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At the Mercy of Tiberius

by Augusta J. Evans · English · Gutenberg #4209 · 1,047,512 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: At the Mercy of Tiberius

Author: Augusta J. Evans


        
Release date: July 1, 2003 [eBook #4209]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

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Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.










AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS

A NOVEL


By

AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON


Author of "A Speckled Bird," "Infelice," "Vashti," "Beulah," "St.
Elmo," etc.




     Fate steals along with silent tread,
     Found oftenest in what least we dread;
     Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
     But in the sunshine strikes the blow.
                               --COWPER.




IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, WHO HAS ENTERED INTO REST.


JTABLE 10 35 1



AT THE MERCY OF TIBERIUS




CHAPTER I.


"You are obstinate and ungrateful. You would rather see me suffer and
die, than bend your stubborn pride in the effort to obtain relief for
me. You will not try to save me."

The thin, hysterically unsteady voice ended in a sob, and the frail
wasted form of the speaker leaned forward, as if the issue of life or
death hung upon an answer.

The tower clock of a neighboring church began to strike the hour of
noon, and not until the echo of the last stroke had died away, was
there a reply to the appeal.

"Mother, try to be just to me. My pride is for you, not for myself. I
shrink from seeing my mother crawl to the feet of a man, who has
disowned and spurned her; I cannot consent that she should humbly beg
for rights, so unnaturally withheld. Every instinct of my nature
revolts from the step you require of me, and I feel as if you held a
hot iron in your hand, waiting to brand me."

"Your proud sensitiveness runs in a strange groove, and it seems you
would prefer to see me a pauper in a Hospital, rather than go to your
grandfather and ask for help. Beryl, time presses, and if I die for
want of aid, you will be responsible; when it is too late, you will
reproach yourself. If I only knew where and how to reach my dear boy, I
should not importune you. Bertie would not refuse obedience to say
wishes."

The silence which followed was so prolonged that a mouse crept from its
covert in some corner of the comfortless garret room, and nibbled at
the fragments of bread scattered on the table.

Beryl stood at the dormer window, holding aside the faded blue cotton
curtain, and the mid-day glare falling upon her, showed every curve of
her tall full form; every line in the calm, pale Sibylline face. The
large steel gray eyes were shaded by drooping lids, heavily fringed
with black lashes, but when raised in a steady gaze the pupils appeared
abnormally dilated; and the delicately traced black brows that
overarched them, contrasted conspicuously with the wealth of deep
auburn hair darkened by mahogany tints, which rolled back in shining
waves from her blue veined temples. While moulding the figure and
features upon a scale almost heroic, nature had jealously guarded the
symmetry of her work, and in addition to the perfect proportion of the
statuesque outlines, had bestowed upon the firm white flesh a gleaming
smoothness, suggestive of fine grained marble highly polished. Majesty
of mien implies much, which the comparatively short period of eighteen
years rarely confers, yet majestic most properly describes this girl,
whose archetype Veleda read runic myths to the Bructeri in the twilight
of history.

Beryl crossed the room, and with her hands folded tightly together,
came to the low bed, on which lay the wreck of a once beautiful woman,
and stood for a moment silent and pre-occupied. With a sudden gesture
of surrender, she stooped her noble head, as if assuming a yoke, and
drew one long deep breath. Did some prophetic intuition show her at
that instant the Phicean Hill and its dread tenant, which sooner or
later we must all confront?

"Dear mother, I submit. Obedience to your commands certainly ought not
to lead me astray; yet I feel that I stand at the cross-roads, longing
to turn and flee from the way whither your finger points. I have no
hope of accomplishing any good, and nothing but humiliation can result
from the experiment; but I will go. Sometimes I believe; that fate
maliciously hunts up the things we most bitterly abhor, and one by one
sets them down before us--labelled Duty. When do you wish me to start?"

"To-night, at nine o'clock. In the letter which you will take to
father, I have told him our destitution; and that the money spent for
your railway ticket has been obtained by the sacrifice of the diamonds
and pearls, that were set around my mother's picture; that cameo, which
he had cut in Rome and framed in Paris. Beryl so much depends on the
impression you make upon him, that you must guard your manner against
haughtiness. Try to be patient, my daughter, and if he should seem
harsh, do not resent his words. He is old now, and proud and bitter,
but he once had a tender love for me. I was his idol, and when my child
pleads, he will relent."

Mrs. Brentano laid her thin hot fingers on her daughter's hands,
drawing her down to the edge of the bed; and Beryl saw she was
quivering with nervous excitement.

"Compose yourself, mother, or you will be so ill that I cannot leave
you. Dr. Grantlin impressed upon us, the necessity of keeping your
nervous system quiet. Take your medicine now, and try to sleep until I
come back from Stephen & Endicott's."

"Do not go to-day."

"I must. Those porcelain types were promised for a certain day, and
they should be packed in time for the afternoon express going to
Boston."

"Beryl."

"Well, mother?"

"Come nearer to me. Give me your hand. My heart is so oppressed by
dread, that I want you to promise me something, which I fancy will
lighten my burden. Life is very uncertain, and if I should die, what
would become of my Bertie? Oh, my boy! my darling, my first born! He is
so impulsive, so headstrong; and no one but his mother could ever
excuse or forgive his waywardness. Although younger, you are in some
respects, the strongest; and I want your promise that you will always
be patient and tender with him, and that you will shield him from evil,
as I have tried to do. His conscience of course, is not sensitive like
yours--because you know, a boy's moral nature is totally different from
a girl's; and like most of his sex, Bertie has no religious instincts
bending him always in the right direction. Women  generally have to
supply conscientious scruples for men, and you can take care of your
brother, if you will. You are unusually brave and strong, Beryl, and
when I am gone, you must stand between him and trouble. My good little
girl, will you?"

The large luminous eyes that rested upon the flushed face of the
invalid, filled with a mist of yearning compassionate tenderness, and
taking her mother's hands, Beryl laid the palms together, then stooping
nearer, kissed her softly.

"I think I have never lacked love for Bertie, though I may not always
have given expression to my feelings. If at times I have deplored his
reckless waywardness, and expostulated with him, genuine affection
prompted me; but I promise you now, that I will do all a sister
possibly can for a brother. Trust me, mother; and rest in the assurance
that his welfare shall be more to me than my own; that should the
necessity arise, I will stand between him and trouble. Banish all
depressing forebodings. When you are strong and well, and when I paint
my great picture, we will buy a pretty cottage among the lilacs and
roses, where birds sing all day long, where cattle pasture in clover
nooks; and then Bertie, your darling, shall never leave you again."

"I do trust you, for your promise means more than oath and vows from
other people, and if occasion demand, I know you will guard my Bertie,
my high-strung, passionate, beautiful boy! Your pretty cottage? Ah,
child! when shall we dwell in Spain?"

"Some day, some day; only be hopeful, and let me find you better when I
return. Sleep, and dream of our pretty cottage. I must hurry away with
my pictures, for this is pay day."

Tying the strings of her hat under one ear, and covering her face with
a blue veil, Beryl took a pasteboard box from a table, on which lay
brushes and paints, and leaving the door a-jar, went down the narrow
stairs.

At the window of a small hall on the next floor, a woman sat before her
sewing-machine, bending so close to her work that she did not see the
tall form, which paused before her, until a hand was laid on the steel
plate.

"Mrs. Emmet, will you please be so good as to go up after a while, and
see if mother needs anything?"

"Certainly, Miss, if I am here, but I have some sewing to carry home
this afternoon."

"I shall not be absent more than two hours. To-night I am going South,
to attend to some business; and mother tells me you have promised to
wait upon her, and allow your daughter Maggie to sleep on a pallet by
her bed, while I am gone. I cannot tell you how grateful I shall be for
any kindness you may show her, and I wish you would send the baby often
to her room, as he is so sweet and cunning, and his merry ways amuse
her."

"Yes, I will do all I can. We poor folks who have none of this world's
goods, ought to be rich at least in sympathy and pity for each other's
suffering, for it is about all we have to share. Don't you worry and
fret, for I will see your ma has what she needs. I was mothered by the
best woman God ever made, and since she died, every sick mother I see
has a sort of claim on my heart."

Pausing an instant to adjust the tucker of her machine, Mrs. Emmet
looked up, and involuntarily the women shook hands, as if sealing a
compact.

It was a long walk to the building whither Beryl directed her steps,
and as she passed through the rear entrance of a large and fashionable
photograph establishment, she was surprised to find that it was
half-past two o'clock.

The Superintendent of the department, from whom she received her work,
was a man of middle-age, of rather stern and forbidding aspect; and as
she approached his desk, he pointed to the clock on the mantel-piece.

"Barely time to submit those types for inspection, and have them packed
for the express going East. They are birthday gifts, and birthdays have
an awkward habit of arriving rigidly on time."

He unrolled the tissue paper, and with a magnifying glass, carefully
examined the pictures; then took from an envelope in the box, two short
pieces of hair, which he compared with the painted heads before him.

"Beautifully done. The lace on that child's dress would bear even a
stronger lens than my glass. Here Patterson, take this box, and letter
to Mr. Endicott, and if satisfactory, carry them to the packing
counter. Shipping address is in the letter. Hurry up, my lad. Sit down,
Miss Brentano."

"Thank you, I am not tired. Mr. Mansfield, have you any good news for
me?"

"You mean those etchings; or the designs for the Christmas cards? Have
not heard a word, pro or con. Guess no news is good news; for I notice
'rejected' work generally travels fast, to roost at home."

