XLIV.

HOW AUGUSTUS FINALLY PROPOSED.

After this there was a lull; and Penn, who had forgotten every thing else whilst the conflict was raging, remembered that he had seen Bythewood at the ravine, and hastened to inform Pomp of the circumstance.

The death of Cudjo had plunged Pomp into a fit of stern, sad reverie. His surgical task performed, he stood leaning on his rifle, gazing abstractedly at the darkly gliding waves, when Penn's communication roused him.

"Ha!" said he, with a slight start. "We must look to that! The danger here is over for the present, and two or three of us can be spared."

"Shall I go, too?" said Carl. "It is time I vas seeing to my prisoner."

"Come," said Pomp. And the three set out to return.

Having but slight anticipations of trouble from the side of the ravine, they came suddenly, wholly unprepared, upon a scene which filled them with horror and amazement.

The prisoner, as we know, had fled. We left him on his way back to the cave with a squad of men. Since which time, this is what had occurred.

The assailants had approached so stealthily over the ledges, below which Toby was stationed, looking intently for them in another direction, that he had no suspicions of their coming until they suddenly dropped upon him as from the clouds. He had no time to run for his axe; and he had scarcely given the alarm when he was overpowered, knocked down, and rolled out of the way off the rocks.

The assailants then, with Lysander at their head, rushed to the entrance of the cave. But there they encountered unexpected resistance: the two sisters—Salina with the pistol, Virginia with the axe.

"Hello! Sal!" cried Lysander, recoiling into the arms of his men; "what the devil do you mean?"

"I mean to kill you, or any man that sets foot in this place! That is what I mean!"

There could be no doubt about it: her eyes, her attitude, her whole form, from head to foot, looked what she said. She was flushed; a smile of wild and reckless scorn curved her mouth, and her countenance gleamed with a wicked light.

By her side was Virginia, with the uplifted axe, expressing no less determination by her posture and looks, though she did not speak, though there was no smile on her pale lips, and though her features were as white as death.

"It's no use, gals!" said Sprowl. "Don't make fools of yourselves! You won't be hurt; but I'm bound to come in!"'

"Do not attempt it! You have broken your oath to me. But I have made an oath I shall not break!"

What that oath was Salina did not say; but Lysander's changing color betrayed that he guessed it pretty well.

"I don't care a d—n for you! Virginia, drop that axe, and come out here with your father, and I pledge my sacred honor that neither of you shall receive the least harm."

"Your sacred honor!" sneered Salina.

But Virginia said nothing. She stood like a clothed statue; only the eyes through which the fire of the excited spirit shone were not those of a statue; and the advanced white arm, beautiful and bare, from which the loose sleeve fell as it reared the axe, was of God's sculpture, not man's.

She seemed not to hear Lysander; for the promise of safety for herself was as nothing to her: she felt that she was there to defend, with her life, if needs were, the friends whom he had betrayed. Only a holy and great purpose like this could have nerved that gentle nature for such work, and made those tender sinews firm as steel.

There was something slightly devilish in the aspect of Salina; but Virginia was all the angel; yet it was the angel roused to strife.

"Call off your gals, Mr. Villars!" said Sprowl.

"Lysander!" said the solemn voice of the old minister from within, "hear me! We are but three here, as you see: a blind and helpless old man and two girls. Why do you follow to persecute us? Go your way, and learn to be a man. The business you are engaged in is unworthy of a man. My daughters do right to defend this place, which you, false and ungrateful, have betrayed. Attempt nothing farther; for we are not afraid to die!"

"Go in, boys!" shouted Lysander, himself shrinking aside to let the soldiers pass.

Salina fired the pistol—not at the soldiers.

"She has shot me!" said Lysander, staggering back. "Kill the fiend! kill her!"

Instantly two bayonets darted at her breast. One of them was struck down by Virginia's axe, which half severed the soldier's wrist. But before the axe could rise and descend again, the other bayonet had done its work; and the soldiers rushed in.

It was all over in a minute. The axe was seized and wrenched violently away. Toby lay senseless on the rocks without. Lysander was leaning dizzily, clutching at the ledge, a ghastly whiteness settling about the gay mustache, and a strange glassiness dimming his eyes. The soldiers had possession. Virginia was a prisoner, and her father; but not Salina. There was the body which had been hers, transfixed by the bayonet, and fallen upon the ground: that was palpable: but who shall capture the escaping soul?

