Meanwhile Walden himself, ignorant of all the 'local' excitement so
suddenly stirred up in his tiny kingdom, had arrived on a three
days' visit at the house, or to put it more correctly, at the
palace, of his friend Bishop Brent. It was, in strict reality a
palace, having been in the old days one of the residences of Henry
VII. Much of the building had been injured during the Cromwellian
period, and certain modern repairs to its walls had been somewhat
clumsily executed, but it still retained numerous fine old mullioned
windows, and a cloistered court of many sculptured arches still
eminently beautiful, though grey and crumbling under the touch of
the melancholy vandal, Time. The Bishop's study had formerly been
King Henry's audience chamber, and possessed a richly-wrought
ceiling of interlaced oak rafters, and projecting beams smoothly
polished at the ends and painted with royal emblems, from which
projections no doubt, in early periods, many a banner of triumph had
floated and many a knightly pennon. Bishop Brent was fond of this
room, and carefully maintained its ancient character in the style of
its furniture and general surroundings. The wide angle-nook and high
carved chimney-piece, supported by two sculptured angel-figures of
heroic size, was left unmodernised, and in winter the gaping recess
was filled with great logs blazing cheerily as in olden times, but
in summer, as now, it served as a picturesque setting for masses of
rare flowers which, growing in pots, or cut freshly and set in
crystal vases, were grouped together with the greatest taste and
artistic selection of delicate colouring, forming, as it seemed, a
kind of blossom-wreathed shrine, above which, against the carved
chimney itself, hung a wonderfully impressive picture of the Virgin
and Child. Placed below this, and slightly towarde the centre of the
room, was the Bishop's table-desk and chair, arranged so that
whenever he raised his head from his work, the serene soft eyes of
Mary, Blessed among Women, should mystically meet his own. And here
just now he sat at evening, deep in conversation with John Walden,
who with the perfect unselfishness which was an ingrained part of
his own nature, had for the time put aside or forgotten all his own
little troubles, in order to listen to the greater ones of his
friend. He had been shocked at the change wrought in seven years on
Brent's form and features. Always thin, he had now become so
attenuated as to have reached almost a point of emaciation,--his
dark eyes, sunk far back under his shelving brows, blazed with a
feverish brilliancy which gave an almost unearthly expression to his
pale drawn features, and his hand, thin, long, and delicate as a
woman's, clenched and unclenched itself nervously when he spoke,
with an involuntary force of which he was himself unconscious.
"You have not aged much, Walden!" he said, thoughtfully regarding
his old college chum's clear and open countenance with a somewhat
sad smile--"Your eyes are the same blue eyes of the boy that linked
his arm through mine so long ago and walked with me through the
sleepy old streets of 'Alma Mater!' That time seems quite close to
me sometimes--and again sometimes far away--dismally, appallingly,
far away!"
He sighed. Walden looked at him a little anxiously, but for the
moment said nothing.
"You give me no response,"--continued Brent, with sudden
querulousness--"Since you arrived we have been talking nothing but
generalities and Church matters. Heavens, how sick I am of Church
matters! Yet I know you see a change in me. I am sure you do--and
you will not say it. Now you never were secretive--you never said
one thing and meant another--so speak the truth as you have always
done! I AM changed, am I not?"
"You are,"--replied Walden, steadily--"But I cannot tell how, or in
what way. You look ill and worn out. You are overworked and
overwrought--but I think there is something else at the root of the
evil;--something that has happened during the last seven years. You
are not quite the man you were when you came to consecrate my church
at St. Rest."
"St. Rest!" repeated the Bishop, musingly--"What a sweet name it is-
-what a still sweeter suggestion! Rest--rest!--and a saint's rest
too!--that perfect rest granted to all the martyrs for Christ!--how
safe and peaceful!--how sure and glorious! Would that such rest were
mine! But I see nothing ahead of me but storm and turmoil, and
stress of anguish and heartbreak, ending in--Nothingness!"
Walden bent a little more forward and looked his friend full in the
eyes.
"What is wrong, Harry?" he asked, with exceeding gentleness.
At the old schoolboy name of bygone years, Brent caught and pressed
his hand with strong fervour. A smile lighted his eyes.
"John, my boy, everything is wrong!" he said--"As wrong as ever my
work at college was, before you set it right. Do you think I forget!
Everything is wrong, I tell you! I am wrong,--my thoughts are
wrong,--and my conscience leaves me no peace day or night! I ought
not to be a Bishop--for I feel that the Church itself is wrong!"