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Page 10
"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. Nobody 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, Dick," 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 pass 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 reassured 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 passionate 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 Dick, 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. Dick 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!"
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