master spoke Billy whinnied softly as if he understood and would be
quiet. He blew a clean breath in the bishop’s face, and as the door
slid he doubled up his forefoot to shake hands. It was the best “good
morning” Billy could say, and he got his sugar for it. The bishop
placed the saddle and buckled the girths, and Billy put down his
big, gentle head and pushed his nose into the bridle, proud of his
accomplishment. “Good Billy,” and the bishop smiled, and patted him,
and mounted with a spring such as he had not given for five years. He
would have to turn back when he got to the river, as Higgins would
be asleep on the farther side; but he would have a ride and see the
sun rise. He had never felt more like it; he was delighted that he
had been imposed upon by that overbearing young man with wings. What
was the lost identity of that face? The bishop puzzled over this as
Billy cantered along, plunging and snorting with joy to be out in the
freshness.
The garden lay in the half-darkness; it was late June, and there
were roses; a lattice arch loomed heavy with honeysuckle, and the
damp smell met him like a wall; down by the stream there were rows
of vague lilies. Everything was quiet, yet awake—waiting for him. It
seemed as if some joyful secret was abroad which only he knew—and
maybe Billy. The gray, long road was in it, and the branches bent,
whispering it, and the cold, wet leaves of the trees that touched him
were full of significance. The world was his alone, a world opening
in his hand. Sometimes, not often, the glory of the star we live on
comes fresh, and suddenly it is not words but a reality that we are
part of the glory and of the fight, a cog in the scheme, each least
one. The bishop, in the brightening morning, with no sound on earth
but the wind and Billy’s hoof-beats, threw out his arm boyishly.
“_Si la jeunnesse savait—si la vieillesse pouvait_”—he said aloud.
“I am old—I know, and to-day I am young—I can. It’s a good day.
Something good is to happen to-day.”
The ferryman’s house was on the Lancaster side, but a hut was on this
shore, where he sat often in the daytime. Out of this rose a man’s
figure, and stood with arms stretched and head back in a giant yawn.
“What business have you got over here at this hour, Higgins?” the
bishop demanded with asperity.
“Well—well, sir,” Higgins stammered through the yawn, and the bishop
laughed.
“Me! I’m waitin’ fo’ Squire Fassett. County Co’t to-day; las’ month
I slep’ over, an’ the Squire, he come in early with his cattle, and
had the devil’s own—excuse me, sir—had a hell of a time—excuse me,
sir—I’m sleepy—had a right bad job wakin’ me. He talked some about
shootin’, so I thought I’d sleep handy over this side.”
“Good,” the bishop said thoughtfully. “You’ll ferry me over? I can
get to Lancaster?”
“Get to Lancaster?” the man repeated. “Nothin’ simpler, bishop; I
reckon,” he added, apparently to Billy, “there ain’t much you want of
these parts you _can’t_ get.”
There was a three-mile stretch on the Lancaster side; the bishop took
it slowly; it was six when he turned into the main street, where
the early birds stared as Billy’s tread echoed from the cobbles.
Embarrassment seized the bishop. This was an absurd performance.
As soon as Billy and he had breakfast he would ride back to the
Thickets. He drew up at a hotel and gave Billy over to a groom, and
strolled to the echoing dining-room, killing time over details. He
had to wait for breakfast, and when it was over he found that he
had managed the day up to eight o’clock, and with that the thought
occurred to him that he would wait and meet Doctor Fletcher at
eleven. The ride had not tired him; in fact he felt like a walk on
top of it, a good way to get rid of some of the time on his hands.
There was a park on the other side of the city, and he had not seen
it for months.
The landlord of the Harrington House stood on the steps and watched.
“There goes the right sort of parson,” he observed to the clerk.
“Look at him beat it up the street. He ain’t too pious to be a human,
and that’s what rakes in the souls. And he’s awfully good comp’ny.
Heaven for climate, but hell for comp’ny, folks say; but the bishop’s
got hell queered when he starts business up on high.” In many forms
good-will followed the short figure and the fine gray head; eyes
brightened to see how well he looked, how young his gait.
It was quiet in the park. It lay high, and through a vista cut in
juicy green he looked across the valley, where his home lay, the big
place with fields and thickets and trees, and the large, sunshiny
garden. “I’m sorry it all has to go to strangers,” he said aloud;
then his mouth twisted into a queer, lovable, sidewise smile that
was his, and he lifted himself from the bench to start back to town.
