Читать книгу: «Devota», страница 4

Mrs. Churchill motioned to the nurse to withdraw, and her lips twitched as she replied:

"Can your Excellency, and your Reverence, magnanimously ignore the vivid object lesson, so unexpectedly illustrative of your lectures on neglected parental discipline? My young rebel would certainly prefer your inconsistent leniency to my exacting domestic code. In honor of your pet theory – that, like other distinguished doctrinaires, you both decline to practise – I must ask you all to drink a toast once offered by a cynical wit when dining at a table, which was similarly invaded by marauders from the host's nursery. I propose to drink to 'King Herod.'"

She lifted her wine glass, but each guest laid a hand over theirs, and in the midst of a chorus of protests the butler approached the Governor and held out a salver on which lay two telegrams.

"If you please, sir, Mr. Walton says he thinks, sir, you must see these at once."

Pushing aside his untasted pink ice, Governor Armitage took the yellow envelopes, rose, bowed to his hostess, and said:

"Pardon my unceremonious desertion."

As he walked away, Mr. Churchill called to him:

"Come back to us for coffee and cigars. We shall wait for you."

He shook his head.

"Thank you; no. I will join you later."

As the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room, Mrs. Churchill paused at the foot of the stairway, where the sullen nurse lingered.

"Go on, Bertha, and get Rex's bath ready. Miss Lindsay will take him with her, as she wishes to see Grace and Otto."

Turning to Devota, whose arm encircled the boy's shoulder, she looked steadily at both.

"Mrs. Churchill, you must do me the favor to set my fears at rest about Rex. Promise me he shall have no reason to regret that he proved himself my brave and loyal lover. Recollect I encouraged his rebellion."

The mother twined over one finger a red silk curl, and shook her free hand warningly.

"You both deserve a sound, old-fashioned, hearty spanking, and I make no rash promises; but as the pair of you seem equally culpable, I might be embarrassed in administering justice. Good night, Rex. No, naughty boys cannot kiss their mothers. Don't forget your prayers, you need them. Now, Miss Devota, do not let my pretty imps, my tawny cub triad keep you too long. Perhaps Providence is aiding your mission by calling the Governor to the library. Better watch his door from the side hall. Good luck to you, dear, when you beard the lion!"

CHAPTER III

A promise having been exacted that the "triad" should accompany her to the early railway train, Devota went swiftly down a rear staircase to the side corridor running in front of the library. The door was open, and from the threshold she looked in. The room was well lighted; the typewriting machine at rest, the desk covered with official documents, and from a file at one side a sheaf of telegrams rustled as the air surged through the window. The sole occupant of the apartment was the secretary, Mr. Walton, seated before a tray-laden table. He had dined, and was dallying with a gilded liqueur glass in which iced Chartreuse sparkled like splintered emeralds.

Doubtless Governor Armitage was the centre of attraction in the drawing-room, and the auspicious moment had passed beyond recall. A premonition of defeat impaired her self-control, and shrinking from observation, Devota walked down the corridor to an arched door, whence a flight of steps led to the flower garden.

Avoiding the stone terrace in front, where an electric globe shone, she turned into a winding path bordered on both sides with wheeled boxes filled with tall pink oleanders in profuse bloom. A mid-summer full moon lighted every corner of the sloping lawn, bringing into velvety relief the shadow vignettes traced by leaf and vine across the smoothly clipped grass, and adding a silvery lustre to beds of lilies that lifted their white lips to drink from Hersé's cool, dripping palms.

Among Mr. Churchill's valued curios he numbered a quaint sun dial of black lava, fashioned ages ago in an Ægean isle riven by volcanic throes.

The gnomon had been destroyed, and erosion by time and storm partly erased the Greek characters on the base, but doubtless some pagan Le Nôtre once deemed it an ornamental altar to the great sun god. A prosaic new gardener at "The Oleanders" found it more useful as a mere pedestal, whereon he had placed a terra cotta vase filled with luxuriant nasturtiums that wove over the whole a fringe of scarlet and orange.

