The air of the blue Christmas noon was sparkling clear, yet the
Bishop’s steps were groping. His blue eyes were vague as he smiled in
response to motor cars that flashed by, or carriages that passed with
a brisk jingle of harness. Groups, lightly laughing in the Christmas
sun, brushed by the old familiar figure in the cape overcoat, but they
seemed strangers. In the sharp daylight after that dusky study, the
Bishop trod an unknown street, as wistful and alone as a lost child.
Was this his Westbury, where none of this gay Christmas throng gave
thought to those swarming tenements at the bending of the river? An old
man’s life, what was it, against this hard and happy current? A smile,
briefly bitter, darkened the Bishop’s face; he was old and would pass,
having given his Westbury nothing!
Yet all the time his feet, making for reassurance and relief, were
bearing him toward Lucy Hollister’s welcome, with the homing instinct
of a child that knows one door its own. Across the Bishop’s weariness
flashed the thought that in the afternoon Lucy would let him lie down
for a while.
Lucy’s door opened wide to the Bishop. He felt once again, as the
closed latch shut him in from that vague and puzzling street, the spell
of the wide hall that cleft the house, and of grave old walls showing
at the opposite end a picture of the river through broad glass. The
Bishop handed his coat and hat to the brown old footman, his friend of
many years, then his head cleared happily at the sound of a soft rustle
and the tapping of light decisive slippers. Lucy’s hand was in his.
“Good Christmas, Henry,” she said crisply, and led him in to the
drawing-room fire.
“I was worried,” she went on. “You were not at church, nor at the house
when I drove there afterward.”
“The service?” he inquired anxiously.
“It was not Christmas without your sermon. Otherwise it was--well, a
service. For we missed our rector, too!”
“He is ill.”
“Is he?” inquired Lucy with musing emphasis. “And of what sickness? Too
much Westbury?”
But at the Bishop’s troubled glance her tone changed instantly, “But
you yourself, Henry, have you been, are you, ill?”
“Not now, not here. It is really Christmas here.”
“I am glad,” she answered; then, with an unperceived catch of her
breath, “if it is really Christmas--here!”
“How many Christmas dinners is it, Lucy?”
“I do not count them,” to herself she added, looking at him, “those
that are over!”
They fell to talking of the Christmases that were over. The Bishop did
not know that from time to time he leaned his head back, closing his
lids, and was silent while minutes ticked slowly and Lucy watched him
intently. It was comforting when he opened his eyes still to see her
sitting there, so alert, so alive.
“So many Christmases!” he murmured.
“I neither own to them,” she answered, “nor yet, not own!”
Despite her many Christmases, it was with only a slight stiffening of
the sinuous grace of her girlhood that Lucy moved at the Bishop’s side,
to the dining-room, to the mid-afternoon holiday dinner of Westbury
habit. Lucy kept every custom Westbury had had in her youth, and she
made other people keep such custom, too; slight, elusive, dominant,
as she was, in her great house by Westbury’s river. They passed from
stately course to course exactly as they had done on that Christmas
when Henry Collinton and his wife had dined with Lucy when Annie was
a bride, and still earlier, the Bishop could remember dining at that
table, when he was a college lad and the two cousins, girls, Annie the
dark one, and Lucy, elfin and amber-tinted. The room was the same, the
china and the silver the same. Beyond the two long windows ran the gray
loop of the river. Many a time long ago, they had floated all three
in a boat on that spangled river. The wall paper was the same, put on
by French hands many a year ago. Round and round it raced a French
sporting scene, trim-waisted gentlemen that rode to the hunt by wood
and stream, and ladies that joined them for the huntsman’s repast, gay
picnickers all, still vivid in color.
It was all the same, for in Westbury things did continue blessedly
unchanged. Lucy was unchanged, for all the long wearing of her widow’s
black. The yellow still showed in the snowy gloss of her carefully
arranged hair. Age had slightly rimmed her eyes with red, but the
will-o’-the-wisp still danced in them. Her mouth, netted by wrinkles,
was hardly more finely whimsical than in girlhood. As of old, when
in earnest talk, she dropped her chin, still clearly chiseled, to a
delicate white claw of a hand, flashing from a fall of black chiffon.
Lucy treated age as she did people: like them, age could not tell
whether it had penetrated her delicate aloofness.
To the Bishop, room and river and woman were still the same. Spent
to the uttermost as he knew himself to be to-day, Lucy’s indomitable
vitality quickened him with sharp hope; perhaps, after all, there was
much he could still leave to Lucy! But not yet for him the outpouring,
as ever, into Lucy’s ear. That would come, but not yet! How happy,
now, shut in by that race round and round the walls of those merry
picnickers, to pluck, as it were a Christmas gift from a tree, one hour
in which they should still be boy and girl together.
As they talked, two faces looked over their shoulders; over the
Bishop’s a boy’s with brown hair flung back, with eager listening
eyes, and a mouth that spoke poetry and as instantly laughed out in
merry mockery of it, a face that, clear as water, was all the play of
a mobile brain; and close by Lucy’s head, another in a white bonnet,
green-ribboned and green-leaved, from which, framed in red-gold curls,
looked out a tinted cameo face, with green-blue eyes, mocking and
mysterious. To-day, Lucy’s body was still fragile and unbroken, as in
girlhood, and for all she had married and borne four children, her
soul still went unfettered as when she was a girl. But age had charred
the Bishop’s face to fine white ashes, in which the blue eyes burned,
luminous and inward.
“Henry,” mused Lucy, “the poetry never came back to you, did it? Do you
ever write nowadays, ever snare a little wild, singing poem now?”
“The verses come to me sometimes still, but not near enough to catch,
or to _wish_ to catch, perhaps. I do sometimes see the pictures still,
this very morning, for instance, and I hear rhythms; but, no, I have
never written since--since Nan went.”
He was silent a moment, lips tightening, then lights began to gleam on
his face, with the familiar pleasure of thinking aloud to Lucy. “But
perhaps I do not write because I can no longer distinguish between
poetry and prose, in life. That is boy’s work, really, to see the
sharp outlines of things that afterwards, for us, seem to overlap, to
interweave. Poetry and prose, which is which? Just so the distinction
between the sacred and the secular, easy enough at twenty, not at
eighty: then the two were clear to me as bars of sun and shadow on a
pavement; now the sun-bars would seem all softened with shadow, and the
shadow all shot through with sun. Just so the distinction between the
divine and the human, God and man, where shall one separate the two?
