"Lewis, if it was right—I would have said to God and the world and him, 'It is the least that I can do!'"
He stared at her. "By God, the amende honorable!"
There came blinding lightning, followed by thunder which seemed to shake the room. Rand crossed to the hearth and, with his booted foot upon the iron dogs, rested his arm upon the mantel-shelf and his head upon his hand. "I'll think of that awhile," he said harshly. "That means disgrace and may mean death."
He heard the drawing of her breath. There was a knock at the door followed by Mammy Chloe's voice. "De bread an' meat an' wine on de table, marster."
"Very well, Mammy, I'll come presently," the master answered; then, when she was gone, "This is the earth, Jacqueline. It was long while I sat there upon the stone and saw matters as they might be upon another plane, but that appearance passed. Because for those moments I saw its shape, I know the aspect that is before your eyes. But it is not reality that you see; it is an appearance, thin and unsubstantial as the mist upon the hills. Expiation, purgation, aided retribution, the criminal to spare Justice the search, and the offender against Society to turn and throw his weight into the proper scale!—that is a dream of the world as it may become. This is the present earth,—earth of the tobacco-fields, earth of the struggle, earth of the fight for standing-room! I have fought—and I have fought—I cannot cease to fight."
With his foot he pushed back the burning wood. "I did not kill him in self-defence. I killed him in anger. That is murder. Say, for argument, that it is confessed murder. I will tell you, as a lawyer, what that means. It means a full stop. Life stopped, work stopped, fame stopped—a period black as ink, and never to be erased! A stop deep as the grave and sharp as the hangman's drop, and the record that it closes empty, vile, read at the best with horror and pity, read at the worst with a glance aside at every man and woman whom the stained hand had ever touched! That is what would come if I followed this appearance." He struck the hand at which he looked against the mantel-shelf. "And if he says, 'Ay, Lewis Rand, it is so that I would do,' I will answer, 'Yes! being you!—but what, Ludwell Cary, had you lain in my cradle?" His face worked and he turned from the mantel to the great chair. "Oh, mother!" he said beneath his breath.
Jacqueline came and knelt beside him. "Lewis, Lewis, is it all so dark?"
He touched her hair with his fingers. "Dark! I feel as though I were in a bare, light place. Underground, you know, but bare and flooded with light. Well, Jacqueline, well—"
She clung to him without speech, and he went on. "There is enough to create suspicion. We were travelling at the same hour, and it is known that we were opponents. The crossroads where I slept last night—there was nothing, I think, said at the inn. Then the forge, and the mill. At the mill they will swear to telling me that he took the main road, and since they could not see the ford, they must suppose that I, too, went that way. The main road. There's the insistence. I kept to the main road. As for Young Isham, I can manage him. That old Frenchman is more difficult. Danger there—unless he holds his tongue. There's a witness indeed lying at the bottom of some pool below the strand, but the strand may sink into the sea before that witness is found! There is this and there is that, but they'll serve no warrant on the this and that the world can see. I have won more difficult cases."
"You propose," she cried, "to lie—and lie—and lie!"