Devota stood beside the dial, and silently wrestled with emotions habitually held in bondage by an iron will. The night had grown very still; only a faint breath of air now and then pilfered and strewed the attar of oleanders and lilies, and from rock-ribbed shore rose the solemn, monotonous ocean hymn, the immemorial recessional chanted by shattered waves.

An overwhelming sorrow seized and shook the lonely woman standing by the dial. She threw up her arms, as if in mute appeal to some tragic fate, and her fingers gripped and wrung each other; then the clenched hands fell upon the crown and garlands of nasturtiums, and she closed her eyes to shut out torturing retrospective visions.

The pungent smoke of a cigar suddenly arrested her attention, and over the sward slowly walked the Governor. As he passed a drooping deodar he disappeared, but a moment later a great cluster of rose oleander smote his bared black head, and he stood inhaling its fragrance. His upturned face showed unusual pallor, and an expression of profound sadness that failed to soften its dominant sombre sternness. An audible sigh escaped him, and throwing away his cigar he moved forward toward the terrace.The sight of the graceful figure immediately in front of him was evidently an unpleasant surprise, and for an instant he wavered, tempted to turn aside, then advanced. When quite near he bowed, and without pausing, would have passed her, but she stepped at once to meet him.

The pungent smoke of a cigar suddenly arrested her attention, and over the sward slowly walked the Governor. As he passed a drooping deodar he disappeared, but a moment later a great cluster of rose oleander smote his bared black head, and he stood inhaling its fragrance. His upturned face showed unusual pallor, and an expression of profound sadness that failed to soften its dominant sombre sternness. An audible sigh escaped him, and throwing away his cigar he moved forward toward the terrace.

The sight of the graceful figure immediately in front of him was evidently an unpleasant surprise, and for an instant he wavered, tempted to turn aside, then advanced. When quite near he bowed, and without pausing, would have passed her, but she stepped at once to meet him.

Her voice was steady, though strained, and her words crisp and measured:

"If Governor Armitage can grant me a few moments in which to lay before him a matter of importance to others, I shall be glad for reasons that he will readily understand are not personal."

"If it is Miss Lindsay's wish, my time and services are certainly at her command."

The moon shone full on both faces, and each had suddenly contracted and hardened. The Governor threw back his head and folded his arms behind him; Devota's right hand clutched the edge of the dial, and with her left she drew from beneath the violets in her girdle a slip of telegram paper.

"Having twice refused to become a member of Mrs. Churchill's house-party for this week, I was much annoyed, perplexed and pained when most unexpectedly I found myself reluctantly obliged to come here for a few hours. In the midst of preparations for my long absence, I was summoned to a grief-stricken family whose pitiable condition of abject misery and terror no verbal picture can exaggerate. My old friend, Mrs. Ronald Clinton, is prostrated by sickness and sorrow, and unable to leave the room where her baby girl is critically ill, probably dying; while in the same house the aged mother-in-law raving with brain fever calls for the son who is sentenced to be hung next week. Neither his wife nor his mother can visit the distant prison to say good-bye to the doomed man; In her despair, Amy Clinton, having exhausted all other means of saving her husband, has seized the fatuous belief that my prayer might possibly have some effect. It was in vain that I refused to come, assuring her that I was the very last person to send as envoy to your Excellency, who had declined her own appeal when she knelt at your feet. She persisted in her frantic pleadings because of an inexplicable telegram from Ronald Clinton, telling her the prison chaplain was sure I could secure help for him. On what grounds he based this preposterous advice Amy was absolutely ignorant, as neither of us can learn even the name of the chaplain. Knowing the futility of my mission, I yielded at last to her frenzied prayers – I drank the cup of bitter humiliation – and as my last sacrifice on the altar of friendship for a broken-hearted wife and mother, I surrendered my self-respect, my womanly pride. Read this message to the wife, and then I feel assured you will realize what a terrible ordeal has finally forced me into your presence."

She held the telegram toward him, and taking the paper he read it carefully more than once. Refolding it, he bowed and returned it, but the locked lips yielded no comment. She tore the slip into shreds, and her hands trembled as she asked:

"Can your Excellency imagine why this mournful and mortifying task was laid on my unwilling shoulders, by the chaplain who is an utter stranger?"

