Chapter 11

The horror of the thing she had been about to do rushed upon her and blinded her. The blood came rushing up into her throat and brain, choking her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered. The young man, Perry Waite, caught her by the arm as she seemed about to fall. She struggled a moment for control of herself, then managed to gasp:

"It's nothing-- Let me go."

Perry Waite looked sharply into her face. Then he took his hand from her arm.

Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herself in among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would be likely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, a sense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand. Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet the mere feeling that she stood among those who could have understood gave her strength and a feeling of safety even against herself which she could not have had among her own kind.

But she was not long left with her feeling of security. A wan, grey-faced girl with burning eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and drew her out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal, though Ruth found it difficult to recognise in her the red-cheeked, sprightly French girl she had met in the early summer.

"You saw Rafe Gadbeau die," the girl said roughly, as she faced Ruth sharply at a little distance from the crowd. "You were there, close? No?"

"Yes, the fire was all around," Ruth answered, quaking.

"How did he die? Tell me. How?"

"Why--why, he died quickly, in the Bishop's arms."

"I know. Yes. But how? He _confessed_?"

"He--he went to confession, you mean. Yes, I think so."

But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.

"I know that," she persisted. "I heard M'sieur the Bishop. But did he _confess_--about Rogers?"

"Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know I didn't hear anything. I couldn't--"

"He didn't say nothing, except in confession?" the girl questioned swiftly.

"Nothing at all," Ruth answered, relieved.

"And you heard?" the girl returned shrewdly.

"Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know that."

"I know you are lying," Cynthe said slowly. "That is right. But I do not know. Will you always be able to lie? I do not know. You are Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not like one of us. Sometime you will forget. It is not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in us. Sometime when you are not thinking some one will ask you a question and you will start and your tongue will slip, or you will be silent--and that will be just as bad."

Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She dared not speak, did not even raise her eyes, for any assurance of silence or even a reassuring look to the girl would be an admission that she must not make.

"Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did not hear a word! You cannot speak to me. But swear it to your soul," said the girl in a low, tense whisper; "swear that you will never, sleeping or waking, laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let woman or man know that you heard. Swear it. And while you swear, remember." She drew Ruth close to her and almost hissed into her ear:

"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting!"

She dropped Ruth's arm and turned quickly away.

Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of fright and bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could not grapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind.

This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her love and her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from the dark blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is sometimes given to those beside themselves with some great grief or strain, the girl had seen Ruth's terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had plucked it out before Ruth's very eyes.

The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened, thought Ruth. She had broken the seal of the confessional! She had been entrusted with the most terrible secret that a man could have to tell, under the most awful bond that God could put upon a secret. And the secret had escaped her!

She had said no word at all. But, just as surely as if she had repeated the cry of the dying man in the night, Ruth knew that the other girl had taken her secret from her.

And with that same uncanny insight, too, the girl had looked into the future and had shown Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her. Nay, what a burden it was already becoming. For already she was afraid to speak to any one, afraid to go near any person that she had ever known.

And that girl had stripped bare another of Ruth's secrets, one that had been hidden even from herself. She had said:

"Remember-- You love Jeffrey Whiting."

In ways, she had always loved him. But she now realised that she had never known what love was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up in the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to clutch and tear for the dead name of the man whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it was, and it came burning up in her heart to protect the dear name of her own beloved one, her man. Already men were putting the brand of Cain upon him! Already the word was running from mouth to mouth over the hills-- The word of blood! And with it ran the name of her love! Jeffrey, the boy she had loved since always, the man she would love forever!

He would hear it from other mouths. But, oh! the cruel, unbearable taunt was that only two days ago he had heard it first from her own lips! Why? Why? How? How had she ever said such a thing? Ever thought of such a thing?

But she could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. She could not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out the bursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, not even to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by the faintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than his and other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able to look into his eyes and say:

I _know_ you did not do it.

Only in her most secret heart of hearts could she be glad that she knew. And even that knowledge was the sacred property of the dead man. It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of her mind. Love, horror, and the awful weight of God's seal pressed in upon her to crush her. There was no way to turn, no step to take. She could not meet them, could not cope with them.

Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd and down to where Brom Bones stood by the lake. There the kindly French women found her, her face buried in the colt's mane, crying hysterically. They bathed her hands and face and soothed her, and when she was a little quieted they gave her drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing that she would need strength above all things, took what was given and silently faced the galling weight of the burden that was hers.

The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole situation. The first thing to be decided was whether the people should try to hold out where they were or should attempt at once to walk out to the villages on the north or west. To the west it would mean forty miles of walking over ashes with hardly any way of carrying water. To the north it would mean a longer walk, but they could follow the river and have water at hand. The danger in that direction was that they might come into the path of a new fire that would cut them off from all help.

