Part 3 (1/2)
”Oh!” and Fielding's look cleared. ”Well, what is it then, old man? Out with it--want a check for a mission? Surely you don't hesitate to tell me that! Whatever I have is yours, too--you know it.”
The Bishop looked deeply disgusted. ”Muddlehead!” was his unexpected answer, and Fielding, serene in the consciousness of generosity and good feeling, looked as if a hose had been turned on him.
”What the devil!” he said. ”Excuse me, Jim, but just tell me what you're after. I can't make you out.”
”It's most difficult.” The Bishop seemed to articulate with trouble.
”It was so long ago, and I've never spoken of it.” Fielding, mouth and eyes wide, watched him as he stumbled on. ”There were three of us, you see--though, of course, you didn't know. n.o.body knew. She told my mother, that was all.--Oh, I'd no idea how difficult this would be,” and the Bishop pushed back his damp hair and gasped again. Suddenly a wave of color rushed over his face.
”No one could help it, d.i.c.k,” he said. ”She was so lovely, so exquisite, so--”
Fielding rose quickly and put his hand on his friend's forehead, ”Jim, my dear boy,” he said gravely, ”this heat has been too much for you. Sit there quietly, while I get some ice. Here, let me loosen your collar,”
and he put his fingers on the white clerical tie.
Then the Bishop rose up in his wrath and shook him off, and his deep blue eyes flashed fire.
”Let me alone,” he said. ”It is inexplicable to me how a man can be so dense. Haven't I explained to you in the plainest way what I have never told another soul? Is this the reward I am to have for making the greatest effort I have made for years?” And after a moment's steady, indignant glare at the speechless Fielding he turned and strode in angry majesty through the wide hall doorway.
When he walked out of the same doorway an hour later, on his way to service, Fielding sat back in a shadowy corner and let him pa.s.s without a word. He watched critically the broad shoulders and athletic figure as his friend moved down the narrow walk--a body carefully trained to hold well and easily the trained mind within. But the careless energy that was used to radiate from the great elastic muscles seemed lacking to-day, and the erect head drooped. Fielding shook his own head as the Bishop turned the corner and went out of his view.
”'_Mens sana in corpore sano_,'” he said aloud, and sighed. ”He has worked too hard this summer. I never saw him like that. If he should--”
and he stopped; then he rose, and looked at his watch and slowly followed the Bishop's steps.
The little church of Saint Peter's-by-the-Sea was filled even on this hot July afternoon, to hear the famous Bishop, and in the half-light that fell through painted windows and lay like a dim violet veil against the gray walls, the congregation with summer gowns and flowery hats, had a billowy effect as of a wave tipped everywhere with foam. Fielding, sitting far back, saw only the white-robed Bishop, and hardly heard the words he said, through listening for the modulations of his voice. He was anxious for the man who was dear to him, and the service and its minister were secondary to-day. But gradually the calm, reverent, well-known tones rea.s.sured him, and he yielded to the pleasure of letting his thoughts be led, by the voice that stood to him for goodness, into the spirit of the words that are filled with the beauty of holiness. At last it was time for the sermon, and the Bishop towered in the low stone pulpit and turned half away from them all as he raised one arm high with a quick, sweeping gesture.
”In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen!”
he said, and was still.
A shaft of yellow light fell through a memorial window and struck a golden bar against the white lawn of his surplice, and Fielding, staring at him with eyes of almost pa.s.sionate devotion, thought suddenly of Sir Galahad, and of that ”long beam” down which had ”slid the Holy Grail.”
Surely the flame of that old vigorous Christianity had never burned higher or steadier. A marvellous life for this day, kept, like the flower of Knighthood, strong and beautiful and ”unspotted from the world.” Fielding sighed as he thought of his own life, full of good impulses, but crowded with mistakes, with worldliness, with lowered ideals, with yieldings to temptation. Then, with a pang, he thought about d.i.c.k, about the crisis for him that the next week must bring, and he heard again the Bishop's steady, uncompromising words as they talked on the piazza. And on a wave of selfish feeling rushed back the old excuses. ”It is different. It is easy for him to be good. d.i.c.k is not his son. He has never been tempted like other men. He never hated Fairfax Preston--he never loved Eleanor Gray.” And back somewhere in the dark places of his consciousness began to work a dim thought of his friend's puzzling words of that day: ”No one could help loving her--she was so lovely--so exquisite!”
