The silence of the study still quivered with the Bishop’s last words, “My successor!”
Newbold sat facing the fact never before so clearly stated by anyone, not even by himself, but clear to him now as the goal of his clumsy, forceful youth, of his anxious, successful ministry, a goal almost near enough now to touch, perhaps. He could not take his eyes from the Bishop’s face, transparent as porcelain, now turned into a mask, impenetrable.
“I would not be your choice, Bishop?”
The straight line of the Bishop’s lips formed a quiet, “No!”
“And likely enough, I may be nobody else’s choice either—in spite of—services rendered!” Then querulous before that intent, gray face that gave no sign, “It’s small odds what happens, with this head of mine! Yet I have served and would gladly serve—”
“God?” the Bishop lifted level eyes.
Newbold’s thick lips formed for a quick reply, worked oddly, then were oddly dumb a moment before they twisted into a cynic curve from the large teeth. “Harry spoke to me with some frankness this morning. He had just left me when you came, Bishop, a different visitor, it seemed to me. A curious Christmas, verily, if you, too, like all the rest, think strange things of me!”
“Strange things! Are they not true?”
A rush of anger had swept the color to the Bishop’s cheeks and shot lightnings to his eyes. The years had fallen from his face like a veil snatched aside. Yet with a torrent of words upon his tongue, the Bishop, looking at Newbold, turned silent. There are some men to whom the sight of one who cringes before a blow deserved is humiliating to their own inmost manhood. The sight of Newbold seated there, from his bowed, brute head, with its too-blue, watching eyes, to his big foot that never ceased to tap the rug raspingly, had caused the Bishop a recoil for which he hated himself. Yet his anger was just, just! The Christ Himself had cried out against the hypocrite, against commercialism in spiritual places. The Bishop, of fine frail fiber as he was himself, remembered the charm for him of the youthful Newbold’s provincial crudity and heartiness,—but now, the Bishop thought bitterly, if one wished to make a minister of the gospel, one had better take a gentleman to start with!
He had trusted Newbold at the first, as he might have trusted a son; he had forced himself to trust him afterwards, until this very day. Yet the Bishop now acknowledged that he had known well enough whose influence was at work in the diocese against his own, why certain motions he had desired were tabled in the convention, or if passed, only half-heartedly carried out. How hard the Bishop had fought not to be aware of a growing evil undercurrent in the spirit of diocesan work! He was far too sensitive not to have felt, as he talked with some of his prominent clergy and laity, his own great simple enthusiasm fall like a baffled flood against a politely concealed embarrassment he refused to understand! But he had understood! He knew now that he had.