With that came a clatter of muffled hoofs down the soft bridle-path,
and he turned with a rider’s interest in riders. A young man was
galloping fast toward him through the shifting light and shadow, and
the bishop, still smiling, suddenly started, horror-struck. Out from
a by-path in front of the rider ran a little boy, late to school,
hurrying across the park with his books and slate, oblivious of
everything else. The bishop shouted, and the rider saw in time and
pulled in, and the child was safe. But it had been a close shave.
The horseman went on, and the bishop fell to thinking. It was odd
that this thing should have happened twice in two months—almost
identically this thing. Early in May he had landed from England at
Quebec, and had spent three days in Montreal, and one morning he had
driven up the mountain, Mount Royal, the park for which nature has
done more, perhaps, than for any other in the world. It was bright
weather, and as the carriage climbed the hanging road he had met many
people on horseback. Around a turn, where the green mist of leaves
arched over a level stretch, a horse and rider cantered toward him
through the speckled sunlight—a splendid brown horse carrying a big
young man, bare-headed, fair-haired. As pleasant a sight, the bishop
thought, as one might see on earth. Then without warning there was
a sound which made his pulse stop. A woman at the roadside screamed
as a creature screams in a last agony. And the bishop followed her
wild eyes. In the middle of the sunny road, where the shadows twisted
bewilderingly, a little lad of three or four bent over a ball which
rolled from him, and the flying hoofs were almost on him. The horse
came galloping—a noble picture—the little white figure, stooping,
fearless of death, in the sun-splashed road, death bearing down
gloriously.
“Ah!” It seemed as if the round world had gasped that. At the last
second the young man had seen, and with a turn of the hand, with all
his strength, with the skill of a finished horseman, had thrown his
mount. Back they rolled together in a dangerous mass, the immense
hoofs and the bright head flashing. And the child scrambled away,
and his mother sobbed and did not even look as he ran toward her,
for before her eyes the man who had given him back to her lay where
the body of the horse must crush him the next second. And as the
horse rolled the great hoofs floundered in air, and somehow righted,
and within six inches of the helpless head rolled back. In two
minutes more they were all grouped in the road, a joyful and excited
company—the woman sobbing with happiness now; the baby shrieking for
sympathy; the driver swearing gleefully, regardless of the bishop,
and the young man who had just grazed death up and punching anxiously
here and there at his trembling animal. The bishop held the beast’s
head, and the boy, the cause of the sensation, played calmly with his
ball. In two minutes more the woman and children had gone on, but the
bishop was still helping the young man look things over.
“Jove, that’s luck—that’s luck I wouldn’t have dared hope for,” the
boy brought out. He was an attractive lad, well bred and radiantly
good-looking, an Englishman, yet with a breeziness not English, and a
peculiarity in his speech. It might be Canadian, the bishop thought
as he noticed—it is hard for Americans to judge. “That’s ripping.
Thank you, bishop. Not a strap or buckle wrong, and the beggar not
scratched. I couldn’t do it again, don’t you know.” He patted the
frightened horse.
“How do you know I’m a bishop?”
The boy laughed, pleased. “You are, aren’t you, sir? That was easy.”
He put his hand on his own collar and nodded at the bishop’s.
“A clergyman, of course—but I’d have known it anyhow—there’s
something—and—” he hesitated, and then looked the older man in the
eyes frankly, deferentially. “It’s plain to see, sir, if you will
excuse me, that you’re a personage. I’m not taking liberties, am I?”
“Not a bit. I like it. I’d walk a mile for a compliment.” Then he
laid his hand on the broad shoulder above him, for the lad towered.
“My boy, I must tell you something also. That was a fine thing you
did.”
The blue eyes opened wider. “Oh, you mean throwing the horse? It’s a
dangerous trick, of course, but I had to. I didn’t want to, but the
youngster was close. You’re a horseman—there wasn’t any other way,
was there, bishop?”
“No,” the bishop said slowly. “There wasn’t any other way,” and let
it go at that.
“I’m glad he’s not hurt,” the boy explained, “because he’s not mine.
He belongs to a friend I’m staying with. That is”—he laughed—“I’m
at his house. He and his people went off yesterday, and I was due
to start for the States last night. But I stayed over for a ride.
You see I was brought up on a horse, on the other side of the world,
that was. And I’ve not had the chance lately, and I’ve missed it.
Henderson would mind most awfully if I’d hurt Thunderbolt, and so
should I. I’m keeping you, bishop.” He held out his hand. “Thanks,
awfully, for helping me,” and the stiff formula held a heartiness
which went to the bishop’s heart. He was attracted beyond explanation
by this boy. He tried to think of a reason to lengthen the incident.