Can anyone say. Just so far,--” here the Bishop, all eager explanation,
drew the figure of a cross upon the leather armchair, keeping an ivory
finger tip upon the spot, “just so far shall God stoop to man, just so
far man rise to God! Oh! no, no!” He erased the imaginary cross with
a quick brushing of his long hand, “life is not like that, not sharp
distinctions, it is all interwoven, interwoven!
“So with poetry and prose. How can I possibly write,” he laughed, “if
I can’t tell them apart? Why, nowadays I seem to get meshed in my own
metres. No, I’m no true poet,” he shook his head ruefully, “if I can’t
tell whether a poem is inside of me or outside of me, whether I am
it, or it is I! No, old age is the time for seeing, not for singing.”
He paused, thinking, “But I verily believe I like the seeing better
than the singing.” He looked over to her in the old, quick boyish way,
“Don’t you?”
Lucy gave her little humorous shrug, inimitably slight, “O Henry,
forgive me, I believe old age for me is all plain prose.”
He laughed his silvery old laugh, in pure amusement, “And that from
you, who know nothing whatever about old age!”
“I! I know everything about old age!”
“Prove it!” he rallied, “prove it! Prove that you know one thing more
about old age to-day than you did when you were twenty!”
Her face, still beautiful despite its subtlety of lines, grew strange,
and her humorous lips delicately mocking, “No, I don’t believe I
could--prove--that I know anything more about old age to-day--than I
did when I was twenty!”
“There,” he cried gaily, “you admit it?”
“Admit what, my friend?”
“That you are still a girl!”
“Yet, a grandmother?”
“One can never somehow remember that,” his gaze upon her changed to
puzzled thought.
“Yet I am a grandmother, a model mother and grandmother, I’d have you
remember!”
“It is very strange,” he mused, “mine, who are gone, seem almost nearer
than yours, who are here. I sometimes have wondered why you never
choose to go to them at Christmas-time. Although it is a happy thing
for me that you do not.”
“I prefer my Christmas to myself!”
“But isn’t it lonely?”
“Lonely, when you have never failed me, Henry!” she laughed. “You know
I’m a stickler for old customs. I can’t change old friends for new
grandchildren.”
“Grandchildren!” he shook his head. “No, it is impossible to believe
in them! You seem to me still Lucy Dwight of the long ago,” a twinkle
danced in his eyes, “and aren’t you?”
“Who can answer that question but Henry Collinton, of the long ago? Who
else remembers?”
They both remembered, and fell silent, joining thoughts.
At length the Bishop, shining-eyed, exclaimed, “Those were great days,
when I came here to college!”
“Great days, yes, when I--when we--taught you the town. You thought
everything so wonderful that you almost made me believe Westbury
wonderful, too.”
“And didn’t you, don’t you, believe it wonderful?”
She looked at him quietly, “But Westbury is my own,” she answered.
“And isn’t it,” he pleaded, “my own, too, by this time?”
“Yours?” she looked at him with far, intent eyes, then before his wide
child-gaze, troubled, her smile flashed reassurance, “Yours, surely,
Henry!” again she fell thoughtful, “yet it depends a little on what you
mean!”
“Westbury _has_ been mine,” he maintained, and then, not confident,
“and Westbury has not changed, has it, Lucy?”
She was silent.
“It has not changed, Lucy?”
“Oh, no, no, Henry,” she comforted him, “How? Where? Look about and
see!”
“Once it sent more men forth into the church than any other place in
all the country. Will it, do you believe, continue to do that?”
“Westbury is still churchly! Look at us! Westbury still goes to church.
I myself set the example.”
“Westbury always has followed your example,” the Bishop answered; again
he felt a start of hope, but still postponed in this pleasant lighter
hour the full revelation of his morning’s anxiety.
“Westbury will always follow my example, Henry, just so long as I
give it its head. It is a triumph, is it not,” her lips puckered
whimsically, “for an old lady to lead a town by a string? If I cared
for the triumph! Not to let Westbury get away from me, that has been
at least an absorbing pastime. I have spent my life trying to keep
Westbury the Westbury of my youth!” Quizzical, darting gleams showed in
her eyes.
“There was no more beautiful way to spend your life,” the Bishop
answered.
Lucy’s face changed, old age dropped over it like a veil, from which
her eyes looked forth, strange.
“I, too,” the Bishop answered, “have wished to spend my life in keeping
Westbury the Westbury of my youth. It seemed so beautiful to me! People
were already beginning to be in a hurry in other places, but they still
had time to be kind, here. They were already locking themselves into
classes in other places, but they still had time to be friends, rich
with poor, rich with rich, here. You remember the mission, Lucy?”
She started, glancing at him with quick, culprit look, which he, lost
in dreams, did not observe, continuing, “Westbury was a place of
beautiful friendship, a place to make a young man dream dreams.”
Very low she whispered, “Your dreams, Henry, not Westbury’s!”
“It has not changed, has it, Lucy?”
She did not answer at first, then a smile, elusive, sweet, brushed her
lips and was gone, “No, Henry!”
“For how could it,” he burst out joyously, “how could it, when you have
not changed, and you are Westbury!”
“I am Westbury?”
“Yes!” he answered, “yes!”
“Have you always thought that, Henry?”
“I believe so, yes.”
But beneath his clear, smiling gaze, the witch lights gleamed in her
eyes, “I wonder if you will always think so, Henry!” But his words
seemed to have made her inattentive, restless, so that it was at length
almost abruptly that she rose. She turned an instant toward the picture
framed by the window.
“How you love this town, Henry!”
“It is my piece of God’s world,” he answered with that simple reverence
that could startle, then he stopped before turning away from the table,
“May I?” he asked permission, as he picked up a sprig of holly. “We’ve
had none at the house, and you remember how Annie loved holly.”
“Yes,” Lucy answered, “I remember--Annie’s holly.”
