slightest warning, the lieutenant threw himself upon the captain,
attacking him viciously with his sword. For a moment they struggled
there, unnoticed in the dust of the conflict. Then the captain,
swinging free, struck the lieutenant's sword from his hand. The latter
drew his pistol and fired, point blank. It missed. By what miracle I
do not know. All this time the captain had held his sword poised to
lunge, within easy striking distance of the other's throat. But he had
made no attempt to thrust. As the pistol missed I saw him stiffen his
arm to strike. Instead he looked a long moment into the lieutenant's
eyes. The latter was screaming what were evidently taunts into his
face. The captain dropped his arm, wheeled, and plunged at the now
breaking line of Confederates.
"I have seen brave men kill bravely. I have seen brave men bravely
refrain from killing. That was the bravest thing I ever saw."
Clifford Stanton sat staring directly in front of him. He gave no sign
of hearing. He was living over for himself that scene on a lonely,
forgotten Virginia road. At last he said as to himself:
"The lieutenant died, a soldier's death, the next day."
"I knew," said the Bishop quietly. "My question is: Are you the same
brave man with a soldier's brave, great heart that you were that
day?"
For a long time Clifford Stanton sat staring directly at something
that was not in the visible world. The question had sprung upon him
out of the dead past. What right had this man, what right had any man
to face him with it?
He wheeled savagely upon the Bishop:
"You sat by the roadside and got a glimpse of the tragedy of my life
as it whirled by you on the road! How dare you come here to tell me
the little bit of it you saw?"
"Because," said the Bishop swiftly, "you have forgotten how great and
brave a man you are."
Stanton stared uncomprehendingly at him. He was stirred to the depths
of feelings that he had not known for years. But even in his emotion
and bewilderment the steel trap of silence set upon his face. His
lifetime of never speaking until he knew what he was going to say kept
him waiting to hear more. It was not any conscious caution; it was
merely the instinct of self-defence.
"For months," the Bishop was going on quietly, "the people of my hills
have been harassed by you in your unfair efforts to get possession of
the lands upon which their fathers built their homes. You have tried
to cheat them. You have sent men to lie to them. You tried to debauch
a legislature in your attempt to overcome them. I have here in my
pocket the sworn confessions of two men who stood in the shadow of
death and said that they had been sent to burn a whole countryside
that you and your associates coveted--to burn the people in their
homes like the meadow birds in their nests. I can trace that act to
within two men of you. And I can sit here, Clifford Stanton, and look
you in the eye man to man and tell you that I _know_ you gave the
suggestion. And you cannot look back and deny it. I cannot take you
into a court of law in this State and prove it. We both know the
futility of talking of that. But I can take you, I do take you this
minute into the court of your own heart--where I know a brave man
lives--and convict you of this thing. You know it. I know it. If the
whole world stood here accusing you would we know it any the better?
"Now my people have made a terrible mistake. They have taken the law
into their own hands and have thought to punish you themselves. They
have done wrong, they have done foolishly. Who can punish you? You
have power above the law. Your interests are above the courts of the
land. They did not understand. They did not know you. They have been
misled. They have listened to men like me preaching: 'Right shall
prevail: Justice shall conquer.' And where does right prevail? And
when shall justice conquer? No doubt you have said these phrases
yourself. Because your fathers and my fathers taught us to say them.
But are they true? Does justice conquer? Does right prevail? You can
say. I ask you, who have the answer in your power. Does right prevail?
Then give my stricken people what is theirs. Does justice conquer?
Then see that they come to no harm.
"I dare to put this thing raw to your face because I know the man that
once lived within you. I saw you--!"
"Don't harp on that," Stanton cut in viciously. "You know nothing
about it."
"I _do_ harp on that. I have come here to harp on that. Do you think
that if I had not with my eyes seen that thing I would have come near
you at all? No. I would have branded you before all men for the thing
that you have done. I would have given these confessions which I hold
to the world. I would have denounced you as far as tongue and pen
would go to every man who through four years gave blood at your side.
I would have braved the rebuke of my superiors and maybe the
discipline of my Church to bring upon you the hard thoughts of men. I
would have made your name hated in the ears of little children. But I
would not have come to you.
