Part 12

“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.

The boy looked dazed—almost smiled. The bishop was not at all solemn 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.”