Cudjo's Cave Part 63

"Then, much as I love you, I can do nothing!"

"Nothing for my father?"

"Nothing!"

"Nor for me?"

"Not even for you!"

"Why, then, G.o.d pity us all!" said Virginia, calmly.

"Truly you may say, G.o.d pity you! For do you know what will happen? Your father will die in prison: you will never see him again. Your friends will be ma.s.sacred to a man. I will be frank with you: to a man they will be given to the sword. They are but a dozen; we are fifty--a hundred--a thousand, if necessary. The sink has already been taken, and a force is on its way to occupy this end of the cave. If your friends hold out, they will be starved. If they fight, they will be bayoneted and shot. If they surrender, every living man of them shall be hung. There is no help for them. Lincoln's army, that has been coming so long, is a chimera; it will never come. The power is all in our hands; and not even G.o.d can help them. That sounds blasphemous, I know; but it is true. They are doomed. But I can save them--and you can save them."

"And what is to become of me?" asked Virginia, calmly as before.

"Your future is entirely in your own hands. On the one side, what I have promised. On the other----" Augustus thought he heard a crackling of sticks, and looked around.

"On the other,"--Virginia took up the unfinished speech,--"the fate of a friendless, fatherless, Union-loving woman in this chivalrous south! I know how you treat such women. I know what awaits me on that side. And I accept it. My friends can die. My father can die; and I can. All this I accept; all the rest, you and your offers, I reject. I would not be your wife to save the world. Because I not only do not love you, but because I detest you. You have my answer."

With swelling breast and set teeth Augustus kept his eyes upon her for full a minute, then replied, in a low voice shaken by pa.s.sion,--

"I hoped your decision would be different. But it is spoken. I cannot hope to change it?"

"Can you change these rocks under our feet with empty words?" she said, with a white smile.

"All is over, then! Without cause you hate me, Miss Villars. Hitherto, in all that has happened to you and your friends, I have been blameless.

If in the future I am not so, remember it is your own fault."

Then the fire flashed into Virginia's cheeks, and indignation rang in her tones as she denounced the falsehood.

"Hitherto, in the wrong that has happened to me and my friends, you have NOT been blameless! In the future you cannot do more to injure us than you have already done, or meant to do. Look at me, and listen while I prove what I say."

Again there was a slight noise in the thicket behind them, and he would have been glad to make that an excuse for leaving her a moment; but her spirit held him.

"I listen," he said, inwardly quaking at he knew not what.

"Do you remember the night my father was arrested?"

"I do."

"And how you that day took a journey to be away from us in our trouble?"

"I certainly took a short journey that day, but--" his eyes flickering with the uneasiness of guilt.

"And do you remember a conversation you had with Lysander under a bridge?"

His face suddenly flushed purple. "The villain has betrayed me!" he thought. Then he stammered, "I hope you have not been listening to any of that fellow's slanders!"

"You talked with Lysander under the bridge. Your conversation was heard, every word of it, by a third person, who lay concealed under the planks, behind you."

"A villanous spy!" articulated Augustus.

"No spy--but the man you two were at that moment seeking to kill: Penn Hapgood, the Schoolmaster."

It was a blow. Poor Bythewood, too luxurious and inert to be a great villain, was only a weak one; and, wounded in his most sensitive point, his pride, he writhed for a s.p.a.ce with unutterable chagrin and rage.

Then he recovered himself. He had heard the worst; and now there was nothing left for him but to cast down and trample with his feet (so to speak) the mask that had been torn from his face.

"Very well! You think you know me, then!"--He seized her wrists.--"Now hear me! I am not to be spurned like a dog, even by the foot of the woman I love. You reject, despise, insult me. As for me, I say this: all shall be as I have p.r.o.nounced. Your father, your lover,--not Fate itself shall intervene to save them! And as for you----"

Again he heard a rustling by the ravine; this time so near that it startled him. He looked quickly around, and saw, slowly peering through the bushes, a dark human face. Had it been the terrible front of the Fate he had just defied, the soul of Augustus Bythewood could not have shrunk with a more sudden and appalling fear. It was the face of Pomp.

XLV.

_MASTER AND SLAVE CHANGE PLACES._

The sergeant and his men were several rods distant: the bush through which that menacing visage peered was within as many feet. Augustus reached for his revolver.

"Make a single move--speak a single word--and you are food for the buzzards!" came a whisper from the bush that well might chill his blood.

"You know this rifle--and you know me!" And in the negro's face shone a persuasive glitter of the old, untamable, torrid ferocity of his tribe--not pleasing to Augustus.

"What do you want?"

"Give your revolver to that girl--instantly!"

"I have men within call!"

"So have I."

Through the bush, advancing noiselessly, came the straight steel barrel of a rifle that had never missed fire but once: that was when it had been aimed by Augustus at the head of Pomp. Now it was aimed by Pomp at the head of Augustus; and it was hardly to be expected that it would be so obliging as to remember that one fault, and, for the sake of fairness, repeat it, now that positions were reversed. Bythewood hesitated, in mortal fear.

"Obey me! I shall not speak again!"

And there was heard in the bush another slight noise, too short, quick, and clicking, to be the crackle of a twig. Neither was that pleasing to the mind of Augustus. He turned, and with trembling hand made Virginia a present of the revolver.

"Do you know how to use it?" Pomp asked. She nodded, breathless. "And you will use it if necessary?" She nodded again, and held the weapon prepared. "Now,"--to Bythewood,--"send those men away."

"What do you mean to do?"

"I mean to spare their lives and yours, if you obey me. To kill you without much delay if you do not."

"If you shoot,"--Bythewood was beginning to regain his dignity,--"they will rush to the spot before you can escape, and avenge me well!"

A superb, masterful smile mounted to the ebon visage, and the answer came from the bush,--

"Look where the bowlder lies, up there by the ravine. You will see a twinkle of steel among the leaves. There are guns aimed at your men. You understand."