or what is called religious; he had the air of stating something
which gratified him.
“Sit down,” he ordered. “I’ve a great deal to say to you.” He broke
off and stared once more at the straight-featured, glowing young
face. “It’s just the sort of boy I like,” he considered out loud, and
“it” looked astonished and reddened, and laughed and looked pleased,
but the older man did not notice. With preoccupied movements he
filled his pipe and packed it, and lighted it and drew a puff, as if
his soul were on it, the boy meantime bursting with wonder. “A great
many things to say to you. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.” A moment’s silence.
“It was eleven years before you were born. You were the only child?”
“No—two others, older; they died.”
The bishop reflected, his luminous eyes on the boy’s face. “You are
like her. I’m glad.”
“So am I,” the lad smiled, and waited in an agony now of anxiety to
know what it all meant. A minute, two minutes, and he still waited.
“Let me think,” the bishop crossed his legs with deliberation, and
puffed a cloud of smoke and gazed at it, absorbed, as it rolled
toward the hollyhocks. “Let me think.”
“Yes, sir,” and the lad shut his lips, as it might be to shut in
something which kicked and struggled. The bees hummed; the bishop
smoked as if hours were nothing, nor yet a young man exploding with
curiosity. At length he put the pipe down on the table and pushed it
from him.
“I’d better tell you the whole story,” he said gravely. “I have never
told it before. Thirty-five years ago—eleven years before you were
born—I was a lawyer, alone in the world, as I am now.” He stopped a
moment, and suddenly smiled at the listener. The lad flushed as if he
had been caressed. “As now. I met—a young girl—and fell in love with
her. It was—the only time in my life. She was much younger than I.
I can see now that she never cared as I did—my impetuousness forced
her—but I did not see that then. We were engaged. Then, the autumn
after, a man—a stranger—came. He had letters to me from a cousin
of mine. My cousin spoke highly of his ability and of his social
qualities. He gave him also letters to a Mr. Seaton, the president
of a large mine, the Scylla Mine. I felt—his—charm at once. He was a
big fellow, very handsome, very attractive. I did what I could for
him—it was a good deal, for I knew many people. Through me he went
into a business—temporarily, for we both thought his best chance
would be with Seaton. But Seaton was off in China and would not be
home till spring. Other chances came, one or two almost as good as
the Scylla, but I felt sure that with my influence to back him he
would be taken into the mine, and it ought to mean a career. Then
I began to see that—she,” the bishop spoke a bit difficultly, “was
attracted by him. She did not realize at first, and I tried not to
believe it. But I grew to—” The speaker hesitated and then looked the
boy gently, frankly in the face. “I loved her. I grew to hate—the
man. It poisoned everything—hate does, you know. One day alone in my
office I was brooding over it, and Seaton came in, the president, you
remember, of the Scylla Mine, just home from China.”
“‘You know this man?’ he asked me.
“I said ‘yes,’ quietly enough, and Seaton explained that they
wanted a superintendent, that Jerome, my cousin, had written
enthusiastically of this man, but that he did not put entire trust
in Jerome’s enthusiasm. He had heard,” the bishop hesitated, “he had
heard something not altogether favorable about—about the man.”
The boy listened, bewildered. What was this story—why should he know
it?
“I did not believe this at the time. I knew the man to be able; I
thought him fitted for Seaton’s place. I made up my mind what to do,
believing this. Seaton went on to say that he would rather take my
opinion.
“‘You know him well?’ he asked. ‘You’ve known him some time—seen
quite a bit of him?’
“I said simply: ‘Yes.’ You know, my boy, that one can at times lie
and steal and commit murder with a syllable? Well, I did that. But
Seaton wanted it clear. He looked at me sharply.
“‘I’d be obliged for your opinion,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do as
you say. Tell me this: would you yourself put the man in a position
requiring not only brains but trustworthiness?’
“I waited a minute, a whole minute I think, not because I had one
shred of doubt as to the crime I was about to commit—I waited to give
emphasis to my answer. Then I lifted my head and looked Seaton in the
eyes and said: ‘No.’ And many a man has been sent to state prison for
less wickedness than those two small words, that ‘yes’ and that ‘no.’”
The wrinkled hand that lay on the table was clinched; never, in all
the sermons that had cut to the souls of men, had the wonderful
voice, with its intense reality, sincerity, been more charged with
power than as the old clergyman told, in bare words, the story of his
own sin. The boy thrilled as if a drama was played before him; it
continued.