"I thought the awards were made last week, and that to-day you could
tell me the result."

"The awards have been made, I presume, but who owns the lucky cards is
the secret that has not yet transpired. You young people have no
respect for red tape, and methodical business routine.  You want to
clap spurs on fate, and make her lower her own last record? 'Bide awee.
Bide awee'."

"Winning this prize means so much to me, that I confess I find it very
hard to be patient. Success would save me from a painful and expensive
journey, upon which I must start to-night; and therefore I hoped so
earnestly that I might receive good tidings to-day. I am obliged to go
South on an errand, which will necessitate an absence of several days,
and if you should have any news for me, keep it until I call again. If
unfavorable it would depress my mother, and therefore I prefer you
should not write, as of course she will open any letters addressed to
me. Please save all the work you can for me, and I will come here as
soon as I get back home."

"Very well. Any message, Patterson?"

"Mr. Endicott said, 'All right; first-rate;' and ordered them shipped."

"Here is your money, Miss Brentano. Better call as early as you can, as
I guess there will be a lot of photographs ready in a few days. Good
afternoon."

"Thank you. Good-bye, sir."

From the handful of small change, she selected some pennies which she
slipped inside of her glove, and dropping the remainder into her
pocket, left the building, and walked on toward Union Square. Absorbed
in grave reflections, and oppressed by some vague foreboding of
impending ill, dim, intangible and unlocalized--she moved slowly along
the crowded sidewalk--unconscious of the curious glances directed
toward her superb form, and stately graceful carriage, which more than
one person turned and looked back to admire, wondering when she had
stepped down from some sacred Panathenaic Frieze.

Near Madison Square, she paused before the window of a florist's, and
raising her veil, gazed longingly at the glowing mass of blossoms,
which Nineteenth Century skill and wealth in defiance of isothermal
lines, and climatic limitations force into perfection, in, and out of
season. The violet eyes and crocus fingers of Spring smiled and
quivered, at sight of the crimson rose heart, and flaming paeony cheeks
of royal Summer; and creamy and purple chrysanthemums that quill their
laces over the russet robes of Autumn, here stared in indignant
amazement, at the premature presumption of snowy regal camellias,
audaciously advancing to crown the icy brows of Winter. All latitudes,
all seasons have become bound vassals to the great God Gold; and his
necromancy furnishes with equal facility the dewy wreaths of orange
flowers that perfume the filmy veils of December brides--and the blue
bells of spicy hyacinths which ring "Rest" over the lily pillows, set
as tribute on the graves of babies, who wilt under August suns.

From early childhood, an ardent love of beauty had characterized this
girl, whose covetous gaze wandered from a gorgeous scarlet and gold
orchid nodding in dreams of its habitat, in some vanilla scented
Brazilian jungle, to a bed of vivid green moss, where skilful hands had
grouped great drooping sprays of waxen begonias, coral, faint pink, and
ivory, all powdered with gold dust like that which gilds the heart of
water-lilies.

Such treasures were reserved for the family of Dives; and counting her
pennies, Beryl entered the store, where instantaneously the blended
breath of heliotrope, tube-rose and mignonette wafted her across the
ocean, to a white-walled fishing village on the Cornice, whose gray
rocks were kissed by the blue lips of the Mediterranean.

"What is the price of that cluster of Niphetos buds?"

"One dollar."

"And that Auratum--with a few rose geranium leaves added?"

"Seventy-five cents. You see it is wonderfully large, and the gold
bands are so very deep."

She put one hand in her pocket and fingered a silver coin, but poverty
is a grim, tyrannous stepmother to tender aestheticism, and prudential
considerations prevailed.

"Give me twenty-five cents worth of those pale blue double violets,
with a sprig of lemon verbena, and a fringe of geranium leaves."

She laid the money on the counter, and while the florist selected and
bound the blossoms into a bunch, she arrested his finishing touch.

"Wait a moment. How much more for one Grand Duke jasmine in the centre?"

"Ten cents, Miss."

She added the dime to the pennies she could ill afford to spare from
her small hoard, and said: "Will you be so kind as to sprinkle it? I
wish it kept fresh, for a sick lady."

Dusky shadows were gathering in the gloomy hall of the old tenement
house, when Beryl opened the door of the comfortless attic room, where
for many months she had struggled bravely to shield her mother from the
wolf, that more than once snarled across the threshold.

Mrs. Brentano was sitting in a low chair, with her elbows on her knees,
her face hidden in her palms; and in her lap lay paper and pencil,
while a sealed letter had fallen on the ground beside her. At the sound
of the opening door, she lifted her head, and tears dripped upon the
paper. In her faded flannel dressing-gown, with tresses of black hair
straggling across her shoulders, she presented a picture of helpless
mental and physical woe, which painted itself indelibly on the panels
of her daughter's heart.

"Why did you not wait until I came home? The exertion of getting up
always fatigues you."

"You staid so long--and I am so uncomfortable in that wretchedly hard
bed. What detained you?"

"I went to see the Doctor, because I am unwilling to start away,
without having asked his advice; and he has prescribed some new
medicine which you will find in this bottle. The directions are marked
on the label. Now I will put things in order, and try my hands on that
refractory bed."

"What did the Doctor say about me?"

"Nothing new; but he is confident that you can be cured in time, if we
will only be patient and obedient. He promised to see you in the
morning."

She stripped the bed of its covering, shook bolster and pillows; turned
over the mattress, and beat it vigorously; then put on fresh sheets,
and adjusted the whole comfortably.

"Now mother, turn your head, and let me comb and brush and braid all
this glossy black satin, to keep it from tangling while I am away. What
a pity you did not dower your daughter with part of it, instead of this
tawny mane of mine, which is a constant affront to my fastidious
artistic instincts. Please keep still a moment."

She unwrapped the tissue paper that covered her flowers, and holding
her hands behind her, stepped in front of the invalid.

"Dear mother, shut your eyes. There--! of what does that remind you?
The pergola--with great amber grape clusters--and white stars of
jasmine shining through the leaves? All the fragrance of Italy sleeps
in the thurible of this Grand-Duke."

"How delicious! Ah, my extravagant child! we cannot afford such
luxuries now. The perfume recalls so vividly the time when Bertie--"

A sob cut short the sentence. Beryl pinned the flowers at her mother's
throat, kissed her cheek, and kneeling before her, crossed her arms on
the invalid's lap, resting there the noble head, with its burnished
crown of reddish bronze braids.

"Mother dear, humor my childish whim. In defiance of my wishes and
judgment, and solely in obedience to your command, I am leaving you for
the first time, on a bitterly painful and humiliating mission.
To-night, let me be indeed your little girl once more. My heart brings
me to your knees, to say my prayers as of yore, and now while I pray,
lay your dear pretty hands on my head. It will seem like a parting
benediction; a veritable Nunc dimmitas."




CHAPTER II.


"I do not want a carriage. If the distance is only a mile and a half, I
can easily walk. After leaving town is there a straight road?"

"Straight as the crow flies, when you have passed the factory, and
cemetery, and turned to the left. There is a little Branch running at
the foot of the hill, and just across it, you will see the white
palings, and the big gate with stone pillars, and two tremendous brass
dogs on top, showing their teeth and ready to spring. There's no
mistaking the place, because it is the only one left in the country
that looks like the good old times before the war; and the Yankees
would not have spared it, had it not been such comfortable bombproof
headquarters for  their officers. It's our show place now, and General
Darrington keeps it up in better style, than any other estate I know."

"Thank you. I will find it."

Beryl walked away in the direction indicated, and the agent of the
railway station, leaning against the door of the baggage room, looked
with curious scrutiny after her.

"I should like to know who she is. No ordinary person, that is clear.
Such a grand figure and walk, and such a steady look in her big solemn
eyes, as if she saw straight through a person, clothes, flesh and all.
Wonder what her business can be with the old general?"

From early childhood Beryl had listened so intently to her mother's
glowing descriptions of the beauty and elegance of her old home "Elm
Bluff," that she soon began to identify the land-marks along the road,
alter passing the cemetery, where so many generations of Darringtons
slept in one corner, enclosed by a lofty iron railing; exclusive in
death as in life; jealously guarded and locked from contact with the
surrounding dwellers in "God's Acre."

The October day had begun quite cool and crisp, with a hint of frost in
its dewy sparkle, but as though vanquished Summer had suddenly faced
about, and charged furiously to cover her retreat, the south wind came
heavily laden with hot vapor from equatorial oceanic caldrons; and now
the afternoon sun, glowing in a cloudless sky, shed a yellowish glare
that burned and tingled like the breath of a furnace; while along the
horizon, a dim dull haze seemed blotting out the boundary of earth and
sky.

A portion of the primeval pine forest having been preserved, the trees
had attained gigantic height, thrusting their plumy heads heavenward,
as their lower limbs died; and year after year the mellow brown carpet
of reddish straw deepened, forming a soft safe nidus for the seeds that
sprang up and now gratefully embroidered it with masses of golden rod,
starry white asters, and tall, feathery spikes of some velvety purple
bloom, which looked royal by the side of a cluster of belated evening
primroses.

