in quick deprecation,
“sentimental in sound, but that’s what I mean.”
“Exactly what?” probed Newbold.
“You know,” the other appealed whimsically, “I left all the details
to you even in my plans. I thought I’d just explain the spirit of it.
A House of Friendship, that is a settlement house, in connection with
the chapel in the Southside, a house open to everybody, to the mothers
and fathers and the babies and the little girls and the newsboys, and
open--still more open--to the members of St. John’s over here, on River
Street, so that the mission and the church might learn, from each
other, to be friends. I haven’t gone into the details, although I want
to, one of these days, when my head gets a little clearer. The main
thing was that you should understand.”
“And I am to understand that your will is made out to me, with no
instructions as to the use of the money?”
“Yes.”
“Does anyone know of your desire for the settlement house?”
“No one. You were the only one who needed to know.”
Newbold looked straight at his visitor. “Has it occurred to you,
Bishop, that you are taking a great risk?”
“What do you mean, lad?” asked the Bishop wonderingly.
Newbold laughed, a laugh that rang true with honest amusement. “Well,
hardly, as we both know, that I should make way with the money for my
own ends, or that one cent of it shall be spent except for the object
of your desire, but,--” his face grew grave and dark, “you imply, I
think, something more. It is not merely the money that you leave in my
charge, Bishop, but the work itself?”
“I had always hoped, lad, to leave my work in your charge. In spirit,
if not in actuality.”
“Do you hope so this morning?”
“May I hope so, Murray?” Once before, on the night of his ordination,
the Bishop had called Newbold by his first name.
Newbold’s answer was as direct to the soul as the Bishop’s question, “I
don’t know!” Then sharp and querulous, “How could I? How can I?”
The kindled hope on the Bishop’s face died like a quenched flame. In
its stead slowly there grew in his eyes their great and brooding pity.
“Lad, you’re tired to the depths this morning, and I am fretting you
with the thought of new responsibilities. Forgive me. I hope that in
eighty-one years I’ve learned to listen. Suppose you do the talking
now. What are some of the bothers back of this headache?”
“My head is the chief bother, back of all bothers! It won’t let me go
on and I can’t stop!” Newbold sprang up and then reseated himself at
his desk, sweeping a fret of papers aside so that some fell on the
floor, then taking up a flexible paper cutter that he kept snapping in
his hands while he swung the revolving chair slowly from side to side.
“The truth is, I’ve been going down hill ever since I came here eight
years ago. The air of Westbury is knocking me to pieces.”
“Yet it agreed with you during your other stay here, twenty odd years
ago.”
“I was a boy then; I had a different body.”
“And perhaps,” mused the Bishop, “a different soul.”
“Oh, that!” cried Newbold with a shrug, then, “Do you suppose if I’d
had my health, I’d ever have let the vestry bully me into giving up the
Southside Mission!”
“Yet I used to think sometimes that opposition was the breath of life
to you. I wonder,” a flicker of whimsical humor in the blue eyes, “if
perhaps it would still be the breath of life to you,--if you tried it!”
“Can I fight a spirit in the air? Can I fight, of all things, mere
amusement at enthusiasm? Can I fight the impenetrable self-satisfaction
of Westbury?”
“Yet I thought you were one who loved Westbury!”
“I love it, yes! And I hate it!”
“Yet Westbury has loved you and taken you in, as it once took me, also
a stranger.”
“It has never taken me in! Has Mrs. Hollister ever taken me in?”
“Newbold, may I ask,” the Bishop sought to be patient with a resentful
child, “whether Mrs. Hollister has ever shown you the slightest
incivility?”
“Never!” Newbold pressed his lips together in a curious grim smile. He
studied the paper-knife in his hands intently, “Oh, no, I should not
find fault with Westbury. It has given me what I wanted when I came
here as a boy, to be rector of St. John’s. I did not perceive then the
price a man pays to be rector of--a St. John’s.”
“What price?”
“The price of his freedom! There’s no way to please the congregation of
St. John’s, except to _please_ them! I’ve learned the trick of that!
Ah, commend me to the clergy as latter-day courtiers!” It was sentences
such as these, applied in the chancel to his congregation, not to
himself, that his people so enjoyed in his sermons, feeling him at one
with them in a comfortable, workaday cynicism. Newbold’s words were
pressed through closed teeth as he concluded, “But I despise my people!”
“Your people of the Southside, too?”
“They! Oh, no! Poor wretches! They are honest! I understand them! But
it is the strain of trying to understand St. John’s that is killing
me!” his hand went impatiently to his head.
