“You will have time,” he answered, while the mysticism again touched his face, “my head is not clear to-day, but that is one of the things I seem to know, that you will have time, more than I. Time enough to help Newbold to learn his own strength. He has never tried it. Time enough to teach him to fight. A soldier, he’ll not desert,—afterwards. And time enough to help Westbury rekindle the mission, whose death would mean—you and I know,” his voice fell and he groped a little for words, a little confused, “the light must not die, you will have time to keep the light, to keep Westbury—alive. Your Westbury and mine! I seem to know to-day,” his low voice, in the twilight, was very clear, “that you will have time to help the man and the town I have failed to help.”
“If time were all that is needed, Henry, to help them!”
Looking into the fire, he did not turn, answering happily, “Whatever else is needed you possess, and have given to me for sixty years.”
With the snapping of a lifetime’s tension her voice rang, “Henry, stop looking into the fire! For sixty years you have looked into dreams. Now, once, look at me!”
The Bishop turned.
Her elfin laugh tinkled, “The fairies were good to you, Henry, they gave you eyes that do not see.”
While she spoke, slowly the Bishop saw, but at first he saw only a girl’s witch-face in the fire glow.
“I will make you see this once, Henry Collinton—me! You look strange, Henry! As if you couldn’t guess what’s coming. Neither, I assure you, can I. You called me Lucy Dwight of the long ago,—and you’ll have to take the consequences! I like you to look strange, for then you don’t look old! Look young, Henry, and look at me! You are looking, I believe, at last, with open eyes,—looking at a woman, not a diocese. Henry, I might say in passing that I did not think once, on one afternoon we both recall,—but differently!—when we talked about a mission, that we should still be talking about that mission after sixty years. You will excuse my changing the subject from your work for a few moments, then, after sixty years! I’ve been a pretty good listener—take your turn!”
She looked no longer at the Bishop, who watched her as if she were some Christmas sprite risen out of the red hearth. Her white old face, white-crowned, was touched to rose and gold by the fire flame.
“Shall I draw you a portrait, Henry, of someone you have never seen? Yet it is a portrait on constant exhibition. It is shown to every guest in Westbury,—a private exhibition is called High Tea at Mrs. Hollister’s. People watch the guest when he sees the portrait; by its effect he is judged. People point out that the portrait is valuable historically, since it combines inseparably the style of sixty years ago with the style of to-day. That is because the picture has been retouched so carefully from year to year to fit the taste of the times. So the painting is seen to represent the sixty-year history of a town, even to costume,” she flashed a white hand from throat to skirt of her clinging black which looked at first sight so fresh from a fashion plate and was so carefully studied to fit no decade, and no person, but her own.