But he was not wise. He was sore. He felt ill-used. He was sure that
some of this was unjust. He foolishly stayed to argue.
"But she--she cared for me," he blurted out. "I know she did. I
couldn't understand why she couldn't tell--the truth; when you--you
did so much for me."
"For you? For _you_!" the girl flamed up in his face. "Oh, villainous
monster of vanity! For _you_! Ha! I could laugh! For _you_! I put _mon
Rafe_--dead in his grave--to shame before all the world, called him
murderer, blackened his name, for _you_!
"No! No! _No!_ _Never!_
"I would not have said a word against him to save you from the death.
_Never!_
"I did what I did, because there was a debt. A debt which _mon Rafe_
had forgotten to pay. He was waiting outside of Heaven for me to pay
that debt. I paid. I paid. His way was made straight. He could go in.
I did it for _you_! Ha!"
The theology of this was beyond Jeffrey. And the girl had talked so
rapidly and so fiercely that he could not gather even the context of
the matter. He gave up trying to follow it and went back to his main
argument.
"But why couldn't she have told the truth?"
"The truth, eh! You must have the truth! The girl must tell the truth
for you! No matter if she was to blacken her soul before God, you
must have the truth told for you. The truth! It was not enough for you
to know that the girl loved you, with her heart, with her life, that
she would have died for you if she might! No. The poor girl must tear
out the secret lining of her heart for you, to save you!
"Think you that if _mon Rafe_ was alive and stood there where you
stood, in peril of his life; think you that he would ask me to give up
the secret of the Holy Confession to save him. _Non!_ _Mon Rafe_ was a
_man_! He would die, telling me to keep that which God had trusted me
with!
"Name of a Woodchuck! Who were you to be saved; that the Good God must
come down from His Heaven to break the Seal of the Unopened Book for
_you_!
"You ask for truth! _Tiens!_ I will tell you truth!
"You sat in the place of the prisoner and cried that you were an
innocent man. _Mon Rafe_ was the guilty man. The whole world must come
forth, the secrets of the grave must come forth to declare you
innocent and him guilty! You were innocent! You were persecuted! The
earth and the Heaven must come to show that you were innocent and he
was guilty! _Bah!_ _You were as guilty as he!_
"I was there. I saw. Your finger was on the trigger. You only waited
for the man to stop moving. Murder was in your heart. Murder was in
your soul. Murder was in your finger. But you were innocent and _mon
Rafe_ was guilty. By how much?
"By one second. That was the difference between _mon Rafe_ and you.
Just that second that he shot before you were ready. _That_ was the
difference between you the innocent man and _mon Rafe_!
"You were guilty. In your heart you were guilty. In your soul you were
guilty. M'sieur Cain himself was not more guilty than you!
"You were more guilty than _mon Rafe_, for he had suffered more from
that man. He was hunted. He was desperate, crazy! You were cool. You
were ready. Only _mon Rafe_ was a little quicker, because he was
desperate. Before the Good God you were more guilty.
"And _mon Rafe_ must be blackened more than the fire had blackened his
poor body. And the poor Ruth must break the Holy Secret. And the good
M'sieur the Bishop must break his holiest oath. All to make you
innocent!
"Bah! _Innocent!_"
She flung away from him and ran up the hill. Cynthe had not said quite
all that she intended to say to this young gentleman. But then, also,
she had said a good deal more than she had intended to say. So it was
about even. She had said enough. And it would do him no harm. She had
felt that she owed _mon Rafe_ a little plain speaking. She was much
relieved.
Jeffrey Whiting stood where she had left him digging up the tender
roots of the new grass with his toe. He did not look after the girl.
He had forgotten her.
He felt no resentment at the things that she had said. He did not
argue with himself as to whether these things were just or unjust. Of
all the things that she had said only one thing mattered. And that not
because she had said it. It mattered because it was true. The quick,
jabbing sentences from the girl had driven home to him just one
thing.
Guilty? He _was_ guilty. He was as guilty as--Rafe Gadbeau.
Provocation? Yes, he had had provocation, bitter, blinding provocation.
But so had Rafe Gadbeau: and he had never thought of Rafe Gadbeau as
anything but guilty of murder.