Serene and low the Bishop’s words, “Then why not go to your people of
the Southside?”
“And _leave St. John’s_?”
“If you do not understand the people of St. John’s. If it is killing
you.”
“They would think me a madman!”
“Does it matter, what they think?”
“It has mattered,” Newbold replied grimly, “a good bit, for eight
years!”
“And where has that road brought us, lad?”
Silence.
Low, incisive against the stillness, the Bishop’s voice, “Verily you
have _had_ your reward.”
Newbold’s hands dropped to the desk motionless.
“Yet even so, amid the praise of men, there was one man whose praise
you never had.”
Newbold lifted his eyes in interrogation.
“Yourself!” the Bishop concluded.
Suddenly Newbold’s face, set as marble, puckered unbearably. “There’s
someone else, too!” Forcing the words out, he quoted, “‘I don’t care if
you are a minister. I’m your son, and I know you’re a hypocrite!’ How’s
that,” he was furious at the catch in his throat, “how’s that--for a
speech--from an only son--on Christmas morning!”
“It is not true, Murray!”
“You are perhaps the only man who believes in me, Bishop.”
“It is because I have known you longest.”
“I am afraid the truth is that your namesake, my son, has the sharper
eyes, as well as the sharper tongue. A son’s estimate of his father
is doubtless the correct one. Yet it’s an ugly word--hypocrite! I
confess it drew blood, and knocked me out for the day.” He looked oddly
sheepish, boyish, in his confession, in spite of all the signs of
torturing nerves upon a body too vigorous to take ill-health with any
poise or patience. “You see I got up this morning feeling rather out
of sorts. I hadn’t slept since twelve. I’ve been dreading the services
more and more lately. I’m haunted by the idea of collapsing suddenly
before the eyes of my congregation--those eyes!
“Then breakfast was late. If only, only, only,” his heavy fist came
down lightly but tensely upon the blotter, “the women would not look as
if they expected a scene under such circumstances. I had meant to hold
my tongue. But I didn’t. Nobody said anything, so I fancy I continued
to fill in the pauses. Harry sat with a face that made me want to knock
him down. It was afterwards that he spoke, a full hour afterwards, when
I had managed to pull myself together and was on my way to church. He
stopped me in the hall with ‘Going to the communion, father? After
making mother and Lois feel like that?’ Then he added that little
remark about hypocrisy, I came back upstairs, here. Presently you came.
A highly successful Christmas! A merry family group, do you not think
so, Bishop?”
The Bishop had closed his eyes. This was the kind of thing that hurt
his head, and he must keep his head clear, must! “Christmas is not half
over,” he said, starting at the thought of the morning slipping by, and
the church, so near, calling to him, “There is half of Christmas left!”
“Half a day in which to teach my son to respect me!”
“But this son is Harry. So it will not take so long.”
“Harry is hard!”
“He is generous!”
“He never forgives!”
“Have you ever asked him to forgive?”
“My boy! No! I know him! He knows me!”
“I think perhaps,” the Bishop said slowly, “you will never know Harry,
nor he you, until you have asked of him forgiveness. It’s one of the
test things, forgiveness. The boy will meet it. He has nobility, Harry,
by inheritance.”
“From his mother, yes.”
“From his father, no less.”
“They are their mother’s children, both of them,” Newbold murmured
wearily.
The Bishop’s face flashed radiant. His right hand lifted in a quick
gesture. “Can any man say anything more beautiful than that?”
“You mean,” stammered Newbold, “what?”
“I think I only meant,” hesitated the Bishop, “that I felt just that
way about my child, and her mother. They belonged to each other, not to
me. I was only fit to try to take care of them.”
“I have not taken,” said Newbold heavily, “much care of mine!”
“Oh, lad, lad,” said the Bishop, “don’t waste that privilege. It
never--it never has grown easy--for me to live without it.”
Newbold’s words came in a whisper, to himself, “She does not expect it
now. Perhaps she does not even wish it!”
The Bishop leaned slightly forward in his chair. “Newbold,” he said
firmly, “between you and Harry there must be words, as between men.
But, for Lois and the mother, downstairs, have you anything to do but
to stretch out your hand? It is one of their mysteries, that women
always understand better without words.”
Newbold dropped his forehead on interlaced fingers that concealed
his face. He was long silent. His hands dropped at last from a face
haggard, but a-shine with boyishness.
“Bishop,” he said, “you’ve made me feel a whole lot better!”
“I am glad!” For the first time in their talk the Bishop’s lip showed
its slight palsied trembling.
