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droop of her mouth. The look in her eyes became faraway. She rubbed the
dimness hastily out of them; it interfered with her stitching.
'No, it is not the hunger that makes the heart ache,' she explained. 'You get
used to being hungry. It is for my child that I cry. It was the machine that
killed her. It is true that she worked hard, but I cannot understand. She was
strong. And she was young only forty; and she worked only thirty years. She
began young, it is true; but my man died. The boiler exploded down at the
works. And what were we to do? She was ten, but she was very strong. But the
machine killed her. Yes, it did. It killed her, and she was the fastest worker
in the shop. I have thought about it often, and I know. That is why I cannot
work in the shop. The machine bothers my head. Always I hear it saying, "I did
it, I did it." And it says that all day long. And then I think of my daughter,
and I cannot work.'
The moistness was in her old eyes again, and she had to wipe it away before
she could go on stitching.
I heard the Bishop stumbling up the stairs, and I opened the door. What a
spectacle he was. On his back he carried half a sack of coal, with kindling on
top. Some of the coal dust had coated his face, and the sweat from his
exertions was running in streaks. He dropped his burden in the corner by the
stove and wiped his face on a coarse bandanna handkerchief. I could scarcely
accept the verdict of my senses. The Bishop, black as a coal-heaver, in a
working-man's cheap cotton shirt (one button was missing from the throat), and
in overalls! That was the most incongruous of all the overalls, frayed at the
bottoms, dragged down at the heels, and held up by a narrow leather belt
around the hips such as labourers wear.
Though the Bishop was warm, the poor, swollen hands of the old woman were
already cramping with the cold; and before we left her, the Bishop had built
the fire, while I had peeled the potatoes and put them on to boil. I was to
learn, as time went by, that there were many cases similar to hers, and many
worse, hidden away in the monstrous depths of the tenements in my
neighbourhood.
We got back to find Ernest alarmed by my absence. After the first surprise of
greeting was over, the Bishop leaned back in his chair, stretched out his
overall-covered legs, and actually sighed a comfortable sigh. We were the
first of his old friends he had met since his disappearance, he told us; and
during the intervening weeks he must have suffered greatly from loneliness. He
told us much, though he told us more of the joy he had experienced in doing
the Master's bidding.
'For truly now,' he said, 'I am feeding his lambs. And I have learned a great
lesson. The soul cannot be ministered to till the stomach is appeased. His
lambs must be fed with bread and butter and potatoes and meat; after that, and
only after that, are their spirits ready for more refined nourishment.'
He ate heartily of the supper I cooked. Never had he had such an appetite at
our table in the old days. We spoke of it, and he said that he had never been
so healthy in his life.
'I walk always now,' he said, and a blush was on his cheek at the thought of
the time when he rode in his carriage, as though it were a sin not lightly to
be laid.
'My health is better for it,' he added hastily. 'And I am very happy indeed,
most happy. At last I am a consecrated spirit.'
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And yet there was in his face a permanent pain, the pain of the world that he
was now taking to himself. He was seeing life in the raw, and it was a
different life from what he had known within the printed books of his library.
'And you are responsible for all this, young man,' he said directly to
Ernest.
Ernest was embarrassed and awkward.
'I I warned you,' he faltered.
'No, you misunderstand,' the Bishop answered. 'I speak not in reproach, but
in gratitude. I have you to thank for showing me my path. You led me from
theories about life to life itself. You pulled aside the veils from the social
shams. You were light in my darkness, but now I, too, see the light. And I am
very happy, only& ' he hesitated painfully, and in his eyes fear leaped large.
'Only the persecution. I harm no one. Why will they not let me alone? But it
is not that. It is the nature of the persecution. I shouldn't mind if they cut
my flesh with stripes, or burned me at the stake, or crucified me
head-downward. But it is the asylum that frightens me. Think of it! Of me in
an asylum for the insane! It is revolting. I saw some of the cases at the
sanatorium. They were violent. My blood chills when I think of it. And to be
imprisoned for the rest of my life amid scenes of screaming madness! No! no!
Not that! Not that!'
It was pitiful. His hands shook, his whole body quivered and shrank away from
the picture he had conjured. But the next moment he was calm.
'Forgive me,' he said simply. 'It is my wretched nerves. And if the Master's
work leads there, so be it. Who am I to complain?'
I felt like crying aloud as I looked at him: 'Great Bishop! O hero! God's
hero!'
As the evening wore on, we learned more of his doings.
'I sold my house my houses, rather,' he said, 'and all my other possessions.
I knew I must do it secretly, else they would have taken everything away from
me. That would have been terrible. I often marvel these days at the immense
quantity of potatoes two or three hundred thousand dollars will buy, or bread,
or meat, or coal and kindling.' He turned to Ernest. 'You are right, young
man. Labour is dreadfully underpaid. I never did a bit of work in my life,
except to appeal æsthetically to Pharisees I thought I was preaching the
message and yet I was worth half a million dollars. I never knew what half a
million dollars meant until I realized how much potatoes and bread and butter
and meat it could buy. And then I realized something more. I realized that all
those potatoes and that bread and butter and meat were mine, and that I had
not worked to make them. Then it was clear to me someone else had worked and
made them and been robbed of them. And when I came down amongst the poor I
found those who had been robbed and who were hungry and wretched because they
had been robbed.'
We drew him back to his narrative.
'The money? I have it deposited in many different banks under different
names. It can never be taken away from me, because it can never be found. And
it is so good, that money. It buys so much food. I never knew before what
money was good for.'
'I wish we could get some of it for the propaganda,' Ernest said wistfully.
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'It would do immense good.'
'Do you think so?' the Bishop said. 'I do not have much faith in politics. In
tact, I am afraid I do not understand politics.'
Ernest was delicate in such matters. He did not repeat his suggestion, though
he knew only too well the sore straits the Socialist Party was in through lack
of money.
'I sleep in cheap lodging-houses,' the Bishop went on. 'But I am afraid, and
I never stay long in one place. Also, I rent two rooms in working-men's houses
in different quarters of the city. It is a great extravagance, I know, but it
is necessary. I make up for it in part by doing my own cooking, though
sometimes I get something to eat in cheap coffeehouses. And I have made a
discovery.Tamales1are very good when the air grows chilly late at night. Only [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
