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The Day of Wrath, a novel by Maurus Jokai |
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Chapter 14. The Sentence Of Death |
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_ CHAPTER XIV. THE SENTENCE OF DEATH The candles were burning on the table though it was broad daylight, the bells were tolling though nobody was sick, the coffin had also been made ready though nobody was dead. The hard sentence had been pronounced over the poor sinner, he must die. The law demanded his head. If his dear father and mother and all his brothers and sisters were to plead for him all day long they could not wash away the strict letter of the law with their tears. All those who sat by the long table, the captains, lieutenants, and common soldiers, all of them wished, longed, to avoid uttering the fatal word. The General himself covered his face with his hands as he uttered the words: "With God there is mercy!" In his hand he held a little staff, a little white staff. From time to time he glances at it, it is still whole, still smooth and unbroken. The old sergeant-major approaches him, his shako on his head, his storm-belt strapped down over his shoulder, one hand by his side, the other touching the band of his shako. "Mercy, General, for the poor condemned prisoner!" "With God only there is mercy." Again the sergeant-major raises the tip of his palm to the cord of his shako and makes his petition. "Mercy, General, for the poor condemned criminal!" A third time he utters his appeal. "With God only there is mercy," is the General's reply. The little white staff falls to the ground broken in two. The condemned man gives a sigh of relief, thanks the gentlemen present for the trouble they have taken, the good sergeant-major for interceding on his behalf, and the rigorous judge for pronouncing over him the sentence of the law. Then they take him away to the house of mourning, give him a white uniform to put on, and set meat and drink before him that he may eat and drink for the last time. That day the iron man was afraid to go to his own quarters. Suppose Cornelia were to ask him what sentence he had pronounced upon the son of his enemy? He durst not go home, he was actually afraid. He was still brooding there when the gaoler came to tell him that the condemned man wished to say a few words to the General privately. Vértessy hastened to him at once. "You defended yourself badly," said he reproachfully on entering, "you made it impossible for us to pronounce any other sentence." "I know that, I wished it so," replied the youth with a bright, calm countenance. "That is all over now, General; it was a soldier's duty to condemn me. In three days' time I am to die. Take it as if I was very sick, and the doctors had told you beforehand that I had only three more days to live." "I will send the sentence to His Majesty." "It would be useless. Why, even you can advance nothing in my defence, and I have myself nothing to allege in mitigation of my sentence." "But I know everything. Others have come forward to defend you, and if you had not cut the ground from under my feet by your defiant answers before the court-martial, I might have devised some means of saving you." "I am surprised that anyone should have defended me. I know of none who might bear me in mind." "Indeed yes. First of all there was my wife." "Ah! General, such knowledge will make my death the easier." "Then there was the man you fired at in your stupid jealousy." "Then he did not die after all?" exclaimed the youth joyfully. "It does me good to hear that." "That's all one so far as you are concerned. You have in any case committed a capital offence." "But my heart is the easier, nevertheless. A load has been removed from it. I thank you. What you have said will shorten my last moments." "Your third advocate was your father." "What?" stammered the youth with trembling lips--"my father, did you say?--my own father?" "Your own dear father. He wrote to me with those trembling hands of his, those hands which have barely recovered from a paralytic stroke. He wrote to me himself--do you realise what that means?" "He wrote on my account!" whispered the condemned man, clasping his manacled hands together and closing his heavy eyelashes over his moist eyes. "Your fourth advocate was Count Kamienszki, whose sister you will doubtless remember." The youth looked up in astonishment. "I have no recollection of such a person. _She_ had no brother." Vértessy shrugged his shoulders. "He himself told me so, he was with me here to-day." A struggle with a torturing suspicion seemed to be going on in the young soldier's troubled mind; presently, however, he turned to the General with a radiant countenance and said to him with a smile: "All these things, General, will alleviate my chastisement and I thank you for telling them to me. I regret that my misfortune will cause others to shed tears which I did not expect, which I do not desire; still, they will greatly ease my affliction. I am sure that you too, at the bottom of your heart, forgive me and my poor family--you do forgive us, General, do you not? Will you not even go further and protect that poor old man who has now got nobody to stand by him?