client--unless--unless. He knew that Rafe Gadbeau had made confession
to the Bishop. He had wanted to ask the Bishop this morning, if there
was not some way. He had not dared. Now he dared. The Bishop stood
waiting for his further questions. There might be some way or some
help, thought Dardis; maybe some word had dropped which was not a part
of the real confession. He said quickly:
"You were with Rafe Gadbeau at his death?"
"I was."
"What did he say to you?"
Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward in his chair, his eyes eager and
confident. His heart shouting that here was his deliverance. Here was
the hour and the need! The Bishop would speak!
The Bishop's eyes fell upon the prisoner for an instant. Then he
looked full into the eyes of his questioner and he answered:
"Nothing."
"That will do. Thank you, Bishop," said Dardis in a low, broken
voice.
Jeffrey Whiting fell back in his chair. The light of confidence died
slowly, reluctantly out of his eyes. The Bishop had spoken. The Bishop
had _lied_! He _knew_! And he had _lied_!
As the Bishop walked slowly back to his seat, Ruth Lansing saw the
terrible suffering of the spirit reflected in his face. If she were
questioned about that night, she must do as he had done.
Mother in Heaven, she prayed in agony, must I do that? _Can_ I do
that?
Oh! She had never thought it would come to this. How _could_ it happen
like this! How could any one think that she would ever stand like
this, alone in all the world, with the fate of her love in her hands,
and not be able to speak the few little words that would save him to
her and life!
She _would_ save him! She _would_ speak the words! What did she care
for that wicked man who had died yelling out that he was a murderer?
Why should she keep a secret of his? One night in the early summer she
had lain all through the night in the woods outside a cabin and wished
for a way to kill that man. Why should she guard a secret that was no
good to him or to any one now?
Who was it that said she must not speak? The Catholic Church. Then she
would be a Catholic no longer. She would renounce it this minute. She
had never promised anything like this. But, on the instant, she knew
that that would not free her. She knew that she could throw off the
outward garment of the Church, but still she would not be free to
speak the words. The Church itself could not free her from the seal of
the secret. What use, then, to fly from the Church, to throw off the
Church, when the bands of silence would still lie mighty and
unbreakable across her lips.
That awful night on the Gaunt Rocks flamed up before her, and what she
saw held her.
What she saw was not merely a church giving a sacrament. It was not
the dramatic falling of a penitent at the feet of a priest. It was not
a poor Frenchman of the hills screaming out his crime in the agony and
fear of death.
What she saw was a world, herself standing all alone in it. What she
saw was the soul of the world giving up its sin into the scale of God
from which--Heart break or world burn!--that sin must never be
disturbed.
As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name,
a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path.
Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce,
piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal. She saw the look in those eyes which
she had recognised for the first time that day at French Village--the
terrible mother-hunger look of love, ready to die for its own. And
though the girl said nothing, Ruth could hear the warning words:
Remember! You love Jeffrey Whiting.
How well that girl knew!
Dardis had called Ruth only to contradict a point which he had not
been able to correct in the testimony of Myron Stocking. But since he
had dared to bring up the matter of Rafe Gadbeau to the Bishop, he had
become more desperate, and bolder. Ruth might speak. And there was
always a chance that the dying man had said something to her.
"You were with Jeffrey Whiting on the afternoon when word was brought
to him that suspicious men had been seen in the hills?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Was the name of Rogers mentioned by either Stocking or Whiting?"
"No, sir."
Then he flashed the question upon her:
"What did Rafe Gadbeau say when he was dying?"
Ruth staggered, quivering in every nerve. The impact of the sudden,
startling question leaping upon her over-wrought mind was nothing to
what followed. For, in answer to the question, there came a scream, a
terrified, agonised scream, mingled of fright and remorse and--relief.
A scream out of the fire. A scream from death. _On my knee I dropped
and shot him, shot Rogers as he stood._
Again Jeffrey Whiting leaned forward smiling. Again the inner citadel
of his hope stood strong about him. Ruth was there to speak the word
that would free him! Her love would set him free! It was the time.