He looked intently into her beautiful eyes, and his voice lowered to a key of icy sternness.

"If Miss Lindsay desires the name of the chaplain, I can gratify her wish. Peyton Knox has recently officiated in the prison chapel."

A hot wave crimsoned her cheeks, and she shrank as if from a blow, but as the color ebbed, she drew herself proudly to her full height.

"As any other total stranger claiming every citizen's right of petition, I reluctantly intrude upon your leisure, and I appeal to you as a man, as a gentleman, as the highest official of my State, to grant some mercy to a doomed criminal. For humanity's sake – oh, Governor Armitage, for the sake of a ruined and helpless family, I ask – I beg – that you will pardon Ronald Clinton and save two women from insanity! Be merciful; oh, be merciful, as every Governor can be if he so wills."

He watched her steadily, and once he drew a long, deep breath as if sorely oppressed; but her anxiously searching gaze discovered no relaxation. She suddenly leaned forward, and her exquisitely curved lips quivered:

"You will not deny my prayer! You will pardon Ronald?"

Slowly he shook his head.

"Miss Lindsay, I shall never pardon him. At all costs I must be absolutely just."

"You will not spare his life? when your office empowers you to set him free? You cruelly elect to order his wife widowed, and his babes disgraced!"

"Should I forget the widow and fatherless little ones of Norman Hewitt whom Ronald Clinton deliberately and brutally murdered? The wrongs of the dead are too often buried with him, and sickly sympathy – posing as philanthropic Christian clemency – is lavished on branded Cains set free to defy human and divine law, and repeat crimes that should have forfeited their blackened lives."

"Your Excellency's standard of justice is more righteous than that of Abel's God, Who instead of slaying his murderer granted him long life in which to purify his guilty soul and mend his ways!"

"Disclaiming any approach to irreverence, permit me to remind you that the experiment of pardon was not repeated; and the severest penal code ever compiled came directly from the Divine lawgiver, whose chosen people demanded 'a life for a life.'"

"Hanging poor Amy's husband could not compensate Mrs. Hewitt for the loss of hers. The exaction of blood tax is a legal survival of savagery. Justice is not the sole divine attribute – mercy is coordinate. Try to remember that Talmudic prayer of Jehovah: 'Be it my will that my mercy overpower my justice!' As Governor, the issue of life or death lies in the hollow of your hand, and for the last time I beg of you not to listen to the barbarous prompting of a cruel revenge. Think of the awful responsibility of hurling an unprepared soul into eternity. Think of the blessed relief that only you can give to tortured, despairing human hearts who can look to no one but you for succor."

"I have never pardoned a convicted criminal, and I never will. I cannot conscientiously exercise the 'gubernatorial prerogative' of riding roughshod over the mature, deliberate verdict of twelve sane, dispassionate men empowered to sift all testimony, and carefully guard for their guidance only indubitable evidence. The sanctity of jury verdicts has been so frequently violated by reckless use of pardoning power, that the value of blood-bought jury trial has dwindled into a mere mockery, an arena for spectacular professional jugglers. Ample legal machinery has long been provided for the rehearing and unbiased review of all criminal cases, whenever new witnesses or new and vital facts cast any doubt on the wisdom or justice of judge and jury. Courts of appeal and review should have power to correct wrongs that juries sometimes inflict upon the innocent, but the preposterous assumption of infallible prescience and 'altruistic clemency' by a President or a Governor is an ideal aspiration that I do not permit myself to indulge. This popular form of annulling jury verdicts is a fatal blow at the very foundation of penal jurisprudence; and the exasperating quibbles of subtle attorneys – the systematically delayed execution of verdicts and the too frequent veto of death sentences – all contribute to the deplorable increase of lynching. Pardon my taxing your patience for this enumeration of my reasons for preferring to leave justice to competent and unprejudiced courts."

She threw out one hand with a repellent gesture.

"Capital punishment is merely revengeful, judicial murder, utterly futile as a corrective method. Taking a second human life avails nothing as requital for the destruction of the first victim. It is indefensible cruelty in an age pluming itself on higher humanitarian standards."