"If I had not seen that thing I would not have come to you, for I
would have said: What good? The man is a coward without a heart. A
_coward_, do you remember that word?"
The man groaned and struck out with his hand as though to drive away a
ghastly thing that would leap upon him.
"A coward without a heart," the Bishop repeated remorselessly, "who
has men and women and children in his power and who, because he has no
heart, can use his power to crush them.
"If I had not seen, I would have said that.
"But I saw. I _saw_. And I have come here to ask you: Are you the same
brave man with a heart that I saw on that day?
"You shall not evade me. Do you think you can put me off with defences
and puling arguments of necessity, or policy, or the sacredness of
property? No. You and I are here looking at naked truth. I will go
down into your very soul and have it out by the roots, the naked
truth. But I will have my answer. Are you that same man?
"If you are not that same man; if you have killed that in you which
gave life to that man; if that man no longer lives in you; if you are
not capable of being that same man with the heart of a great and
tender hero, then tell me and I will go. But you shall answer me. I
will have my answer."
Clifford Stanton rose heavily from his chair and stood trembling as
though in an overpowering rage, and visibly struggling for his command
of mind and tongue.
"Words, words, words," he groaned at last. "Your life is made of
words. Words are your coin. What do you know?
"Do you think that words can go down into my soul to find the man that
was once there? Do you think that words can call him up? When did
words ever mean anything to a man's real heart! You come here with
your question. It's made of words.
"When did men ever do anything for _words_? Honour is a word. Truth is
a word. Bravery is a word. Loyalty is a word. Hero is a word. Do you
think men do things for words? No! What do you know? What _could_ you
know?
"Men do things and you call them by words. But do they do them for the
words? No!
"They do them-- Because _some woman lives, or once lived!_ What do
_you_ know?
"Go out there. Stay there." He pointed. "I've got to think."
He fell brokenly into his chair and lay against his desk. The Bishop
rose and walked from the room.
When he heard the door close, the man got up and going to the door
barred it.
He came back and sat awhile, his head leaning heavily upon his propped
hands.
He opened a drawer of his desk and looked at a smooth, glinting black
and steel thing that lay there. Then he shut the drawer with a bang
that went out to the Bishop listening in the outer office. It was a
sinister, suggestive noise, and for an instant it chilled that good
man's heart. But his ears were sharp and true and he knew immediately
that he had been mistaken.
Stanton pulled out another drawer, unlocked a smaller compartment
within it, and from the latter took a small gold-framed picture. He
set it up on the desk between his hands and looked long at it,
questioning the face in the frame with a tender, diffident expression
of a wonder that never ceased, of a longing never to be stilled.
The face that looked out of the picture was one of a quiet,
translucent beauty. At first glance the face had none of the striking
features that men associate with great beauty. But behind the eyes
there seemed to glow, and to grow gradually, and softly stronger, a
light, as though diffused within an alabaster vase, that slowly
radiated from the whole countenance an impression of indescribable,
gentle loveliness.
Clifford Stanton had often wondered what was that light from within.
He wondered now, and questioned. Never before had that light seemed
so wonderful and so real. Now there came to him an answer. An answer
that shook him, for it was the last answer he would have expected. The
light within was truth--truth. It seemed that in a world of sham and
illusions and evasions this one woman had understood, had lived with
truth.
The man laughed. A low, mirthless, dry laugh that was nearer to a
sob.
"Was that it, Lucy?" he queried. "Truth? Then let us have a little
truth, for once! I'll tell you some truth!
"I lied a while ago. He did _not_ die a soldier's death. I told the
same lie to you long ago. Words. Words. And yet you went to Heaven
happy because I lied to you and kept on lying to you. Words. And yet
you died a happy woman, because of that lie.
"He lied to you. He took you from me with lies. Words. Lies. And yet
they made you happy. Where is truth?
"You lived happy and died happy with a lie. Because I lied like what
they call a man and a gentleman. _Truth!_"
He looked searchingly, wonderingly at the face before him. Did he
expect to see the light fade out, to see the face wither under the
bitter revelation?
