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 244 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 245 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.