--will you not be his protector if any danger, yes, any great danger should threaten him?" The General pressed the young man's extended hand--the chains rattled on the hand that he held in his. "And now, General, may I speak to you of a very serious matter? Would you be so good as to hear me out?" "Say on." "And you will not take what I am about to tell you as the mere ravings of a disordered brain? Many men's brains grow disordered at the approach of death I know; you will not imagine that I am simply delirious, will you? You will believe that I am well and with all my wits, sound both in heart and mind, will you not?" The General nodded. "First of all I would beg you not to postpone my execution for the usual three days. Let it take place sooner. I do not ask this for my own sake. I am as good as dead already, my time has run." "Why do you make this request?" "I will tell you presently. Then I would beg you not to conduct me outside the town; the execution could take place just as well inside the courtyard of the barracks." "Very well, I will promise you that." "And, finally, announce the execution for the afternoon and have it carried out in the morning, early, at break of day, before anyone is awake." "What are your reasons for so extraordinary a request?" "I will tell you, General. You know right well what terrifying rumours have been circulating through the land in consequence of the extraordinary, unprecedented epidemic now raging there. I had an opportunity of discovering, involuntarily, the designs of sundry malevolent persons who looked upon this terrible time as an excellent occasion for carrying out their nefarious designs. The dregs of the population have been roused to action, and only await the signal to pour their ignorant, brutal herds all over the kingdom. This is no idle tale I am telling you, General. I have heard their seditious mutterings, I have read their letters, I have seen the lists of the names of those who are to fall the first victims. My father's name stands at the very top of the list. His peasants have always hated him as much as they have loved me. One of the leaders of these secret conspirators was formerly a fellow-soldier with me, since then he has been compelled to quit the service. I accidentally met him in Galicia, where he was pursuing his secret plans. He promised to hide me away, and, immediately afterwards, went and denounced me. It is part of his infernal plan, when I am led outside the town and a large crowd of people have come together to see the execution, to incite the mob to riot, overpower the little band of soldiers guarding me, release me, proclaim me far and wide as a hero, and use my name as the means of provoking a general rising. You can see, General, with what horror I so much as mention this affair, you can see that I have neither dreamt nor imagined it, but shudder at it, and for that very reason would hasten on my exit from this world." The General really did believe that the youth was not quite in his right mind. The young man perceived the cold smile on the General's face, and convulsively grasping his hand with his own manacled hands, exclaimed despairingly: "General! they would murder my father, they would destroy my house, my nation!" "Who forsooth?" inquired the General with an expression of unutterable contempt. "These skulking loafers, eh? I will not presume to deny that they may, perhaps, intend to do what you say, such ideas may and do occur at times to some blockhead or other. But I do not believe that the time will ever come for the realisation of such projects. But if anybody should attempt to move in the matter, I solemnly assure you that at the very first outcry he will be a dead man!" And he tapped his sword with proud self-consciousness. At that moment an adjutant hastily entered the room and announced that there were suspicious gatherings of the people in the market-place and the streets of the town. They were exclaiming loudly against the gentry and the soldiers, and were goading one another on with incendiary speeches. It had been found necessary to bar the gates of the town hall against them, and the windows of an apothecary's shop had already been smashed. Apparently they meant to give most of their attention to the barracks and the town hall. The General had no sooner hastened out of the corridor than he already heard in the adjacent streets, that vague hubbub whose chaotic voice sounds so terrifying in the ears of the faint-hearted, who know not whether it is an alarm of fire or a hue and cry after a murderer. On the present occasion, however, there was both fire and murder in the sound--it was a riot. In a distant part of the town some over-zealous guardians of public order had set ringing the alarm-bells, whose strident semi-tones rose above the low hideous murmur of the mob. The General hastened into the courtyard. The soldiers were already standing there under arms. There was scarcely more than two hundred men there, the rest were a long way off, forming part of the far-stretching military cordon. This, however, was quite enough for Vértessy's purpose. What had he to fear? It was impossible to conceive that the honest scythe and saddle makers of the town, the peaceful citizens who had only to do with planes and awls and shuttles, would dare to attack him forcibly and compel him to retire before them. Swiftly, but with the utmost _sang froid_, he made his preparations. Half a battalion took up a position outside the gate guarding every approach, the rest remained within the courtyard. The rifles of the soldiers outside the gate remained unloaded. At three rolls of a drum the remaining column also marched out into the street. A single word of command would suffice for subsequent tactics. It was also considered