As on so many, many evenings, he was ready to hear a secret, the secrets a motherless girl may tell to her father. The Bishop remembered still one secret she had told him which had seemed to be a fine silk thread cutting his heart in two, for the father, listening, knew that the man Nan loved was not worthy of her. Then a tiny smile touched the worn old lips, a smile of pride, half-jealous, at the memory that it was her father, not her husband, that Nan had first told about her little baby. The father’s blood, even now, beat faster at the thought of that remembered hope. Then again he saw the wee waxen form on Nan’s arm. But instantly mysterious glad expectancy swept that sight from him as he recalled that even now he was listening for Nan’s tap-tap at his study door, Nan, once more coming to tell him a secret, a secret blithe, unguessed.
The house had ceased to be silent; there were movings, stirrings, voices, through it. They seemed to be without, on the stairs, and above, in the upper rooms. There were people on the stairs, mounting up and up on jocund feet. The Bishop heard it perfectly clear now, Annie’s voice from his bedroom overhead, “Up here, I’m up here, Hal!”
But listen! There on the hallstair, that was surely a child he heard now! It was little Nan, chuckling and chattering as she climbed. It was her old merry challenge to her father to be out and after her as up she scampered. Yet no, that was not Nan, that merry call was a boy’s, a baby’s,—it was Nan’s baby-boy, who had just learned to go upstairs. The Bishop heard the small ecstatic feet, the slap of exultant little palms on each step achieved. And, like little Nan, the brave wee grandson meant the Bishop to follow him, as on he scurried, up and up, where the stairs were multiplied, were mounting, ever higher, higher.
Again the sounds on the stair changed to other footfalls, lighter, firmer, surer, but like the others, very glad; fleet and pattering, pattering, spirit-light, the steps of the little Christ-Child, going home.
A slight tremor ran through the length of the form seated there, silver and black. Suddenly all mist was wiped from the Bishop’s brain, leaving it clear. The Nazarene laid his hand on the window-sash, as if opening a door. “Rise!” He said, “Let us go forth into the morning.”
Beyond the silent house, Westbury slept on, the star-lit, throbbing city, not knowing. The deep sleep of the earliest dawn held those three faces of the Bishop’s failure, sleep of victors, spent with struggle. In the morning they would awaken, the three the Bishop had loved, to know! In the morning all Westbury would awaken, to know,—that there was only one way to love him now!
In the house of each heart that must perforce hold his memory like a shrine, there could never be any chamber for hate. Through the gift of his three years’ presence should the grandmother hold to her breast her baby’s baby, until love, overflowing, should enfold that black-mooded woman, her son’s wife, and both, being mothers, should learn the way of peace by guiding there the little feet of a little child. This, himself all unwitting, should be the Bishop’s immortal gift.
Even so, by divine largess of life given to life, should Murray Newbold become the Bishop’s spiritual son. Henceforth, always—instant, insistent—should the Bishop’s presence seem near him at every turning-point, compelling, as in the darkened study on that last day of all their days together.
And the woman who had loved the boy, Henry Collinton, she, too, through his gift of a beauty steadfast to the end, should in the last brief years find ease of her lifelong hunger. In unspoken kinship of loneliness must they draw near now, the man and the woman who had walked closest to him, to rear together his last wish. Deathless as dream should rise the House of Friendship, for, passing, the Bishop had found the way to give himself. It is only a little city where he offered the chalice of his spirit, and only a little space his whole bishopric, yet all the world is richer for the gift of his Christmas soul.
Westbury shall know now,—shining old face beneath the shabby hat, stooping old shoulders beneath the worn cape overcoat, spent old feet that walked these careless streets—Westbury shall know now, their Bishop, passed from them, their own forever.