"My dear son! It is not I, nor is it another, that can convince you.
G.o.d, alone, extends the grace of faith. Have you ever asked for it?"
Kimberly started from his apathy. "I?" He relapsed again into moodiness. "No." The thought moved him to a protest. "How can I reach a far-off thing like faith?" he demanded with angry energy---"a shadowy, impalpable, evasive, ghostly thing? How can I reach, how can I grasp, what I cannot see, what I cannot understand?"
"You can reach it and you can grasp it. Such questions spring from the anger of despair; despair has no part in faith. Faith is the death of despair. From faith springs hope. It is despair that pictures faith to you as a far-off thing."
"Whatever it may be, it is not for me. I have no hope."
"What brought you to-night? Can you not see His grace in forcing you to come against your own inclination? His hope has sustained you when you least suspected it. It has stayed your hand from the promptings of despair. Faith a far-off thing? It is at your side, trembling and invisible. It is within your reach at every moment. You have but to put forth your hand to touch it."
Kimberly shook his bowed head.
"Will you stretch forth your hand--will you touch the hem of His garment?"
Kimberly sat immovable. "I cannot even stretch forth a hand."
"Will you let me stretch forth mine?" His silence left the archbishop to continue. "You have come to me like another Nicodemus, and with his question, unasked, upon your lips. You have done wrong--it is you who accuse yourself, not I. Your own words tell me this and they can spring only from an instinct that has accused you in your own heart.
"Christianity will teach you your atonement--nothing else can or will.
You seem to picture this Christianity as something distant, something of an unreal, shadowy time and place. It is not. It is concrete, clear, distinct, alive, all about you every day, answering the very questions you have asked in your loneliness. It is hidden in the heart of the servant that waits at your call, locked in the breast of the man that pa.s.ses you in the street. It is everywhere, unseen, unapprehended about you. I am going to put it before you. Stay with me to-night. In that room, my own little chapel," the archbishop rose as he indicated the door, "spend the time until you are ready to sleep. You have given many years to the gratification of yourself. Give one hour to-night to the contemplation of G.o.d. May I tell you my simple faith? The night before He suffered, He took bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to His disciples. And He said, in substance, "Take and eat of this, for this is my body, broken for your sins. And as often as ye shall do this, do it in commemoration of me." And on these words I ground my faith in this mystery of His presence; this is why I believe He is here to-night, and why I leave you with Him in this tabernacle before you. If you feel that you have done wrong, that you want to atone for it, ask Him to teach you how."
The archbishop opened the chapel door. In the darkness of the cool room, the red sanctuary lamp gleamed above the altar. The archbishop knelt for a moment beside his questioner; then he withdrew, closing the door behind him, and the silence of the night remained unbroken.
An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head. In the adjoining room the archbishop himself had slept, within call, in his chair. He entered the chapel and an a.s.sistant robed him to say his ma.s.s before his single auditor. The service over, he made his thanksgiving, walked to where the man knelt and, touching him on the shoulder, the two left the room together.
[Ill.u.s.tration: An acolyte, entering in the gray of the early morning, saw on the last of the kneeling benches a man resting with bowed head]
CHAPTER XLVIII
The apprehension that had long waited upon Robert Kimberly"s intentions weighed upon his circle. It was not enough for those about him to a.s.sure themselves that their affairs of business or of pleasure must move on whether Robert should determine to move on with them or not. His aloofness carried with it an uncertainty that was depressing.
If he were wholly gone it would be one thing; but to be not gone and not of them was quite another. When Nelson brought the codicil providing for the school, satisfactorily framed, Kimberly had changed his intention and resolved, instead of incorporating the foundation in his will, to make immediate provision for an endowment. When the details were worked out, Nelson left to bring his wife home from Paris. Lottie"s first visit was to Dolly"s home, and there she found Imogene and Fritzie. She tiptoed in on the surprised group with a laugh.
They rose in astonishment, but Lottie looked so trim and charming in her French rig that she disarmed criticism. For a moment every one spoke at once. Then Dolly"s kind heart gave way as she mentally p.r.o.nounced Lottie faultless.
"You never looked so well in your life," she exclaimed with sincerity.
"I declare, Lottie, you are back to the sprightliness of girlhood.
Paris certainly agrees with you."
Lottie smiled. "I have had two great rejuvenators this year--Paris and a good conscience."
Fritzie could not resist. "Do they go together, Lottie?" she asked.
Lottie responded with perfect ease: "Only when one is still young, dear.
I shouldn"t dare recommend them to mature persons."
"You felt no risk in the matter yourself?" suggested Fritzie.
"Not in the least," laughed Lottie, pushing down her slender girdle.
But she was too happy to quarrel and had returned resolved to have only friends. "You must tell me all about poor Robert." She turned, as she spoke to Dolly, with a sudden sympathy in her tender eyes. "I have thought so much about his troubles. And I am just crazy to see the poor fellow. What is he doing?"
"He is in town for a few days, just now. But he has been away for two months--with the yacht."
"Where?"
"No one knows. Somewhere along the coast, I suppose."
"With whom?"
"Alone."
Lottie threw her eyes upward. "_What_ does he _mean_? What do _you_ all mean by letting him get into such a rut? Such isolation; such loneliness! He needs to be cheered up, poor fellow. Dolly, I should think _you_ would be frightened to death----"
"What could I possibly do that I haven"t done?" demanded Dolly. "No one can do a thing with Robert when he is set. I have simply _had_ to give up."
"You _mustn"t_ give up," protested Lottie courageously. "It is just the giving up that ruins everything. Personally, _I_ am convinced that no one can long remain insensible to genuine and sincere sympathy. And certainly no one could accuse poor Robert of being unresponsive."
"Certainly not--if you couldn"t," retorted Fritzie.
Lottie turned with amiability. "Now, Fritzie dear, you are _not_ going to be unkind to me. I put myself entirely out of the case. It is something we ought all to work for together. It is our duty, I think."
She spoke very gently but paused to give the necessary force to her words. "Truly, it would be depressing to _any_ one to come back to a gay circle and find it broken up in the way ours is. We can"t help the past. Its sorrows belong to it alone. We must let the dead bury the dead and all work together to restore the old spirit when everybody was happy--don"t you feel so, Arthur?" she asked, making that sudden kind of an appeal to Arthur De Castro to which it is difficult to refuse a.s.sent.
"Certainly we should. And I hope you will be successful, Lottie, in pulling things together."
"Robert is at home now, isn"t he?"
"He has been at home a fortnight," returned Arthur, "but shut up with the new board of directors all the time. MacBirney walked the plank, you know, last fall when Nelson went on the board."
"I think it was very nice of Robert to confer such an honor on Nelson,"
observed Lottie simply, "and I intend to tell him so. He is always doing something for somebody," she continued, rising to go. "And I want to see what the constant kindness he extends to others will do if extended to him."
"She also wants to see," suggested Fritzie to Imogene, as Dolly and Arthur walked with Lottie to the door, "what Paris and a good conscience, and a more slender figure, will do for him."
"Now, Fritzie!"
"If Robert Kimberly," blurted Fritzie hotly, "ever takes up again with Lottie Nelson, I"ll never speak to him as long as I live."
"Again? When did he ever take up with her?"
"I don"t care. You never can tell what a man will do."
Imogene, less easily moved, only smiled. "Dolly entertains the Nelsons to-morrow evening, and Robert will be asked very particularly to come."