Ruth _knew_. He would rather have it this way. He was almost glad that
the Bishop had lied. Ruth _knew_. Ruth would speak.
The words of that terrible scream went searing through Ruth's brain
and down into the very roots of her being. Oh! for the power to shout
them out to the ends of the earth!
But she looked levelly at Dardis and in a clear voice answered:
"Nothing."
Then, at his word, she stumbled down out of the stand.
Again Jeffrey Whiting fell back into his seat.
_Ruth_ had _lied_!
The walls of his inner citadel had fallen in and crushed him.
VIII
SEIGNEUR DIEU, WHITHER GO I?
The Bishop walked brokenly from the courthouse and turned up the
street toward the little church. He had not been the same man since
his experience of those two terrible nights in the hills. They had
aged him and shaken him visibly. But those nights of suffering and
superhuman effort had only attacked him physically. They had broken
the spring of his step and had drawn heavily upon the vigour and the
vital reserves which his years of simple living had left stored up in
him. He had fought with fire. He had looked death in the face. He had
roused his soul to master the passions of men. No man who has already
reached almost the full allotted span of life may do these things
without showing the outward effects of them. But these things had
struck only at the clay of the body. They had not touched the quick
spirit of the man within.
The trial through which he had passed to-day had cut deep into the
spiritual fibre of his being. If Joseph Winthrop had been given the
alternative of speaking his secret or giving up his life, he would
have offered the few years that might be his, without question or
halting. For he was a man of simple, single mind. He never quibbled or
thought of taking back any of the things which he had given to Christ.
Thirty years ago he had made his compact with the Master, and he had
never blinked the fact that every time a priest puts on a stole to
receive the secret of another's soul he puts his life in pledge for
the sanctity of that secret. It was a simple business, unclouded by
any perplexities or confusion.
Never had he thought of the alternative which had this day been forced
upon him. Years ago he had given his own life entire to Christ. The
snapping of it here at this point or a few spaces farther on would be
a matter of no more moment than the length of a thread. This world had
nothing to give him, nothing to withhold from him. But to guard his
secret at the cost of another life, and that a young, vigorous,
battling life full of future and promise, full of youth and the glory
of living, the life of a boy he loved--that was another matter. Never
had he reckoned with a thing such as that. Life had always been so
direct, so square-cut for Joseph Winthrop. To think right, to do
right, to serve God; these things had always seemed very simple. But
the thing that he had done to-day was breaking his heart. He could not
have done otherwise. He had been given no choice, to be sure.
But was it possible that God would have allowed things to come to
that issue, if somewhere, at some turn in that line of circumstances
which had led up to this day, Joseph Winthrop had not done a wrong? It
did not seem possible. Somewhere he had done wrong or he had done
foolishly--and, where men go to direct the lives of others, to do
unwisely is much the same as to do wickedly.
What use to go over the things that he had done, the things that he
had advised? What use to say, here he had done his best, there he
thought only of the right and the wise thing. Somewhere he had spoken
foolishly, or he had been headstrong in his interference, or he had
acted without thought and prayer. What use to go over the record? He
could only carry this matter to God and let Him see his heart.
He stumbled in the half light of the darkened little church and sank
heavily into the last pew. Out of the sorrow and anguish of his heart
he cried out from afar to the Presence on the little altar, where he,
Bishop of Alden, had often spoken with much authority.
When Cynthe Cardinal saw Ruth Lansing go up into the witness stand she
sank down quietly into a front seat and seemed fairly to devour the
other girl with the steady gaze of her fierce black eyes. She hung
upon every fleeting wave of the contending emotions that showed
themselves on Ruth's face. She was convinced that this girl knew that
Rafe Gadbeau had confessed to the murder of Samuel Rogers and that
Jeffrey Whiting was innocent. She had not thought that Ruth would be
called as a witness, and Dardis, in fact, had only decided upon it at
the last moment.