"I've been everything," he went on, still trying to make his point,
"I've done everything, that men say I've been and done. Why?
"Well--Why?" he asked sharply. "Did it make any difference?
"Hard, grasping, tricky, men call me that to my face--sometimes.
Well--Why not? Does it make any difference? Did it make any difference
with you? If I had thought it would-- But it didn't. Lies, trickery,
words! They served with you. They made you happy. _Truth!_"
But as he looked into the face and the smiling light of truth
persisted in it, there came over his soul the dawn of a wonder. And
the dawn glowed within him, so that it came to his eyes and looked out
wondering at a world remade.
"Is it true, Lucy?" he asked gently. "Can that be _truth_, at last? Is
that what you mean? Did you, deep down, somewhere beneath words and
beneath thoughts, did you, did you really understand--a little? And do
you, somewhere, understand now?
"Then tell me. Was it worth the lies? Down underneath, when you
understood, which was the truth? The thing I did--which men would call
fine? Or was it the words?
"Is that it? Is that the truth, Lucy? Was it the fine thing that was
really the truth, and did you, do you, know it, after all? Is there
truth that lives deep down, and did you, who were made of truth, did
you somehow understand all the time?"
He sat awhile, wondering, questioning; finally believing. Then he
said:
"Lucy, a man out there wants his answer. I will not speak it to him.
But I'll say it to you: Yes, I am that same man who once did what they
call a fine, brave thing. I didn't do it because it was a great thing,
a brave thing. I did it for you.
"And--I'll do this for you."
He looked again at the face in the picture, as if to make sure. Then
he locked it away quickly in its place.
He thought for a moment, then drew a pad abruptly to him and began
writing. He wrote two telegrams, one to the Governor of the State, the
other to the Sheriff of Tupper County. Then he took another pad and
wrote a note, this to his personal representative who was following
the state troops into the hills.
He rose and walked briskly to the door. Throwing it open he called a
clerk and gave him the two telegrams. He held the note in his hand and
asked the Bishop back into the office.
Closing the door quickly, he said without preface:
"This note will put my man up there at your service. You will prefer
to go up into the hills yourself, I think. The officers in command of
the troops will know that you are empowered to act for all parties.
The Governor will have seen to that before you get there, I think.
There will be no attempt at prosecutions, now or afterwards. You can
settle the whole matter in no time.
"We will not buy the land, but we'll give a fair rental, based on what
ores we find to take out. You can give _your_ word--mine wouldn't go
for much up there, I guess," he put in grimly--"that it will be fair.
You can make that the basis of settlement.
"They can go back and rebuild. I will help, where it will do the most
good. Our operations won't interfere much with their farm land, I
find.
"You will want to start at once. That is all, I guess, Bishop," he
concluded abruptly.
The Bishop reached for the smaller man's hand and wrung it with a
sudden, unwonted emotion.
"I will not cheapen this, sir," he said evenly, "by attempting to
thank you."
"A mere whim of mine, that's all," Stanton cut in almost curtly, the
steel-trap expression snapping into place over his face. "A mere
whim."
"Well," said the Bishop slowly, looking him squarely in the eyes, "I
only came to ask a question, anyhow." Then he turned and walked
briskly from the office. He had no right and no wish to know what the
other man chose to conceal beneath that curt and incisive manner.
So these two men parted. In words, they had not understood each other.
Neither had come near the depths of the other. But then, what man does
ever let another man see what is in his heart?
* * * * *
All day long the line of armed men had gone spreading itself wider and
wider, to draw itself around the edges of the shorter line of men
hidden in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day long clearly and
more clearly Jeffrey Whiting had been seeing the inevitable end. His
line was already stretched almost to the breaking point. If the enemy
had known, there were dangerous gaps in it now through which a few
daring men might have pushed and have begun to divide up the strength
of the men with him.
All the afternoon as he watched he saw other and yet other groups and
troops of men come up the railroad, detrain and push out ever farther
upon the enveloping wings to east and west.
Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line had been driven in and
almost surrounded. They had decided in the beginning to leave their
horses in the rear, and so use them only at the last. But the
spreading line in front had become too long to be covered on foot by
the few men he had. They were forced to use the speed of the animals
to make a show of greater force than they really had. The horses
furnished marks that even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the
afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams of terrified,
wounded horses rang horribly through the woods above the pattering
crackle of the irregular rifle fire. Old men who years before had
learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and fell asleep grumbling.
Young men and boys who had never heard such sounds turned sick with
horror or wandered frightened through the dark, nervously ready to
fire on any moving twig or scraping branch.
In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the line, talking aside to
every man; telling them to slip quietly away through the dark. They
could make their way out through the loose lines of soldiers and
sheriffs' men and get down to the villages where they would be unknown
and where nobody would bother with them.
The inevitable few took his word-- There is always the inevitable few.
They slipped away one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly
good reason for going, several good reasons, in fact; any reason,
indeed, but that they were afraid. Most of them were gathered in by
the soldier pickets and sent down to jail.
Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with a grim, ugly suggestion in
it of the coming winter. Jeffrey Whiting and his men drew wearily out
to their posts, munching dryly at the last of the stores which they
had taken from the construction depots along the line which they had
destroyed. This was the end. It was not far from the mind of each man
that this would probably be his last meal.
The firing began again as the outer line came creeping in upon them.
They had still the great advantage of the shelter of the woods and the
formation of the soldiers, while their marksmanship kept those
directly in front of them almost out of range. But there was nothing
in sight before them but that they would certainly all be surrounded
and shot down or taken.
Suddenly the fire from below ceased. Those who had been watching the
most distant of the two wings creeping around them saw these men halt
and slowly begin to gather back together. What was it? Were they going
to rush at last? Here would be a fight in earnest!
But the soldiers, still keeping their spread formation, merely walked
back in their tracks until they were entirely out of range. It must be
a ruse of some sort. The hill men stuck to their shelter, puzzled, but
determined not to be drawn out.
Jeffrey Whiting, watching near the middle of the line, saw an old man
walking, barehead, up over the lines of half-burnt ties and twisted
rails. That white head with the high, wide brow, the slightly
stooping, spare shoulders, the long, swinging walk-- That was the
Bishop of Alden!
Jeffrey Whiting dropped his gun and, yelling to the men on either side
to stay where they were, jumped down into the roadbed and ran to meet
the Bishop.
"Are any men killed?" the Bishop asked before Jeffrey had time to
speak as they met.
"Old Erskine Beasley was shot through the chest--we don't know how bad
it is," said Jeffrey, stopping short. "Ten other men are wounded. I
don't think any of them are bad."
"Call in your men," said the Bishop briefly. "The soldiers are going
back."
At Jeffrey's call the men came running from all sides as he and the
Bishop reached the line. Haggard, ragged, powder-grimed they gathered
round, staring in dull unbelief at this new appearance of the White
Horse Chaplain, for so one and all they knew and remembered him. Men
who had seen him years ago at Fort Fisher slipped back into the scene
of that day and looked about blankly for the white horse. And young
men who had heard that tale many times and had seen and heard of his
coming through the fire to French Village stared round-eyed at him.
What did this coming mean?
He told them shortly the terms that Clifford W. Stanton, their enemy,
was willing to make with them. And in the end he added:
"You have only my word that these things will be done as I say. _I_
believe. If you believe, you will take your horses and get back to
your families at once."
Then, in the weakness and reaction of relief, the men for the first
time knew what they had been through. Their knees gave under them.
They tried to cheer, but could raise only a croaking quaver. Many who
had thought never to see loved ones again burst out sobbing and crying
over the names of those they were saved to.
The Bishop, taking Jeffrey Whiting with him, walked slowly back down
the roadbed. Suddenly Jeffrey remembered something that had gone
completely out of his mind in these last hours.
"Bishop," he stammered, "that day--that day in court. I--I said you
lied. Now I know you didn't. You told the truth, of course."
"My boy," said the Bishop queerly, "yesterday I asked a man, on his
soul, for the truth--the truth. I got no answer.
"But I remembered that Pontius Pilate, in the name of the Emperor of
all the World, once asked what was truth. And _he_ got no answer.
Once, at least, in our lives we have to learn that there are things
bigger than we are. We get no answer."