Pausing on the small but pretty rustic bridge, Beryl leaned against the
interlacing cedar boughs twisted into a balustrade, and looked down at
the winding stream, where the clear water showed amber hues, flecked
with glinting foam bubbles, as it lapped and gurgled, eddied and sang,
over its bed of yellow gravel. Unacquainted with "piney-woods'
branches," she was charmed by the novel golden brown wavelets that
frothed against the pillars of the bridge, and curled caressingly about
the broad emerald fronds of luxuriant ferns, which hung Narcissus-like
over their own graceful quivering images. Profound quiet brooded in the
warm, hazy air, burdened with balsamic odors; but once a pine burr full
of rich nutty mast crashed down through dead twigs, bruising the satin
petals of a primrose; and ever and anon the oboe notes of that shy,
deep throated hermit of ravines--the russet, speckled-breasted
lark--thrilled through the woods, like antiphonal echoes in some vast,
cool, columned cloister.

The perfect tranquillity of the scene soothed the travel-weary woman,
as though nestling so close to the great heart of nature, had stilled
the fierce throbbing, and banished the gloomy forebodings of her own;
and she walked on, through the iron gate, where the bronze mastiffs
glared warningly from their granite pedestal--on into the large
undulating park, which stretched away to meet the line of primitive
pines. There was no straight avenue, but a broad smooth carriage road
curved gently up a hillside, and on both margins of the graveled way,
ancient elm trees stood at regular intervals, throwing their boughs
across, to unite in lifting the superb groined arches, whose fine
tracery of sinuous lines were here and there concealed by clustering
mistletoe--and gray lichen masses--and ornamented with bosses of velvet
moss; while the venerable columnar trunks were now and then wreathed
with poison-oak vines, where red trumpet flowers insolently blared
defiance to the waxen pearls of encroaching mistletoe.

On the other side, the grounds were studded with native growth, as
though protective forestry statutes had crossed the ocean with the
colonists, and on this billowy sea of varied foliage Autumn had set her
illuminated autograph, in the vivid scarlet of sumach and black gum,
the delicate lemon of wild cherry--the deep ochre all sprinkled and
splashed with intense crimson, of the giant oaks--the orange glow of
ancestral hickory--and the golden glory of maples, on which the hectic
fever of the dying year kindled gleams of fiery red;--over all, a
gorgeous blazonry of riotous color, toned down by the silver gray
shadows of mossy tree-trunks, and the rich, dark, restful green of
polished magnolias.

Half a dozen fine Cotswold ewes browsed on the grass, and the small
bell worn by a staid dowager tinkled musically, as she threw up her
head and watched suspiciously the figure moving under the elm arches.
Beneath the far reaching branches of a patriarchal cedar, a small herd
of Jersey calves had grouped themselves, as if posing for Landseer or
Rosa Bonheur; and one pretty fawn-colored weanling ran across the sward
to meet the stranger, bleating a welcome and looking up, with
unmistakable curiosity in its velvety, long-lashed eyes.

As the avenue gradually climbed the ascent, the outlines of the house
became visible; a stately, typical southern mansion, like hundreds,
which formerly opened hospitably their broad mahogany doors, and which,
alas! are becoming traditional to this generation--obsolete as the
brave chivalric, warm-hearted, open-handed, noble-souled, refined
southern gentlemen who built and owned them. No Mansard roof here, no
pseudo "Queen Anne" hybrid, with lowering, top-heavy projections like
scowling eyebrows over squinting eyes; neither mongrel Renaissance, nor
feeble, sickly, imitation Elizabethan facades, and Tudor towers; none
of the queer, composite, freakish impertinences of architectural style,
which now-a-day do duty as the adventurous vanguard, the aesthetic
vedettes "making straight the way," for the coming cohorts of Culture.

The house at "Elm Bluff" was built of brick, overcast with stucco
painted in imitation of gray granite, and its foundation was only four
feet high, resting upon a broad terrace of brickwork; the latter
bounded by a graceful wooden balustrade, with pedestals for vases, on
either side of the two stone steps leading down from the terrace to the
carriage drive. The central halls, in both stories, divided the space
equally into four rooms on each side, and along the wide front, ran a
lofty piazza supporting the roof, with white smooth round pillars;
while the upper broad square windows, cedar-framed, and deeply
embrasured, looked down on the floor of the piazza, where so many
generations of Darringtons had trundled hoops in childhood--and
promenaded as lovers in the silvery moonlight, listening to the ring
doves cooing above them, from the columbary of the stucco capitals.
This spacious colonnade extended around the northern and eastern side
of the house, but the western end had formerly been enclosed as a
conservatory--which having been abolished, was finally succeeded by a
comparatively modern iron veranda, with steps leading down to the
terrace. In front of the building, between the elm avenue and the
flower-bordered terrace, stood a row of very old poplar trees, tall as
their forefathers in Lombardy, and to an iron staple driven into one of
these, a handsome black horse was now fastened.

Standing with one foot on the terrace step, close to the marble vases
where heliotropes swung their dainty lilac chalices against her
shoulder, and the scarlet geraniums stared unabashed, Beryl's gaze
wandered from the lovely park and ancient trees, to the unbroken facade
of the gray old house; and as, in painful contrast she recalled the
bare bleak garret room, where a beloved invalid held want and death at
bay, a sudden mist clouded her vision, and almost audibly she murmured:
"My poor mother! Now, I can realize the bitterness of your suffering;
now I understand the intensity of your yearning to come back; the
terrible home-sickness, which only Heaven can cure."

What is presentiment? The swaying of the veil of futurity, under the
straining hands of our guardian angels? Is it the faint shadow, the
solemn rustle of their hovering wings, as like mother birds they spread
protecting plumes between blind fledglings, and descending ruin? Will
theosophy ever explain and augment prescience?

                                    "It may be--
     The thoughts that visit us, we know not whence,
     Sudden as inspiration, are the whispers
     Of disembodied spirits, speaking to us
     As friends, who wait outside a prison wall,
     Through the barred windows speak to those within."

With difficulty Beryl resisted an inexplicable impulse to turn and
flee; but the drawn sword of duty pointed ahead.

Striking her hands together, as if thereby crushing her reluctance to
enter, she waited a moment, with closed eyes, while her lips moved in
silent prayer; then ascending the terrace, she crossed the stone
pavement, walked up the stops and slowly advanced to the threshold. The
dark mahogany door was so glossy, that she dimly saw her own image on
its polished panels, as she lifted and let fall the heavy silver
knocker, in the middle of an oval silver plate, around the edges of
which were raised the square letters of the name "Darrington." The
clanging sound startled a peacock, strutting among the verbena beds,
and his shrill scream was answered by the deep hoarse bark of some
invisible dog; then the heavy door swung open, and a gray-headed negro
man, who wore a white linen apron over his black clothes, and held a
waiter in one hand, stood before her.

"I wish to see Mr. Darrington."

"I reckon you mean Gin'l Darrington, don't you? Mr. Darrington, Marse
Prince Darrington, is in Yurope."

"I mean Mr. Luke Darrington, the owner of this place."

"Jess so; Gin'l Luke Darrington. Well, you can't see him."

"Why not? I must see him, and I shall stay here until I do."

"'Cause he is busy with his lie-yer, fixin' of some papers; and when he
tells me not to let nobody else in I'de ruther set down in a yaller
jacket's nest than to turn the door knob, after he done shut it. Better
leave your name and call ag'in."

"No, I will wait until he is at leisure. I presume my sitting on the
steps here will not be a violation of your orders."

"To be shore not. But them steps are harder than the stool of
repentance, and you had better walk in the drawing-room, and rest
yourself. There's pictures, and lots and piles of things there, you can
pass away the time looking at."

He waved his waiter toward a long, dim apartment, on the left side of
the hall.

"Thank you, I prefer to sit here."

She seated herself on the top of the stone steps, and taking off her
straw hat, fanned her heated brow, where the rich waving hair clung in
damp masses.

"What name, miss, must I give, when the lie-yer finishes his bizness?"

"Say that a stranger wishes to see him about an important matter."

"Its mighty uncertain how long he will tarry; for lie-yers live by
talking; turning of words upside down, and wrong side outards, and
reading words backards, and whitewashing black things, and smutting of
white ones. Marse Lennox Dunbar (he is our lie-yer now, since his pa
took paralsis) he is a powerful wrastler with justice. They do say down
yonder, at the court house, that when he gets done with a witness, and
turns him aloose, the poor creetur is so flustrated in his mind, that
he don't know his own name, on when he was born, or where he was born,
or whether he was ever born at all."

Curiosity to discover the nature of the stranger's errand had
stimulated the old man's garrulity, but receiving no reply, he finally
retreated, leaving the front door open. By the aid of a disfiguring
scar on his furrowed cheek, Beryl recognized him as the brave,
faithful, family coachman, Abednego, (abbreviated to "Bedney")--who had
once saved his mother's life at the risk of his own. Mrs. Brentano had
often related to her children, an episode in her childhood, when having
gone to play with her dolls in the loft of the stable, she fell asleep
on the hay; and two hours later, Bedney remembering that he had heard
her singing there to her dolls, rushed into the burning building,
groped through the stifling smoke of the loft, and seizing the sleeping
child, threw her out upon a pile of straw. When he attempted to jump
after her, a falling rafter struck him to the earth, and left an
honorable scar in attestation of his heroism.

Had she yielded to the promptings of her heart, the stranger would
gladly have shaken hands with him, and thanked him, in the name of
those early years, when her mother's childish feet made music on the
wide mahogany railed stairs, that wound from the lower hall to the one
above; but the fear of being denied an audience, deterred her from
disclosing her name.