Once Cynthe Cardinal had been very near to hating this girl, for she
had seen Rafe Gadbeau leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very
long time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon talking
gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing
left of him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory. But that
memory was as much to her as was the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this
other girl. She was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be? What
would that girl do? If the question was not asked directly, it was not
likely that the girl would tell what she knew. She would not wish to
tell. She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the question came to
her of a sudden, without warning, without time for thought? What then?
Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny and to keep on
denying?
Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic. But she was a convert. She
did not know the terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it
who had been born to the Faith.
Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from this trial. She knew it was
no place for her to carry the awful secret that she had hidden away
in her heart. No matter how deeply she might have it hidden, the fear
hung over her that men would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint
might be enough to set some on the search for it and she had had a
superstition that it was a secret of a nature that it could not be
hidden forever. Some day some one would tear it from her heart. She
knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton during these days
when the hill people were talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers
and hunting for any possible fact that might make Jeffrey Whiting's
story believable. But she had been drawn irresistibly to the trial and
had sat all day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly, avidly to
every word that was said, waiting to hear, and praying against hearing
the name of the man she had loved. The idea of protecting his name and
his memory from the blight of his deed had become more than a
religion, more than a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own
thought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in her
world which Rafe Gadbeau had filled.
When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning of
the Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him that
he must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected. They might
as well have asked the stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell
Rafe Gadbeau's secret as to ask it from the Bishop.
But this girl was different. You could not tell what she might do
under the test. If she stood the test, if she kept the seal unbroken
upon her lips, then would Cynthe be her willing slave for life. She
would love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die for
her!
When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in
the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl
stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask
her further questions. But when she saw the girl reel and quiver in
pain, when she saw her gasp for breath and self-control, when she saw
the hunted agony in her eyes, a great light broke in upon the heart of
Cynthe Cardinal. Here was not a pale girl of the convent who could not
know what love was! Here was a woman, a sister woman, who could
suffer, who for the sake of one greater thing could trample her love
under foot, and who could and did sum it all up in one steady
word--"Nothing."
Cynthe Cardinal revolted. Her quickened heart could not look at the
torture of the other girl. She wanted to run forward and throw herself
at the feet of the other girl as she came staggering down from the
stand and implore her pardon. She wanted to cry out to her that she
must tell! That no man, alive or dead, was worth all this! For Cynthe
Cardinal knew that truth bitterly. Instead, she turned and ran like a
frightened, wild thing out of the room and up the street.
She had seen the Bishop come direct from the little church to the
court. And as she watched his face when he came down from the stand,
she knew instinctively that he was going back there. Cynthe
understood. Even M'sieur the Bishop who was so wise and strong, he was
troubled. He thought much of the young Whiting. He would have business
with God.
She slipped noiselessly in at the door of the church and saw the
Bishop kneeling there at the end of the pew, bowed and broken.
He was first aware of her when he heard a frightened, hurrying whisper
at his elbow. Some one was kneeling in the aisle beside him, saying:
_Mon Pere, je me 'cuse._
The ritual would have told him to rise and go to the confessional. But
here was a soul that was pouring its secret out to him in a torrential
rush of words and sobs that would not wait for ritual. The Bishop
listened without raising his head. He had neither the will nor the
power to break in upon that cruel story that had been torturing its
keeper night and day. He knew that it was true, knew what the end of
it would be. But still he must be careful to give no word that would
show that he knew what was coming. The French of the hills and of
Beaupre was a little too rapid for him but it was easy to follow the
thread of the story. When she had finished and was weeping quietly,
the Bishop prompted gently.
"And now? my daughter."
