When, in deepest sorrow, and with all the delicacy of his sensitive nature, he told the bishop of his changed mental attitude toward the problem of religion, it seemed to him that in his uncle's reception of it the spirit of the Spanish Inquisitors was revived, so mad appeared to him his horror of this heresy and his conviction that he, Walter, was a poison in the moral atmosphere, which must be exterminated at any cost.
In this interview between them, the bishop stood revealed to him in a new character, and yet Walter seemed to realize that in his deeper consciousness he had always known him for what he really was, though all the circumstances of his conventional life had conduced to hide his real self. He saw, now, how the submissiveness of his own dreamy boyhood had never called into active force his guardian's native love of domineering; his intolerance of opposition; the pride of his exacting will. But on the first provocation of circumstances, these traits stood boldly forth.
"Is it for this that I have spent my time and money upon you—to bring up an INFIDEL?" Bishop Fairchilds demanded, when he had in part recovered from the first shock of amazement the news had given him.
"I am not an infidel even if I have outgrown High Church dogmas. I have a Faith—I have a Religion; and I assure you that I never so fully realized the vital truth of my religion as I do now—now that I see things, not in the dim cathedral light, but out under the broad heavens!"
"How can you dare to question the authority of our Holy Mother, the Church, whose teachings have come down to us through all these centuries, bearing the sacred sanction of the most ancient authority?"
"Old things can rot!" Walter answered.
"And you fancy," the bishop indignantly demanded, "that I will give one dollar for your support while you are adhering to this blasphemy? That I will ever again even so much as break bread with you, until, in humble contrition, you return to your allegiance to the Church?"
Walter lifted his earnest eyes and met squarely his uncle's frowning stare. Then the boy rose.
"Nothing, then, is left for me," he said steadily, "but to leave your home, give up the course of study I had hoped to continue at Harvard, and get to work."
"You fully realize all that this step must mean?" his uncle coldly asked him. "You are absolutely penniless."