Educated in the belief that the utterance of the abhorred name of
Brentano, within the precincts of "Elm Bluff," would produce an effect
very similar to the ringing of some Tamil Pariah's bell, before the
door of a Brahman temple, Beryl wisely kept silent; and soon forgot her
forebodings, in the contemplation of the supreme loveliness of the
prospect before her.

The elevation was sufficient to command an extended view of the
surrounding country, and of the river, which crossed by the railroad
bridge north of the town, curved sharply to the east, whence she could
trace its course as it gradually wound southward, and disappeared
behind the house; where at the foot of a steep bluff, a pretty boat and
bath house nestled under ancient willow trees. At her feet the foliage
of the park stretched like some brilliant carpet, before whose gorgeous
tints, ustads of Karman would have stood in despair; and beyond the
sea-green, undulating line of pine forest she saw the steeple of a
church, with its gilt vane burning in the sunshine, and the red brick
dome of the ante bellum court house.

Time seemed to have fallen asleep on that hot, still afternoon, and
Beryl was roused from her reverie by the sound of hearty laughter in
the apartment opposite the drawing-room--followed by the tones of a
man's voice.

"Thank you, General. That is my destination this afternoon, and I shall
certainly expect you to dance at my wedding."

Quick, firm steps rang on the oil-cloth-covered floor of the hall, and
Beryl rose and turned toward the door.

With a cigar in one hand, hat and riding-whip in the other, the
attorney stepped out on the colonnade, and pausing involuntarily, at
sight of the stranger, they looked at each other. A man, perhaps, more,
certainly not less than thirty years old, of powerful and impressive
physique; very tall, athletic, sinewy, without an ounce of superfluous
flesh to encumber his movements, in the professional palaestra; with a
large finely modeled head, whose crisp black hair closely cut, was
(contrary to the prevailing fashion) parted neither in the middle, nor
yet on the side, but brushed straight back from the square forehead,
thereby enhancing the massiveness of its appearance.

Something in this swart, beardless face, with its brilliant
inquisitorial dark blue eyes, handsome secretive mouth veiled by no
mustache--and boldly assertive chin deeply cleft in the
centre--affected Beryl very unpleasantly, as a perplexing disagreeable
memory; an uncanny resemblance hovering just beyond the grasp of
identification. A feeling of unaccountable repulsion made her shiver,
and she breathed more freely, when he hewed slightly, and walked on
toward his horse. Upon the attorney her extraordinary appearance
produced a profound impression, and in his brief scrutiny, no detail of
her face, figure, or apparel escaped his keen probing gaze.

Glancing back as he untied his bridle rein, his unspoken comment was:
"Superb woman; I wonder what brings her here? Evidently a
stranger--with a purpose."

He sprang into the saddle, stooped his head to avoid the yellow poplar
branches, and disappeared under the elm arches.

"Gin'l Darrington's compliments; and if your bizness is pressin' you
will have to see him in his bedcharmber, as he feels poorly to-day, and
the Doctor won't let him out. Follow me. You see, ole Marster remembers
the war by the game leg he got at Sharpshurg, and sometimes it lays him
up."

The old servant led Beryl through a long room, fitted up as a library
and armory, and pausing before an open door, waved her into the
adjoining apartment. One swift glance showed her the heavy canopied
bedstead in one corner, the arch-shaped glass door leading out upon the
iron veranda; and at an oblong table in the middle of the floor, the
figure of a man, who rose, taller and taller, until he seemed a giant,
drawn to his full height, and resting for support on the hand that was
rested upon the table. Intensity of emotion arrested her breath, as she
gazed at the silvered head, piercing black eyes, and spare wasted framp
of the handsome man, who had always reigned as a brutal ogre in her
imagination. The fire in his somewhat sunken eyes, seemed to bid
defiance to the whiteness of the abundant hair, and of the heavy
mustache which drooped over his lips; and every feature in his
patrician face revealed not only a long line of blue-blooded ancestors,
but the proud haughtiness which had been considered always as
distinctively characteristic of the Darringtons as their finely cut
lips, thin nostrils, small feet and unusual height.

Unprepared for the apparition that confronted him, Luke Darrington
bowed low, surveyed her intently, then pointed to a chair opposite his
own.

"Walk in, Madam; or perhaps it may be Miss? Will you take a seat, and
excuse the feebleness that forces me to receive visits in my bed-room?"

As he reseated himself, Beryl advanced and stood beside him, but for a
moment she found it impossible to utter the words, rehearsed so
frequently during her journey; and while she hesitated, he curiously
inspected her face and form.

Her plain, but perfectly fitting bunting dress, was of the color,
popularly dominated "navy-blue," and the linen collar and cuffs were
scarcely whiter than the round throat and wrists they encircled. The
burnished auburn hair clinging in soft waves to her brow, was twisted
into a heavy coil, which the long walk had shaken down till it rested
almost on her neck; and though her heart beat furiously, the pale calm
face might have been marble, save for the scarlet lines of her
beautiful mouth, and the steady glow of the dilated pupils in her great
gray eyes.

"Pray be seated; and tell me to whom I am indebted for the pleasure of
this visit?"

"I am merely the bearer of a letter which will explain itself, and my
presence, in your house."

Mechanically he took the preferred letter, and with his eyes still
lingering in admiration upon the classic outlines of her face and form,
leaned back comfortably against the velvet lining of his armchair.

"Are you some exiled goddess travelling incognito? If we lived in the
'piping days of Pan' I should flatter myself that 'Ox-eyed Juno' had
honored me with a call, as a reward for my care of her favorite bird."

Receiving no reply he glanced at the envelope in his hand, and as he
read the address--"To my dear father, Gen'l Luke Darrington"--the smile
on his face changed to a dark scowl and he tossed the letter to the
floor, as if it were a red-hot coal.

"Only one living being has the right to call me father--my son, Prince
Darrington. I have repeatedly refused to hold any communication with
the person who wrote that letter."

Beryl stooped to pick it up, and with a caressing touch, as though it
were sentient, held it against her heart.

"Your daughter is dying; and this is her last appeal."

"I have no daughter. Twenty-three years ago my daughter buried herself
in hopeless disgrace, and for her there can be no resurrection here. If
she dreams that I am in my dotage, and may relent, she strangely
forgets the nature of the blood she saw fit to cross with that of a
beggarly foreign scrub. Go back and tell her, the old man is not yet
senile and imbecile; and that the years have only hardened his heart.
Tell her, I have almost learned to forget even how she looked."

His eyes showed a dull reddish fire, like those of some drowsy caged
tiger, suddenly stirred into wrath, and a grayish pallor--the white
heat of the Darringtons--settled on his face.

Twice Beryl walked the length of the room, but each time the
recollection of her mother's tearful, suffering countenance, and the
extremity of her need, drove her back to the chair.

"If you knew that your daughter's life hung by a thread, would you
deliberately take a pair of shears and cut it?"

He glared at her in silence, and leaning forward on the table, pushed
roughly aside a salver, on which stood a decanter and two wine glasses.

"I am here to tell you a solemn truth; then my responsibility ends.
Your daughter's life rests literally in your hands; for unless you
consent to furnish the money to pay for a surgical operation, which may
restore her health, she will certainly die. I am indulging in no
exaggeration to extort alms. In this letter is the certificate of a
distinguished physician, corroborating my statement. If you, the author
of her being, prefer to hasten her death, then your choice of an awful
revenge must be settled between your hardened conscience and your God."

"You are bold indeed, to beard me in my own house, and tell me to my
face what no man would dare to utter."

His voice was an angry pant, and he struck his clenched hand on the
table with a force that made the glasses jingle, and the sherry dance
in the decanter.

"Yes, you scarcely realize how much bravery this painful errand
demands; but the tender love in a woman's heart nerves her to bear
fiery ordeals, that vanquish a man's courage."

"Then you find that age has not drawn the fangs from the old crippled
Darrington lion, nor clipped his claws?"

The sneer curved his white mustache, until she saw the outline of the
narrow, bloodless underlip.

"That king of beasts scorns to redden his fangs, or flesh his claws, in
the quivering body of his own offspring. Your metaphor is an insult to
natural instincts."

She laid the letter once more before him, and looked down on him, with
ill-concealed aversion.

"Who are you? By what right dare you intrude upon me?"

"I am merely a sorrowful, anxious, poverty-stricken woman, whose heart
aches over her mother's sufferings and vho would never have endured the
humiliation of this interview, except to deliver a letter in the hope
of prolonging my mother's life."

"You do not mean that you are--my--"

"I am nothing to you, sir, but the bearer of a letter from your dying
daughter."

"You cannot be the child of--of Ellice?"

After the long limbo of twenty-three years, the name burst from him,
and with what a host of memories its echo peopled the room, where that
erring daughter had formerly reigned queen of his heart.

"Yes, Ellice is my dear mother's name."

He stared at the majestic form, and at the faultless face looking so
proudly down upon him, as from an inaccessible height; and she heard
him draw his breath, with a labored hissing sound.

"But--I thought her child was a boy?"

"I am the youngest of two children."

"It is impossible that you are the daughter of that infernal, low-born,
fiddling foreign vagabond who--"

"Hush! The dead are sacred!"

She threw up her hand, with an imperious gesture, not of deprecation,
but of interdict; and all the stony calm in her pale face seemed
shivered by a passionate gust, that made her eyes gleam like steel
under an electric flash.