The Bishop still kept the spray of crimson berries in his hand when
they had crossed the hall into the library, where the fire sprang
high and where beyond the twin windows that matched those of the
dining-room, the river had turned to slaty gray below the dulling
eastern sky. The light in the room was quite clear, but yet the
Bishop, in the dizziness that followed his rising and walking from the
dining-room, groped for a chair, and sank into it awkwardly, leaning
back a moment with shut eyes. For the instant his clear old face looked
withered, and his hands upon the chair-arms hung lax.
Lucy was still standing against the fire glow, slight, vivid, imperious.
“Henry!”
The Bishop opened vague eyes.
“I can’t let you look like that, Henry, to-day!”
The Bishop smiled, “I’m a bit tired. I’ve just remembered it. You had
made me forget it, as usual, made me forget both the tiredness and
some other things. They come back upon me now. I’ve had a rather rough
morning of it, to tell the truth.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, sitting down.
“I’ve been hearing things I didn’t want to hear, and believing things
I didn’t want to believe, and trying to do things I couldn’t do, all
morning. It seems a pretty long time since to-day began. Oh, I was
going to do great things to-day when I got up!”
“But the day is not over.”
“That is just it,” he answered. “My day _is_ over!”
“No, no, it must never be over! You must never speak like that! Why
even I--” she broke off, “but you, Henry! Who were always such a boy
for hoping! You mustn’t stop; I’ll never let you!”
He looked at her with a grave, far gaze, “It would be a Christmas gift
that I need, Lucy, if to-day you gave me hope. You are the only person
who can!”
“What has gone wrong, Henry?”
“It was only that I wanted to give Westbury a Christmas present, and
Westbury would not have it.”
“Who, pray, had the right to say so?”
“Newbold.”
“Newbold! He! What rights has he in Westbury, may I ask?”
The Bishop’s glance was startled and penetrating, “Has he none, Lucy?”
She caught back her words sharply, saying merely, “No right to hurt
you, Henry, that is all. But tell me about the Christmas present to
Westbury. It is some new philanthropic scheme of yours, I suppose.
Tell me about it, for you know you might offer your Christmas present
to me. Try whether I’ll take it, if I am Westbury.”
[Illustration: As before, he knocked, all eager, and again opening
doors flashed ruddy on the night
_See page 146_]
His face broke aflame, “You will?” he cried, “I believe that you can!”
“Tell me!” she repeated, dropping her chin upon her white bodkin
fingers, and fixing her eyes upon the beauty of his face.
The two clear, pale old faces looked forth at each other across a
space, while slowly there drew in about them the mystery of the dusk.
Athwart the gathering twilight, the Bishop’s voice fell musical and
clear.
“The day didn’t go very well, not till I got here to you. I got up
feeling a bit shaky. I’m going to treat myself to that couch over there
presently. Perhaps if my head had been clearer I might have seen better
how to do what I tried to do to-day. But I’m afraid the real trouble
goes deeper, and dates farther back. Christmas day sometimes throws a
light back over the other days and years. I haven’t done what might
have been done with all the years that have been granted me. I see
that to-day. And now it is too late, isn’t it?”
“What has happened to-day?”
“Nothing has happened but knowledge, perhaps, knowledge to which I have
forced myself to be blind. But in the light of Christmas I had to see,
that’s all. And so I suppose I’m a little discouraged, and need to be
bolstered up, as you can. It’s a good thing for me that you’ve never
had time to grow old, Lucy. For it’s no fun,” his smile flashed, then
fell as suddenly, “this being old.”
She fought against his growing seriousness, “I’ve had to stay young,
Henry, to keep you from growing old. So don’t go and be old all of a
sudden to-day,”--she forced her tone to evenness, “not to-day of all
days! I will have to-day!”
“I wanted to-day, too,” he answered, “but I’ve had to give up what I
wanted, so far, twice.”
“Who, exactly, is the trouble, Henry?”
“Newbold.”
He paused so long that Lucy asked with the faintest frown of
weariness, “Well, and what has that young man done to-day?”
“Young, he is that, certainly! I half forgot it, young and
therefore,--” again he stopped, but his eyes were kindled.
“No, not ‘therefore,’” Lucy answered keenly, “if you mean by that that
he is still young enough to improve.”
“Not with help?”
“Whose?”
The Bishop hesitated, eyes intent, searching hers, then answered,
“Westbury’s, for Westbury has hurt him.”
“Will he profit by Westbury’s help if he has not profited by yours?”
The Bishop mused, frankly anxious, puzzled, “I had been thinking that
if Westbury had hurt him, just for that reason perhaps, Westbury--could
also help him, and would.”
“Oh, Henry, Henry,” she shook her head with pursed, humorous lips, “you
talk in abstract terms. But Westbury is no abstraction. ‘Westbury could
help him.’ Exactly what do you mean? For who, pray, is Westbury?”
The Bishop’s gaze met hers; there was humor in his eyes as in hers, but
also something deeper, something watchful, strange.
“Oh,” she laughed, “I remember. I am Westbury! Do you mean, Henry
Collinton, that I am to help this Newbold of yours? That I am to make a
gentleman of him, if you couldn’t?”
But at her words the Bishop’s face grew stern, “No, I have utterly
failed to make him anything that I wished. But it is arrogant, perhaps,
this hoping to make anybody anything. Yet how could I help hoping? He
was a splendid boy, and I had no son.”
In that stern, brooding silence, Lucy said at length, “Don’t mind too
much, Henry. Remember you idealize--persons and--towns. He was always
out of place here, that is all. He could never belong here.”
The Bishop turned his head in the old quick boyish way, “But could he
not have a place in Westbury, if Westbury would make a place for him?”
“Incorrigible one!” she smiled. “How?”
Stern age in judgment on his failure left the Bishop’s face,--the
little sunny child stole back to it. “I have a little hope,” he
admitted, “but so very small! It depends on you, all of it.”
His eyes were all aflame, but his tone was grave. “You know so well
how to help a man in his work, how to cheer him on through doubt and
failure. Have you ever failed me?”
“I know how to let a man talk to me, perhaps,” she murmured.
“Yes, how you have let me talk to you, always,--ever since the mission
was founded! Ever since that day we have talked, ever since that day I
have brought my work to you!”
“And I have listened!”
