Cudjo's Cave Part 66

"Have you anything to confess?" Pomp said to him, with the solemnity of a priest preparing a sacrifice. "If so, speak, for your time is short."

Deslow said nothing: indeed, his organs of speech were paralyzed.

"Very well: then I will tell you, we know all. We trusted you. You have betrayed us. Withers is dead: you killed him. Cudjo is dead: his blood is upon your soul. For this you are now to die."

There was another besides Deslow whom these calm and terrible words appalled. It was Bythewood, who feared lest, after all he had accomplished, his turn might come next.

It was some time before the fear-stricken culprit could recover the power of speech. Then, in a sudden, hoa.r.s.e, and scarcely articulate shriek, his voice burst forth:--

"Save me! save me!"

He rushed to where the patriots stood. But they thrust him back sternly.

"This is Pomp's business. Deal with him!"

"Will no one save me? Will no one speak for my life?" These words were e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with the ghastly accent and volubility of terror.

"Your life is forfeited. Pomp saved it once; now he takes it. It is just," said Stackridge.

"My G.o.d! my G.o.d! my G.o.d!" Thrice the doomed man uttered that sacred name with wild despair, and with intervals of strange and silent horror between. "Then I must die!"

"_I_ will speak for you," said a voice of solemn compa.s.sion. And Penn stepped forward.

"You? you? you will?"

"Do not hope too much. Pomp is inexorable as he is just. But I will plead for you."

"O, do! do! There is something in his face--I cannot bear it--but you can move him!"

Pomp was leaning thoughtfully by one of the giant's stools. Penn drew near to him. Deslow crouched behind, his whole frame shaking visibly.

"Pomp, if you love me, grant me this one favor. Leave this wretch to his G.o.d. What satisfaction can there be in taking the life of so degraded and abject a creature?"

"There is satisfaction in justice," replied Pomp, quietly smiling.

"O, but the satisfaction there is in mercy is infinitely sweeter!

Forgiveness is a holy thing, Pomp! It brings the blessing of Heaven with it, and it is more effective than vengeance. This man has a wife; he has children; think of them!"

These words, and many more to the same purpose, Penn poured forth with all the earnestness of his soul. He pleaded; he argued; he left no means untried to melt that adamantine will. In vain all. When he finished, Pomp took his hand in one of his, and laying the other kindly on his shoulder, said in his deepest, tenderest tones,--

"I have heard you because I love you. What you say is just. But another thing is just--that this man should die. Ask anything but this of me, and you will see how gladly I will grant all you desire."

"I have done."--Penn turned sadly away.--"It is as I feared. Deslow, I will not flatter you. There is no hope."

Then Deslow, regaining somewhat of his manhood, drew himself up, and prepared to meet his fate.

"Soon?" he asked, more firmly than he had yet spoken.

"Now," said Pomp. He lighted a lantern. "You must go with me. There are eyes here that would not look upon your death." He took his rifle. "Go before." And he conducted his victim into the recesses in the cave.

They came to the well, into the unfathomable mystery of which Carl had dropped the stone. There Pomp stopped.

"This is your grave. Would you take a look at it?" He held the lantern over the fearful place. The falling waters made in those unimaginable depths the noise of far-off thunders. Half dead with fear already, the wretch looked down into the hideous pit.

"Must I die?" he uttered in a ghastly whisper.

"You must! I will shoot you first in mercy to you; for I am not cruel.

Have you prayers to make? I will wait."

Deslow sank upon his knees. He tried to confess himself to G.o.d, to commit his soul with decency into His hands. But the words of his pet.i.tion stuck in his throat: the dread of immediate death absorbed all feeling else.

Pomp, who had retired a short distance, supposed he had made an end.

"Are you ready?" he asked, placing his lantern on the rock, and poising his rifle.

"I cannot pray!" said Deslow. "Send for a minister--for Mr. Villars!--I cannot die so."

"It is too late," answered Pomp, sorrowful, yet stern. "Mr. Villars has been carried away by the soldiers you sent. If you cannot pray for yourself, then there is none to pray for you."

Scarce had he spoken, when out of the darkness behind him came a voice, saying with solemn sweetness, as if an angel responded from the invisible profound,--

"I will pray for him!"

He turned, and saw in the lantern's misty glimmer a spectral form advancing. It drew near. It was a female figure, shadowy, noiseless; the right hand raised with piteous entreaty; the countenance pale to whiteness,--its fresh and youthful beauty clothed with sadness and compa.s.sion as with a veil.

It was Virginia. All the way through the dismal galleries of the cave, and down Cudjo's stairs, she had followed the executioner and his victim, in order to plead at the last moment for that mercy for which Penn had pleaded in vain.

Struck with amazement, Pomp gazed at her for a moment as if she had been really a spirit.

"How came you here?"

She laid one hand upon his arm; with the other she pointed upwards; her eyes all the while s.h.i.+ning upon him with a wondrous brilliancy, which was of the spirit indeed, and not of the flesh.

"Heaven sent me to pray for him--and for you."

"For me, Miss Villars?"

"For you, Pomp!"--Her voice also had that strange melting quality which comes only from the soul. It was low, and full of love and sorrow. "For if you slay this man, then you will have more need of prayers than he."

Pomp was shaken. The touch on his arm, the tones of that voice, the electric light of those inspired eyes, moved him with a power that penetrated to his inmost soul. Yet he retained his haughty firmness, and said coldly,--

"If there had been mercy for this man, Penn would have obtained it. The hardest thing I ever did was to deny him. What is there to be said which he did not say?"

"O, he spoke earnestly and well!" replied Virginia. "I wondered how you could listen to him and not yield. But he is a man; and as a man he gave up all hope when reason failed, and he saw you so implacable. But I would never have given up. I would have clung to your knees, and pleaded with you so long as there was breath in me to ask or heart to feel. I would not have let you go till you had shown mercy to this poor man!"--(Deslow had crawled to her feet: there he knelt grovelling),--"and to yourself, Pomp! If he dies repenting, and you kill him unrelenting, I would rather be he than you. When we shut the gate of mercy on others we shut it on ourselves. For all that you have done for my father and friends, and for me, I am filled with grat.i.tude and friends.h.i.+p. Your manly traits have inspired me with an admiration that was almost hero-wors.h.i.+p. For this reason I would save you from a great crime. O, Pomp, if only for my sake, do not annihilate the n.o.ble and grand image of you which has built itself up in my heart, and leave only the memory of a strange horror and dread in its place!"

Pomp had turned his eyes away from hers, knowing that if he continued to be fascinated by them, he must end by yielding. He drooped his head, leaning on his rifle, and looking down upon the wretch at their feet. A strong convulsion shook his whole frame, as she ceased speaking. There was silence for some seconds. Then he spoke, still without raising his eyes, in a deep, subdued voice.

"This man is the hater of my race. He is of those who rob us of our labor, our lives, our wives, and children, and happiness. They enslave both body and soul. They d.a.m.n us with ignorance and vice. To take from us the profits of our toil is little; but they take from us our manhood also. Yet here he came, and accepted life and safety at my hands. He made an oath, and I made an oath. His oath was never to betray my poor Cudjo's secret. The oath I made was to kill him as I would a dog if his should be broken. It has been broken. My poor Cudjo is dead. Withers is dead. Your sister is dead. I see it to be just that this traitor too should now die!"