Next morning they came over from Taku to look for us. The sea was smiling as ever, and the little launch came dancing over the rose and amethyst water as if there never had been a storm to ruffle it. I caught sight of Molly first, then I noticed another woman, sitting between her and Davidson. As she leaned forward to search the shore I was startled with the likeness of her face to Cartwright’s. Yet there was a difference. Her beauty was gracious and human, and—well, comfortable is the only word I can think of for it.
As they came near the beach she saw just Simmons and me and the staring natives. She cried out sharply and swayed a little. I saw Davidson put his arm out as if he would shield her from a blow. Faithful fellow, Davidson, and he got his reward at last.
It was Cartwright’s Charlotte, and Cartwright was not there to meet her. Lulukuila had seen to that.
Margaret Adelaide Wilson.
THE ARCHBISHOP OF RHEIMS
It was the Feast of the Assumption, and the archbishop, as he left his palace and stepped into the summer sunlight, breathed a prayer of thanksgiving for the brilliance that glowed about him. For, during the mass which was about to be celebrated in the great cathedral, the passion of his life, one of the most impressive moments occurred when the sun shot its rays with pure and dazzling radiance for the first time into the middle of the apse. With exact calculation the architect had arranged that this took place on the fête day of St. Remi, the patron saint of Rheims, and when the day was overcast or rain obscured the sun it seemed to the archbishop that the Almighty was expressing His displeasure of some negligence or wrongful act on the part of the guardian of this, to him, most precious and wonderful trust in the world.
But today the sun’s effulgence surpassed in warmth and splendor that of any August fifteenth in the archbishop’s memory, and brought into his heart an intense calm and peace which even the knowledge that German guns were despoiling Belgium, not many leagues away, could not entirely dispel. Nevertheless, the remembrance cast a shadow over the spirituality of his broad brow, and his lips moved in silent supplication for the suffering inhabitants, and that the onward march of the invaders would be stayed before their presence desecrated the sacred soil of France.
In rapt contemplation he stood, kindliness and benevolence radiating from his mild face, crowned with its silver halo of hair. His large, gentle eyes wandered over the massive pile raising its lofty steeples in eloquent testimony to the omnipotence of God; its slender spires, pointed portals, and lancet windows indicating the heights to which the thoughts and lives of men must reach before perfection can be attained.
When the archbishop emerged from the sacristy at the end of the long procession of choir, acolytes and coped priests, and entered the cathedral, the voice of the mighty organ was rolling through the edifice in rushing waves of melody, which ebbed and flowed in and out among the great columns in a wealth of harmonics, whose exquisite beauty, as they broke around him, caused a band to tighten about the old man’s throat.
The crossing was filled with a throng of devout worshippers whose faces wore a look of expectancy, for France, la belle France, was threatened by a danger greater than even the oldest among them could recall. War had always been a horror, but today it transcended, in the vague reports that reached them from stricken Belgium, the worst the most imaginative of them could conceive, and the thought haunted them, in spite of their faith that the Blessed Virgin would not permit such a calamity to befall France, that notwithstanding their entreaties, the hand of the Hun might descend on her as it had on her equally innocent and unprovoking neighbor.