“And have helped! Lucy, as you have helped,” she felt the sharp intake
of his breath, “as you have helped me, could you not also help him who
shall come after me?”
“Come after you? What, whom, do you mean, Henry! You cannot surely mean
that he, your Newbold, shall come after _you_?”
“You know the diocese, Lucy, as I know it--can you doubt that--Dr.
Newbold--will come after me?”
“Henry, would you, could you, choose that he should? After _you_?”
“What choice have I? I--I am passing on. The sadness is that I would
have desired him to follow me, once.”
“Now?”
“Will you help him, Lucy?”
“How?”
“Be his friend. He does not believe you his friend. It is the only
hope.”
“Hope of what, Henry?”
“It seems to me at this moment, the only hope of all that I have
desired.”
Leaning back in infinite weariness, he gazed into the fire, silently.
In the dusky room the fire glow was rosy warm about them, as they sat
in twin chairs before the hearth. Silently the old footman had entered,
and across the room had lighted and turned low a green-shaded lamp.
Lucy sat motionless. A coal slipped down, with a whisper, glowed, and
dimmed to ashes.
“What have you desired, Henry?”
The Bishop turned, “You have had all my dreams,” he answered, “so
you know.” A strange mysticism showed upon his face, “I have desired
to-day, to give all that I had to the poor, and to the rich, to the
rich! And I could not!” At her look of puzzled curiosity, he explained
quickly, with a passing smile, “But that is a Christmas secret, between
Dr. Newbold and me. And besides, it is all over, now,--that little
Christmas dream.” Again a long gaze into the fire where one can watch
one’s wishes glowing, dying. “And I have desired most of all, to leave
my work to someone who would understand and carry it on!”
“Who could understand, Henry,” she whispered, “your work?”
He turned his head toward her, quick and sunny. “You alone, perhaps,
and therefore you will help him to understand.”
“How?”
“By giving him courage, as you have given it to me.”
“I never gave you courage.”
“Yes! And so, let me believe, you will give it to him!”
“Courage for what? Be explicit, dreamer!”
“Courage to reopen the Southside Mission, and to keep it open,--and
every mission throughout the diocese! Let him know that Westbury stands
by him there!”
“But if--” she spoke low, “if it doesn’t?”
There was a stab of pain on the Bishop’s face, and then bright hope,
“Let him know you do! That will be enough! And besides,” he smiled,
“can you not make Westbury do whatever you wish?”
“I never tried,” she answered musingly, “to make Westbury do anything
it did _not_ wish.”
“I cannot believe,” he cried, “that it wishes the closing of the
mission. There has been somehow a mistake. It cannot be. It would mean
the going out of a lamp which you and I saw kindled,--it does not seem
to me so very long ago.”
“It is a lifetime.”
The light died from the Bishop’s face, leaving on it all the cruelty
of age. “Yes, a lifetime that is over,” for a moment his lips showed
their palsied working, for a moment spoke an old man’s querulousness,
“they could not have closed the mission without my knowing it, if they
had not thought me, already, laid upon the shelf!”
“Henry,” she pleaded, “not that, please!”
“No, not that!” he cried, instantly himself and contrite, “we pass, but
the work goes on! I am an old man who has somehow made a failure of it.
But I’ll try not to think of that any more, clouding our Christmasing.
I’ll try just to remember I am leaving Murray Newbold and Westbury, the
two I have loved, to you.”
“Leaving! But, Henry, you speak as if I were not also old! What time
have I left, for Newbold, for Westbury, more than you?”
“You will have time,” he answered, while the mysticism again touched
his face, “my head is not clear to-day, but that is one of the things I
seem to know, that you will have time, more than I. Time enough to help
Newbold to learn his own strength. He has never tried it. Time enough
to teach him to fight. A soldier, he’ll not desert,--afterwards. And
time enough to help Westbury rekindle the mission, whose death would
mean--you and I know,” his voice fell and he groped a little for words,
a little confused, “the light must not die, you will have time to keep
the light, to keep Westbury--alive. Your Westbury and mine! I seem to
know to-day,” his low voice, in the twilight, was very clear, “that you
will have time to help the man and the town I have failed to help.”
“If time were all that is needed, Henry, to help them!”
Looking into the fire, he did not turn, answering happily, “Whatever
else is needed you possess, and have given to me for sixty years.”
With the snapping of a lifetime’s tension her voice rang, “Henry, stop
looking into the fire! For sixty years you have looked into dreams.
Now, once, look at me!”
The Bishop turned.
Her elfin laugh tinkled, “The fairies were good to you, Henry, they
gave you eyes that do not see.”
While she spoke, slowly the Bishop saw, but at first he saw only a
girl’s witch-face in the fire glow.
“I will make you see this once, Henry Collinton--_me_! You look
strange, Henry! As if you couldn’t guess what’s coming. Neither, I
assure you, can I. You called me Lucy Dwight of the long ago,--and
you’ll have to take the consequences! I like you to look strange, for
then you don’t look old! Look young, Henry, and look at me! You are
looking, I believe, at last, with open eyes,--looking at a woman, not
a diocese. Henry, I might say in passing that I did not think once, on
one afternoon we both recall,--but differently!--when we talked about
a mission, that we should still be talking about that mission after
sixty years. You will excuse my changing the subject from your work
for a few moments, then, after sixty years! I’ve been a pretty good
listener--take your turn!”
She looked no longer at the Bishop, who watched her as if she were
some Christmas sprite risen out of the red hearth. Her white old face,
white-crowned, was touched to rose and gold by the fire flame.
“Shall I draw you a portrait, Henry, of someone you have never seen?
Yet it is a portrait on constant exhibition. It is shown to every
guest in Westbury,--a private exhibition is called High Tea at Mrs.
Hollister’s. People watch the guest when he sees the portrait; by its
effect he is judged. People point out that the portrait is valuable
historically, since it combines inseparably the style of sixty years
ago with the style of to-day. That is because the picture has been
retouched so carefully from year to year to fit the taste of the times.
So the painting is seen to represent the sixty-year history of a town,
even to costume,” she flashed a white hand from throat to skirt of her
clinging black which looked at first sight so fresh from a fashion
plate and was so carefully studied to fit no decade, and no person, but
her own.
