“I believe it is courage of your sort, not my sort, that Westbury needs, now.”
“It would mean a complete facing about. That would surprise,” he smiled grimly, “a few people! I don’t know that I should really mind surprising them.” Then his face again clouded. “The Southside would find me out, Bishop. I have not the vision. I don’t know that I thought it necessary, originally. It’s been, however, of late years, a bit persistent, the advantage, say, of believing what one says one believes.” The caustic tone changed to intensity, “If I were capable, Bishop, of your faith!”
The Bishop studied him wistfully, “And yet,” he mused, “it seems to me so simple, faith, so unavoidable, like sunshine. No man could have made the sun. Just so, it seems as if no man could have invented—that Beauty!”
“Unfortunately most people don’t see things quite so readily. As for me, I believe I’m incapable of religious vision.”
The Bishop hesitated, thoughtful, then quick words came, “But not incapable of action. I’ve always believed that there is need perhaps for soldiers as well as seers. There’s the fighter somewhere within you, isn’t there?”
“I sometimes feel,” Newbold admitted, “as if there were as much fight left in me as there is in Harry to-day. One sees,” he mused, “some pretty queer things when one looks inside.” Then once more he caught up the paper cutter in restless fingers, “But that won’t last. I seem to see a thing or two while you’re here, seem to be more up to—several things. It will all come back fast enough when I’m alone. You’ll carry this quiet away with you, Bishop.”
“I wish I could leave it with you! Couldn’t I, somehow?”
“You couldn’t, could you, put me back twenty years, and give me another try at it all? No, no, I don’t see the way to that!”
“Do it! Don’t wait to see it! Vision!” the Bishop paused. “It is perhaps true that it is not given to all to see, to feel, to know. Yet those who do not see can act! Perhaps—perhaps—it is more beautiful and more brave to work without the vision! We are the stewards, we call ourselves that, you and I—God puts a cup into our hands. He doesn’t say, ‘Believe,’ or ‘See.’ He only says, ‘Give’!”
“But it is as you give, Bishop!”