“You always did make me feel better. It is your secret.” Then a shadow
fell, “But how? Why?” the shadow darkened. “I don’t deserve it!”
The Bishop studied the darkened face with a sad keenness. “You have not
told me all the worries this morning, have you? What else?”
Newbold stirred uneasily, then brightened a little with reminiscence,
“Odd, how little things take one back sometimes. The mere way we are
sitting at this moment,--you, Bishop, in that deep chair with your
hands on the arms, and I here at the desk,--it makes me feel as if you
might take up the dictating and I my shorthand at any instant.”
“It does not seem to me so very long ago.”
“It strikes me now, that you were pretty patient. I was a raw enough
youth when I first came to Westbury.”
“A bit truculent in argument sometimes,” admitted the other, smiling.
“You bowled over some of our best doctors in theology. There wasn’t
much you were afraid of.”
“On the contrary, I was afraid of everything. It was the first time I
had ever been afraid, too. Westbury frightened me.”
“Yet I knew then that you would live to make Westbury proud of you. I
believe I never had such hopes for any young man as I had for you.”
“And now?”
“And now?” The Bishop turned the question back upon the man.
“And now,” said Newbold bitterly, “where are the hopes?”
“Exactly where they were before. Don’t you know, lad, that we old men
are incorrigible in hopes?”
“I know that you are, Bishop, incorrigible in hope,--and in patience.”
The Bishop’s eyes narrowed to fine scrutiny, “Have I then, do you feel,
something to be patient about?”
Newbold shot a sharp glance, searching the Bishop’s meaning. They both
waited. At last Newbold, leaning back in his chair lifted steady eyes.
“Since we’re talking this morning, Bishop, about the things on my mind,
there are, as you seem to guess, more things. I’d be glad to get them
all clear with you this morning. It’s a relief to talk, no matter where
we come out. I’m afraid, that perhaps you haven’t always understood,
Bishop, my apparent opposition to your wishes on some occasions that
perhaps we both remember.”
“We both remember, yes!”
At the tone Newbold started, grew more vehement, “Oh, if you could
but understand, Bishop! Why, sometimes, as I have stood between your
desires on the one hand and what I knew to be those of the majority of
the clergy and laity on the other, what I knew to be necessary to the
prosperity of the diocese and the church, I have verily felt myself
between two fires.”
“Or between two masters?”
Nervous irritation fretted Newbold’s forehead. “Yes, I suppose, that,
too, in a way, from your point of view, Bishop. The point of view
of--well--of the apostles, perhaps!” He hesitated, but then grew
defensive, “In practical application, Bishop, it is impossible that the
policies of primitive Christianity should prevail in their pristine
simplicity in the church to-day!”
The Bishop was long silent, the white profile of his far-away face
clear before Newbold’s watching eyes. Newbold spoke at last in anxious
apology. “You understand, therefore, I hope, Bishop, my policy, as I
understand yours? I wanted you to understand.”
“Why do you want me to understand?”
There was something very strange in those far, far blue eyes, so old,
so ageless. Newbold gazed into them, curiously compelled. “Perhaps you
know best the answer to that, Bishop.”
A wistful smile touched the Bishop’s lips, “Perhaps I do, lad. For it
has been a long while that we have been friends.”
“You know, Bishop, surely,” the man cried out, “how I feel toward
you,--in spite of--mere policies?”
The Bishop nodded slightly, “Yes, yes,” then looked at the other with a
larger thought. “But, Newbold, I have no policy, I have found only one
reading to the riddle of life, and I preach it. There is no policy in
that, I think, is there?”
“I think,” said Newbold, quietly, “that you are the only man I have
ever seen solve that riddle.”
“I have not solved it, Murray, if I have not given you the clew.”
At that unbearable sadness Murray Newbold cried out, “No, Bishop, no!
If I have failed, it is not your failure! Faith such as yours, life
such as yours,--it is impossible to men like me. It is not for us.”
“I always thought it was for all.” There was a long pause. “And it is.
I have not known how to show you, that is all.” The Bishop bowed his
head in silence, murmuring, “But I wanted you,” again a long pause, “as
you would want peace for your boy!”
The next words were not to Newbold, but Newbold knew to Whom they
were spoken, “Yet I ask so much! We can never share with Him, we who
ask fulfillment!” Then the Bishop started sharply from revery, “The
service! I must go. It is too late, perhaps, already for the communion.”
“There is just time. But, Bishop, will you go? There is so much still
to say. Stay a little while!”
“What I have failed to say in twenty years, can I say now? In a little
while?”