“I blasted the man’s future with two words. It closed the way for him
in America. Seaton and I were his sponsors—any opening worth while
would be referred to us; Seaton was not a man to keep still about
such things. Within a week—” The bishop stopped. The strong tone
hardened a little. “Within a week—she—the girl—told me that she was
ready to keep her word and marry me but that she loved him. No”—the
old man answered a look from the young one impetuously—“no—no one may
blame her. She was honorable, true—only—she cared for him, not me.
How could she help it?” The bishop’s sidewise smile came swiftly,
without bitterness, only sadly. “He was brilliant, winning, and a
great, splendid picture of a man. And I was—as you see—small and
ugly.”
A glance of surprise flashed from the young eyes. “I don’t see, sir,”
he said bluntly, and stared at the figure in the chair, a strong
note in deep black of clothes and sharp white of collar, against the
softness of the summer setting.
It is said that in another life the bodies we shall wear—not of flesh
and blood, but as real—will be the close expression of personality;
life loves sometimes here to take a human face and work out on it
that thought. The bishop’s shone with the signs of such modelling.
The man who at thirty-five had been, for all his intellect, ugly, at
seventy-five carried a face whose radiance startled strangers in the
street.
The bishop answered the boy’s look more than his words with a quick
smile, and his eyes were pleased. Then they grew sober. “I must tell
you the whole of this—you’ll see why. I went to Italy the night that
she told me, and when I came home she had married him and gone away.
I heard of them after that once—that his affairs had shaped as I’d
planned—he had found no door open to him and had gone finally to—to
Australia.”
The boy started. “Australia?” he repeated.
“Yes. I tried not to know of them for three or four years, so it
happened I had no clew when I wanted it. For I wasn’t quite bad
enough to be satisfied with the successful villainy. I had been
brought up to be honorable, and I grew restive. Moreover”—he
hesitated, and then his glance rested a moment on the thatch of
fair hair and he went on—“moreover, I was unhappy to think that I
had brought unhappiness to the woman—I loved. The woman whom I
have loved—always. I wanted to make her life bright—I had shadowed
it. That thought haunted me. After three or four years I made up my
mind to find him and tell him and make amends. I had a great deal
of money. I had no doubt I could find them. But I couldn’t. I moved
heaven and earth, but I couldn’t.
“And success poured in. I was a proverb for luck. It was all empty
to me—and so I handled it carelessly, and everything prospered—the
world was my oyster. And there was no one to work for but myself,
and I loathed myself; with every good gift I was wretched. Men kill
themselves sometimes in such a mood—I was near that.”
The flowing voice was arrested. The bishop glanced up contemplatively
and lifted the discarded pipe.
“You’re not going to stop, sir?” the boy ventured, dismayed. The
magnetism which had held all audiences, always, did not fail with
this audience of one. The flashing, humorous smile answered.
“I’ve not tired you yet? I was thinking if I could make you
understand what happened. It was an event, yet it’s hard to make it
show as a fact. Probably you haven’t yet had the experience which
could explain what I mean. So you must take my word for it that there
is an experience which comes to many people and which throws a new
light.” He stopped as if choosing his words. “We stumble along with
our eyes bound tight with the world, the flesh, and the devil. We see
under a bit, but it’s blind work, and one gets knocked and banged.
Then some one comes along and lifts the bandage, or a man may push
it up himself when things hurt—the event is objective or subjective.
Anyhow, suddenly one sees the road and the light that shines down it.
It makes the difference.”
The boy nodded. “I’m not very old,” he said, hesitating. “But I’ve
gone through a bit and I believe I understand.”
“Good!” the bishop threw at him. Then: “It’s queer,” he mused, “that
we don’t keep clear vision when we’ve got it. It’s so much easier.
But most of us don’t. We mostly pull the same old wool back over
our eyes and begin bumping about again. A few don’t—they’re the
saints. They live on earth, and after, in the kingdom of heaven.
Mighty few—but—I think—some.” The bishop’s eyes were as if they took
in things not present. “Most of us fall back; and that’s what sin
is—to walk in darkness deliberately. However—this is a shame—I’m
preaching at you, and taking advantage.” His smile flashed. “But that
illumination of sight which can’t be described any more than you can
describe love or hunger happened to me. I went to church—I didn’t
do that often—and I heard a sermon. The message arrived down that
much-travelled road. A man preached, and his key unlocked my door—and
I came out. It was an old idea which released me, but I found it new.