The congregation rustled softly everywhere as the people settled themselves to listen--they listened always to him. And across the hush that followed came the Bishop's voice again, tranquilly breaking, not jarring, the silence. ”Not disobedient to the heavenly vision,” were the words he was saying, and Fielding dropped at once the thread of his own thought to listen.
He spoke quickly, clearly, in short Anglo-Saxon words--the words that carry their message straightest to hearts red with Saxon blood--of the complex nature of every man--how the angel and the demon live in each and vary through all the shades of good and bad. How yet in each there is always the possibility of a highest and best that can be true for that personality only--a dream to be realized of the lovely life, blooming into its own flower of beauty, that G.o.d means each life to be.
In his own rus.h.i.+ng words he clothed the simple thought of the charge that each one has to keep his angel strong, the white wings free for higher flights that come with growth.
”The vision,” he said, ”is born with each of us, and though we lose it again and again, yet again and again it comes back and beckons, calls, and the voice thrills us always. And we must follow, or lose the way.
Through ice and flame we must follow. And no one may look across where another soul moves on a quick, straight path and think that the way is easier for the other. No one can see if the rocks are not cutting his friend's feet; no one can know what burning lands he has crossed to follow, to be so close to his angel, his messenger. Believe always that every other life has been more tempted, more tried than your own; believe that the lives higher and better than your own are so not through more ease, but more effort; that the lives lower than yours are so through less opportunity, more trial. Believe that your friend with peace in his heart has won it, not happened on it--that he has fought your very fight. So the mist will melt from your eyes and you will see clearer the vision of your life and the way it leads you; selfishness will fall from your shoulders and you will follow lightly. And at the end, and along the way you will have the glory of effort, the joy of fighting and winning, the beauty of the heights where only an ideal can take you.”
What more he said Fielding did not hear--for him one sentence had been the final word. The unlaid ghost of the Bishop's puzzling talk an hour before rose up and from its lips came, as if in full explanation, ”He has fought your very fight.” He sat in his shadowy, dark corner of the cool, little stone church, and while the congregation rose and knelt and sang and prayed, he was still. Piece by piece he fitted the mosaic of past and present, and each bit slipped faultlessly into place. There was no question in his mind now as to the fact, and his manliness and honor rushed to meet the situation. He had said that where his friend had gone he would go. If it was down the road of renunciation of a life-long enmity, he would not break his word. Complex problems resolve themselves at the point of action into such simple axioms. d.i.c.k should have a blessing and his sweetheart; he would do his best for Fairfax Preston; with his might he would keep his word. A great sigh and a wrench at his heart as if a physical growth of years were tearing away, and the decision was made. Then, in a mist of pain and effort, and a surprised new freedom from the accustomed pang of hatred, he heard the rustle and movement of a kneeling congregation, and, as he looked, the Bishop raised his arms. Fielding bent his gray head quickly in his hands, and over it, laden with ”peace” and ”the blessing of G.o.d Almighty,” as if a general commended his soldier on the field of battle, swept the solemn words of the benediction.
Peace touched the earth on the blue and white September day when Madge and d.i.c.k were married. Pearly piled-up clouds, white ”herded elephants,”
lay still against a sparkling sky, and the air was alive like cool wine, and breathing warm breaths of sunlight. No wedding was ever gayer or prettier, from the moment when the smiling holiday crowd in little Saint Peter's caught their breath at the first notes of ”Lohengrin” and turned to see Eleanor, white-clad and solemn, and impressed with responsibility, lead the procession slowly up the aisle, her eyes raised to the Bishop's calm face in the chancel, to the moment when, in showers of rice and laughter and slippers, the Fielding carriage dashed down the driveway, and d.i.c.k, leaning out, caught for a last picture of his wedding-day, standing apart from the bright colors grouped on the lawn, the black and white of the Bishop and Eleanor, gazing after them, hand in hand.
Bit by bit the brilliant kaleidoscopic effect fell apart and resolved itself into light groups against the dark foliage or flas.h.i.+ng ma.s.ses of carriages and people and horses, and then even the blurs on the distance were gone, and the place was still and the wedding was over. The long afternoon was before them, with its restless emptiness, as if the bride and groom had taken all the reason for life with them.