“Say it!” pleaded Newbold, “say it!”
Like a physical need, like hunger, the Bishop felt the blind desire to
feel the chancel quiet about him, to offer once more to his people the
cup of Christ. Yet before him here and now, in this silent room, a soul
a-thirst.
“What is it, lad, that you want from me?”
“You believe it, Bishop?” Newbold burst forth.
“What?”
“What we preach. I never knew any man to believe it as you do. How?”
“How otherwise?”
“I never knew any other man who had found peace. _How?_”
“It is hard,” hesitated the Bishop, “for me to talk about these
things--with you. It is hard for me to understand,” his tired eyes
widened with the effort to understand. “You mean with the Story ever
before you, that yet you cannot see--Him?”
“I see nothing. I’ve come to a pretty dark place in my career,
successful, I suppose it would be called.”
“Since I’ve come to be old, I find I don’t always call things by their
right names. Success and failure, I don’t always know how to name them.”
“But you have success!”
“No--no, you have showed me clearly to-day that I have failure.”
“_I_ have shown you?”
“Don’t you remember that I came here with a hope?”
“Which I have destroyed? But, Bishop, the work you describe is
impossible to me. You know, no one better, what I am. The amazing
thing is that knowing, you still chose me. Why, such a work requires a
courage, a conviction, a vision such as--”
“You have not courage?”
“Not, not courage of your sort, now.”
“I believe it is courage of your sort, not my sort, that Westbury
needs, now.”
“It would mean a complete facing about. That would surprise,” he
smiled grimly, “a few people! I don’t know that I should really mind
surprising them.” Then his face again clouded. “The Southside would
find me out, Bishop. I have not the vision. I don’t know that I
thought it necessary, originally. It’s been, however, of late years,
a bit persistent, the advantage, say, of believing what one says one
believes.” The caustic tone changed to intensity, “If I were capable,
Bishop, of your faith!”
The Bishop studied him wistfully, “And yet,” he mused, “it seems to me
so simple, faith, so unavoidable, like sunshine. No man could have
made the sun. Just so, it seems as if no man could have invented--that
Beauty!”
“Unfortunately most people don’t see things quite so readily. As for
me, I believe I’m incapable of religious vision.”
The Bishop hesitated, thoughtful, then quick words came, “But not
incapable of action. I’ve always believed that there is need perhaps
for soldiers as well as seers. There’s the fighter somewhere within
you, isn’t there?”
“I sometimes feel,” Newbold admitted, “as if there were as much fight
left in me as there is in Harry to-day. One sees,” he mused, “some
pretty queer things when one looks inside.” Then once more he caught up
the paper cutter in restless fingers, “But that won’t last. I seem to
see a thing or two while you’re here, seem to be more up to--several
things. It will all come back fast enough when I’m alone. You’ll carry
this quiet away with you, Bishop.”
“I wish I could leave it with you! Couldn’t I, somehow?”
“You couldn’t, could you, put me back twenty years, and give me
another try at it all? No, no, I don’t see the way to that!”
“Do it! Don’t wait to see it! Vision!” the Bishop paused. “It is
perhaps true that it is not given to all to see, to feel, to know. Yet
those who do not see can act! Perhaps--perhaps--it is more beautiful
and more brave to work without the vision! We are the stewards, we call
ourselves that, you and I--God puts a cup into our hands. He doesn’t
say, ‘Believe,’ or ‘See.’ He only says, ‘Give’!”
“But it is as _you_ give, Bishop!”
Their eyes met long. Then the tense pause slackened. Murray Newbold
knew best his feeling for the Bishop when he felt the child gazing from
the faded eyes and speaking in his pleading voice.
“Murray, will you build, then, the House of Friendship, for Westbury?”
Silence. Newbold had bowed his forehead upon his interlaced fingers.
His face was concealed except the strong jaw, and the lips, motionless,
curiously refined by their tight pressure. Moments went by. Within
closed eyelids Newbold saw his future. He saw the past as if the issues
between himself and the Bishop had been always mounting to this final
issue. He saw himself, objective, detached as a painting. So taut were
all his senses on this morning that it seemed to him that he should
always see the Bishop’s face looking upon him just as he had closed his
eyes against it, there across the desk. It was a moment of such intense
seeing as makes promises impossible. The minutes went, one after one.
He could not have spoken a word.
A touch brushed Newbold’s shoulder, “I am going now, lad,” the Bishop
said. Sudden and clamorous, the noon-day chimes, at the close of the
service, rang out, as the study door closed.