Aderhold saw the change, the resurgence. He made with his chained hands a stately and mournful gesture. “As it will be!” he said.
The other burst forth. “Aye, I believe—I believe that you have poisoned and corrupted her, and that there is truth in every word they say! Now as I am a baptised man there is truth! For you are an unbeliever and God’s enemy! And is not God’s enemy of necessity black and corrupt and a liar to the last particle of his being, to the last hair of his head, to the paring of his nails! More—you have stood there weaving a spell to make me listen and well-nigh believe! Well, your spell will not hold me!—As God liveth I hold it to be true that you met by night in Hawthorn Forest—”
“Look at me!” said Aderhold. “That is as true as that it was I who struck a dagger into you on a Sunday night! Now you know how true it is!”
Carthew gave back a step and went deadly white. There was within him that root of grace that he had risen from his sick bed with his first madness lessened and his mind set on managing a correction in the minds alike of Hawthorn and the commission. In the first wild turmoil and anger, pushing home under the half-moon from Heron’s cottage, blood staining his doublet and his head beginning to swim, he had seized—it coming to him upon some blast of the wind that he must find and presently give a reason for his condition—he had seized the first dark inspiration. It had answered—he had found on stepping from weeks of stupor and delirium that it had answered so well and thoroughly that now—always below the Unbelief and Blasphemy—it was one of the main counts against the physician. He had thought to be able to cast hesitancy and doubt on his original assertion. It was dark—the figure was cloaked—it might not have been the leech.... He found that he could corrupt no one’s belief that it was the leech—Hawthorn, his brother, Master Clement, the commission, all were unshakable. He knew not himself how to shatter their conviction. He could not so injure his own name and fame, the strict religion, the coming England, the great services which he meant yet to perform, as to stand and say, “I lied.” He could see that even if he said it, he would not be believed. They would say, “Your fever still confuses your head.” Or they might say, “They are casting their spells still.” Or they might ask, “Who, then, struck you?”... It was impossible.... Even did they believe it, what would it alter? Nothing! The apostate and sorcerer was in any event doomed. A straw more or less would make no difference. Surely one out of the circle of God’s mercy need not be too closely considered.... But he paled with the issue thrown so by the man himself between them.
He paled; then desperately opened the gates to anger the restorative, and jealousy that shredded shame to the winds. Moreover, there flashed into his soul in storm a suspicion. “Who struck me? Knowest thou that? If thou knowest that, then, indeed—”
But Aderhold knew not that. He stood with folded arms and a steady face. It was now to summon the ancient virtue, to play truly the Republican, the free man, now to summon courage for others. Life! Life! And what men and women had suffered would be suffered again. And still the ether sprang clear and time stretched endlessly, and what was lost here might be found there. He looked at Harry Carthew with a steadfast face, and reckoned that the younger man was unhappier than he.
The door opened with a heavy sound and Master Clement reappeared. Carthew flung himself toward him, his face distorted. “Naught—naught! And now I think the worst—I tell you I think the worst—”
“I have always thought the worst,” said Master Clement. “Send him hence now, and let us see these others.”
... Aderhold moved before the red-faced, wry-mouthed gaoler through the dark passageway and down the stair, back to the chill and darkness of his dungeon. Within it, the gaoler made a moment’s pause before he should turn and, departing, shut the thick door with the sound of a falling slab of a sepulchre. He stood, to the eye a rude and portentous figure, but to the inward vision giving off at times relieving glints.