Suddenly he stopped and clapped his hands to his head.
“Bayard!” he called loudly. “Bayard, come to the window a minute!”
The outline of Bayard’s fine head appeared faintly in the third-story window, against the background of his unlighted room. The moon was so bright that his face seemed to be a white flame, as he looked down on his classmates from that height.
“I brought up your mail,” said Fenton, “and forgot to tell you. You’ll find a letter lying on your table behind the third volume of Dean Alford. You keep your room so dark I was afraid you mightn’t see it.”
Bayard thanked him, and groped for the letter; but he did not light the lamp to read it; he sat on in the moonlit room, alone and still. His heart was hot within him as he remembered how the students talked. That vision which sets a man apart from his fellows, and thus makes him miserable or blessed, or both, beckoned to him with distant, shining finger. His face fell into his hands. Great God! what did it mean to take upon one’s self that sacred Name in which a Christian preacher stands before his fellow-men? What had common pettiness or envy, narrow fear or little weakness, to do with the soul of a teacher of holiness? How easy to quibble and evade, and fall into rank! How hard to stand apart, to look the cannon in the eye, alone!
It is not easy for men of the world, of ordinary business, pleasure, politics, and those professions whose standards are pliable, to understand the noble civil war between the nature and the position of a man like Bayard; and yet it might be worth while to try.
There is something so much higher and more delicate than our own common standards of ethics that it is refining to respect, even if we fail to comprehend, the struggles of a man who aspires to the possession of perfect spiritual honor.
Bayard had not moved nor lifted his face from his hands, when a step which he recognized heavily struck and slowly mounted the lower flight of the old stairs of Galilee Hall. It was his uncle, Trustee of Cesarea Seminary, and of the faith of its founders, returning from the home of the Professor of Hebrew, where he had been entertained on Anniversary week.
Bayard sighed and groped for a match. This interview could not be evaded, but he winced away from it in every nerve. It is easier to face the obloquy of the world than the frown of the man or woman who has brought us up.