THE BISHOP AND THE CARDINAL[17]

THE BISHOP AND THE CARDINAL[17]

George Madden Martin

The spread of the spruce-tree at its base, where its branches rested on the snow in the bishop’s yard, was thirty feet. The apex, to which the branches mounted in slanting tiers, was fifty feet above the ground.

The December afternoon was cold—not much above zero. Weather of that kind was most unusual in a region so far south. The sky was gray. Now and then a few big snow-flakes came silently down to join the white brotherhood that had already fallen a foot deep on the level and more than two feet deep in the drifts.

The shrubs about the yard looked like snow hillocks; the round bushes were cone-shaped, the branching ones were wreathed. Not a berry or seed-vessel or grass-spear or weed-tuft was anywhere visible.

In these bleak surroundings, a valiant and energetic gentleman in the scarlet cassock and biretta of a cardinal—a cardinal with wings and beak and feathers, you understand—was darting from point to point of the big evergreen, from apex to branch, from branch to apex, a gorgeous splash of color against the clear green of the boughs and the blue-white of the snow.

The spruce, with the flitting cardinal on its boughs, stood at the side of the bishop’s grounds between his slate-roofed and ivy-clad house and the brick orphan asylum.

The bishop’s bedroom was on the same side of the house as the spruce, and just now the bachelor bishop himself was at a window of the square bay of this chamber, looking out upon his grounds and the big evergreen in the bleak and wintry setting. He was just becoming acquainted with the spruce and his side yard.

The robe that he wore at the moment had less of the episcopal dignity than that of the cardinal in the evergreen; the bishop’s was a gray-and-black dressing-gown, and it was tied about his body with a gray-and-black cord and tassels.

His expression, or what could be seen of it,—for this square-featured, clean-shaven bishop wore a green celluloid shade over his eyes,—was rueful. It was the first Christmas after his arrival from a distant state to be head of this Southern diocese. And behold, three weeks after his coming, here he was—ill with the measles!

He was in his venerable predecessor’s house, and that was why the stately spruce and the cardinal were new to him.

The dwelling, in its old grounds, with a small, slate-roofed church to the left of it and the asylum to the right of it, stood on the car-line a little way out from the chief city of the diocese. The wife of the late bishop had owned it long before trolley-cars were dreamed of; had built the church and the asylum, and given them to her husband’s diocese; had died, and left the dwelling to her husband. When, within a year, he followed her, he had left the place as an episcopal residence for his successors.

The old bishop’s pensioned servants remained, integral parts of the institution. Neither a new broom nor a new bishop must sweep too clean. Even one who has authority, when he finds himself among the old associations and traditions and institutions of a sedate community, must move slowly.

The bishop found the household of which he was bachelor proprietor somewhat dreary. There was old Mrs. Dyer, the housekeeper, a distant relative of the old bishop’s, gold-spectacled, tall and spare. There was old Aunty Sally, the colored cook, silver-spectacled, short and fat. There was Thomas, the colored coachman and gardener, gray-haired, and, for the time, confined to his room over the tool-house by rheumatism. There was old white Tim, the general factotum and furnace-tender of the asylum, the rectory and the church; he had gone to town that morning for his Christmas purchases, and so far, at four o’clock in the afternoon, had not returned. In this venerable company the new bishop felt a mere infant in arms, an infant with measles!—the more so, because from the beginning he had refused to have a trained nurse, and had put himself into the hands of Mrs. Dyer and Aunt Sally.

The house overflowed with flowers and delicacies that his good people, few of whom he yet knew, had sent him. But to-day as he stood at his window and gazed out on the winter scene he was feeling lonely and a little aggrieved. No doubt it was the bleakness of the day and the nearness of the Christmas season under the present conditions of captivity, that depressed him.

In a direct line across from him, at no great distance, stood the asylum; its side windows looked on his own, and both sets of windows looked upon the spruce-tree. As he had barely established himself in his present residence when he took the measles, he had had no chance to become acquainted with the asylum, or its affairs, or its inmates.

Had that little red-feathered fellow out there on the snow-clad evergreen-tree gone crazy? The bishop came from the city, and knew neither the spruce nor the cardinal by name. The cardinal was dipping and rising about the tree, fluttering and darting, now here, now there, from branch to twig, from twig to branch.

“And always as if he had his red-ringed small eye on the gallery,” said the bishop, who meant by “gallery,” himself at the window.