“You’re sure you’re not shaken up? I could drive you home with
pleasure.”
But the young fellow laughed. “I’m perfectly fit; thanks ever so
much. I hope we’ll meet again, bishop.”
They clasped hands as if both were sorry to part. “If I can ever do
anything for you, you’ll try to let me know, won’t you?”
“I will, bishop,” the boy said heartily. And neither remembered
that they did not know each other’s names, for it seemed an old
friendship. And the young fellow vaulted into the saddle and was gone.
But in the mind of the bishop all that day, and for days after, there
lingered a recollection of the big young figure, and the honest blue
glance, and of the simplicity with which he had offered his life
for a strange child’s. Seldom had the bishop met any one who had so
pleased him—and he did not know his name.
“I should like to own a boy like that,” the bishop thought then,
with a touch of the loneliness which sometimes caught him.
He had said that over to himself more than once in the two months
since the incident, and now, in the park of Lancaster, as the
horseman disappeared into the June greenness, and the startled
little boy hurried off to school, he thought of his garden and his
house, and the things dear to him, which must go to strangers, and
the bright face of the rider on Mount Royal came with a throb of
pain, and he felt his isolation and said it again: “I should like
to own a boy like that.” Then he trudged cheerfully back toward
town, putting away, as was his habit, any personal sadness. And when
he got into the city, it was only ten o’clock—an hour yet before
Doctor Fletcher’s train. He strolled down Brandon Street, past the
court-house. The great doors were wide open, and through them rang a
dictatorial voice which he knew well, the voice of Judge Lovett. The
bishop halted; the winning, odd smile by which people who loved him
remembered him lighted his face—a smile which drew his strong mouth
sidewise in a characteristic line, keen, humorous, kindly. He liked
Judge Lovett. He turned into the court-house, and dropped in the back
row by the side of a man who made way for him deferentially.
“What’s the case?” the bishop whispered.
“A murder case—young fellow’s being tried for murder done twenty
miles from here, about two months ago—trying to prove an alibi, but
it looks right black. That’s him, the big, light-haired chap.” And
the bishop looked, and saw the rider of Mount Royal.
Judge Lovett’s voice went on, emotionless, incisive. “You say that
you were in Montreal on the sixth of last May; can you prove it? Is
there any one who saw you and talked to you there who would remember
you?”
The bishop, standing up, staring, his pulse beating in jumps,
listened to the answer.
“There is one man whom I talked to when I was riding on the
mountain,” the frank tones trailed off rather hopelessly, “but I
don’t know his name or where he lives.”
At the back of the court-room there was a stir. A sudden voice lifted
across the place, startling judge and jury and the crowded benches
of listeners. “I am the man,” the bishop spoke loudly and walked
forward down the aisle to the rail.
There was a dramatic silence. The court-room seemed to catch its
breath as one man. The judge’s dominant speech broke the hush.
“Bishop,” he asked, “did you see this young man in Montreal on the
sixth of May?”
“Yes.”
“Please take the stand,” said the judge.
The bishop testified. People hardly breathed for fear of missing
one of the direct words. It was clear in five minutes, and before
the district-attorney finished his examination of twenty minutes
or so there was no question, so that when the jury went out the
judge directed them to bring in a verdict of acquittal. The bishop,
stepping down from the stand, came to the prisoner. He put out his
hand, his face alight, and the boy caught it in both his, and his
mouth worked.
“Bishop, a man can’t say ‘Thank you’—there aren’t any words—” He
stopped.
“My lad,” the little bishop said soothingly to the towering young
giant, and patted the huge fists with his free fingers as if he spoke
to a child—“my lad, of course there aren’t any words—there never are
if you need them. _I’d_ like to lay my hands on one or two to tell
you how glad I am. And so glad to see you besides; I’ve thought about
you. How did you come here?”
“It’s a long story—I’ll tell you. But, bishop, you—did you drop from
heaven? I wanted you so—it’s a miracle.” And people stood about
laughing and crying and listening openly, but the two did not notice.
“A miracle—yes, I think likely. But at the moment I strolled into the
court-room because I was killing time till—Mercy!” The bishop jerked
out his watch. “Nine minutes of eleven—I must rush.” He caught the
boy’s hand again. “Come out and see me—the Thickets—any one will tell
you—I can’t miss that train.” He looked up into the boy’s face with
half appeal, half command. “Don’t you leave till I’ve seen you again.”