It was the idea that the best thing to do with a life is to give it
away. When I left church that day I’d decided to do things. I went
into the ministry and went West into logging-camps. Doing that,
remorse lost its sting. I wasn’t allowed to right the wrong I’d done,
but it seemed coming close if I righted other wrongs.”
The eyes of the old churchman had travelled away beyond the burnished
young head, beyond the sunny hedges, into years gone by. He was
reviewing his work and it interested him; mostly he did not remember
the present or the listener as he talked, as the blaze of his spirit
lighted up the old battle-field.
“The men I lived with were rough as beasts, but I really liked them,
and so they let me help them. They didn’t know that they were helping
me. I told them the truth and at first they were going to shoot
me.” The bishop laughed. “Oh, yes, several times. But they got into
the habit of letting me live and letting me talk, and by degrees
I showed them things which staggered them. Many of them had never
seen decency, and the minute they looked at it they liked it. People
do—there are few bad people. Mostly ignorant.”
The born preacher had forgotten his audience, as a born preacher
must. He pushed back his chair and clasped his strong, old hands
behind his head, and his eyes were on fire.
“Danger, squalor, men; great forests, dirty camps, and me, just me,
changing eternity, opening humanity for caged brutes. Preaching
behind a barrel with a cloth over it, firing rounds of hot shot from
that pulpit. Exciting—I should say so! I might be knifed, I might be
blessed—you couldn’t tell. It was living!” He caught a quick breath
as if the thought of those vivid days filled his lungs.
The boy was staring, amazed, eager. “Bishop,” he threw at him,
“bishop—you are Gerard—McVeigh.”
“Of course.” The arms came down, the bishop stared too. “Of course.
Why?”
“I only knew your name this morning, Bishop McVeigh. Of course _that_
name—all the world knows it. Your work in the camps—it’s a romance.
My mother used to read all she could find about it. Why, I knew that
she knew you! She was proud—that you had been her friend.” The boy
looked at the older man with a thought dawning in his eyes.
The bishop spoke hurriedly. “I’m glad that she remembered me. But I
mustn’t digress. I want to tell you—”
“But,” the boy interrupted, “excuse me, sir—but—you refused two
bishoprics, and you’re—Bishop McVeigh.”
The old face flushed a trifle, and then: “You know all about me,
I see,” and he smiled. “Yes—I wanted to stay with my loggers. But
this diocese—” He hesitated. “I had business training. It was needed
here. I came reluctantly, and because it seemed a duty, but I’ve been
many times rewarded.” He looked about the bright garden with an odd
expression, as a stranger might have looked, taking it all in. “I’ve
been happy here for years. I could be happy here years longer.”
“I hope you will be, bishop,” the boy said, a bit shyly as if afraid
to be thought presuming to make a speech so obvious to a man so
famous.
The brilliant old eyes moved to meet the lad’s with an odd look.
“Talk to me about yourself,” he said shortly, and then, without
waiting, told the story of his dream. “I can’t remember the face of
the angel,” he said. “I wish I could. It bothers me. But he was the
angel of life for you, my lad, that young man with wings.”
The boy’s face filled with a rush of color. As the bishop’s sentence
ended, he sprang to his feet. He spoke in an awed voice. “Bishop, I
hope you won’t think me irreverent, but I believe God sent you that
dream—straight.”
“Yes,” the bishop answered calmly. “I think so.”
“Let me tell you,” the young man begged. “Last night for me
was—horrible. I was here to help my mother. I’d got tied up in that
ghastly net, perfectly innocent of it all. My mother was going to
hear, instead of the good news I’d hoped to send, that I was to be
hung for murder. It would kill her—kill her with torture. And I
couldn’t do—one thing. I thought of you, of course, and it came to
me what you’d said that morning as I went off—do you remember? You
said: ‘If I can ever do anything for you you’ll try to let me know,
won’t you?’ That pleased me, you know, bishop. I’d never met anybody
like you, and that you should take the trouble seemed wonderful. I
knew you meant it, too. So last night in my trouble I thought of
that and of how I did not know even your name. It’s an odd thing to
talk about to any one, bishop, but I have to tell you. I prayed.
Prayed for all I was worth that you’d help me—that you should be let
know. I said aloud over and over: ‘Make him go to Lancaster—go to
Lancaster.’ I thought with all my strength; I tried to get a word
to you, somewhere, somehow—I couldn’t tell where or how. And it got
there. Good Lord!” the boy gasped.