He turned on his heel and walked down the Run with swift, swinging
strides, fighting this conviction that was settling upon him. He
fought it viciously, with contempt, arguing that he was a man, that
the thing was done and past, that men have no time for remorse and
sickish, mawkish repentance. Those things were for brooding women, and
Frenchmen. He fought it reasonably, sagaciously; contending that he
had not, in fact, pulled the trigger. How did he know that he would
ever have done so? Maybe he had not really intended to kill at all.
Maybe he would not have killed. The man might have spoken to him.
Perhaps he was going to speak when he turned that time. Who could
tell? Ten thousand things might have happened, any one of which would
have stood between him and killing the man. He fought it defiantly.
Suppose he had killed the man? What about it? The man deserved it. He
had a right to kill him.
But he knew that he was losing at every angle of the fight. For the
conviction answered not a word to any of these things. It merely
fastened itself upon his spirit and stuck to the original indictment:
"As guilty as Rafe Gadbeau."
And when he came over the top of the hill, from where he could look
down upon the grave of Rafe Gadbeau there under the Gaunt Rocks, the
conviction pointed out to him just one enduring fact. It said: "There
is the grave of Rafe Gadbeau; as long as memory lives to say anything
about that grave it will say: a murderer was buried here."
Then he fought no more with the conviction. It gripped his spirit and
cowed him. It sat upon his shoulders and rode home with him. His
mother saw it in his face, and, not understanding, began to look for
some fresh trouble.
She need not have looked for new trouble, so far as concerned things
outside himself. For Jeffrey was doing very well in the world of men.
He had gotten the home rebuilt, a more comfortable and finer home than
it had ever been. He had secured an excellent contract from the
railroad to supply thousands of ties out of the timber of the high
hills. He had made money out of that. And once he had gotten a taste
of money-making, in a business that was his by the traditions of his
people and his own liking, he knew that he had found himself a
career.
He was working now on a far bigger project, the reforesting of thirty
thousand acres of the higher hill country. In time there would be
unlimited money in that. But there was more than money in it. It was a
game and a life which he knew and which he loved. To make money by
making things more abundant, by covering the naked peaks of the hill
country with sturdy, growing timber, that was a thing that appealed to
him.
All the Winter nights he had spent learning the things that men had
done in Germany and elsewhere in this direction, and in adding this
knowledge to what he knew could be done here in the hills. Already he
knew it was being said that he was a young fellow who knew more about
growing timber than any two old men in the hills. And he knew how much
this meant, coming from among a people who are not prone to give youth
more than its due. Already he was being picked as an expert. Next
week he was going down to Albany to give answers to a legislative
committee for the Forest Commission, which was trying to get
appropriations from the State for cleaning up brush and deadfalls from
out of standing timber--a thing that if well done would render forest
fires almost harmless.
He was getting a standing and a recognition which now made that law
school diploma--the thing that he had once regarded as the portal of
the world--look cheap and little.
But, as he sat late that night working on his forestry calculations,
the roadway of his dreams fell away from under him. The high
colour of his ambitions faded to a grey wall that stood before him
and across the grey wall in letters of black he could only see the
word--_guilty_.
What was it all worth? Why work? Why fight? Why dream? Why anything?
when at the end and the beginning of all things there stood that wall
with the word written across it. Guilty--guilty as Rafe Gadbeau. And
Ruth Lansing--!
A flash of sudden insight caught him and held him in its glaring
light. He had been doing all this work. He had built this home. He had
fought the roughest timber-jacks and the high hills and the raging
winter for money. He had dreamt and laboured on his dreams and built
them higher. Why? For Ruth Lansing.
He had fought the thought of her. He had put her out of his mind. He
had said that she had failed him in need. He had even, in the blackest
time of the night, called her liar. He had forgotten her, he said.
Now he knew that not for an instant had she been out of his mind.
Every stroke of work had been for her. She had stood at the top of the
high path of every struggling dream.
Between him and her now rose that grey wall with the one word written
on it. Was that what they had meant that day there in the court, she
and the Bishop? Had they not lied, after all? Was there some sort of
uncanny truth or insight or hidden justice in that secret confessional
of theirs that revealed the deep, the real, the everlasting truth,
while it hid the momentary, accidental truth of mere words? In effect,
they had said that he was guilty. And he _was_ guilty!