necessary to close the gates of the neighbouring house, and two sentries were posted outside it with loaded muskets. All this was done in the most perfect order, there was no hurry, no bustle. In that house opposite dwelt the General's wife; one could reach it from the barracks across a garden. Vértessy had just completed his preparations when Cornelia's maid came hastening up to him and whispered something in his ear. For a moment a smile of delight flashed across the General's face, which immediately afterwards, however, formed into still darker folds than before. Hastily transferring the command to his first lieutenant, he hastened to his dwelling, promising to be back in a moment. It must indeed have been a matter of importance to have constrained Vértessy to quit the post becoming a soldier at such a moment. He hastened as fast as he could go to his wife's bedchamber. The curtains had been let down, in the semi-obscure alcove lay a pale woman, seemingly a corpse which, nevertheless, was suffering the torments of life. Domestics were gathered round the bed, at a table sat the doctor writing something. Vértessy had already unfastened his sword outside so as to avoid making a clatter. He now rushed to Cornelia's side, seized her trembling, sweat-covered hand, and, pressing it to his lips, inquired: "How do you feel?" "On the threshold of death," answered the lady, and with her other arm she drew down her husband's head towards her that she might kiss it. Her whole face was as white as marble, and the cold sweat stood out upon her forehead like pearly beads. "The coming hour has secrets of its own, Vértessy," lisped the lady, pressing Vértessy's hand in her own, "whether it be good or evil, joy or death." Vértessy's eyes interrogated the doctor as if he hoped for some comforting reassurance from him. The doctor beckoned him aside. "She is suffering tortures," he whispered, "but she would hide it from you." "She may hide it in her voice, but I can tell it is so from her breathing. Is the danger great?" The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Pretty much as usual. She is very nervous, and besides that, there is something on her mind." "What can it be?" "It would be as well, General, if you ascertained. At such a time peace of mind is a matter of life or death, and fear or any feeling of anxiety might have a bad effect upon--a new life." At the words "a new life" that involuntary gleam of joy flashed across Vértessy's lips once more. He went back to his wife and knelt down on her tapestried cushion. "Cornelia, how are you?" "In God's hands," whispered the lady, raising her glorious eyes. "God chastises and is merciful as it seemeth Him good." Her convulsive pressure showed Vértessy what she must be suffering. "There is mercy with God," faintly murmured the lady once more. Vértessy felt his heart tremble at these words. An hour before he also had said: "With God there is mercy," and that to a man who had promised himself a long life. The lady turned towards him with a languid look, pressed both her husband's hands to her breast, and looking long and painfully into his eyes, she asked: "Will God be merciful to me?" "To thee, my angel?--yes!--oh yes!" stammered the General. "And have you also been merciful to him who begged you for mercy?" Vértessy could not meet that look, he could find no words to answer that question. "Vértessy! One death demands another, judgment is requited with judgment. I am standing on the edge of the grave, do not let me die." "What am I doing, what can I do?" said her husband with a faltering voice. "You see," replied his wife, winding her arm round his like a tender creeping plant round a sturdy oak, "if you slay, I must die also. What the condemned man in the neighbouring house suffers that I also must endure--his terror, his despair, his death-struggle. Oh! my husband, have pity upon me. Be merciful now to him who has offended, that I also may find mercy with God!" Vértessy's mind was much disturbed. And now the doctor approached him and solemnly observed: "General, I fancy it would not be the first instance of a capitally condemned felon being pardoned on the plea of such a sufferer." Vértessy regarded him abstractedly as if to beg him to proceed. "I knew of a similar case when I was in service at the fortress of Comorn, when a youth, who had thrice deserted the ranks, was pardoned in consequence of a similar petition." "And do you believe that it would do good?" "My dear sir, when the exaltation of the nerves has reached such a degree as this, the imagination is omnipotent, good news may give life, bad news death. A soothing thought in such cases is worth all the drugs in the world." Vértessy kissed the forehead of his pale, suffering well-beloved, and cried with a manly emphasis, which instantly inspired self-confidence: "I will save him!" The lady raised her trembling hands and her pale features to Heaven, her eyes slowly closed, and a smile of joy passed over her white face. Outside resounded the threefold roll of the drums. The General arose, hastened to the door, tied on his sword, and rushed towards the barracks. The noise, the hubbub, was now quite close at hand, and he fell a-thinking how he could best, with fair words, persuade these turbulent citizens to go back to their homes and begin weaving linen and stitching boots again, though he longed all the time to storm forth amongst them and like a tempest scatter them in every direction. _ |
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