“It isn’t everybody’s baby. It’s yours, and hers,” then gravely, “I was not thinking of other people. I was just thinking how much she needs her mother, that girl!”
“Florence!” she said, and there were many thoughts in her tone, slow, incredulous.
The Bishop’s eyes grew remote and bright, seeing Florence. He spoke a little dreamily, “She needs you now, and she knows she needs you! She may have been hard once, being young and without a mother. She may have been cruel. It is different now. She does not feel so secure now. They are so afraid for their babies, don’t you remember, always, these little new mothers. There are so many dangers lying in wait for the little men before they’ve got their armor on. There must be advice to give, and care to give—oh, Florence knows how much he needs his grandmother! Go and see. Can’t you? Couldn’t you? I—I’m in such a hurry to have you go!”
“If I could only hold him once, Dan’s baby!”
“Florence’s baby, too,” he corrected gently.
The brief light swept from her face. Her plump comfortable hands were knotted, and her round face drawn into dignity by pain. Her words were grave and final, “The way to that baby is only through Florence, so I can never go. I can never have him.”
Involuntarily the Bishop’s hand went to his temple in a gesture of pain, then instantly was forced down. He hesitated, then at length, “‘Never’ is such a long word,” he said. “Sometimes God says it for us, but don’t—don’t let us ever say it for ourselves! You know,” a passing tremor ran along his lips, “He didn’t let me have the grandchild I hoped for, but don’t—don’t lose having yours. It seems as if I couldn’t let you go on losing,—that. I am in such a hurry somehow to-day. Can’t you go out there to-day, now? Take the baby the Christmas present his mother most wants for him, take him his grandmother!”
She turned on him, intense, “Bishop, do you know what it’s like to make up with a person who’s done you wrong? Do you know what it feels like to forgive? A person who’d hurt you? Where you care most?”
A moment he groped in past experience for the answer, then in a rush of realization it came upon him. He rose a little unsteadily, that he, too, might stand to face her, as she stood by the curtained recess of the window, where the searchlight of the Christmas sun fell relentless on the drawn intensity of her plump face. The Bishop’s lean, corded hands rested on the two ebony knobs of the chair back. He did not notice, nor did she, that he swayed slightly with a passing dizziness.
“Yes,” he answered slowly, thinking of one he soon must see to-day, “I know how it feels. Yes, I have had to learn, how to forgive—where I cared most!”