What was that the Bishop had said when he had asked for truth that day
on the railroad line? "Sooner or later we have to learn that there is
something bigger than we are." Was this what it meant? Was this the
thing bigger than he was? The thing that had seen through him, had
looked down into his heart, had measured him; was this the thing that
was bigger than he?
He was whirled about in a confusing, distorting maze of imagination,
misinformation, and some unreadable facts.
He was a guilty man. Ruth Lansing knew that he was guilty. That was
why she had acted as she had. He would go to her. He would--! But what
was the use? She would not talk to him about this. She would merely
deny, as she had done before, that she knew anything at all. What
could he do? Where could he turn? They, he and Ruth, could never speak
of that thing. They could never come to any understanding of anything.
This thing, this wall--with that word written on it--would stand
between them forever; this wall of guilt and the secret that was
sealed behind her lips. Certainly this was the thing that was stronger
than he. There was no answer. There was no way out.
Guilty! Guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!
But Rafe Gadbeau had found a way out. He was not guilty any more.
Cynthe had said so. He had gotten past that wall of guilt somehow. He
had merely come through the fire and thrown himself at a man's feet
and had his guilt wiped away. What was there in that uncanny thing
they called confession, that a man, guilty, guilty as--as Rafe
Gadbeau, could come to another man, and, by the saying of a few words,
turn over and face death feeling that his guilt was wiped away?
It was a delusion, of course. The saying of words could never wipe
away Rafe Gadbeau's guilt, any more than it could take away this guilt
from Jeffrey Whiting. It was a delusion, yes. But Rafe Gadbeau
_believed_ it! Cynthe believed it! And Cynthe was no fool. _Ruth_
believed it!
It was a delusion, yes. But--_What_ a delusion! What a magnificent,
soul-stirring delusion! A delusion that could lift Rafe Gadbeau out of
the misery of his guilt, that carried the souls of millions of guilty
people through all the world up out of the depths of their crimes to a
confidence of relief and freedom!
Then the soul of Jeffrey Whiting went down into the abyss of
despairing loneliness. It trod the dark ways in which there was no
guidance. It did not look up, for it knew not to whom or to what it
might appeal. It travelled an endless round of memory, from cause to
effect and back again to cause, looking for the single act, or
thought, that must have been the starting point, that must have held
the germ of his guilt.
Somewhere there must have been a beginning. He knew that he was not in
any particular a different person, capable of anything different,
likely to anything different, that morning on Bald Mountain from what
he had been on any other morning since he had become a man. There was
never a time, so far as he could see, when he would not have been
ready to do the thing which he was ready to do that morning--given the
circumstances. Nor had he changed in any way since that morning. What
had been essentially his act, his thought, a part of him, that morning
was just as much a part of him, was himself, in fact, this minute.
There was no thing in the succession of incidents to which he could
point and say: That was not I who did that: I did not mean that: I am
sorry I did that. Nor would there ever be a time when he could say any
of these things. It seemed that he must always have been guilty of
that thing; that in all his life to come he must always be guilty of
it. There had been no change in him to make him capable of it, to make
him wish it; there had been no later change in him by which he would
undo it. It seemed that his guilt was something which must have begun
away back in the formation of his character, and which would persist
as long as he was the being that he was. There was no beginning of it.
There was no way that it might ever end.
And, now that he remembered, Ruth Lansing had seen that guilt, too.
She had seen it in his eyes before ever the thought had taken shape in
his mind.
What had she seen? What was that thing written so clear in his eyes
that she could read and tell him of it that day on the road from
French Village?
He would go to her and ask her. She should tell him what was that
thing she had seen. He would make her tell. He would have it from
her!
But, no. Where was the use? It would only bring them to that whole,
impossible, bewildering business of the confessional. And he did not
want to hear any more of that. His heart was sick of it. It had made
him suffer enough. And he did not doubt now that Ruth had suffered
equally, or maybe more, from it.