"I am the daughter of Ignace Brentano, and I love, and honor his
memory, and his name. No drop of your Darrington blood runs in my
veins; I love my dear mother--but I am my father's daughter--and I want
no nobler heritage than his name. Upon you I have no shadow of claim,
but I am here from dire necessity, at your mercy--a helpless,
defenseless pleader in my mother's behalf--and as such, I appeal to the
boasted southern chivalry, upon which you pride yourself, for immunity
from insult while I am under your roof. Since I stood no taller than
your knee, my mother has striven to inculcate a belief in the nobility,
refinement, and chivalric deference to womanhood, inherent in southern
gentlemen; and if it be not all a myth, I invoke its protection against
abuse of my father. A stranger, but a lady, every inch, I demand the
respect due from a gentleman."

For a moment they eyed each other, as gladiators awaiting the signal,
then General Darrington sprang to his feet, and with a bow, stately and
profound as if made to a duchess, replied:

"And in the name of southern chivalry, I swear you shall receive it."

"Read your daughter's letter; give me your answer, and let us cut short
an interview--which, if disagreeable to you, is almost unendurable to
me."

Turning away, she began to walk slowly up and down the floor; and
smothering an oath under his heavy mustache, the old man sank back in
his chair, and opened the letter.




CHAPTER III.


Holding in leash the painful emotions that struggled for utterance,
Beryl was unconscious of the lapse of time, and when her averted eyes
returned reluctantly to her grandfather's face, he was slowly tearing
into shreds the tear-stained letter, freighted with passionate prayers
for pardon, and for succor. Rolling the strips into a ball, he threw it
into the waste-paper basket under the table; then filled a glass with
sherry, drank it, and dropped his head wearily on his hand. Five leaden
minutes crawled away, and a long, heavy sigh quivered through Gen'l
Darrington's gaunt frame. Seizing the decanter, he poured the contents
into two glasses, and as he raised one to his lips, held the other
toward his visitor.

"You must be weary from your journey; let me insist that you drink some
sherry."

"Thank you, I neither wish nor require it."

"I find your name is Beryl. Sit down here, and answer a few questions."
He drew a chair near his own.

She shook her head:

"If you will excuse me, I prefer to stand."

In turning, so as to confront her fully, his elbow struck from the
table, a bronze paper-weight which rolled just beyond his reach.
Instinctively she stooped to pick it up, and in restoring it, her
fingers touched his. Leaning suddenly forward he grasped her wrists ere
she was aware of his intention, and drew her in front of him.

"Pardon me; but I want a good look at you."

His keen merciless eyes searched every feature, and he deliberately
lifted and examined the exquisitely shaped strong, white hands, the
dainty nails, and delicately rounded wrists with their violet tracery
of veins. It cost her an effort, to abstain from wrenching herself
free; but her mother's caution: "So much depends on the impression you
make upon father," girded her to submit to his critical inspection.

A grim smile crossed his face, as he watched her.

"Blood often doubles, like a fox; sometimes 'crops back,' but never
lies. You can't play out your role of pauper; and you don't look a
probable outcome of destitution and hard work. Your hands would fit
much better in a metope of the Elgin Marbles, than in a wash-tub, or a
bake-oven."

Drawing away quickly, she put them behind her, and felt her palms
tingle.

"It is expected I should believe that for some time past, you have
provided for your own, and your mother's wants. In what way?"

"By coloring photographs; by furnishing designs for Christmas and
Easter cards, and occasionally (not often), by selling drawings used
for decorating china, and wallpaper. At one time, I had regular pay for
singing in a choir, but diphtheria injured my throat, and when I partly
recovered my voice, the situation had been given to another person."

"I am informed also that before long, you intend to astonish the world
with a wonderful picture, which shall distance such laggards as Troyon,
Dore, and Ary Scheffer?"

She was looking, not at him, but out through the glass door, at the
glowing western sky, where distant pine trees printed their
silhouettes. Now her gaze came back to his face, and he noted a faint
quiver in her full throat.

"If God will mercifully spare my mother to me, my loftiest and holiest
ambition shall be to distance the wolfish cares and woes that have
hunted her, ever since she became a widow. Any and all honest labor
that can contribute to her comfort, will be welcome and sweet to me."

"The laws of heredity must be occult and complex. The offspring of a
rebellious and disobedient child, is certainly entitled to no filial
instincts; and some day the strain will tell, and you will overwhelm
your mother with ingratitude, black as that which she showed me."

"When I do, may God eternally forsake me!"

A brief silence ensued, and the old man drummed on the table, with the
fingers of his right hand.

"Who educated you?"

"My dear father."

"It seems there are two of you. Where is your brother?"

"At present, I do not know exactly where he is, but I think in the far
West; possibly in Montana--probably in Canada."

"How does he earn his bread? By daubing, or fiddling?"

"Since he earns it honestly, that is his own affair. We have not heard
from him for some months."

"I thought so! He inherits the worthless vagabond strain of--"

"He is his mother's idol, and she glories in his resemblance to you,
sir; and to your father; hence his name--Robert L. Darrington."

"Then she must have one handsome child! I am not surprised that he is
the favorite."

"Bertie certainly is her darling, and he is very handsome; not in the
very least degree like me."

For the first time, their eyes met in a friendly glance, and a covert
smile stirred the General's lips; but as he put out his hand toward
her, she moved a step beyond his reach.

"Beryl, you consider me a dreadful, cruel old tyrant?"

She made no reply.

"Answer me."

"You are my mother's father; and that word--father, means so much to
me, that it shall shield even you, from the shadow of disrespect."

"Oh! very dutiful indeed, but dead as the days when daughters obeyed,
and honored their fathers! Beggarly foreign professors wiped all that
out of the minds of wealthy girls at boarding schools--just as they
changed their backwoods pronunciation of French and Italian. Don't
evade my question."

"I did not come here, sir, to bandy words; and I ended my mission by
delivering the letter intrusted to me."

"You regard me as a vindictive old bear?"

"I had heard much of the Darringtons; I imagined a great deal more; but
now, like the Queen of Sheba, I must testify--'Behold, the half was not
told me.'"

He threw back his lion-like head, and laughed.

"That will do. Shake hands, child."

"No, thank you."

"And you will not sit down?"

"Frankly, I prefer not. I long to get away."

"You shall certainly be gratified, but there are a few things which I
intend you shall hear. Of course you know that your mother was my only
child, and an heiress; but you are ignorant probably of the fact that
when she returned to boarding school for the last session, she was
engaged in marriage to the son of my best friend--a man in every
respect desirable, and thoroughly acceptable to me."

"So my mother told me."

"Indeed? She should blush to remember it. While she wore his engagement
ring, she forgot her promise to him, her duty to me, her lineage, her
birth, her position--and was inveigled by a low adventurer who--"

"Who was my own precious father--poor, but noble, and worthy of any
princess! Unless you can refer to him respectfully, name him not at
all, in his child's presence."

She suddenly towered over him, like some threatening fate, and her
uplifted arm trembled from the intensity of her indignation.

"At least--you are loyal to your tribe!"

"I am, to my heart's core. You could pay me no higher compliment."

"Ellice wrote that she had bestowed her affections on--on--the 'exiled
scion of a noble house,' who paid his board bill by teaching languages
and music in the school; and who very naturally preferred to marry a
rich fool, who would pay them for him. I answered her letter, which was
addressed to her own mother--then quite ill at home--and I told her
precisely what she might expect, if she persisted in her insane folly.
As soon as my wife convalesced sufficiently to render my departure
advisable, I started to bring my daughter home; but she ran away, a few
hours before my arrival, and while, hoping to rescue Ellice, I was in
pursuit of the precious pair, my wife relapsed and died--the victim of
excitement brought on by her child's disgrace. I came back here to a
desolate, silent house;--bereft of wife and daughter; and in the grave
of her mother, I buried every atom of love and tenderness I ever
entertained for Ellice. When the sun is suddenly blotted out at noon,
and the world turns black--black, we grope to and fro aimlessly; but
after awhile, we accommodate ourselves to the darkness;--and so, I
became a different man--very hard, and I dare say very bitter. The
world soon learned that I would tolerate no illusion to my disgrace,
and people respected my family cancer, and prudently refrained from
offering me nostrums to cure it. My wife had a handsome estate of her
own right, and every cent of her fortune I collected, and sent with her
jewelry to Ellice. Did you know this?"

"I have heard only of the jewels."

"As I supposed, the money was squandered before you could recollect."

"I know that we were reduced to poverty, by the failure of some banking
house in Paris. I was old enough when it occurred, to remember ever
afterward, the dismay and distress it caused. My father no doubt placed
my mother's money there for safety."

"I wrote one long, final letter when I sent the checks for the money,
and I told Ellice I wished never to see, never to hear from her again.
I told her also, I had only one wish concerning her, and that was, that
I might be able to forget her so completely, that if we should meet in
the Last Judgment, I could not possibly know her. I assured her she
need expect nothing at my death; as I had taken good care that my
estate should not fall into the clutches of--her--'exiled scion of a
noble house.' Now do you consider that she has any claim on me?"

"You must not ask me to sit in judgment on my parents."

"You shall decide a question of business facts. I provided liberally
for her once; can you expect me to do so again? Has she any right to
demand it?"

"Having defied your parental wishes, she may have forfeited a
daughter's claim; but as a heart-broken sufferer, you cannot deny her
the melancholy privilege of praying for your help, on her death-bed."

The proud clear voice trembled, and Beryl covered her face with her
hands.