The bishop gazed at him thoughtfully. “Yes, it got there. It’s
wonderful, of course—most things are wonderful. But it doesn’t
surprise me. It’s not the first time that the Lord has made his
angels messengers. ‘Angel’ means messenger, as you know—that’s their
business. I wish I could get that face,” he complained half to
himself. “It bothers me.”
The great young fellow was shaking. He stared with enormous eyes at
the bishop. He was beyond words. But the bishop smiled his quaint,
queer smile and went on quietly.
“Doctor Fletcher, whom you met just now, would call this affair
suggestion or telepathy. I call it ‘the Lord’s doing, and marvellous
in our eyes.’ Probably we mean the same thing—a mere difference of
phraseology.”
The boy burst forth. “It was my angel of life. He and you gave me my
life. Bishop—I don’t know how to say it, but—I’d do anything. If
only I could show you!”
The bishop reached across the table and laid his long, steady hand
on the trembling fingers. “I’m going to ask you to do something,” he
said reassuringly.
“Will you?” The boy’s face lighted.
“But tell me about yourself and your plans.” And in a few words it
was told; a meagre story, yet wide with courage and manliness. “So
you’re only from Australia this six months, and you’ve got no friends
and practically no prospects,” the old churchman reflected aloud,
and then was still, his eyes alive with thought. “My boy, I’ll just
say a word—first. I intend to look after you. You’ve dropped into my
clutches, and I mean to clutch you. You’re the best thing that could
have happened to me on earth. If you’ll do one thing for me.”
“What?” the astonished young man threw at him.
“I didn’t quite finish my story. You must wonder why I told it
to you. You have it in your mind? That I ruined a man’s career?
Deliberately, out of jealousy and hatred I ruined a man’s career?”
“Yes,” the boy answered and smiled, but the bishop did not smile.
“Do you want to know the man’s name?”
“Yes.” No faintest thought of what was coming concentrated the vague
surprise of his mind. The bishop’s dark, luminous eyes played across
him. A cricket sang his sudden drowsy song from the lily bed.
“The man’s name was Basil Lynn,” said the bishop.
The boy stared blankly for a long minute. Then: “You mean—it was—my
father?” he brought out in successive shocks of words.
“Yes.” The grave eyes read him.
“Then—it must have been my mother—it was she—who hurt you?”
“Yes.”
The boy waited, battling for the ground under his feet. At length he
lifted his head, and his eyes met the older man’s with a collected
seriousness. “What is the thing I can do for you, bishop?”
Over the face of the old clergyman, as he watched, came a deep
sadness. “Perhaps—I’m afraid—it’s asking too much of you,” he said.
“I want you, in your father’s name, to forgive me.”
A flame leaped into the boy’s look. “Bishop—oh, bishop!” He bent and
caught the old hands as if they were a woman’s hands. “As if there
could be any debt between us that wasn’t _all_ on my side,” he cried.
“She—my own mother, who is me—she made you unhappy and drove you to
the one wrong thing you ever did. But we won’t talk about it!” He was
very close to the black-clothed, quiet figure, and his big fingers
fell on the bishop’s shoulder. “Talking’s no use—it’s time that
tells. Wait till I can put in years to prove that I mean what I say.
You’ll let me be—the rest of your life—a little bit what a son might
have been?”
He stooped anxiously to the face below, and with that he saw that the
eyes of the bishop were filled with tears. And through them he was
smiling.
“It’s _just_ the sort of boy I like,” brought out the bishop
emphatically. “My son—the rest of my life. But—” He stopped a moment
and then spoke in a delighted tone. “That’s wonderful,” he said.
“That’s the greatest thing anybody in the world could do for me. And
you’re the only one who could do it. But it isn’t for long, my dear—”
He hesitated a mere second. “Doctor Fletcher told me to-day that I’ve
only two months more to live.”
At the quiet, cheerful words the lad started erect, horror-struck,
and through the boughs of the great oak a slanting sun-ray fell
suddenly on his young face and played there, and the bishop tossed up
his hand sharply.
“The face!” he cried out. “It was your face! Your angel of life!” and
then, as the lad dropped on his knees and bent his head wordless on
the table before him, the bishop laid his hand on the fair hair as if
in a benediction, and suddenly once again the queer sidewise smile,
amused, whimsical, lighted his face.
“My angel of death,” said the bishop.
AMICI
AMICI
Who cares for the burden, the night, and the rain,
And the long, steep, lonely road?
