XXXVI. — THE CURSE.
Darke’s hand unconsciously drew the rein, and man and horse both seemed to stagger back before the furious old soldier.
“General—Davenant!” muttered Darke, turning pale.
“Yes, General Davenant!—a gentleman, an honest man; not a traitor and a murderer!”
“Good God!” muttered Darke, “it is my father, truly—and my little brother! The proud face, the eyes, the mouth—and yet they told me you were killed.”
“Ah! ‘Killed!’ Killing is a favorite topic with you!” exclaimed General Davenant, furiously; “well, kill me, now!—Strike your dastardly sword, or your knife if you have one, straight into my breast! Murder me, I say, as you murdered George Conway!—I have a purse in my pocket, and you can rob me when I am dead. Strike! strike!—but not with the sword! That is the weapon of a gentleman. Draw your knife, and stab me in the back—the knife is the weapon of the assassin!”
And crossing his arms upon his breast, the fiery old cavalier confronted his son, with eyes full of bitter wrath and disdain—eyes which I shall never forget; for their fire burnt them into my memory.
Darke did not dare to meet them. I had listened with amazement to those words, which indicated that the Federal officer was General Davenant’s son; then this sentiment of astonishment, profound as it was, had yielded to one of expectation, if I may so express myself. What I expected was a furious outbreak from the man of fierce and violent passions, thus taunted and driven to bay by the repeated insults of the general. No outburst came, however. On the contrary, the Federal officer bowed his head, and listened in silence, while a mortal pallor diffused itself over his swarthy face. His gaze was bent upon the ground, and his brows so closely knit that they extended in an unbroken ridge of black and shaggy hair above his bloodshot eyes. He sat his horse, in the light of the camp-fire,—a huge cavalier upon an animal as powerful and forbidding in appearance as himself,—and for more than a minute after the scornful outburst from General Davenant, Darke remained silent and motionless, with his eyes still fixed upon the ground:
Then he raised his head, made a sign with his hand to an officer, and said, briefly:—
“Move back with the column—leave these prisoners here.”
At the word, the column moved back slowly; the shadowy figures were lost sight of in the darkness; General Davenant, his son Charles, Darke, and myself, were left alone beside the camp-fire.
Then the Federal officer, with a face over which seemed to pass “the shadow of unutterable things,” looked first with a long, wistful, absorbed glance toward the boy Charles, his brother—lastly, toward his father.
“Why do you taunt me?” he said, in a low tone. “Will that result in any good now? Yes, I committed murder. I intended, if I did not commit, robbery. I killed—yes, I killed!—with a knife—as a murderer kills. But I do not wish to kill you—or Charley—or this officer—or rob you. Keep your life and your money. There is the road before you, open. Go; you are free!”
General Davenant had sat his horse—the boy Charley beside him—listening in sullen wrath. As Darke ended, the general’s hand went to the hilt of his sword, and he half drew it, by an instinctive movement, from the scabbard. “Well!” added the Federal officer, in the same low tone, with a deeper flush in his cheeks, “draw your sword, sir—strike me if you think proper. For myself, I am done with murder, and shrink from it, so that, if my father wishes to kill me, I will open my breast, to give him a fair opportunity. You see I am not altogether the murderous wretch you take me for. I am a murderer, it is true, and soiled with every vice—you see I am frank—but I will not resist, if you plunge your sword into my heart. Strike! strike! While I am dying I will have time to say the few words I have to say to you!”
General Davenant shuddered with wrath still, but a strange emotion was mingled with the sentiment now—an emotion which I could not fathom. Before he could open his lips, however, Darke resumed, in the same tone:—
“You hesitate—you are not ready to become my executioner. Well, listen, and I will utter that which may deprive you of all self-control. Yes, once more, I killed a man, and killed him for money; but you made me what I was! You petted, and spoiled, and made me selfish. In addition, you hated—that man. You had hated him for twenty years. When I grew up, I found out that. If you did not strike him, you had the desire to do so—and, like a good son, I shared my ‘father’s loves and hatreds.’ I heard you speak of—him—harshly; I knew that an old grudge was between you; what matter if I met this enemy of the family on the high-road, and, with the dagger at his throat, said: ‘Yield me a portion of your ill-gotten gains!’ for that money was the proceeds of a forced sale for cash, by which the father of a family was turned out of house and home! Well, I did that—and did it under the effect of drink. I learned the habit at your table; wine was placed in my hands, in my very childhood, by you; you indulged all my vile selfishness; made me a miserable, arrogant wretch; I came to hang about the village tavern, and gamble, and fuddle myself, until I was made worthless! Then, when one day the devil tempted me, I committed a crime—and that crime was committed by you! for you cultivated in me the vile habits which led me on to murder!”
