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Page 7
Eleanor looked disappointed, "I wanted to ask you 'bout what dead
chickens gets to be, if they're good. Pups? Do you reckon it's pups?"
The theory of transmigration of souls had taken strong hold. Mr.
Fielding lost his scowl in a look of bewilderment, and the Bishop
frankly shouted out a big laugh.
"Listen, Eleanor. This afternoon I'll come for you to walk, and we'll
talk that all over. Go home now, my lamb." And Eleanor, like a pale-pink
over-sized butterfly, went.
"Do you know that child, Jim?" Mr. Fielding asked, grimly.
"Yes," answered the Bishop, with a serene pull at his cigar.
"Do you know she's the child of that good-for-nothing Fairfax Preston,
who married Eleanor Gray against her people's will and took her South
to--to--starve, practically?"
The Bishop drew a long breath, and then he turned and looked at his old
friend with a clear, wide gaze. "She's Eleanor Gray's child, too, Dick,"
he said.
Mr. Fielding was silent a moment. "Has the boy talked to you?" he asked.
The Bishop nodded. "It's the worst trouble I've ever had. It would kill
me to see him marry that man's daughter. I can't and won't resign myself
to it. Why should I? Why should Dick choose, out of all the world, the
one girl in it who would be insufferable to me. I can't give in about
this. Much as Dick is to me I'll let him go sooner. I hope you'll see
I'm right, Jim, but right or wrong, I've made up my mind."
The Bishop stretched a large, bony hand across the little table that
stood between them. Fielding's fell on it. Both men smoked silently for
a minute.
"Have you anything against the girl, Dick?" asked the Bishop, presently.
"That she's her father's daughter--it's enough. The bad blood of
generations is in her. I don't like the South--I don't like
Southerners. And I detest beyond words Fairfax Preston. But the girl is
certainly beautiful, and they say she is a good girl, too," he
acknowledged, gloomily.
"Then I think you're wrong," said the Bishop.
"You don't understand, Jim," Fielding took it up passionately. "That man
has been the _b�te noir_ of my life. He has gotten in my way
half-a-dozen times deliberately, in business affairs, little as he
amounts to himself. Only two years ago--but that isn't the point after
all." He stopped gloomily. "You'll wonder at me, but it's an older feud
than that. I've never told anyone, but I want you to understand, Jim,
how impossible this affair is." He bit off the end of a fresh cigar,
lighted it and then threw it across the geraniums into the grass. "I
wanted to marry her mother," he said, brusquely. "That man got her. Of
course, I could have forgiven that, but it was the way he did it. He
lied to her--he threw it in my teeth that I had failed. Can't you see
how I shall never forgive him--never, while I live!" The intensity of a
life-long, silent hatred trembled in his voice.
"It's the very thing it's your business to do, Dick," said the Bishop,
quietly. "'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you'--what do you
think that means? It's your very case. It may be the hardest thing in
the world, but it's the simplest, most obvious." He drew a long puff at
his cigar, and looked over the flowers to the ocean.
"Simple! Obvious!" Fielding's voice was full of bitterness. "That's the
way with you churchmen! You live outside passions and temptations, and
then preach against them, with no faintest notion of their force. It
sounds easy, doesn't it? Simple and obvious, as you say. You never loved
Eleanor Gray, Jim; you never had to give her up to a man you knew
beneath her; you never had to shut murder out of your heart when you
heard that he'd given her a hard life and a glad death. Eleanor Gray! Do
you remember how lovely she was, how high-spirited and full of the joy
of life?" The Bishop's great figure was still as if the breath in it had
stopped, but Fielding, carried on the flood of his own rushing feeling,
did not notice. "Do you remember, Jim?" he repeated.
"I remember," the Bishop said, and his voice sounded very quiet.
"Jove! How calm you are!" exploded the other.
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