Where could he go? He must tell this thing. He _must_ talk of it to
some one! That resistless, irrepressible impulse for confession, that
call of the lone human soul for confidence, was upon him. He must find
some other soul to share with him the burden of this conviction. He
must find some one who would understand and to whom he could speak.
Jeffrey Whiting was not subtle. He could not have analysed what this
craving meant. He only knew that it was very real, that his soul was
staggering alone and blind under the weight of this thing.
There was one man who would understand. The man who had looked upon
the faces of life and death these many years, the man of strange
comings and goings, the Bishop who had set him on the way of all this,
and who from what he had said in his house in Alden, that day so long
ago when all this began, may have foreseen this very thing, the man
who had heard Rafe Gadbeau cry out his guilt; that man would
understand. He would go to him.
He wrote a note which his mother would find in the morning, and
slipping quietly out of the house he saddled his horse for the ride to
Lowville.
"I came because I had to come," Jeffrey began, when the Bishop had
seated him. "I don't know why I should come to you. I know you cannot
do anything. There is nothing for any one to do. But I had to tell
some one. I _had_ to say it to somebody."
"I sat that day in the courtroom," he went on as the Bishop waited,
"and thought that the whole world was against me. It seemed that
everybody was determined to make me guilty--even you, even Ruth. And I
was innocent. I had done nothing. I was bitter and desperate with the
idea that everybody was trying to make me out guilty, when I was
innocent. I had done nothing. I had not killed a man. I told the men
there on the mountain that I was innocent and they would not believe
me. Ruth and you knew in your hearts that I had not done the thing,
but you would not say a word for me, an innocent man."
"It was that as much as anything, that feeling that the whole world
wanted to condemn me knowing that I was innocent, that drove me on to
the wild attack upon the railroad. I was fighting back, fighting back
against everybody.
"And--this is what I came to say--all the time I was guilty--guilty:
guilty as Rafe Gadbeau!"
"I am not sure I understand," said the Bishop slowly, as Jeffrey
stopped.
"Oh, there's nothing to understand. It is just as I say. I was guilty
of that man's death before I saw him at all that morning. I was guilty
of it that instant when Rafe Gadbeau fired. I am guilty now. I will
always be guilty. Rafe Gadbeau could say a few words to you and turn
over into the next world, free. I cannot," he ended, with a sort of
grim finality as though he saw again before him that wall against
which he had come the night before.
"You mean--" the Bishop began slowly. Then he asked suddenly, "What
brought your mind to this view of the matter?"
"A girl," said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl that
loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me."
Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some
plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than
to treat the matter lightly. Jeffrey Whiting was not a boy to be
laughed out of a morbid notion, or to be told to grow older and forget
the thing. His was a man's soul, standing in the dark, grappling with
a thing with which it could not cope. The wrong word here might mar
his whole life. Here was no place for softening away the realities
with reasoning. The man's soul demanded a man's straight answer.
"Before you could be guilty," said the Bishop decisively, "you must
have injured some one by your thought, your intention. Whom did you
injure?"
Jeffrey Whiting leaped at the train of thought, to follow it out from
the maze which his mind had been treading. Here was the answer. This
would clear the way. Whom had he injured?
Well, _whom_ had he injured? _Who_ had been hurt by his thought, his
wish, to kill a man? Had it hurt the man, Samuel Rogers? No. He was
none the worse of it.
Had it hurt Rafe Gadbeau? No. He did not enter into this at all.
Had it hurt Jeffrey Whiting, himself? Not till yesterday; and not in
the way meant.
Whom, then? And if it had hurt nobody, then--then why all this--?
Jeffrey Whiting rose from his chair as though to go. He did not look
at the Bishop. He stood with his eyes fixed unseeing upon the floor,
asking:
Whom?
Suddenly, from within, just barely audible through his lips there came
the answer; a single word:
"_God!_"
"Your business is with Him, then," said the Bishop, rising with what
almost seemed brusqueness. "You wanted to see Him."
"But--but," Jeffrey Whiting hesitated to argue, "men come to you, to
confess. Rafe Gadbeau--!"
"No," said the Bishop quickly, "you are wrong. Men come to me to
_confession_. They come to _confess_ to God."
