Somehow--he looked toward the eastward window--the
strength would come for the day, as it always came.
Slowly, while he stood looking out into the morning grown rosy now with
the coming sun, his head cleared more and more, as he thought about his
Westbury as it brightened beneath the Christmas sunrise. Few towns, the
Bishop thought, had changed so little in sixty years. He looked out on
the same Westbury he had first seen when he had come to St. John’s
college as a boy. Stately old River Street with its twin rows of elms
still curved to the curve of the river. Each quiet old house had in the
rear a terraced wintry garden sloping to the wide and sparkling water.
The Bishop knew each of these houses, even as far as Lucy Hollister’s,
which was beyond his sight. Lucy still kept the house of her girlhood
where the Bishop had first known her, known Lucy and her cousin, Annie.
Far beyond Lucy’s house, River Street changed to towering tenements and
grimed factories, the place of the strangers, where the Bishop often
walked, but wistful and puzzled, for it was this part of Westbury alone
that had changed since his boyhood, although even then it had been the
place of work-people, for whom St. John’s Southside Mission had been
founded. The Bishop stood thinking of the mission.
Well in sight, breaking the row of houses set among their wintry trees,
sprang the spire of St. John’s, and beyond its Rectory lay the brown,
cube-like buildings of the college above the sweeping river, a small
college of mighty men. It was there that the Bishop and his roommate,
Barty Judd, had learned to dream dreams. It was the glory of Westbury,
the kindly old city, remote, unworldly, that it had set so many young
men dreaming. The Bishop smiled to think how proudly Westbury still
pointed to its seven bishops, for the spirit of Westbury had not
changed in all the sixty years since the founding of the mission.
Westbury had given the Bishop, he thought, the most beautiful thing in
his life; it was this that brought the light to his face as he thought
of the gift he wished to give Westbury in return, to-day, if--if he
could! At that “if” his eyes deepened with a sharp and subtle change,
then cleared as the passing thought of the day before him yielded
to memories, and he saw the afternoon of the laying of the mission
corner-stone. As they had walked home together, the Bishop, after long
silence, had broken into boyish fire of words, seeing all his life
before him. Lucy had listened and answered, but Annie had been silent.
Dreamer as the boy had been, he had never dreamed of coming back one
day, long afterwards, and living to be an old, old man in the bishop’s
house in Westbury.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account