“Who would ever have thought Lucy Dwight could have stepped into a
picture and stayed there all her life? She did not expect to, once, but
she made up her mind to it, later, when one day she looked in the glass
and took stock of what was left to her. She was twenty then.
“I am proud of the portrait, frankly. I have enjoyed making it. I
haven’t had anything else to do, except, of course,” a ripple of
laughter ran through her tone, “to listen! The portrait needed a frame,
so I’ve made that, too. Your figure of speech was inaccurate, a while
ago. I am not Westbury. Westbury is the frame; I am the portrait, the
portrait of an interesting old woman, interesting to everybody but
herself!”
Lucy was an artist, she knew the value of the pause, she knew the
value of a shrug, the most delicate perceptible lifting of brows and
shoulders, she knew the value of hands, that, out of periods of quiet,
flickered now and then, spirit-white against the black shadows of her
gown. An artist, she forgot the Bishop while she talked and did not
look upon the change that grew upon his face.
“It is very easy to be interesting. It only needs that you always guess
what people are going to say next and never let them guess what you are
going to say next. It needs a gift for words and a gift for silence.
It was the process by which I brought up my children. My children have
always known they did not know their mother, a course of training
easier than spanking and more efficacious.” She stopped a moment. Her
clasped hands tightened, “Yet in ultimate effect, at seventy-seven, a
little lonely. We prefer our Christmases apart, my children and I.”
Her words fell clear against a long silence following, “My husband, of
course, spoiled the children. I was perfectly willing that he should;
they were his children.”
After a pause, the Bishop, bringing the words forth from far away
murmured, musing, “Fathers do spoil children, perhaps.”
Her tone turned tense, “I would have spoiled Nan!” then, resuming her
gaze into the fire, upon her portrait, she continued her retrospective
analysis, “And I have managed the town as I have managed my family.
What Mrs. Hollister says, what Mrs. Hollister does not say, about
ministers and missions, about dinners and diners, Westbury waits
to know, and I have never let it be quite, quite sure! So Westbury
watches, watches me--but oh, not as I watch Westbury! For it would be
a little curious and disquieting--if I should cease to be popular! I
don’t think that unpopularity would exactly suit--my physique! I am old
and accustomed to sovereignty, even if it is, well, a bit monotonous!
We were young and lively once, Westbury and I, but now we grow old and
wish to be complacent and comfortable, so we don’t poke at each other’s
consciences. And, indeed, why should we? For are we not pretty good,
when one stops to look at us!” Patriotism deepened her voice, “Where is
there another Westbury! We have kept the heritage of our fathers! We
have not grown cheap in Westbury!” Then a lighter tone, “And how could
we be very bad when we always have had you to idealize us! Ever since
you were a boy! You came to us a stranger and we took you in, at once.
We sometimes do take in the stranger at once, and sometimes never.
Nowadays he must be presented to the portrait, and must pass that
examination. Young Murray Newbold has never passed his, and he knows
it. I believe I rather like to see him squirm, for it is not petty, it
is a giant’s squirming, and I enjoy it because I fancy it has ceased to
be perceptible to any eye but mine. It is interesting to observe the
effect of the air of Westbury on some constitutions. Your young Newbold
would have been worth bringing up once, but he has never learned not
to be afraid, and that brings it about that he has parted with every
good quality he possesses except his brain. That is still with us,
fortunately, for, quite between us, in spite of patriotism, I must say
there are not many brains in active employment in Westbury in these
days (I’m not, of course, so impolitic as to say ‘in these days’ to
anyone but you, Henry!). We have about half-a-dozen brains in Westbury
capable of conversation,--yours and young Newbold’s and mine, I forget
the other three!” Her laugh died into a thoughtful pause.
“And yet a brain for a woman is a big stupidity. But perhaps I ought
not to quarrel with mine, for,” she drew a quick breath of intensity,
“it has given me all I’ve ever had! Oh, you and I have had some great
old talks, haven’t we, here by my old red fire! Brains make--at
least--good comradeship!” Her voice fell low, “I sometimes wonder if
there is anything better for--men and women--than good comradeship.
What--what do you think, Henry?” But still she looked into the fire and
not at him, and the Bishop did not answer. For a moment his deep gaze
upon her wavered, went to the blackening window,--below there in the
wintry garden long bleak stems broke aflame with wee yellow blossoms,
beneath them little brown Annie walked among the roses.
“How curiously that holly glistens, Henry!” Lucy’s eyes were upon the
long lean hands transparent to the fire glow, then suddenly in a voice
lingering and judicial, “I really do not know whether it is so very
interesting after all to be an interesting old woman!”
Lucy’s hands unclasped, fluttered an instant on the chair arms, then
lay still, “Oh, I am bored! And I have been bored for so long! It would
astonish this town of mine to know how it bores me! There is nothing
new for me anywhere! I know what everybody is going to say and do. If
it were not for you, I should even know what I myself am going to say
and do! Oh, dull, dull, dull,--this being old! I wish I had something
to do! I don’t even yet feel old enough to do nothing, yet when have I
ever done anything else?”
The fire snapped in the stillness of the room, embers leaping up, the
sooner to die to blackened ashes. Lucy’s voice grew low and vibrant.
“You wonder why I speak these things to-day? It is your own fault,
Henry, my friend! Why do I keep my hearth fire bright except that you
should drop in beside it and talk to me? It is quite the only thing
left that is entertaining. And to-day you yourself threaten that!” Her
voice fell low, “Christmas has always been my day, why this time do
you bring with you these terrible thoughts, this talk of--death! Why
talk of it, the thinking of it is bad enough! Did anyone ever hear me
talk of dying? Except, of course, my lawyer. No, when death takes me,
he must catch me first! I shall never go forth to meet him with plans
and preparations for the things that shall come after,--and why should
you? Why must you talk of your going, speaking as if I could have an
interest in your work without you! Oh, Henry, why did you yourself
bring the spectre to our Christmas fire, where I wanted to be snug and
warm! You are not afraid, but I--I regret to confess it, I am!” Then
her tone grew less intense, determinedly casual, “Yet it is curious
that I should care or really take the trouble to be afraid! I who am
bored to the uttermost! The other will be at least a new thing! But I
have never been fond of games of chance! A picture in a frame is dead
enough, but a coffin is--ugh!--slightly worse! It is so ugly, this
dying! Nobody can ever say I yielded to it before I had to--I have
yielded so far, I flatter myself, to nothing! Yet when I must, I shall
step into my carriage and drive off with my head up and my lips shut,
like a lady! As I have lived!”
