THE BISHOP SPEAKS
Inside the study, meanwhile, the bishop was greeting Harry Sanderson. He
had officiated at his ordination and liked him. His eyes took in the
simple order of the room, lingering with a light tinge of disapproval
upon the violin case in the corner, and with a deeper shade of question
upon the jewel on the other's finger--a pigeon-blood ruby in a setting
curiously twisted of the two initial letters of his name.
There came to his mind for an instant a whisper of early prodigalities
and wildnesses which he had heard. For the lawyer who had listened to
Harry Sanderson's recital on the night of the making of the will had not
considered it a professional disclosure. He had thought it a "good
story," and had told it at his club, whence it had percolated at leisure
through the heavier strata of town-talk. The tale, however, had seemed
rather to increase than to discourage popular interest in Harry
Sanderson. The bishop knew that those whose approval had been withheld
were in the hopeless minority, and that even these could not have denied
that he possessed desirable qualities--a manner by turns sparkling and
grave, picturesqueness in the pulpit, and the unteachable tone of
blood--and had infused new life into a generally sleepy parish. He had
dismissed the whisper with a smile, but oddly enough it recurred to him
now at sight of the ruby ring.
"I looked in to tell you a bit of news," said the bishop. "I've just
come from David Stires--he has a letter from Van Lennap, the great
eye-surgeon of Vienna. He disagrees with the rest of them--thinks
Jessica's case may not be hopeless."
The cloud that Hugh's call had left on Harry's countenance lifted.
"Thank God!" he said. "Will she go to him?"
The bishop looked at him curiously, for the exclamation seemed to hold
more than a conventional relief.
"He is to be in America next month. He will come here then to examine,
and perhaps to operate. An exceptional girl," went on the bishop, "with
a remarkable talent! The angel in the chapel porch, I suppose you know,
is her modelling, though that isn't just masculine enough in feature to
suit me. The Scriptures are silent on the subject of woman-angels in
Heaven; though, mind you, I don't say they're not common on earth!" The
bishop chuckled mildly at his own epigram.
"Poor child!" he continued more soberly. "It will be a terrible thing
for her if this last hope fails her, too! Especially now, when she and
Hugh are to make a match of it."
Harry's face was turned away, or the bishop would have seen it suddenly
startled. "To make a match of it!" To hide the flush he felt staining
his cheek, Harry bent to close the safe. A something that had darkled in
some obscure depth of his being, whose existence he had not guessed, was
throbbing now to a painful resentment. Jessica was to marry Hugh!
"A handsome fellow--Hugh!" said the bishop. "He seems to have returned
with a new heart--a brand plucked from the burning. You had the same
_alma mater_, I think you told me. Your influence has done the boy good,
Sanderson!" He laid his hand kindly on the other's shoulder. "The fact
that you were in college together makes him look up to you--as the whole
parish does," he added.
Harry was setting the combination, and did not answer. But through the
turmoil in his brain a satiric voice kept repeating:
"No, they don't call me 'Satan' now!"