"And now, _Mon Pere_, must I tell? I would not tell. I loved Rafe
Gadbeau. As long as I shall live I shall love him. For his good name I
would die. But I cannot see the suffering of that girl, Ruth. _Mon
Pere_, it is too much! I cannot stand it. Yet I cannot go there before
men and call my love a murderer. Consider, _Mon Pere_. There is
another way. I, too, am guilty. I wished for the death of that man. I
would have killed him myself, for he had made Rafe Gadbeau do many
things that he would not have done. He made my love a murderer. I went
to keep Rafe Gadbeau from the setting of the fire. But I would have
killed that man myself with the gun if I could. So I hated him. When I
saw him fall, I clapped my hands in glee. See, _Mon Pere_, I am
guilty. And I called joyfully to my love to run with me and save
himself, for he was now free from that man forever. But he ran in the
path of the fire because he feared those other men.
"But see, _Mon Pere_, I am guilty. I will go and tell the court that I
am the guilty one. I will say that my hand shot that man. See, I will
tell the story. I have told it many times to myself. Such a straight
story I shall tell. And they will believe. I will make them believe.
And they will not hurt a girl much," she said, dropping back upon her
native shrewdness to strengthen her plea. "The railroad does not care
who killed Rogers. They want only to punish the young Whiting. And the
court will believe, as I shall tell it."
"But, my daughter," said the Bishop, temporising. "It would not be
true. We must not lie."
"But M'sieur the Bishop, himself," the girl argued swiftly, evidently
separating the priest in the confessional from the great bishop in his
public walk, "he himself, on the stand--"
The girl stopped abruptly.
The Bishop held the silence of the grave.
"_Mon Pere_ will make me tell, then--the truth," she began. "_Mon
Pere_, I cannot! I--!"
"Let us consider," the Bishop broke in deliberately. "Suppose he had
told this thing to you when he was dying. You would have said to him:
Your soul may not rest if you leave another to suffer for your deed.
Would he not have told you to tell and clear the other man?"
"To escape Hell," said the girl quickly, "yes. He would have said:
Tell everything; tell anything!" In the desolate forlornness of her
grief she had not left to her even an illusion. Just as he was, she
had known the man, good and bad, brave and cowardly--and had loved
him. Would always love him.
"We will not speak of Hell," said the Bishop gently. "In that hour he
would have seen the right. He would have told you to tell."
"But he confessed to M'sieur the Bishop himself," she retorted
quickly, still seeming to forget that she was talking to the prelate
in person, but springing the trap of her quick wit and sound Moral
Theology back upon him with a vengeance, "and he gave _him_ no leave
to speak."
The Bishop in a panic hurried past the dangerous ground.
"If he had left a debt, would you pay it for him, my daughter?"
"_Mon Pere_, with the bones of my hands!"
"Consider, then, he is not now the man that you knew. The man who was
blind and walked in dark places. He is now a soul in a world where a
great light shines about him. He knows now that which he did not know
here--Truth. He sees the things which here he did not see. He stands
alone in the great open space of the Beyond. He looks up to God and
cries: _Seigneur Dieu_, whither go I?
"And God replying, asks him why does he hesitate, standing in the open
place. Would he come back to the world?
"And he answers: 'No, my God; but I have left a debt behind and
another man's life stands in pledge for my debt; I cannot go forward
with that debt unpaid.'
"Then God: 'And is there none to cancel the debt? Is there not one in
all that world who loved you? Were you, then, so wicked that none
loved you who will pay the debt?'
"And he will answer with a lifted heart: 'My God, yes; there was one,
a girl; in spite of me, she loved me; she will make the debt right;
only because she loved me may I be saved; she will speak and the debt
will be right; my God, let me go.'"
The Bishop's French was sometimes wonderfully and fearfully put
together. But the girl saw the pictures. The imagery was familiar to
her race and faith. She was weeping softly, with almost a little break
of joy among the tears. For she saw the man, whom she had loved in
spite of what he was, lifted now out of the weaknesses and sins of
life. And her love leaped up quickly to the ideal and the illusions
that every woman craves for and clings to.
"This," the Bishop was going on quietly, "is the new man we are to
consider; the one who stands in the light and sees Truth. We must not
hear the little mouthings of the world. Does he care for the opinions
or the words that are said here? See, he stands in the great open
space, all alone, and dares to look up to the Great God and tell Him
all. Will you be afraid to stand in the court and tell these people,
who do not matter at all?