“Not for worlds, bishop.”
“Good-bye!” and the short figure bolted from the court-room with an
impetuousness which nearly knocked over a mighty policeman on the
steps.
Billy, harnessed to a runabout, trotted briskly along the road
which he had covered under saddle at peep of day, and behind him
two gray-haired dignitaries chattered like boys. By common consent
the main subject was not to be discussed till after lunch, but the
coincidence of the dream and the scene in the court-house were talked
over with interest.
“It was extraordinary—quite,” Doctor Fletcher acknowledged. “The
verses in your mind gave rise to the young man with wings; but what
made him tell you to go to Lancaster?” The bishop was silent. “Had
you been planning to go to Lancaster? To meet me, for instance?”
“No. I didn’t feel up to the trip.”
“Some shaft of memory projecting itself on the weakened consciousness
during sleep,” Doctor Fletcher reflected. “A lucky accident for the
prisoner.”
“It was not an accident,” observed the bishop calmly. “It was an
intervention.”
The doctor considered. “A lot about dreams—unknown. Theories. Memory,
personality, suggestion, telepathy—more, likely before we let go and
say supernatural.”
“If there is anything supernatural.” The bishop caught it up.
“Perhaps it is all in nature, only we don’t know. The most advanced
of us stands before psychology like an ancient cave-dweller before
electricity. We see gleams from the penumbra of a new universe. Two
hundred years ago everybody jumped at that word supernatural, and
burned some of the people concerned and worshipped others. To-day we
clamor as promptly that there isn’t any penumbra or any universe,
but somebody has scratched a match. However”—the clear, assured
voice, so compelling in its flexibility, its sympathy, changed
swiftly—“however, Jim, we both use very beautiful long words when we
prod each other a bit. Don’t we?”
“Why do you put rubber pads on that horse in summer?” inquired the
doctor, and the talk fell to Billy’s shoeing.
After lunch the bishop and the great doctor, the “Jim” of his
lifelong friendship, went into a pleasant room with broad open
windows looking over the drowsy garden. Muslin curtains flapped in
the breeze; bees hummed outside; the fragrance of roses was in the
air, and a puff of wind lifted to them the smell of honeysuckle. The
old friends sat and smoked and talked cheerfully of big affairs and
of little ones, of the bills before Congress, of the last scientific
discovery, of the doctor’s grandchildren, of boys of fifty years
ago and doings of them then and now. Then, when the cigars were
finished, Everingham, the village physician, had come in and there
had been twenty minutes of serious short questions and answers, and
then Everingham had gone and the two were together alone again.
Doctor Fletcher was silent. He got up and went to the window and
stood with his back turned and his hands in his pockets looking out
on the garden. With that the telephone on the study-table rang and
the bishop went to answer it. But as he stood with his hand at the
receiver, ready to take it down, he turned his face to his friend
with an unspoken question, and the great doctor wheeled sharply
and crossed the room in long strides, and his arm was around his
friend’s shoulder.
“Tell me, Jim,” the bishop said quietly.
“I can’t,” said the doctor, and his forehead suddenly was against the
black clerical coat.
Then the bishop, with his calm hand over the shaking one, put the
receiver to his ear.
“Yes, this is he,” he answered composedly. And in a moment: “Oh—yes.
I’m glad. Surely, my boy. Come at once.”
Under the big oak in the garden, by the stream which was the garden’s
boundary, were placed wicker chairs and a table. One went through
the honeysuckle arch to get to them. There were tall lilies along
the stream and blue ranks of larkspur towered beyond; the hollyhocks
were showing spots of color in the high rows against the hedge; stone
steps led to the little river, and a boat rocked, tied; the water
tinkled; it was as pleasant a place as might be where two old friends
should sit of a warm afternoon and smoke and talk. They went there,
the bishop and his guest.
Doctor Fletcher, straining after composure, bent over a blossom.
“A verbena, isn’t it?”
“Jim, you’re probably the original of the man in the story who knew
only two botanical names of flowers—aurora borealis and delirium
tremens. That’s phlox.”
The hearty contempt helped to steady the stricken man. No one of his
patients had ever seen the great physician unnerved, but to-day the
match shook which he held to his pipe; for a moment he could not
light it. The bishop laughed and his mouth twisted whimsically.