Even if they did come out safe to the villages, what would they do there? They would be scattered, penniless, homeless. There was nothing left for them here but the places where their homes had been, but at least they would be together. The cataclysm through which they had all passed, which had brought the prosperous and the poverty-stricken alike to the common level of just a few meals away from starvation, would here bind them together and give them a common strength for a new grip on life. If there was food enough to carry them over the four or five days that would be required to get supplies up from Lowville or from the head of the new railroad, then they should stay here.

The Bishop went swiftly among them, where already mothers were drawing family groups aside and parcelling out the doles of food. Already these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree and drawing around them and theirs the circle of the hearth, even though it was a circle drawn only in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor kindly of eye and understanding of heart, but by no means to be evaded. Unsuspected stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came forth from nondescript bundles of clothing and were laid under his eye. It appeared that Arsene LaComb had stayed in his little provision store until the last moment portioning out what was his with even hand, to each one as much as could be carried. The Bishop saw that it was all pitifully little for those who had lived in the village and for those refugees who had been driven in from the surrounding hills. But, he thought, it would do. These were people born to frugality, inured to scanty living.

The thing now was to give them work for their hands, to put something before them that was to be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all things it is not well for men to sit down in the ashes and merely wait. They had no tools left but the axes which they had carried in their hands to the rafts, but with these they could hew some sort of shelter out of the loose logs in the lake. A rough shack of any kind would cover at least the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at the outlet of the lake. It would be slow work and hard and a makeshift at the best. But it would put heart into them to see at least something, anything, begin to rise from the hopeless level of the ashes.

Three of the hill men had managed to keep their horses by holding desperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wading them through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched to what, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from which messages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. They bore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things that were immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the little village. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the men gathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names would mean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would well know that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worth while, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For the Bishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardy relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one of the notes he signed that day.

All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears, their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal and whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and unashamed.

Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.

Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his fingers and unfolded their story to him.

Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of barren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknown country. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit for travel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodging like hunted rats, between a line of fire--of their own making--before them, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fire and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them. They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had run with them all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them through all the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all the blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorching thirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes. And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them, torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep and wide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew that it was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight. They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lake came up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air from it cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up to taunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy that they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks. This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, all might as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who had yesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scattered around the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who might come out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burnt ground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitened hillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And, for these two men, to be seen meant to die.

So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture. Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had been beginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily down to the water.

They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge of the lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink no more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested until they could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirst and rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realised now that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken up so much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everything else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knew that if they would live and travel--and they must travel--they would have to have food at once.

Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now died out there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There was food over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now it did not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any great thing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the one thing that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else. They would go over there and take the food in the face of all the world!

Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at a few wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself. There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed, seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did not remember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up some baked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eat them, but--Fresh grass! Or oats!

Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothing to be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands around him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of the matter.

A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. He carried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. At peril of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pile that was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women and children slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones' bridle and tried to launch himself across the colt's back. In his leap a can of meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom Bones' hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.

A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped and plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout, faithful heart.

In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting and shooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women and children screamed and wailed their fright within the little building.

The two men running with the food for which they had been willing to give their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men running wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured and hustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire.

They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of men whose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with the most terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had been thirsting to kill them. The hour had come.

"Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves." Old Erskine Beasley spoke the sentence.

A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry that suggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey.

Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, laying hands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he had caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be done. But he had cried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and he spoke now calmly, as one assured.

"Do we do wisely, men?" he questioned. "These men are guilty. We know that, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, for they planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shall only these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silence these two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?"

"We'll be sure of these two," said a sullen voice in the crowd.

"True," returned the Bishop, raising his voice. "But I tell you there are others greater than any of these who have come into the hills risking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greater ones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in the end. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without a thought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all this trouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, my friends and my neighbours," he went on raising his hand, "I pledge you that that one man will be found and that he will do right by you.

"Before these men die, bring a justice--there is one of the village--and let them confess before the world and to him on paper what they know of this crime and of those who commanded it."

A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for the time. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was brought forward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to sit upon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in his long hand of the _rue Henri_ the story that the men told.

They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail of all they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient for the ending of the story, that they might go on with their task.

The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must save these men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and a Christian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend, Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certain man, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something of that story which he himself could but must not tell.

The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when the story of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure that he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spoke simply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At the first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out their intention, he said:

"My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. I will prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall not move these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bullets must pass through me.

"You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it is just one thing--Revenge."

"What business is it of yours?" came an angry voice out of the crowd.

"It is _not_ my business," said the Bishop solemnly. "It is the business of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? Have I no right to speak God's name to you, because we do not believe all the same things? My business is with the souls of men--of all men. And never in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doing this minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of my fathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon your souls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have you sweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands and say: A man warned us, but he had no _business_!

"Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done. And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh! believe me now! You shall see right!"

The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the men about him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad.

He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them.

Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden. But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this grief.

He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered the things of God and His world.

VII

THE INNER CITADEL