"Then we will ignore outraged ties of blood, and treat on the ground of
mere humanity? Let me conclude, for it is sickening and loathsome to a
man of my age, to see his long silent household graves yawn, and give
up uncalled--their sheeted dead. For some years the money sent, was a
quietus, and I was left in peace. I was lonely; it was, hard work to
forget, because I could never forgive; and the more desolate the gray
ruin, the more nature yearns to cover it close with vines and flowers;
so after a time, I married a gentle, pure hearted woman, who made the
best of what was left of me. We had no children, but she had one son of
a former marriage, who proved a noble trustworthy boy; and by degrees
he crept into my heart, and raked together the cinders of my dead
affections, and kindled a feeble flame that warmed my shivering old
age. When I felt assured that I was not thawing another serpent to
sting me for my pains, I adopted Thorton Prince, and with the aid of a
Legislative enactment, changed his name to Prince Darrington. Only a
few months elapsed, before his mother, of whom I was very fond, died of
consumption and my boy and I comforted each other. Then I made my
second and last will, and took every possible precaution to secure my
estate of every description to him. He is my sole heir, and I intend
that at my death he shall receive every cent I possess. Did you know
this?"

"I did, because your last endorsement on a letter of my mother's
returned unopened to her, informed her of the fact."

"Why? Because in violation of my wishes she had persisted in writing,
and soon began to importune me for money. Then I made her understand
that even at my death, she would receive no aid; and since that
endorsement, I have returned or destroyed her letters unread. My Will
is so strong--has been drawn so carefully--that no contest can touch
it; and it will stand forever between your mother and my property."

As he uttered these words, he elevated his voice, which had a ring of
savage triumph in its harsh excited tones. Just then, a muffled sound
attracted his attention, and seizing his gold-headed cane, he limped
with evident pain to the threshold of the adjoining room.

"Bedney."

Receiving no reply, he closed the door with a violence that jarred the
whole room; and came slowly back to the table, where he stood leaning
heavily on his stick.

"At least we will have no eavesdropping at this resurrection of my
dead. That Ellice is now a miserable woman, I have no doubt; for truly:
'Quien se casa por amores, ha de vivir con dolores.' Of course you
understand Spanish?"

"No, sir; but no matter; I take it for granted that you intend some
thrust at my mother, and I have heard quite enough."

"Don't know Spanish? Why I fancied your--your 'exiled scion of a noble
house'--taught all the languages under the sun; including that used by
the serpent in beguiling Eve! Well, the wise old adage means: 'Who
marries for love, lives with sorrow.' Ellice made her choice, and she
shall abide by it; and you--being unluckily her daughter--will share
the punishment. If 'fathers WILL eat sour grapes, the children's teeth
MUST be set on edge.' I repudiate all claims on my parental treasury,
save such as I have given to my son Prince. To every other draft I am
bankrupt; but merely as a gentleman, I will now for the last time,
respond to the petition of a sick woman, whose child is so loyal as to
arouse my compassion. Ellice has asked for one hundred dollars. You
shall have it. But first, tell me why she did not go to the hospital,
and submit to the operation which she says will cure her?"

"Because I could not be with her there, and I will never be separated
from her. The aneurism has grown so alarmingly, that I became
desperate, and having no one to aid us, I reluctantly obeyed my
mother's requirement that I should come here. I could not summon my
brother, because I have no idea where a letter would reach him; and
with no friend--but the God of the friendless--I am before you. There
is one thing I ought to tell you; I have terrible forebodings of the
result of the operation, from which the Doctor encourages her to hope
so much. She will not be able to take anesthetics, at least not
chloroform, because she has a weak heart, and--"

"Yes--a very weak heart! It was never strong enough to hold her to her
duty."

"If you could see her now, I think even your vindictive hatred would be
sufficiently gratified. So wasted, so broken!--and with such a
ceaseless craving for a kind word from you. One night last week pain
made her restless, and I heard her sob. When I tried to relieve the
suffering, she cried bitterly: 'It is not my poor body alone--it is the
gnawing hunger to see father once more. He loved me so fondly once and
if I could crawl to his feet, and clasp his knees in my arms, I could
at least die in peace. I am starving for just one sight of him--one
touch.' My poor darling mother! My beautiful, bruised, broken flower."

Through the glittering mist of unshed tears, her eyes shone, like
silver lamps; and for a moment Gen'l Darrington covered his face with
one hand.

"If you could realize how bitterly galling to my own pride and self
respect is this appeal to a man who hates and spurns all whom I love, I
think, sir, that even you would pity me so heartily, that your hardened
heart would melt into one last farewell message of forgiveness to your
unfortunate daughter. I would rather carry her one word of love than
all your fortune."

"No--I come of a flinty race. We never forgive insults; never condone
wrongs; and expecting loyalty in our own blood, we cannot live long
enough to pardon its treachery. Once, I made an idol of my beautiful,
graceful, high-bred girl; but she stabbed my pride, dragged my name
through the gutters, broke her doting mother's heart; and now, I tell
you, she is as dead to me as if she had lain twenty-three years in her
grave. I have only one message. Tell her she is reaping the tares her
own hand sowed. I know her no more as child of mine, and my son fills
her place so completely, I do not even miss her. That is the best I can
say. No doubt I am hard, but at least I am honest; and I will not feign
what I cannot feel."

He limped across the floor, to a recess on one side of the chimney,
where a square vault with an iron door had been built into the wall.
Leaning on his cane, he took from his pocket a bunch of keys, fitted
one into the lock, and pushing the bolt, the door slid back into a
groove, instead of opening on hinges. He lifted a black tin box from
the depths of the vault, carried it to the table, sat down, and opened
it. Near the top, were numerous papers tied into packages with red
tape, and two large envelopes carefully sealed with dark-green wax. In
removing the bundles, to find something beneath them, these envelopes
were laid on the table; and as one was either accidentally or
intentionally turned, Beryl saw the endorsement written in bold black
letters, and heavily underscored in red ink: "Last Will and Testament
of Robert Luke Darrington." Untying a small chamois bag, the owner
counted out five twenty-dollar gold pieces, closed the bag, and
replaced it in the box.

"Hold out your hand. Your mother asked fur one hundred dollars. Here is
the exact amount. Henceforth, leave me in peace. I am an old man, and I
advise you to 'let sleeping dogs lie.'"

If he had laid a red-hot iron on her palm, it would scarcely have been
more scorching than the touch of his gold, and only the vision of a wan
and woeful face in that far off cheerless attic room, restrained her
impulse to throw it at his feet.

An almost intolerable humiliation dyed her pale cheeks a deep purplish
crimson, and she proudly drew herself to her utmost height.

"Because I cannot now help myself, I accept the money--not as a gift,
but as a loan for my mother's benefit; and so help me God! I will not
owe it to you one moment longer than by hard labor I can earn and
return it. Goodbye, Gen'l Darrington."

She turned toward the closed door leading to the library, but raising
his cane, he held it out, to intercept her.

"Wait a moment. There is one thing more."

He took from the tin box an oblong package, wrapped in letter paper,
yellowed by age, and carefully sealed with red wax. As he held it up,
she read thereon: "My last folly." He tore off the paper, lifted an old
fashioned morocco case, and attempted to open it, but the catch was
obstinate, or rusty, and several ineffectual efforts were made, ere he
succeeded in moving the spring. The once white velvet cushion, had
darkened and turned very yellow, but time had robbed in no degree, the
lustre of the magnificent sapphires coiled there; and the blue fires
leaped out, as if rejoicing in the privilege of displaying their
splendor.  "This set of stones was intended as a gift to your mother,
when she was graduated at boarding-school. The time fixed for the close
of the session was only one month later than the day on which she
eloped with that foreign fraud, who should never have been allowed in
the school. My wife had promised that if your mother won the honor of
valedictorian, she should have the handsomest present ever worn at a
commencement. These costly sapphires were my poor wife's choice. Poor
Helena! how often she admired them!" His voice faltered, and he bit his
under lip to still its quiver.

Was there some necromancy in the azure flames, that suddenly revealed
the beloved face of the wife of his youth, and the lovely vision of
their only child? His eagle eyes were dim with tears, and his hand
shook; but, as if ashamed of the weakness, he closed the jewel case
with a snap, and held it out.

"Here--take them. I had intended to give them as a bridal present to my
son's wife, when he marries to suit me--as he certainly will; but
somehow, such a disposal seems hard on my dear Helena's wishes, and for
her sake, I don't feel quite easy about leaving them to Prince's bride.
Your mother never saw them, never knew of their existence. They are
very valuable, and the amount they will bring must relieve all present
necessities. Tell Ellice the sight of the case disturbs me, like a
thorn in the flesh, so I send them away, to rid myself of an annoyance.
She must not thank me; they come from her--dead mother."

"A knowledge of their history would give her infinitely more pain than
the proceeds of their sale could bring comfort. I would not stab her
aching heart for twenty times the value of the jewels."

"Then sell them, or do as you like. It matters not what becomes of
them, if I am spared in future all reminders of the past. Put them in
your pocket. What? The case is too large? Where is your trunk--your
baggage?"

"I have none, except my basket and shawl."

She picked them up from the carpet near the library door, and dropped
the case into her basket.

"You are a brave, and a loyal woman, and you appear to deserve far
better parents than fell to your lot. Before you go, let me offer you a
glass of wine, and a biscuit."

"Thank you--no. I could not possibly accept it."

"Well, we shall never meet again. Good-bye. Shake hands."

"I will very gladly do so if you will only give me just one gentle,
forgiving kind word to comfort mother."

He set his teeth, and shook his head.

