In the doorway, wearing his old cape overcoat, his face like a wistful child’s beneath his silver hair, the Bishop waited.
“You will go?”
She did not hear, nor know. She did not move until she started at a sound, the heavy closing of the outer door.
PART II
The river was a splendor of Christmas sunshine. A flurry of snow had lightly powdered the brown sod beneath the double rows of elms. Few people were abroad. Sometimes a little group of children, eyes and feet a-dance, and cheeks nipped red, went tripping past the Bishop. Older folk passed with hearty, careless greeting, for the stooping figure in the cape overcoat was as familiar and unnoted as the river itself with all its mystery of light. The Bishop had known Westbury so long and so well that he felt that the homes by which he was passing, all bright with holly, were his homes, that he might have stopped anywhere to share the Christmasing. His slowly pacing feet, however, were bent on the old way toward St. John’s Rectory. In the old days the Bishop had always called at the Rectory to greet Barty Judd and his household before church-time, and he still kept to the habit, even though it was so different now at the Rectory.
A flock of sparrows came swooping down through the wintry silence with much chatter, and at the same time there came scudding across the street a little Italian newsboy as shrill and brown as the birds. The Bishop bought a paper, and made the youngster’s smile flash as he paused for a few words in his own tongue. Presently, as he went on, the newspaper dropped from the Bishop’s fingers, as he fell to thinking of that alien colony down below there, where the river curved, Westbury’s strangers. They had come so recently, the factories had sprung up so quickly, that the workers were still the strangers. It is true that the Bishop was well known to those teeming streets as the old man who spoke Italian and who loved babies, but he felt that he had done nothing for these others, really. Eighty years! How barren of accomplishment they looked beneath the searchlight of Christmas! But perhaps there was still time! His step quickened.
As the Bishop passed beneath the shadow of St. John’s church, the chimes clanged forth the ten o’clock hour. He glanced toward the door, thinking how calm and gentle and familiar everything was within. After all, his headache had melted away and nothing was to prevent his presence by the altar on this morning. The quiet of the chancel was restful to his fancy, lying beyond the visit immediately before him.
As he turned up the Rectory steps, tugging slightly on the handrail, the door was flung open, and a tall boy came hurrying out. His thin, fine face was set and black, but a smile played across its frown when he saw the Bishop.
“Good morning, Harry,” said the visitor, “and good Christmas.”
“There’ll be no good Christmas here,” answered the low taut voice, “unless you’ve brought it, Bishop!”