She paused, momentarily conscious of his expression, so that to the
strange intentness of his watching face she went on, “I never have
yielded to the need of a confessional before; if I do so once in a
lifetime, you really must excuse me, Henry!
“Of course, for you it is different, you are not afraid; you are a man,
and then you have your religion. But a woman is rarely religious, at
least a woman who has not had what she wanted! As a thinking person, I
quite envy you your religion. It is a valuable possession, at this end
of life. Not that I am unorthodox--who is, in our good old churchly
Westbury? I am a good churchwoman,--that does not enable me to see
through a stone wall. Oh, Henry, Henry, here you come to-day, looking
so pale that I can’t bear it, and talking of going, passing on, leaving
your work! You have made me feel how near we are, you and I, to that
stone wall. I am sitting here shivering at the strange things on the
other side!”
No light but the ebbing fire and the clear green lamp, and somewhere
outside in the darkness stars above the swift rush of the river.
“It is this that makes me talk. The time is so short, here, and over
there--who knows about over there? One speaks out at last, I find,
after being good for sixty years. For I have been good, have I not,
Henry, for sixty years,--listened and listened, helped, as you believe,
your work? It has been a great thing to be jealous of so great a work!
Did you really think my mind was in it, that I really cared,--I!--for
missions, for making men over, for turning a town right about face!
“I never expected to speak out; pictures in frames do not expect to
speak out. Yet I might have known, for sooner or later everyone does
speak out to you. I’ve been rather proud of being the one exception.
But is it not my turn? And yours to listen, to me, just once, at last?
You are surprised, I suppose. I am afraid I do not care that you are. I
had to open your eyes. You speak as if I existed only to carry on your
work--it has always been like that. So I’ve drawn you a portrait. Do
you still think, looking at it, that I am the one to give you hope, I!
What do you think, Henry Collinton, of the portrait of Lucy Dwight?”
Her strangely gleaming eyes at last met the Bishop’s deep gaze,
profound, unfaltering. There was stillness, then the Bishop spoke, in
quiet judgment on himself, “My work? Yet I had hoped that it seemed
God’s. And for sixty years I have thought that you loved it!”
“I have loved you!”
There was no old age for them now, no past, no future. Beyond the room
that briefly held them were night and the river and death. She was Lucy
Dwight of the flickering fire flame, who laid bare at the last her
deathless desire. The man she loved was God’s, was all men’s. After a
lifetime of delicate sanity, she cried out to him to be for one hour
hers. Then she waited.
The singular clarity of the Bishop’s brain had annulled for him every
other emotion. He no longer felt any shock of revelation. The lucidity
of his thinking was like a physical sensation of actual daylight in the
room and beyond the windows. He saw the past as if it had been written
in a foreign tongue and with a new meaning, but he saw it as plainly as
black print on white paper. The woman before him was one whom he had
never known, but he read her soul, too, clear as a printed page. So
strangely clear his head, it seemed to him he could have laid his hand
on that wall of death Lucy had talked of, that it would have crumbled
at his touch, leaving him standing on the other side, in this same new
daylight, serene and unsurprised. So crystal his thoughts that words
seemed to him a remote and frivolous medium, like a grown man’s being
forced to rediscover his baby-lisp in order to make himself understood.
His personal pain had become merely a matter for reflection and limpid
analysis. Carried far on thought that ran deep and wide, the Bishop
spoke, hardly conscious of his words, “But love _loves_! It does not
hurt! You knew me and my faith in you and my hope through you. If you
had loved me, would you have destroyed for me that faith and hope?
Would you not have taken from my hand my boy and my town, to take care
of and to help, if you had loved me?”
They seemed to sit there as if looking on these words, in a silence
that grew palpitant. Then her cry broke, “Henry, I can be all that you
have believed, I can promise to try to do all that you desire. If you
ask me to do it for you! Do you?”
All in that strange daylight within his brain, the Bishop saw the
future, saw his work die with him. In the same white light he saw the
woman before him whom he had never known.
Lucy waited. God’s or hers? Yet why had she loved him except because
he had never been hers? The Bishop’s gaze rested upon her in a far
tranquillity of insight.
“No.”
He sat there, quiet as a portrait before her gaze, and all alone. She
had desired to rouse him from bodily weakness, and there was about
him now no taint of feebleness. He sat erect, his long hands tranquil
but not flaccid. A smile touched his lips, so fine and firm, a man’s
smile, not a child’s; a smile of thought in retrospect, neither bright
nor bitter. He had believed his lonely life cheered by a beautiful
friendship, so sacred that he had supposed it hallowed the shrines of
his God, of his wife, even as he did. This friendship had not been what
he thought it. Truth was well. He had no friend. There remained God.
“Henry!”
He looked over to her with a far, alien pity.
“Have I lost you, Henry? I was never mad before. To keep you I have
been for a lifetime so frightfully wise! Have I lost you now?”
Involuntarily he shut his eyes, the faintest line was pencilled between
his brows. Pain struck home again through all that serenity of light.
If there was one thing Henry Collinton, the man, loved, it was reserve,
the delicate stateliness of their mutual sympathy. Yet here was the
nakedness of a woman’s soul! Words seemed to him too far away to find
or utter.
“Henry, sometimes you seem to me to see only God!”
Still he sat before her, silent and motionless as a portrait statue, as
austere and beautiful. His face was in profile to her. The firelight
fell on his silver-white hair and filled the eyes that did not turn or
see her. Still she seemed to him changed into a stranger. But her words
sounded in his head, “Sometimes you seem to see only God!” The Bishop
put up his right hand to his brow, suddenly veiling his face from her.
Against the strange recoil from her his quick prayer throbbed. So long
Lucy gazed at that corded old hand that shut him from her that there
grew at last on her face also, a marble sternness that matched his own.
