“Hark!” cried Master Clement. “She speaks the tongue she learned of Apollyon!”
Harry Carthew rose from the window-seat. His face was yet without colour, drawn and sunken, grim and set. For the most part, with an iron effort, he kept his voice under control, but now it broke and sank and now it took a cadence of pain and horror. He leaned against the wall for support, and once or twice he lifted his eyes to where, in his thought, there sat God whom he had angered. “Master Clement, and my friend here,” he said, “God knows I cannot doubt that this man is a sorcerer and this woman a witch! In his Bible God tells us that there are such and commands that they be done to death. Moreover, from old time, wise judges and men of law and knowledge, and devout and holy preachers of the Word have showed us how these wicked abound! As for these two, all manner of witness was brought against them, and proof irrefragable. Yea, and those who were hanged confessed that these two kept by day and by night companionship with Satan and did monstrous wickednesses. And that the man is an apostate and blasphemer, an atheist worthy of death, has been proved—nay, he himself denied nothing in that sort. All that, and the doom pronounced against them, in this world and in the next, stands for true and lasting, and I have no part in it, and there the shadow comes not against me.... But there is a sin upon my soul, and God gives me no rest until I tell it—” He wheeled toward Master Clement. “I will tell it here and now, and appoint me a day and I will tell it in open church—So may offended God pardon me!”
“Harry Carthew! Harry Carthew!” cried Master Clement. “Every man alive has sin against his soul! The soul of every man alive is black as midnight, and no dawn cometh to it save from one that is not himself! Unless and save the dayspring chooseth to shine upon that soul, it resteth black and lost—it hath in itself no power of motion and light! But God hath elected thee, Harry Carthew! But this man and woman are of the deep gulf of hell, predestined and damned of eternity! What have you to do with them, my brother, my son—for Christ knoweth I love thee as a son—”
“What had I to do with them?” said Carthew. “I will tell you! At the trial in the town I gave evidence that he struck me in the side with a dagger that eve upon his road to prison. I lied. Sorcerer and atheist though he be, he told truth when he said that he did not so. And witch though she be, this woman told truth when there in the court she cried out against me. She told truth when she cried that that night I had come to her cottage to tempt her and that she struck me with a hunting-knife.... What was I? I was a young man, mad for a fair woman—fair as her mother Eve who sinned before her! What was I? I was a man desirous to increase in name and fame, desirous of leadership—who therefore must not let men view his sin! But it was sin, and I know not if there be a greater—”
If he began as to a more general audience, he ended with a haggard-eyed appeal to Master Clement.... The minister’s frame trembled; with a pale and scared face he fronted Harry Carthew whom he truly loved. “Harry Carthew! Harry Carthew! Pray to God—”
“I pray,” said Carthew. “Night and day, I wrestle in prayer. I thought that He had answered and given me peace in service. The moment I ceased to serve and to act for this England, that moment Gehenna opened in my soul.... But now I see that He wanteth open confession.” He turned upon the two where they stood beyond the shaft of light. “Joan Heron, I wronged you,—and Gilbert Aderhold, I wronged you,—and that I must say, though you be the Fiend’s own! I must say it, though I stood in heaven and looked across the gulf upon you in hell—” He sank upon a bench by the table and flung his clasped hands above his head. “God, God! Grant me but to save my soul alive!”
Silence held in the room at the Hour-Glass. The agent of the Company leaned against the table, white and shaken. Master Clement came to Carthew, put his hand on his shoulder, and spoke in a trembling voice. “A great sin verily, and greatly to be repented.... But not the great sin, Harry Carthew—not the Unpardonable Sin.... God will have mercy. He will forgive. Have you not served Him well, and will you not do so, ever the more zealously? And will you not forever more guard your ways, that you fall not again into the pit? I trow that you will! Harry Carthew—Harry Carthew, we will pray together! You are too valuable—This very night I will come, and on our knees we will wrestle with Him as did Jacob of old—”
Joan and Aderhold stood hand in hand. What now they felt and thought was simple and whole. This room with its occupants seemed not to have over-greatly to do with them—it had widened out—they felt a larger world.... It was as though these old quarrels were childish concerns and fears and quarrels—small, intense, unknowing things—childish, pitiful. They felt them so, and yet they did not feel old, they felt young....
Aderhold spoke, again to the agent of the Company. “Knowing nothing of our story, save that we were shipwrecked folk, you showed us much kindness. It does not hurt to take the thanks of shipwrecked folk. Believe that we are grateful for that kindness. This is to end, we know, in giving us into the hands of the law. Then let them call those who will take us.”