“Think of them before another kind of judgment-seat, Effie. Where would the balance of crime be laid then?”
“I think no one would dare to carry there any quarrels that grew up out of war,” Effie replied. “Whatever noise of war there may be on this earth, I fancy all will be glad to keep utter silence upon it in another state.”
“Aye, if they could. But how is it to be kept out of knowledge? How am I to account for my temper being bitter, that once was kindly; and my habits being lazy, that once were brisk; and my life being short and troublesome to everybody, that might have been long and busy for others’ good; and my death being fearful, like an eclipse, when it might have been as the shutting in of the summer twilight? How am I to account for all this, without any plea of going out to war on the high seas? Why do you look at me so, Effie? I cannot bear being so looked at.”
Effie had often tried to fancy the aspect and demeanour of persons under sentence of death; but she had never imagined anything so awful as the lot seemed to be when it sat upon her brother. To have seen his corpse stretched before her would not have been more strange than to look on his familiar face, to listen to his accustomed voice, and to think that this motion and this sound were awaiting extinction, while the thinking part was fluctuating between this world and the next, not in the frame of calm faith which abides the summons of its Maker, but in the restless mood which attends upon the tyranny of man. Effie had seen her brother once awaiting death as the issue of an illness. What she had then beheld caused her heart now to sink on perceiving the starting eye and curled lip, which told her that her brother was a less religious man than he had been,—less humble, less strong, less hopeful, less thoughtful for others than before. She was not fully aware of the difference of the cases,—how darkly God’s agency is shrouded in the gloom of man’s injustice; how the sufferer’s whole nature is outraged by dependence upon his fellow-man for the breath of life; and how infinitely the agony of such outrage transcends the throes of dissolution. The humblest convict may feel this, though he may not be able to express it in words, as well as the noblest patriot that ever encountered martyrdom; and it may be this sense of outrage that parches the tongue and enfeebles the knees of one, while it strings the nerves of another on the way to the scaffold; while both may equally disregard the parting convulsion, and long rather than dread to know “the grand secret.”
“No, no, Cuddie, you do not mean that you who sit there are doomed to be laid in the cold ground so soon, unless you can banish yourself?”
“I do; and for a token—you must either help me away this very hour, or see me carried off to death, as one of the doomed five thousand. I tell you I was nearly caught this day. If it had not been for an acquaintance, more thoughtful than Adam, (who spoke out my name the moment he saw me,) I should have been beyond hope at this hour. The whisper passed along, however,—‘a poor deserter,’—and they opened a way for me, and blocked up the enemy in a crowd, and then gave out that it was only a petty thief they were running after; and in this manner I got off for the time.”
“And so you will again. God will not let such as you so perish.”
“I shall not tempt the risk further by staying. God forgive me for saying so! but I cannot, and I will not, so die.”
“Hush, hush! What would uncle Christopher, what would all religious people say, if they heard such a word from you as that?”
“They might say that if one man presumes to declare ‘You shall die at my bidding, for a crime invented by such as myself,’ another man may, without presumption, say, ‘I will not die for such a cause;’ and that he may, with as little presumption, do his utmost peaceably to make good his words. I will be gone this very hour, to make good my word.”