She was no longer beautiful beneath that blighting cynicism. Behind
his lifted hand, the Bishop did not guess his testing, alone with God
as he sat there, praying against this quivering repulsion of his soul.
At last Lucy’s eyes turned from him to the fire. The smile of a faint
scorn caught on her lips! Scorn for herself? Scorn for him? Sixty years
of loving? Was this its issue?
Silence, except for the whispering fire.
The Bishop dropped his hand, leaning back a moment in uttermost relief.
From head to foot, he felt, all quietly, some stern tension relaxed,
and with it there passed away also something of that intensely clear
vision he had just experienced. Looking now toward that other chair by
the fire, he knew it was no stranger but the old familiar Lucy seated
there, his friend, and how tired she looked and white and lonely! He
must try to understand. It was very strange to realize it all, but
step by step he must try to understand, even though he felt again now
suddenly, and far more certainly, the shutting in upon him of the
vagueness and dullness of the morning hours. He cried out to the Friend
to hold it at bay a little while that he might talk to Lucy. He smiled
over to her sunnily.
As she looked into his eyes that blighting scorn was transformed into
a tremulous new beauty, her brooding face suddenly puckered with the
painful tears of age.
“Henry, tell me how to live without you! Give it to me this Christmas
Day, that gift of hope!”
“I would,” he answered slowly, “if I could! But I haven’t been so
very successful in my gift-giving to-day. So I don’t feel very sure
of myself. You’ll be patient, won’t you, while I try to understand?”
Slowly and humbly he felt his way, with wistful pauses. “There is so
much that is new to me, to understand.” Deep in thought he gazed into
the past. “You have been very patient with me. I see now how often I
have been self-absorbed and selfish, bringing it all to you, every
worry. I have taken,--I see it now--much sympathy and given very
little. It’s a little late, isn’t it, after sixty years, to ask you to
excuse it?” He shook his head with a strange, sad little smile. “How I
have talked to you! Always! It must indeed have seemed to you a long,
long listening! I am sorry!”
“But I am not sorry, Henry!”
“No!” his face brightened. “For if I have been self-absorbed, you at
least can remember that you have been very good to me. That helps, does
it not?” he pleaded quickly. “That thought helps a little toward cheer?
For as I try to understand, I do not seem able to look back and read
my life without you. You have always strengthened me. You have never
failed me.”
“Until to-day?”
Her whisper sent a shiver of hurt along his lips, but in a moment he
achieved steadiness, holding self at bay. “That!” his breath caught,
then low words that grew calm, “But as you said, it is perhaps my turn
now, to listen to you. It is only fair, as you said, that I should
listen and see, at last.”
“I never meant you to see. I always knew what would happen if you did.”
Her voice throbbed through the dusky room, with strange finality, “And
now it _has_ happened!”
His eyes met hers, crystal clear, “Nothing has happened,” he said
simply; “I think nothing ever happens, does it, to friends?”
There was a strange wondering relief upon her keen white face, as she
listened for his words, seeing the old boyish mysticism brighten in
his eyes. “But let me keep on trying to understand. They cannot be
very easy to bear, the things you have been telling me about, all that
I have been so dull and slow to guess. It will never do for either of
us to let Christmas day go out in the blues. The air seemed full of
good cheer this morning; we mustn’t lose that, you and I, just because
we are being drawn into the evening. You have been cheer itself to me
through all these years; if only I knew the word to say to you now! My
thoughts don’t feel very clear or manageable, but you know I want to
find the right word! You who have always known what to say to me.” He
fell thoughtful and silent, then looked up quickly, “You see it was
for that reason that I couldn’t help asking you to look after Murray,
because I knew what you had done for me. I have had every hope for
him, and you know how hard it is for me to give up a thing I have
hoped for,--that is why I caught at your friendship for him as the one
security now. I thought perhaps there would be for you the pleasure
in his brain, in his strength, that I have felt. But no, now I see it
cannot be. It would all be too hard on you. I know, of course,” he
sighed, “Murray’s faults. I’ve cared too much for him not to know them;
that was another reason, my love for him, that made me want to feel
that I was leaving him to you, to help him through--what lies before
him. But now I see it would be painful and difficult for you--one man
who has always brought you all the worry of his work has been enough!
And even to-day I have been bringing it all to you still, troubling you
with my work and worry and Murray and Westbury! Lucy, believe me, I
never meant to be selfish with it! I see at last that I have been.
“And Westbury,--shall we leave that subject quiet, too, as being
troublesome to-day? And the Southside Mission and all the other
missions, and the spirit that enkindles them, and must be kept alive
here and everywhere--one tries to keep the fire alight, but one must
go some day, trusting, hoping, not _knowing_, for that is too much to
ask! I will try not to trouble you with all that, any more, to-day. It
was a good deal, wasn’t it, to ask you to keep a whole town--alive!
One of my dreams! Such incorrigible dreams they must seem to you, I’m
afraid. I am always looking into dreams, you said. And perhaps my
Westbury is all a dream, for it has always seemed to me one of the holy
places. It does not seem, when you talk, to be that to you. You see,
I thought we were one in our love for it,--that is why I talked of
leaving it to you--it all sounds now, doesn’t it, a little fantastic?
Have I always lived in fantasy then? Are you showing me truth at the
last, Lucy?”
His voice ceased, weary. His face looked forth from the shadow depths,
worn to silver-white by all the years, then, even as he paused, hope
ran across it a bright transforming hand.
“It cannot be true! It need not be true! Need it, Lucy? I seem to
see--forgive me one more dream,--Murray with you to help him, still
keeping Westbury the Westbury of our youth. Of our youth! The old
customs, the way of graceful living, you have kept! And now to keep
the spirit, the spirit of the place, its simple godliness, its simple
friendliness! It has seemed to me God’s ground, where He let me walk a
little while and serve and then pass on, hoping! Hoping, Lucy?
“For you, there is so much left!” he spoke a bit wistfully. “Such
vigor still and life left in you! It does not matter if the years left
are few and late, if they can be so strong and beautiful! While, as
for me--” he shook his head, shrugging his shoulders, smiling, “oh,
these poor old bodies that we wear, how they fetter and confine! Yet
we mustn’t scorn them too much either, poor things, when they’ve done
their best for us for eighty years!”