Jeffrey inquired no more for truth that day.
X
THAT THEY BE NOT AFRAID
It was morning in the hills; morning and Spring and the bud of
Promise.
The snow had been gone from the sunny places for three weeks now. He
still lingered three feet deep on the crown of Bald Mountain, from
which only the hot June sun and the warm rains would drive him. He
still held fastnesses on the northerly side of high hills, where the
sun could not come at him and only the trickling rain-wash running
down the hill could eat him out from underneath. But the sun had
chased him away from the open places and had beckoned lovingly to the
grass and the germinant life beneath to come boldly forth, for the
enemy was gone.
But the grass was timid. And the hardy little wild flowers, the
forget-me-nots and the little wild pansies held back fearfully. Even
the bold dandelions, the hobble-de-hoys and tom-boys of meadow and
hill, peeped out with a wary circumspection that belied their nature.
For all of them had been burned to the very roots of the roots. But
the sun came warmer, more insistent, and kissed the scarred, brown
body of earth and warmed it. Life stirred within. The grass and the
little flowers took courage out of their very craving for life and
pushed resolutely forth. And, lo! The miracle was accomplished! The
world was born again!
Cynthe Cardinal was coming up Beaver Run on her way back to French
Village. She had been to put the first flowers of the Spring on the
grave of Rafe Gadbeau, where Father Ponfret had blessed the ground for
him and they had laid him, there under the sunny side of the Gaunt
Rocks that had given him his last breathing space that he might die in
peace. They had put him here, for there was no way in that time to
carry him to the little cemetery in French Village. And Cynthe was
well satisfied that it was so. Here, under the Gaunt Rocks, she would
not have to share him with any one. And she would not have to hear
people pointing out the grave to each other and to see them staring.
The water tumbling down the Run out of the hills sang a glad,
uproarious song, as is the way of all brooks at their beginnings,
concerning the necessity of getting down as swiftly as possible to the
big, wide life of the sea. The sea would not care at all if that brook
never came down to it. But the brook did not know that. Would not have
believed it if it had been told.
And Cynthe hummed herself, a sad little song of old Beaupre--which
she had never seen, for Cynthe was born here in the hills. Cynthe was
sad, beyond doubt; for here was the mating time, and-- But Cynthe was
not unhappy. The Good God was still in his Heaven, and still good.
Life beckoned. The breath of air was sweet. There was work in the
world to do. And--when all was said and done--Rafe Gadbeau was in
Heaven.
As she left the Run and was crossing up to the divide she met Jeffrey
Whiting coming down. He had been over in the Wilbur's Fork country and
was returning home. He stopped and showed that he was anxious to talk
with her. Cynthe was not averse. She was ever a chatty, sociable
little person, and, besides, for some time she had had it in mind that
she would some day take occasion to say a few pertinent things to this
scowling young gentleman with the big face.
"You're with Ruth Lansing a lot, aren't you?" he said, after some
verbal beating about the bush; "how is she?"
"Why don't you come see, if you want to know?" retorted Cynthe
sharply.
Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went on:
"If you wanted to know why didn't you come up all Winter and see? Why
didn't you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babies
through the black diphtheria, when their own mothers were afraid of
them? Why didn't you come see when she was helping the mothers up
there to get into their houses and make the houses warm before the
coming of the Winter, though she had no house of her own? Why didn't
you come see when she nearly got her death from the 'mmonia caring for
old Robbideau Laclair in his house that had no roof on it, till she
shamed the lazy men to go and fix that roof? Did you ask somebody
then? Why didn't you come see?"
"Well," Jeffrey defended, "I didn't know about any of those things.
And we had plenty to do here--our place and my mother and all. I
didn't see her at all till Easter Sunday. I sneaked up to your church,
just to get a look at her. She saw me. But she didn't seem to want
to."
"But she should have been delighted to see you," Cynthe snapped back.
"Don't you think so? Certainly, she should have been overjoyed. She
should have flown to your arms! Not so? You remember what you said to
her the last time you saw her before that. No? I will tell you. You
called her 'liar' before the whole court, even the Judge! Of one
certainty, she should have flown to you. No?"