When Penn and his companions arrived, not a living person was there; but alone, stretched upon the cold stone floor, where the gray light from the entrance fell,—pulseless, pallid, with pale hands crossed peacefully on her breast, hiding the wound, and features faintly smiling in their stony calm,—lay the corpse of her that was Salina. The fair cup that had brimmed with the bitterness of life was shattered. The soul that drank thereat had fled away in haughtiness and scorn.

Toby, groaning on the stones outside, felt somebody shaking him, and heard the voice of Carl asking how he was.

"Dunno'; sort o' common," said the old negro, trying to rise.

He knew nothing of what had happened, except that he had been fallen upon and beaten down: for the rest, it was useless to question him: not even Penn's agonies of doubt and fear could rouse his recollection.

Lieutenant-colonel Bythewood had committed the error of an officer green in his profession. The cave surprised, and the prisoners taken, the men retired in all haste, simply because they had received no orders to the contrary. Thus no advantage whatever was taken of the very important position which had been gained.

Leaving the dead behind, and carrying off the wounded and the prisoners, the sergeant, upon whom the command devolved after his captain was disabled, lost no time in reporting to the lieutenant-colonel.

Augustus stood up to receive the report and the prisoners,—extremely pale, but appearing preternaturally courteous and composed. He bowed very low to the old clergyman (who, he forgot, could not witness and appreciate that graceful act of homage), and expressed infinite regret that "his duty had rendered it necessary," and so forth. Then turning to Virginia, whose look was scarcely less stony than that of her dead sister in the cave, he bowed low to her also, but without speaking, and without raising his eyes to her face.

"Have this old gentleman carried to his own house, and see that every attention is paid to him."

"And my daughter?" said the blind old man, meekly.

"She shall follow you. I will myself accompany her."

"And my dead child up yonder?"

"She shall be brought to you at the earliest possible moment."

"And my faithful servant?"

"He shall be cared for."

"Thank you." And Mr. Villars bowed his white head upon his breast.

"Take the captain immediately to the hospital! And you fellow with the hacked wrist, go with him."

The number of men required to execute these orders (since both the old clergyman and the wounded captain had to be carried) left Augustus almost alone with Virginia. Having previously sent off all his available force to Ropes at the sink, in answer to a pressing call for reënforcements, he had now only the sergeant and two men at his beck. But perhaps this was as he wished it to be. He approached Virginia, and, bowing formally, still without speaking, offered her his arm.

"Thank you. I can walk without assistance." Like marble still, but with the same wild fire in her eyes. "The only favor I ask of you is to be permitted to leave you."

Bythewood made a motion to the sergeant, who removed his men farther off.

"I wish to have a few words of conversation with you, Miss Villars. I beg you to be seated here in the shade."

Virginia remained standing, regarding him with features pale and firm as when she held the axe. It was evident to her that here was another struggle before her, scarcely less to be dreaded than the first. Augustus looked at her, and smiled pallidly.

"If eyes could kill, Miss Villars, I think yours would kill me!"

"If polite cruelty can kill, YOU HAVE killed my sister!"

"O, I beg your pardon, dear Miss Villars, but it was not I!"

"I beg no pardon, but I say it WAS you! And now you will murder my father—perhaps me."

"O, my excellent young lady, how you have misunderstood me! By Heaven, I swear!"—his voice shook with sincere emotion,—"if I have committed a fault, it has been for the love of you! Such faults surely may be pardoned. Virginia! will you accept my life as an atonement for all I have done amiss? You shall bear my name, possess my wealth, and, if you do not like the cause I am engaged in, I will throw up my commission to-morrow. I will take you to France—Italy—Switzerland—wherever you wish to go. Nor do I forget your father. Whatever you ask for him shall be granted. I have money—influence—position—every thing that can make you happy."

There was a minute's pause, the intense glances of the girl piercing through and through that pale, polite mask to his soul. A selfish, chivalrous man; not a great villain, by any means; moved by a genuine, eager, unscrupulous passion for her—sincere at least in that; one who might be influenced to good, and made a most convenient and devoted husband: this she saw.

"Well, what more?"

"What more? Ah, you are thinking of your friends—I should say, of your friend! It is natural. I have no ill will against him. Whatever you ask for him shall be granted. At a word from me, the fighting up there ceases; and he and the rest shall be permitted to go wherever they choose, unharmed."

"Well, and if I reject your generous offer?"

Augustus smiled as he answered, with a hard, inexorable purpose in his tones,—

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

"Nothing for my father?"

"Nothing!"

"Nor for me?"

"Not even for you!"

"Why, then, God pity us all!" said Virginia, calmly.

"Truly you may say, God 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 massacred 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 God 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 passion,—

"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 space 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 pronounced. 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.