"Good-bye, Gen'l Darrington. When you lie down to die, I hope God will
be more merciful to your poor soul, than you have shown yourself to
your suffering child."

He bowed profoundly.

Her hand was on the knob of the door, when he pointed to the western
veranda.

"You are going back to town? Then, if you please, be so good as to pass
out through that rear entrance, and close the glass door after you. A
side path leads to the lawn; and I prefer that you should not meet the
servants, who pry and tattle."

When she stood on the veranda, and turned to close the wide arched
glass door, whence the inside red silk curtain had been looped back,
her last view of the gaunt, tall figure within, showed him leaning on
his stick, with the tin box held in his left hand, and the dying
sunlight shining on his silver hair and furrowed face.

Along the serpentine path which was bordered with masses of brilliant
chrysanthemums, Beryl walked rapidly, feeling almost stifled by the
pressure of contending emotions. Recollecting that these spice censers
of Autumn were her mother's favorite flowers, she stooped and broke
several lovely clusters of orange and garnet color, hoping that a
lingering breath of perfume from the home of her girlhood, might afford
at least a melancholy pleasure to the distant invalid.

Advancing into the elm avenue, she heard a voice calling, and looking
back, saw the old negro man, Bedney, waving his white apron and running
toward her; but at that moment his steps were arrested by the sudden,
loud and rapid ringing of a bell. He paused, listened, wavered; then
threw up his hands, and hurried back to the house, whence issued the
impatient summons.

The sun had gone down in the green sea of far-off pine tops, but the
western sky glowed like some vast altar of topaz, whereon zodiacal
fires had kindled the rays of vivid rose, that sprang into the zenith
and cooled their flush in the pale blue of the upper air. Under the
elms, swift southern twilight was already filling the arches with
purple gloom, and when the heavy iron gate closed with a sullen clang
behind her, Beryl drew a long deep breath of relief. On the sultry
atmosphere broke the gurgling andante music of the "branch," as it
eddied among the nodding ferns, and darted under the bridge; and the
weary, thirsty woman knelt on the mossy margin, dipped up the amber
water in her palms, drank, and bathed her burning face which still
tingled painfully.

Having learned from the station agent, who had already sold her a
return ticket, that the north bound railway train, by which she desired
to travel home, would not depart until 7.15, she was beguiled by the
brilliance of the sky into the belief that she had ample time, to
comply with her mother's farewell request. Mrs. Brentano had tied with
a scrap of ribbon the bouquet of flowers, bought by her daughter on the
afternoon of her journey south, and asked her to lay them on her
mother's grave.

Anxious to accomplish this sacred mission Beryl took the faded blossoms
from her basket, added a cluster of chrysanthemums, a frond of fern
from the "branch" border, and hurried on to the cemetery. When she
reached the entrance, the gate was locked, but unwilling to return
without having gratified her mother's wish, she climbed into a
spreading cedar close by the low brick wall, and swung herself easily
down inside the enclosure.

Some time was lost in finding the Darrington lot, but at last she stood
before a tall iron railing, that bristled with lance-like points,
between the dust, of her ancestors and herself. In one corner rose a
beautiful monument, bearing on its front, in gilt letters, the
inscription "Helena Tracy, wife of R. L. Darrington."

Thrusting her hand through a space in the railing, Beryl dropped her
mother's withered Arkja tribute on the marble slab. Her dress was
caught by a sharp point of iron, and while endeavoring to disengage it,
she heard the shrill whistle of the R. R. engine. Tearing the skirt
away, she ran to the wall, climbed over, after some delay, and finding
herself once more in the open road, darted on as fast as possible
through the dusk, heedless of appearances, fearful only of missing the
train. How the houses multiplied, and what interminable lengths the
squares seemed, as she neared the brick warehouse and office of the
station! The lamps at the street corners beckoned her on, and when
panting for breath she rushed around the side of the tall building that
fronted the railway, there was no train in sight.

Two or three coal cars stood on a siding, near a detached engine, where
one man was lighting the lamp before the reflector of the headlight,
and another, who whistled merrily, burnished the brass and copper
platings. In the door of the ticket office the agent lounged, puffed
his cigar, and fanned himself with his hat.

"What time is it?" cried Beryl.

"Seven-forty-five."

"Oh! do not tell me I have missed the train."

"You certainly have. I told you it left at 7:15 sharp. It was ten
minutes behind time on account of hot boxes, but rolled out just twenty
minutes ago. Did you get lost hunting 'Elm Bluff,' and miss your train
on that account?"

"No, I had no difficulty in finding the place, but having no watch, I
was forced to guess at the time. Only twenty minutes too late!"

"Did you see the old war-horse?"

Beryl did not answer, and after a moment the agent added:

"That is Gen'l Darrington's nick-name all over this section."

"When will the next train leave here?"

"Not until 3:05 A.M."

Beryl sat down on the edge of a baggage truck, and pondered the
situation. She knew that her mother, who had carefully studied the
railway schedule, was with feverish anxiety expecting her return by the
train, now many miles away; and she feared that any unexplained
detention would have an injurious effect on the sick woman's shattered
nerves.

Although she could ill afford the expense, she resolved to allay all
apprehension, by the costly sedative of a telegram.

Only a wall separated the ticket office from that of the "telegraph,"
and approaching the operator, Beryl asked for a blank form, on which
she wrote her mother's address, and the following message:

"Complete success required delay. All will be satisfactory. Expect me
Saturday. B. B."

When she had paid the operator, there remained in her purse, exclusive
of the gold coins received that afternoon, only thirty-eight cents.
Where could she spend the next seven hours? Interpreting the perplexed
expression of her face, the agent, who had curiously noted her
movements, said courteously:

"There is a hotel a few blocks off, where you can rest until train
time."

"I prefer to remain here."

"We generally lock up this office about half-past eight, and re-open at
half-past two, which gives passengers ample accommodation for the 3:05
train."

"Would you violate regulations by leaving the waiting-room open
to-night?"

"Not exactly; as of course we are obliged to keep open for delayed
trains; but it will be lonesome waiting, for no one stays here, except
the Night Train Despatcher, and the switch watchman. Still if it will
oblige you, miss, I will not lock up, and you can doze away the time by
spreading your shawl on two chairs. I am going to supper now, and shall
turn down the lights. One burner will be sufficient."

"Thank you very much. Where can I find some water?"

"In the cooler in the ladies' dressing-room. It is most unaccountably
hot tonight, and I never knew anything like it in October. There must
be a cyclone brewing somewhere not far off."

He lifted his hat, as he passed her, and disappeared; and the tired
girl seated herself near a window and stirred the dense, impure air by
fanning herself with her straw hat. Gradually the few stragglers
loitering about the station wandered away; the engineer stepped upon
the locomotive; a piercing whistle broke suddenly on the silence
settling down over the whilom busy precincts, and as the rhythmic
measure of the engine bell rang farewell chimes, a pyramid of sparks
leaped high, and the mighty mechanism fled down the track, hunting its
own echoes. The man in charge of the express office came out, looked up
and down the street; yawned, lighted his pipe, and after locking the
office, wended his way homeward.

From the adjoining room came the slow monotonous clicking of the
telegraph wires, as messages passed to other stations, and only the
switch watchman was visible, sitting on an inverted tub, and playing
snatches from "Mascotte" and "Olivette" upon a harmonicon.

Heat seemed radiating from the brick pavement outside, from the inner
walls of the waiting-room; and Beryl, finding the atmosphere almost
stifling, went out under the stars. Up and down she paced, until weary
of the dusty thoroughfare, she turned into the street which, earlier in
the day, had conducted her toward the suburbs. She knew that a full
moon had climbed above the horizon, and some malign Morgana lured her
on, with visions of cool pine glades paved with silver mosaics, and
balmy with breath of balsam; where through vast forest naves echoed the
melodious monody chanted by the reddish gold wavelets of the "branch."
In the eastern sky the florid face of a hunter's moon looked down, from
the level line of a leaden cloud, which striped the star emblazoned
shield of night, like a bar sinister; and the white lustre of her rays
was dimmed to a lurid dulness solemn and presageful.

As Beryl crossed the common near the station, and entered the pillared
aisles of the pines, the air was less oppressive, but a dun haze seemed
on every side to curtain the horizon, and the stars looked bleared and
tired in the breathless vault above her. A man driving two cows toward
town, stared at her; then a wagon drawn by four horses rattled along,
bearing homeward a gay picnic party of young people, who made the woods
ring with the echoes of "Hold the Fort." The grandeur of towering
pines, the mysterious dimness of illimitable arcades, and the peculiar
resinous odor that stole like lingering ghosts of myrrh, frankincense
and onycha through the vaulted solitude of a deserted hoary sanctuary,
all these phases of primeval Southern forests combined to weave a spell
that the stranger could not resist.

After a while, fearful of straying too far, the weary woman threw her
shawl on the brown straw, and sat down quite near the road. She leaned
her bare head against the trunk of a pine, listened to the katydids
gossiping in a distant oak that shaded the "branch," to the quavering
strident song of a locust; and she intended, after resting for a few
moments, to return to the station-house; but unexpected drowsiness
overpowered her. Suddenly aroused from a sound sleep, she heard the
clatter of galloping hoofs, and as she sprang up, the horse, startled
by her movement, shied and reared within a few feet of the spot where
she stood. The moon shone full on the glossy black animal, and upon his
powerful rider, and Beryl recognized the massive head, swarthy face and
keen eyes of the attorney, Lennox Dunbar. He leaned forward and said,
as he patted the erect ears of his horse:

"Madam, you seem a stranger. Have you lost your way?"