Just then the cardinal left the big spruce-tree altogether, and dropped to the snow-mantled clump of spirea nearer the house. Immediately there appeared upon the branches of the spruce two flashing, swaggering, top-knotted blue jays.

The cardinal flew from the spirea; down from the spruce dropped the jays to the bush that he had left; and almost at once two brown and speckled sapsuckers perched upon the branches of the evergreen.

The bishop looked on with interest. Almost parrot-like the cardinal was clinging with the coral-red claws of his coral-red legs to the sharp edge of the window-sill; his red head and coral beak were held sidewise, and his beady eyes were upturned sharply. Behind him was a world that was cold and desolate and threatening. The white flakes were falling persistently.

Then the bell of the bishop’s telephone rang. The doctor who twice a day came in to see him and cheer him up had forbidden him to use his eyes or to do any hard work or to see his secretary, who had not had the measles; but he could use his ears and his tongue. So he had had the telephone brought into his room and set upon a table, and he talked daily with his dean at the cathedral in town, with various members of his clergy, and with other official persons.

He turned from the window at the ring, and lifted the receiver.

“Bishop Herbert at the telephone. Yes?” said he, and his voice was deep and genial and sonorous.

“He is telling you that he is hungry, please,” said a voice, small and anxious.

“Who is hungry? Who is this speaking?”

“The cardinal-bird on your window-sill. This is Gwinie.”

“Why should he be telling me? And who is Gwinie? And how does she know a cardinal-bird is on my window-sill and hungry?”

“I can see him there. I live across from you at the asylum. He is hungry because I can’t come over and put crumbs on his bird-tray; and it’s snowed three days now.”

“Where is his bird-tray? And why can’t you come?”

“It’s there by the spruce-tree. You can see it from your window. It’s a tray on a stake in the ground. The other bishop kept it full. I can’t come over and fill it the way I’ve been doing because I’ve got the measles.”

“Is that so?” said the bishop. “So have I. Is there anybody over there who can come and fill it? You cannot expect me to ask Mrs. Dyer to wade out there in a blizzard. And old Aunt Sally would go under in the drifts.”

“The doctor told us you had measles,” said Gwinie. “You took them first; then we did. He’s just gone. He said I might come to the telephone and call up, and tell whoever answered about the cardinal. He said he didn’t want to have my measles worried in. We’ve all got them. There isn’t anybody who can come. Tim, he’s never got home from town. We’ve put crumbs out, but the birds don’t know it, and the snow keeps covering the crumbs up. We haven’t any tray over here.”

“H’m!” said the bishop. “And how can I put crumbs on the sills of French windows? They open outward, you know. What? Hold on there, Gwinie!”

“I have to go. Miss Lowry, she’s called three times. But I’ll think.”

The bishop hung up his receiver, and returned to the window to survey the situation in the light of what he had just learned. The cardinal had advanced boldly on the sill, and now hopped back and forth on it, with his bright eye fixed on the occupant of the room.

The jays and sapsuckers were on the spirea together, and a dozen small, crested birds with brown backs and slate-colored breasts were flitting anxiously about the spruce-tree. Across the open space, at an asylum window, was a little girl, flattening her nose against the pane. She was wrapped in a heavy blanket, and she wore a shade!

Was it Gwinie? She saw him. The flattened nose drew back, and its owner waved a hand. It was Gwinie. Suddenly she turned, as if something had compelled her attention in the room behind her. And then she disappeared. The bishop felt a pang of loneliness.

Ten minutes passed while he wondered what he could do. He put the question to the cardinal himself on the sill: How could either of them ask fat little old Aunt Sally to wade out through the big drifts to that tray? Then the telephone rang again.

“It’s Gwinie. Miss Lowry says I may speak one minute. It’s about Mr. Blythe. He takes the orders from the asylum for Santy Claus every year. We tell him what we want most, and he puts it down, and we get it. This year the doctor had to take the orders for him because of the measles. So I asked the doctor to-day, if he saw Mr. Blythe, to get him to ask Santy to see to the birds till I get over the measles. And Mr. Blythe just called up to say he will telephone Santy direct, himself, about tending to them.”

It is to be presumed that when “Santy” received the message, he acted promptly. No doubt he knew as well as Gwinie did—although the bishop did not know—that even in the South a starving cardinal compelled to endure the rigors of a night with the thermometer at zero would be a little scarlet corpse on the snow by morning. Before the early dusk quite closed in, the grocer’s delivery boy appeared in the bishop’s side yard. He took off his cap to the dignitary at the window, tramped knee-deep out to the bird-tray, and emptied his pockets and the contents of a paper bag on the tray. Then he lifted his cap again to the figure at the window, and departed.

