“It would mean a complete facing about. That would surprise,” he
smiled grimly, “a few people! I don’t know that I should really mind
surprising them.” Then his face again clouded. “The Southside would
find me out, Bishop. I have not the vision. I don’t know that I
thought it necessary, originally. It’s been, however, of late years,
a bit persistent, the advantage, say, of believing what one says one
believes.” The caustic tone changed to intensity, “If I were capable,
Bishop, of your faith!”
The Bishop studied him wistfully, “And yet,” he mused, “it seems to me
so simple, faith, so unavoidable, like sunshine. No man could have
made the sun. Just so, it seems as if no man could have invented--that
Beauty!”
“Unfortunately most people don’t see things quite so readily. As for
me, I believe I’m incapable of religious vision.”
The Bishop hesitated, thoughtful, then quick words came, “But not
incapable of action. I’ve always believed that there is need perhaps
for soldiers as well as seers. There’s the fighter somewhere within
you, isn’t there?”
“I sometimes feel,” Newbold admitted, “as if there were as much fight
left in me as there is in Harry to-day. One sees,” he mused, “some
pretty queer things when one looks inside.” Then once more he caught up
the paper cutter in restless fingers, “But that won’t last. I seem to
see a thing or two while you’re here, seem to be more up to--several
things. It will all come back fast enough when I’m alone. You’ll carry
this quiet away with you, Bishop.”
“I wish I could leave it with you! Couldn’t I, somehow?”
“You couldn’t, could you, put me back twenty years, and give me
another try at it all? No, no, I don’t see the way to that!”
“Do it! Don’t wait to see it! Vision!” the Bishop paused. “It is
perhaps true that it is not given to all to see, to feel, to know. Yet
those who do not see can act! Perhaps--perhaps--it is more beautiful
and more brave to work without the vision! We are the stewards, we call
ourselves that, you and I--God puts a cup into our hands. He doesn’t
say, ‘Believe,’ or ‘See.’ He only says, ‘Give’!”
“But it is as _you_ give, Bishop!”
Their eyes met long. Then the tense pause slackened. Murray Newbold
knew best his feeling for the Bishop when he felt the child gazing from
the faded eyes and speaking in his pleading voice.
“Murray, will you build, then, the House of Friendship, for Westbury?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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