The House of Toys Part 22

In such company he entered. On the threshold they paused with a quick breath for the chaste beauty of vista and line, the soft play of color and shadow. Then sense of beauty faded before a thing that eye can not see nor tongue express, what the seekers had needed and what they found: peace, pa.s.sing understanding, unseen but undoubted; hovering above them in the n.o.ble nave, kneeling with them in shadowy aisle, winging toward them on the shaft of sunshine streaming from heaven itself upon the altar. Here, for intrigant and ravager, penitent and saint, failure and world-weary, was sanctuary--respite, if only for an hour, from sin and strife, pa.s.sion and hate and self. It was good to stay there a while, humbled yet uplifted, aspiring anew. For there was a Presence in His own house.

A wonderful thing had happened to David Quentin. His sensitive quivering heart had caught and recorded the great human need, and to him it had been given to build a rest house for many weary and poor in heart. Perhaps if his commonplace little trials had not seemed big and tragic to him, he never could have known the need and so he never would have written in stone and wood the story of sanctuary that has meant so much to the ages.

He did not foresee that. He did not think of it as a possibility. He was thinking only of the great discovery he had made: that a man may find sanctuary, as he may give worship, in a task well loved and well done. Life was a pretty good thing after all, since it could not take from him eyes to perceive or heart to rejoice in the beauty he could create, though none else cared to see. The days of his whimpering, even to himself, were ended.

"I should have been doing this all along."

Nor did he notice that the music had ceased. He did not know even that he was no longer alone, until a voice broke in on his reverie.

"He doesn't look very hospitable, does he?"

"Maybe," said another, "he doesn't feel that way."

David jumped to his feet and peered over the easel at Jonathan and Esther.

"But he does, indeed. Visitors," he announced, "are requested to stay on this side of the door."

They stepped within. "Since you wouldn't come down," Jonathan explained, "of course we had to come up. Though Miss Summers almost lost her courage on the way. She said we were taking a liberty."

"But I didn't," she protested in some confusion. "I only said--"

"That you don't seem to care much for company," Jonathan completed her sentence. "She was mistaken, I trust?"

"Woefully," smiled David. "And I've had company all evening. They played and sang and helped me to work." He waved a hand toward the easel.

"Do you think," Jonathan inquired of Esther, "we may take that as a compliment?"

"I'm not quite sure," she answered.

"She means," chuckled Jonathan, who seemed to be enjoying himself hugely, "she must see the work before she commits herself. Is it allowed--?"

"Of course, if you care to," David said. "And you'll find these chairs comfortable, I think. Over here, where you get the light." When they had sat down, he turned the easel toward them. "Now, ladies and gentlemen," he burlesqued, "if you will look upon my right--"

They looked. And their sudden surprised interest made his heart skip a beat.

"Why, I--I didn't know--" Esther began, in the words he had once stammered to her. She gave him a quick questioning glance, then looked again at the sketch.

Jonathan had become very grave. "You have a gift for drawing."

"Only a knack," said David.

"A very pretty knack then. Is that a copy?"

"Just a sketch of an idea I've been trying to work out lately. This,"

David placed another drawing on the easel, "is about what it would be like outside."

"It is," said Esther, "like seeing music."

Jonathan studied that drawing for several silent minutes.

"You keep up your professional work as a side issue?" he asked abruptly.

"Oh, no! But sometimes I--waddle for the fun of it. Under advice,"

David smiled at Esther, "of a very good fairy."

Jonathan did not understand that saying, but he thought from her color he could guess the fairy's name.

"And very good advice, too. Have you done any other ecclesiastical work?"

"Why, that," laughed David, "I used to think was my mission in life."

"Is there anything else you could show us?"

"I have a set of drawings I submitted to St. Christopher's last spring.

They're all that escaped a general destruction when I took down my shingle."

David got the plans from a closet, unrolled them and placed the ill.u.s.trative sketches before his visitors. Jonathan studied these drawings, too, very carefully.

"St. Christopher's, you say?" he said at last. "But I don't understand. I happen to have seen the plans they accepted. I don't know very much about architecture technically, but I should say yours are better--manifestly better. Am I right?"

"They weren't what St. Christopher's wanted."

"But they are better, aren't they?"

"I think they are," said David quietly.

"But I believe I like the new idea even better. Am I right again?"

"I suppose it is better in a way. It's less pretentious and spectacular, but has more warmth--more meaning, I suppose."

David tried to speak casually, but excitement was mounting. He caught up the new sketches and compared them eagerly with the old, forgetting for the moment what St. Christopher's had meant to him. And he saw the new idea as he had not seen it before.

"It _is_ better," he muttered. "I--I hadn't realized."

"David!" It was hard to believe that Jonathan could be so stern. "You are a fraud. You came to me under false pretenses. You gave me to believe that you had been a failure."

"I was."

"You know better than that. Any man who can work out such things--!

For a very little I would give you your discharge this moment."

"But I beg of you--Mr. Radbourne, you don't know what my position means to me--"

"I didn't mean that seriously, of course. But you ought to be back in your own work. Why did you ever leave it?"

"Because I couldn't make a good enough living." David flushed as he said it. How pitifully poor, despite all his late philosophizing, that reason sounded! "Mr. Radbourne, let us drop the subject."

But the shining-eyed Jonathan would not drop it.