"Remember, it is not for Jeffrey Whiting. It is not for the sake of
Ruth Lansing. It is because the man you loved calls back to you, from
where he has gone, to do the thing which the wisdom he has now learned
tells him must be done. He has learned the lesson of eternal Truth. He
would have you tell."
"_Mon Pere_, I will tell the tale," said the girl simply as she rose
from her knees. "I will go quickly, while I have yet the courage."
The Bishop went with her to one of the counsel rooms in the courthouse
and sent for Dardis.
"This girl," he told the lawyer, "has a story to tell. I think you
would do wisely to put her on the stand and let her tell it in her own
way. She will make no mistakes. They will not be able to break her
down."
Then the Bishop went back to take up again his business with God.
As a last, and almost hopeless, resort, Jeffrey Whiting had been put
upon the stand in his own defence. There was nothing he could tell
which the jurors had not already heard in one form or another.
Everybody had heard what he had said that morning on Bald Mountain. He
had not been believed even then, by men who had never had a reason to
doubt his simple word. There was little likelihood that he would be
believed here now by these jurors, whose minds were already fixed by
the facts and the half truths which they had been hearing. But there
was some hope that his youth and the manly sincerity with which he
clung to his simple story might have some effect. It might be that a
single man on that jury would be so struck with his single sturdy tale
that he would refuse to disbelieve it altogether. You could never tell
what might strike a man on a jury. So Dardis argued.
Jeffrey Whiting did not care. If his counsel wished him to tell his
story he would do so. It would not matter. His own friends did not
believe his story. Nobody believed it. Two people _knew_ that it was
true. And those two people had stood up there upon the stand and sworn
that they did not know. One of them was a good man, a man of God, a
man he would have trusted with every dear thing that life held. That
man had stood up there and lied. The other was a girl whom he loved,
and who, he was sure, loved him.
It had not been easy for Ruth to tell that lie--or maybe she did not
consider it a lie: he had seen her suffer terribly in the telling of
it. He was beginning to feel that he did not care much what was the
outcome of the trial. Life was a good thing, it was true. And death,
or a life of death, as a murderer, was worse than twenty common
deaths. But that had all dropped into the background. Only one big
thing stood before him. It laid hold upon him and shook him and took
from him his interest in every other fact in the world.
Ruth Lansing, he thought he could say, had never before in her life
told a lie. Why should she have ever told a lie. She had never had
reason to fear any one; and they only lie who fear. He would have said
that the fear of death could not have made Ruth Lansing lie. Yet she
had stood up there and lied.
For what? For a church. For a religion to which she had foolishly
given herself. For that she had given up him. For that she had given
up her conscience. For that she had given up her own truth!
It was unbelievable. But he had sat here and listened to it.
He had heard her lie simply and calmly in answer to a question which
meant life or death to him. She had known that. She could not have
escaped knowing it if she had tried. There was no way in which she
could have fooled herself or been persuaded into believing that she
was not lying or that she was not taking from him his last hope of
life.
Jeffrey Whiting did not try to grapple or reason with the fact. What
was the use? It was the end of all things. He merely sat and gazed
dumbly at the monstrous thing that filled his whole mental vision.
He went forward to the witness chair and stood woodenly until some
one told him to be seated. He answered the questions put him
automatically, without looking either at the questioner or at the
jury who held his fate in their hands. Men who had been watching
the alert, keen-faced boy all day yesterday and through to-day
wondered what had happened to him. Was he breaking down? Would he
confess? Or had he merely ceased hoping and turned sullen and dumb?
Without any trace of emotion or interest, he told how he had raced
forward, charging upon the man who was setting the fire. He looked
vacantly at the Judge while the latter ordered that part of his words
stricken out which told what the man was doing. He showed no
resentment, no feeling of any kind. He related how the man had run
away from him, trailing the torch through the brush, and again he did
not seem to notice the Judge's anger in cautioning him not to mention
the fire again.