He took the young man's hand, saying:
"I will not say another word. You have found your own answer. You
would not understand better if I talked forever. Find God, and tell
Him, what you have told me."
In the night Jeffrey Whiting rode back up the long way to the hills
and home. He was still bewildered, disappointed, and a little
resentful of the Bishop's brief manners with him. He had gone looking
for sympathy, understanding, help. And he had been told to find God.
Find God? How did men go about to find God? Wasn't all the world
continually on the lookout for God, and who ever found Him? Did the
preachers find Him? Did the priests find Him? And if they did, what
did they say to Him? Did people who were sick, and people who said God
had answered their prayers and punished their enemies for them; did
they find God?
Did they find Him when they prayed? Did they find Him when they were
in trouble? What did the Bishop mean? Find God? He must have meant
something? How did the Bishop himself find God? Was there some word,
some key, some hidden portal by which men found God? Was God to be
found here on the hills, in the night, in the open?
God! God! his soul cried incoherently, how can I come, how can I find!
A wordless, baffled, impotent cry, that reached nowhere.
The Bishop had once said it. We get no answer.
Then the sense of his guilt, unending, ineradicable guilt, swept down
upon him again and beat him and flattened him and buffeted him. It
left him shaken and beaten. He was not able to face this thing. It was
too big for him. He was after all only a boy, a lost boy, travelling
alone in the dark, under the unconcerned stars. He had been caught and
crushed between forces and passions that were too much for him. He was
little and these things were very great.
Unconsciously the heart within him, the child heart that somehow lives
ever in every man, began to speak, to speak, without knowing it,
direct to God.
It was not a prayer. It was not a plea. It was not an excuse. It was
the simple unfolding of the heart of a child to the Father who made
it. The heart was bruised. A weight was crushing it. It could not lift
itself. That was all; the cry of helplessness complete, of dependence
utter and unreasoning.
Suddenly the man raised his head and looked at the stars, blinking at
him through the starting tears.
Was that God? Had some one spoken? Where was the load that had lain
upon him all these weary hours?
He stopped his horse and looked about him, breathing in great, free,
hungry breaths of God's air about him. For it _was_ God's air. That
was the wonder of it. The world was God's! And it was new made for him
to live in!
He breathed his thanks, a breath and a prayer of thanks, as simple and
unreasoning, unquestioning, as had been the unfolding of his heart. He
had been bound: he was free!
Then his horse went flying up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new
life upon the soft, breathing air of the spring night.
With the inconsequence of all of us children when God has lifted the
stone from our hearts, Jeffrey had already left everything of the last
thirty-six hours behind him as completely as if he had never lived
through those hours. (That He lets us forget so easily, shows that He
is the Royal God in very deed.)
Before the sun was well up in the morning Jeffrey was on his way to
French Village, to look out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old
Robbideau Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into fixing that roof.
What he had heard the other day from Cynthe was by no means all that
he had heard of the doings of Ruth during the last seven months. For
the French people had taken her to their hearts and had made of her a
wonderful new kind of saint. They had seen her come to them out of the
fire. They had heard of her silence at the trial of the man she loved.
They had seen her devoting herself with a careless fearlessness to
their loved ones in the time when the black diphtheria had frightened
the wits out of the best of women. All the while they knew that she
was not happy. And they had explained fully to the countryside just
what was their opinion of the whole matter.
Jeffrey, remembering these things, and suddenly understanding many
things that had been hidden from him, was very humble as he wondered
what he could say to Ruth.
At the outskirts of the little unpainted village he met Cynthe.
"Where is she?" he asked without preface.
Cynthe looked at him curiously, a long, searching look, and was amazed
at the change she saw.
Here was not the heady, thoughtless boy to whom she had talked the
other day. Here was a man, a thinking man, a man who had suffered and
had learned some things out of unknown places of his heart.
I hurt him, she thought. Maybe I said too much. But I am not sorry.
_Non._
"The last house," she answered, "by the crook of the lake there. She
will be glad," she remarked simply, and turned on her way.
Jeffrey rode on, thanking the little French girl heartily for the word
that she had thought to add. It was a warrant, it seemed, of
forgiveness--and of all things.