Something in her listening face recalled him, “Dear me, I am at it
again! Troubling you again with the things that shall come after. It
was only that I saw before you for a moment--so much! I seem to see
so much everywhere, to-day. And yet much of it is sadly jumbled. Your
brain never seems to play these sorry tricks on you. You’re feeling
patient still, aren’t you,” he smiled, “while I try still to remember
and understand?”
Slowly keenness grew in his gaze upon her face, mute before him and
subtle. His words were a little hesitant, “I do not believe it is quite
true, that figure of a portrait. It hurts us both to think about that
portrait, because it is not true. Truly, I think my idea was better
than that, that you are the spirit of the place. Yes, I prefer my
figure of speech to yours, and so I shall keep it and forget yours. We
have known each other too long to believe in that portrait,--it’s such
a lonesome notion, somehow! Perhaps you feel like a portrait yourself
sometimes when you’re sitting alone by the fire and feeling a little
down, as we all do sometimes, I’m afraid, but you surely couldn’t
expect me to believe you a picture in a frame when for a lifetime
you’ve seemed life and energy to me! So remember,” an instant his voice
grew lower, “always remember--” the old twinkle showed, “that I don’t
believe a word of it!”
He knew that her eyes, at full gaze on him, frankly showed all secrets,
but they were secrets he was not sure he read. Still he was trying to
understand, while he paused for help.
“You did not quite mean, did you, that the dullness, the boredom, is
all the time present with you? Only sometimes? It is very puzzling
to believe ennui of you who seem so alert. You are very brave at
concealing it,--you must know the remedy better than I do, for it is
one of the things that have not been chosen for me to bear, for I still
get up in the morning expecting new things to happen. I did this very
day.”
Involuntary mocking pulled at her lips. “New things _are_ happening to
us both to-day!”
“Yes!” he murmured, while his face was shadowed, then reverting, “To be
dull every day! It seems to me almost the saddest thing you have said
to me! I wish it were not so! I wish I had the right word to say for
that!”
He sat silent, hesitant and doubtful.
“Henry, say out to me all that you have in mind to say. I need it.
There are no veils left!”
His face grew clear with light.
“You are looking into dreams again!” she cried, “but now tell me what
you see!”
“What I see for you?”
“Yes, that belongs to me now.”
“I think I see for you what might be,” he began hesitant.
“Mysteriously, there is in you still the power of effort together with
the power of wisdom. It seems to me that it is like a cup in your hand,
your influence. And if it should be all in vain,--I know to-day that
much we desire to do must be in vain. We understand that together, you
and I. I feel, you know, as if the soul of a man and the soul of a town
were in your keeping for a little while,--if you should take them,
might it not be that new thing you want? Might it not bring you joy and
forgetting? My work has meant that to me. And I know it is very lonely
if one never forgets. And even if it were all in vain, might it not be
life and hope to you, Lucy? I do not want to preach any preachments,
you know that, surely. I can only tell you what I have lived. Perhaps
I have never lived in reality--I half guess it this evening, looking
back, and looking forward, seeing all that I have not done. It isn’t
very easy to grow old, not easy for anyone to feel the body breaking
beyond mending, and to see all that is unfinished, but I believe, Lucy,
an enthusiasm is the one thing to keep us warm, us old ones. I’ve done
a plentiful amount of failing, but I wish I could succeed in one thing
now,--I wish God would let me give you the word of joy to-night!”
It was so quiet in the old room, that low-lighted space, four-square,
swung out upon the night. The Bishop’s long fingers passed slowly
across his brow, trying to smooth away that darkness which seemed
shutting in upon his brain.
“And might not effort new and different help you to forget, Lucy, that
wall of death? Perhaps you might be so busy, so joyously busy, that you
would come quite to the wall without seeing, and the gate would open
so quickly that you would step through without waiting to be afraid. I
wish God might let it be that way with you. Perhaps He will. Strange
that for me death has always seemed easier than life, so that I’ve
tried not to look at the thought of it too much, not because of fear,
because of beauty. It is only lately that I have felt that God will not
mind if I look toward the gate. I think perhaps he’ll excuse me now,
for wanting to get home. They’ve been waiting for me pretty long, too,
Annie and Nan and the baby. He must be a man now. I often wonder by
what ways they grow up over there.
“Lucy, I wish you need not be afraid of going home.”
Again the Bishop passed his hand over his forehead. He felt himself
growing vague, tried blindly to remember what he was trying to say,
turned to her at length, appealing, with a strange little smile of
apology.
“There is something I am trying to say, but somehow I keep losing it.
Can you possibly excuse me if you try quite hard? For I know you’ve
told me something this afternoon that I ought never to have forgotten,
and somehow, Lucy, it’s gone, it fades, it escapes me! Only it was
something that troubled you and that I was trying to understand. But
I can’t, I can’t remember! But I wanted to say something to help a
little, I remember that part of it. Lucy, for you and me, is that
enough, even if I can’t remember what it was all about?
“There is just one thing I can find the words for, before they slip
away,--you and I have had to walk through life alone, and yet we have
walked together. It was because God walked with us that we have walked
together. Lucy, you will remember, whatever happens, that He is always
there? And so, that way, you see, we can never be so very far apart!”
They are piteous, the tears of age. Lucy pressed them back with ivory
finger-tips on each eyelid, her hands masking all her face. Behind them
stretched the long past, the brief future. The key to the future was
in her broken whisper, “After all, God was just; Annie was fit to love
you!”
But the Bishop had risen suddenly, and crossed the room blindly,
stumbling but once. The crashing pain in his head left only one
instinct--air, the street, his own house! Instantly he must get there!
Then sharp through his own pain came admonishment. He steadied himself
with one hand upon the mahogany table where the green lamp stood. It
was the close of his Christmas, he remembered; would it go with no
reassurance?
The white panelled doorway behind him, he stood there by the low green
lamp. His face was all longing, like a little child’s.
“Lucy, I tried; have I given you--hope?”
The Bishop’s voice was low, lower than he knew, and it is sometimes
impossible to hear or to speak. It was a long time before Lucy’s hands
dropped from a face a-quiver. She looked about, startled to know
herself alone when she felt only him, everywhere.
But quietly the outer door had closed.