When out of the darkness a light shines plain,
And a voice calls hail and a friend draws rein
With a hand for the stubborn load?
He strolled across the road and stood with both hands on the rail
which guarded the landslide, and looked into the distance. Below him,
at the foot of the landslide and rolling to the river and lodged in
the hollows were tin cans and burnt-out kettles and broken china; the
Western city had dumped its refuse along this way. From below, untidy
children screamed in an untidy garden. But he did not hear or see
these things.
Back of him a woman ran down a path to the gate which he had left
swinging, and latched it and stood a moment watching him. All his
life he had looked into the distance, she considered. A smile came,
for the woman loved him. She lingered, gazing at the tall figure
with its air of distinction, its shabby clothes. A breeze lifted
the loose hair, and she knew, though his back was turned, how a
brown-gray lock had blown across the broad forehead—the forehead of a
thinker, a dreamer. She sighed. The wife of an unsuccessful inventor
is likely to sigh often. She turned to go back, but a little lad
scrambled suddenly over the fence.
“Letter, Mrs. Ellsworth,” he exploded. “Mother says come s’afternoon.
Mother says postman made mistake.” He was scrambling back in the same
second, with consistent suddenness.
She looked at the letter, saw that it was addressed to her husband,
glanced at him, and went with it into the house.
The man, unconscious, still stood with those glowing eyes miles off,
where the river widened and lawns sloped to it and large houses
overlooked it. He threw back his head and gazed high into the orange
and rosy sky, and laughed.
“Up as far as that gold-edged fellow—farther. It seems queer that
I’ll be swimming there before long. But I shall. And _my_ aeroplane
won’t tip over.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled
happily. “I’ve done it; just to get it on the market and I’ll have
made good. I’ll have earned my place in the world. And a fortune for
Margaret and Jack. Her drudgery over. Margaret,” he repeated half
aloud; and again: “Margaret.” Then a cloud drowned the brightness
from his face. “If I could get money for the model,” he spoke aloud.
“The thing is so sure. It’s a hideous joke not to have a thousand or
two now.”
His mind, working this way and that trying to find a solution for the
problem, his thought travelling along all possible ways, came shortly
on another thought, stirring sorely at a touch.
“The fellows,” he murmured. “A lot of them have money.” He drew his
hand sharply from his pocket and thumped on the rail. His dreamy eyes
flashed. “Not if I starve,” he cried. “Never that. I won’t poison the
memory of college days. I’ve got my place among them yet; they don’t
know; nobody knows.”
He dived into a coatpocket, and brought out a letter. Looking over
his shoulder, one might have read that the class of such a year of
Yale University would hold its thirtieth reunion three months from
the date; that it was hoped that John Ellsworth of this class would
be present; that he was requested to let the class secretary know.
Signed with a name which brought to the man’s lips a half-laugh.
“Little old Saint Peter,” he murmured.
With that his face was grim. Peter Price had sent a letter with the
formal notice; a friendly, easy letter, taking it for granted that
all of the “boys” would bring to Alma Mater this June some simple
gifts of the years. Such gifts as success and good spirits and manly
work well done; money to enrich Yale perhaps; perhaps big lads to
carry on her banner; perhaps honored names for her roll of fame. The
man’s head bent farther over the flimsy rail. He caught at it again
with both hands. He stared, not away now at the gleaming, darkening
river, but at the rubbish—broken pottery, old chair-legs, things
whose day was done. His day was done; he was fifty-two, and had not
made good; he was a failure. They had expected great things of him;
he was to have been a Newton, an Edison. He was to have made the
class illustrious; they had said it, patting him on the shoulder in
generous boy fashion, that last day in New Haven almost thirty years
ago. He remembered well how, a dozen boys, they had stood together
on the campus, under the elms, very tender-hearted over each other
at this parting of the ways, very shamefaced at their unaccustomed
softness. Jimmy Pendleton, his chum, with an arm stretched to
Ellsworth’s shoulder—for Jimmy was short and chubby—had fallen into
prophecy.
“We’re all great men, that’s sure, but it’s Johnny who’s going to be
our crown of glory. He’s going to invent things. Flying-machines will
be play. You listen while I tell you that this class will be known as
the class of John Ellsworth.” And the others had growled assent in
deep, friendly young voices, while Ellsworth called them all “darn
fools,” with love and gratitude bursting his ribs. He had felt fairly
sure that Jimmy was right.