“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.