Darke’s eyes were gloomy, and full of a strange fire. As he uttered the last words, he spurred close to his father, tore open his uniform until his bare breast was visible, and added in accents full of vehement and sullen passion:—
“Strike me! Bury your sword’s point in my heart! I am your son. You are as noble a gentleman as Brutus was! Kill me, then! I am a murderer: but I am a Davenant, and no coward!”
From the fierce and swollen face, in which the dark eyes burned like firebrands, my glance passed to the countenance of General Davenant. A startling change had taken place in the expression of the old cavalier. He was no longer erect, fiery, defiant. His glance no longer darted scorn and anger. His chin had fallen upon his breast; his frame drooped; his cheeks, but now so flushed, were covered with a deep pallor.
For a moment he remained silent. The hand which had clutched at the sword hilt hung listless at his side. All at once his breast heaved, and with a sound which resembled a groan, he said, in low tones:—
“I am punished! Yes, my hatred has brought forth fruit, and the fruit is bitter! It was I who warped this life, and the tree has grown as I inclined it.”
“Yes,” said Darke, in his deep voice, “first warped—then, when cut down, cast off and forgotten!”
General Davenant looked at the speaker with bitter melancholy.
“Ah! you charge me with that, do you, sir?” he said, “You do not remember, then, that I have suffered for you—you do not know, perhaps, that for ten years I have labored under the imputation of that crime, and have preserved silence that I might shield your memory—for I thought you dead! You do not know that I never breathed a syllable of that letter which you sent to me on the day of my trial—that I have allowed the world to believe I was saved by a legal technicality! You have not heard, perhaps, that a daughter of Judge Conway is beloved by your brother, and that her father rejects with scorn the very idea of forming an alliance with my son—the son of one whom he regards as the murderer of his brother! Oh! yes, sir! truly I have cast off and forgotten you and your memory! I have not wept tears of blood over the crime you committed—over the dishonor that rested on the name of Davenant! I have not writhed beneath the cold and scornful eye of Judge Conway and his friends! I have not seen your brother’s heart breaking for love of that girl; and suppressed all, concealed every thing, borne the brand on my proud forehead, and his young life, that your tombstone might at least not have ‘murderer’ cut on it! And now you taunt me with my faults!—with my injudicious course toward you when your character was forming. You sneer and say that I first hated George Conway, and that the son only inherited the family feud, and struck the enemy of the family! Yes, I acknowledge those sins; I pray daily to be forgiven for them. I have borne for ten years this bitter load of dishonor. But there is something more maddening even than my faults, and the stain on my name—it is to be taunted to my face, here, with the charge that I struck that blow! that I made you the criminal, and then threw you off, and drove you to become a renegade in the ranks of our enemies!”
The last words of the speaker were nearly drowned in a heavy fusillade which issued from the woods close by.
“Listen!” exclaimed General Davenant, “that is the fire of your hirelings, sir, directed at the hearts of your brethren! You are leading that scum against the gentlemen of Virginia! Well join them! Point me, and my son, and companion out to them! Tear us to pieces with your bullets! Trample us beneath your hireling heels! That will not prevent me from branding you again in your dishonored forehead!—from cursing you as renegade, debauchee, and murderer!”
The whistle of bullets mingled with these furious and resounding words; and then the crackle of footsteps was heard, the undergrowth suddenly swarmed with figures—a party of Confederates rushed shouting into the little glade.
Darke wheeled not from, but toward them, as though to charge them. The stern courage of the Davenant blood burned in his cheeks and eyes. Then, with a harsh and bitter laugh, he turned and pushed his horse close up beside that of his father.
“I would call this meeting and parting strange, if any thing were strange in this world!” he said, “but nothing astonishes me, or moves me, as of old! The devil has brought it about! he put a knife in my hands once! to-night he brings me face to face with you and my boy-brother—and makes you curse and renounce me! Well, so be it! have your will! Henceforth I am really lost—my father!”
And drawing his pistol, he coolly discharged barrel after barrel in the faces of the men rushing upon him; wheeled his horse, and dug the spurs into him; an instant afterward, with his sneering face turned over his shoulder, he had disappeared in the woods.
Two hours afterward I was on my way to Petersburg.
The enemy were already falling back from their adventurous attempt to seize the Southside road.
In the morning they had retired across the Rowanty, and disappeared.
So ended that heavy blow at Lee’s great war-artery.
{Illustration: THE FLIGHT}