The door of the bishop’s room opened, and Mrs. Dyer appeared, followed by Aunt Sally, who bore the patient’s supper. The women stirred the open fire, brushed the hearth, drew the curtains, and lighted the lamp. They pulled the table up near the blaze, laid the white cloth upon it, and arranged the contents of the tray.

“Creamed oysters, beefsteak, rolls, waffles, coffee, quince preserves? Good gracious, Mrs. Dyer, do I, a patient, dare to eat all that? Very well, then, since my friend the cardinal has his supper also, outside. But you do not know about that. And, one moment, Mrs. Dyer, before you and Aunt Sally go; who is Mr. Blythe?”

“He goes by heah ev’y mornin’ to the trolley. He’s one o’ those heah pink-colored young men,” said Aunt Sally.

“He’s a general favorite,” said Mrs. Dyer. “He lives with an aunt up on the hill.”

“He sells money at one o’ these heah banks. The bishop he bought his’n f’om him. Got it ev’y Sat’day reg’lar foh to pay us’en off all roun’.”

“He thinks a great deal of Christmas,” said Mrs. Dyer. “I hear he is as disappointed as the children at the asylum that there will be no tree this year because of the measles.”

Thanks to Mr. Blythe’s fortunate telephone connection, Santa Claus continued his useful work. When the bishop got up the next day—none too early, to be sure—more snow had fallen, but the tray was swept clean of it and heaped with a fresh meal; and the birds had gathered round in dozens. Moreover, on the spruce-tree above the tray hung a placard; it was white, with large black letters, and it was visible to both sets of windows that looked upon the yard:

To His Grace The Cardinal, And Other Tenants. Please Take Notice. This Tree is Preëmpted For The Christmas Season.

S. Claus.

The cold weather held; that evening the grocer’s boy appeared again, and once more emptied his pockets and a paper bag on the birds’ tray. And the next morning Santy or one of his emissaries had again swept the tray and refilled it. On the snow-draped and trailing spruce hung a second placard. It was more elaborately printed than the first one had been, and touches of holiday scarlet relieved the black of its letters.

In the asylum, a dozen small faces now appeared at the windows where one small child had flattened her nose against the pane two days before. The children were all wrapped in blankets, and wore green shades over their eyes. This is what they read on the placard:

To His Grace The Cardinal, And His Friends, Near And Far. Please Take Notice. Gifts will be Ready for Distribution from this Tree To-morrow, Christmas Day in the Morning.

S. Claus.

The presents were ready for distribution when that blessed morning dawned, snow-bound and cold and still. There were many stories circulated as to how and when the work had been done.

One story was that among the agents whom S. Claus had found it necessary to call upon for aid in the work were the grocer’s boy and Mr. Blythe.

Some persons said that it could not have been done without the help of the hook and ladder from the engine-house two miles away. Others were convinced that unofficial ladders and orchard-pruning implements had done it.

Whatever the truth of the matter is, the orphan asylum certainly knew nothing about it, for that was wrapped in measles, and could not have peeped. As for the bishop, not for worlds would he have done such a thing.

However, Mr. S. Claus and his friends did achieve it, and when Christmas day dawned, clear and crisp and cold, the bishop and the asylum and Mrs. Dyer and Aunt Sally gazed out upon a transformed spruce-tree.

Everything was on it that should be on a tree for hungry birds—and more. For besides cranberries in strings, pop-corn in festoons, grain in gold and scarlet cornucopias, ginger-bread men, red apples, tallow candles, half loaves of bread, biscuits, there were many things that were there not to be eaten, but to make a glitter.

His grace the cardinal, a scarlet splash against the winter blue sky, was poised upon the very topmost black tip of the glorious old evergreen. And not only the two jays, but a dozen other handsome and noisy jays, as well as the speckled sapsuckers and many smaller birds, hung in mid-air about the branches, rapt and almost motionless. As the vested choir from the choir-room that adjoined the asylum crossed the yard through the brick cloister for the seven-o’clock service at the little church, they sang with hearty voices:

The bishop and Gwinie and the many little children of the asylum, all warmly wrapped in big blankets, gazed out on the scene through their frosty windows; and among those marching in the choir through the cloister were Mr. Blythe and the grocer’s boy, robed and beaming, and singing most heartily of all.