“Nonsense, Jim. You mustn’t be upset. You and I know better. It is
a crisis, of course, but there is nothing final about it—you know
all I can say. Old age and death are just a sort of measles in the
cosmic childhood of us eternal people. We’ll sit in gardens and talk
together thousands of times again—better gardens than this, maybe,
though I can’t imagine it.” He looked about him wistfully. “To my
mind it’s like the hill of Zion here—‘a fair place, and the joy of
the whole earth’—‘the whole earth’—that’s me.” He went on: “I’m not
bothered. That is—well, if I could manage two things the way I want
I’d be satisfied to leave the job and move on.”
“What things?” the doctor demanded eagerly, stretching his fingers
across the table between them.
“You can’t manage them, old man.”
“What are they?” the doctor insisted.
The bishop drew a long puff at his pipe and gazed off toward the
hollyhocks, where a vivid blur of cherry lay in the swinging green.
He took the pipe from his mouth and held it on the table. The back of
his hand just touched his friend’s. “Two things. One is, if I could
get hold of Basil Lynn and make that thing straight. The other”—he
hesitated, and then snapped out: “I do hate to have this place go to
the Williamsons.”
Out of his sadness the doctor laughed. “It shouldn’t have to,” he
agreed. “Why not make a hospital?”
“Not much.” The bishop’s eyes flashed. “Butchers in white
pajamas—like you—around my halls? No, thank you. And I’ve left stacks
of money to hospitals, Jim—don’t nag me—you know that. This place is
different—it’s got to belong to people, not charity boards. Yet Tom
Williamson doesn’t differ much from a board,” and he smiled sidewise.
“Thoroughly good.”
“Good? Oh, mercy, he’s good,” groaned the bishop. “But he’d never
give Billy sugar. And imagine the dogs playing with Tom Williamson!
And so dull, Jim—so deadly dull! If I heard—Tom—talking platitudes in
my garden”—the bishop brought his fist down with a thump—“I’d come
back. I’d have to. The digitalis would die—drought kills it.”
“Tom’s not the point,” Fletcher suggested. “Not your cousin.”
“No, it’s Anita,” assented the bishop, and knocked the ashes from his
pipe. Then, confidentially: “She’s so fat.”
“Jerry,” said the doctor, “you may be a bishop, but you’re
unregenerate and full of sin.”
“I am ashamed, Jim. Poor old Tom—he is a nice fellow, and Anita is
kind. I’m sorry, Jim,” the bishop said penitently, and then changed
as swiftly. “All your fault. I only talk this way to you. You always
did inspire me with the devil.” And they laughed a little together.
A silence fell again. The pipes burned, and the bishop’s dark eyes
stared absently across the tranquil spaces of lawn and the flower
borders to the fields spread beyond in sunlight.
At length: “‘Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall
dream dreams,’” he mused aloud.
“Boy with wings?” Fletcher asked.
“Yes. I wish I could remember the face. Queer I can’t. A light was on
it twice as if to give me a good chance.” He was silent again; then:
“Jim, I wish I owned a boy like that.”
“I wish to heaven you did, Jerry,” and with that a horse turned in at
the gate and trotted up the gravel. Through the arch the two saw a
tall figure spring down.
Black Peter, the butler, brought him out to them in the garden and
the doctor stayed to regard him gravely and approvingly, and strolled
away with inelastic step across the lawn to the house.
“Young man,” shot the bishop at him, “the first thing I want to know
is your name.”
The boy’s eyes widened. “You don’t know my name, sir? But how should
you? It’s Basil Lynn.”
In the still, bright place time and tide seemed to stop. The pipe in
the bishop’s hand fell and rolled away, and the newcomer sprang after
it and brought it back, smiling. Then he saw the bishop’s face.
“What is it? Are you ill, sir?”
The bishop took the boy’s hands and stared up at him, and stared—and
yet stared. And the boy turned a slow red, but stood quiet. “Why,
it’s plain,” the bishop said. “Your father’s size, but your mother’s
son. Her son.”
The lad’s face lit. “Why, bishop—you knew her?”
The bishop still questioned the bright face with his close gaze.
“I don’t remember my father,” the young fellow said. “He died
when I was a year old—they say I’m built like him. But this is my
mother’s”—he put his hand through his thick, straight, very light
hair. “I’m mostly like her, I think.”
“She is alive?” the bishop asked.
“Oh, yes—bless her,” the boy beamed. “But I’ve had to leave her in
England.” He hesitated. “I can tell you anything, bishop. We’re
poor—I’ve come over to make money, and then she’ll come. She wants
to live in America. I must get to work. I’m anxious to work—I’m in a
hurry to get my mother.”
“‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,’” remarked the
bishop.