"No, sir."

"Pardon me; but having seen you this afternoon at 'Elm Bluff,' I
thought it possible you had missed the road."

Standing so straight and tall, with the sheen of the moon on her
faultless features, he thought she looked the incarnation of some
prescient Norn, fit for the well of Urda.

She made no reply; and he touched his hat, and rode rapidly away in the
direction of the town, carrying an indelible impression of the
mysterious picture under the pines.

The sky had changed; the face of the moon had cleared, but tatters and
scuds of smoke-colored cloud fled northward, as if scourged by a stormy
current too high to stir the sultry stagnation of the lower atmospheric
stratum. From its vaporous lair somewhere in the cypress and palm
jungles of the Mexican Gulf borders, the tempest had risen, and before
its breath the shreds of cloud flew like avant couriers of disaster.
Already the lurid glare of incessant sheet lightning fought with the
moon for supremacy, and from a leaden wall along the southeastern sky,
came the long reverberating growl of thunder, that told where the
electric batteries had opened fire. A vague foreboding, which for
several days had haunted Beryl's mind, now pressed so heavily upon her,
that she hurried back to the station, which was near the edge of the
town; and more than once she started nervously at sight of grotesque
shadows cast by the trees across the sandy road.

The streets were deserted, and lights gleamed only in upper windows of
apartments, where sick sufferers tossed, or tender mothers sang soft
lullabys to restless babies crooning in their cribs. Now and then a
sudden gust of wind shook the yellow berries from the china trees, that
bordered the pavements, and very soon the moonshine faded, then flashed
fitfully, and finally vanished, as the blackening cloud swept over the
face of earth and sky. The watchman dozed on his post of observation; a
porter slept on a baggage truck under the awning, and as Beryl peeped
into the telegraph office, she heard the snoring of the operator, whose
head rested upon the table close to the silent instrument. She listened
to the ticking of a clock in the ticket office, but could not see its
face; wondered how late it was, and how long she had been absent.
Feeling very lonely and restless she closed the door, and sat down in
the deserted waiting-room, glad of the companionship of a
tortoise-shell cat which was curled up on a chair next her own.

Gradually the storm approached, and she thought that an hour had
elapsed, when the dust-tainted smell of rain came with the rush of cold
air. There was no steady gale, but the tempest broke in frantic
spasmodic gusts, as though it had lost its reckoning, and
simultaneously assaulted all the points of the compass; while the
lightning glared almost continuously, and the roar of the thunder was
uninterrupted. Now and then a vivid zig-zag flash gored the intense
darkness with its baleful blue death-light, followed by a crash,
appalling as if the battlements of heaven had been shattered. Once the
whole air seemed ablaze, and the simultaneous shock of the detonation
was so violent, that Beryl involuntarily sank on her knees, and hid her
eyes on a chair. The rain fell in torrents, that added a solemn sullen
swell to the diapason of the thunder fugue, and by degrees a delicious
coolness crept into the cisterns of the night.

When the cloud had wept away its fury, and electric fires burned low in
the far west, a gentle shower droned on the roof, and lulled by its
cadence Beryl fell asleep, still kneeling on the floor, with her head
resting on the chair where the cat lay coiled.

In dreams, she wandered with her father and brother upon a Tuscan
hillside draped with purple fruited grape vines, and Bertie was
crushing a luscious cluster against her thirsty lips, when some noise
startled her. Wide awake, she sprang to her feet, and listened.

"There ain't no train till daylight, 'cepting it be the through
freight."

"When is that due?"

"Pretty soon; it's mighty nigh time now, but it don't stop here; it
goes on to the water tank, whar it blows for the railroad bridge."

"How far is the bridge?"

"Only a short piece down the track, after you pass the tank."

Beryl had rushed to the window, and looked out, but no one was visible.
She could scarcely mistake that peculiar voice, and was so assured of
its identity, that she ran out under the awning and looked up and down
the platform in front of the station buildings. The rain had ceased,
but drops still pattered from the tin roof, and a few stars peeped over
the ragged ravelled edge of slowly drifting clouds. By the light of a
gas lamp, she saw an old negro man limping away, who held a stick over
his shoulder, on which was slung a bundle wrapped in a red
handkerchief; and while she stood watching, he vanished in some cul de
sac. With her basket in her hand, and her shawl on her arm, she sped
down the track, looking to right and left.

"Bertie! Bertie!"

Once she fancied she discerned a form flying ahead of her, leaping from
cross tie to cross tie to avoid the water, but when she called
vehemently, only the sound of her own voice broke the silence.

Was it merely an illusion born of her vivid dream of her brother; and
while scarcely awake, had she confounded the tones of a stranger, with
those so long familiar? She could not shake off the conviction that
Bertie had really spoken only a few yards from her, and while she stood
irresolute, puzzling over the problem, the through freight train dashed
by the station and left a trail of sparks and cinders. To avoid it she
sprang on a pile of cross ties beside the track, and when the fiery
serpent wound out of sight, she reluctantly retraced her steps. How
long the night seemed! Would day never dawn again? She heard the
telegraph operator whistling at his work, and as she re-entered the
waiting-room, she saw the ticket agent standing in his office.

"What time is it?"

"Half-past two o'clock. I might as well have locked up as usual, for
after all, you did not stay here."

"Yes I did."

He eyed her suspiciously.

"I came back from supper, and brought a pitcher of cold tea, thinking
you might relish it, but you were not here. I waited nearly an hour;
then I went home."

"It was so hot, I walked about outside. What a frightful storm."

"Yes, perfectly awful. Were you exposed to the worst of it?"

"No, I was here."

He shook his head, smiled, and went into the next room, knowing that
when he returned to unlock his office she was not in the building, and
that he had seen her coming up the railway track. The bustle of
preparation soon began; the baggage wagons thundered up to the
platform, porters called to one another; passengers collected in the
waiting-room, carriages and omnibuses dashed about; then at 2:50 the
long train of north bound cars swept in. With her shawl and basket in
one hand, and the odorous bunches of chrysanthemums clasped in the
other, Beryl stepped upon the platform. She found a seat at an open
window, and made herself comfortable; placing her feet upon the basket
which contained the jewels that constituted her sole earthly fortune.
The bell rang, the train glided on, and as it passed the office door,
she saw the agent watching her, with a strangely suspicious expression.

The cars wound around a curve, and she sank back and shut her eyes,
rejoicing in the belief that her mission to "Elm Bluff," and its keen
humiliation, were forever ended.




CHAPTER IV.


"I concede that point. Your lover is amply endowed with brains, and
moreover has a vast amount of shrewdness, all that is requisite to
secure success and eminence in his profession; but to-day, it seems as
much a matter of astonishment to me--as it certainly was six months
ago, when first you told me of your engagement--that you, Leo Gordon,
could ever fancy just such a man as Lennox Dunbar."

"I am very sorry, Aunt Patty, that he finds no favor in your eyes, and
I think he is aware of the fact that he is not in your good graces. You
both look so vaguely uncomfortable when thrown into each other's
presence; but for my sake you must try to like Lennox."

Miss Gordon bent her pretty head over a square of ruby velvet, whereon
she was embroidering a wreath of pansies, and the delicate flush on her
fair face, deepened to a vivid carnation.

"My likes or dislikes are a matter of moonshine, in comparison with
your happiness. Because you are an orphan, I feel a sort of
responsibility; and sometimes I am not exactly easy over the account of
my stewardship I must render to my poor dead Marcia. The more I see of
your lover, the more I dread your marriage. A man who makes no
profession of religious belief, is an unsafe guardian of any woman's
peace of mind. You who have been reared almost in the shadow of the
altar, accustomed to hearing grace at your meals, to family prayers, to
strict observance of our ritual, will feel isolated indeed, when
transplanted to the home of a godless man, who rarely darkens the door
of the sanctuary. 'Be ye not unequally yoked together with
unbelievers.'"

Miss Patty Dent took off her spectacles, wiped them with the string of
her white muslin cap, and adjusting them firmly on her nose, plucked
nervously at the fluted lace ruffles around her wrists.

"Auntie, you are scarcely warranted in using such strong language.
Because a man refrains from the public avowal of faith, incident to
church membership, he is not necessarily godless; nor inevitably devoid
of true religious feeling. Mr. Dunbar has a strong, reticent nature,
habituated to repression of all evidences of emotion, but of the depth
and earnestness of his real feeling, I entertain no doubt."

"I fear your line and plummet will never sound his depth. You often
speak of his strength; but, Leo, hardness is not always strength; and
he is hard, hard. I never saw a man with a chin like his, who was not
tyrannical, and idolatrous of his own will. My dear, such men are as
uncomfortable to live in the same house with, as a smoky chimney, or a
woman with shattered nerves, or creaking doors, or draughty windows.
They are a sort of everlasting east wind that never veers, blowing
always to the one point, attainment of their own ends, mildewing all
else. Ugh!"

Miss Patty shivered, and her companion smiled.

"What a grewsome picture, Auntie dear! Fortunately human taste is as
diverse and catholic as the variety of human countenances. For example:
Clara Morse raves over Mr. Dunbar's 'clear-cut features, so immensely
classical'; and she pronounces his offending 'chin simply perfect! fit
for a Greek God!'"

"A very thin and gauzy partition divides Clara Morse's brains from
idiocy. In my day, all such feeble watery minds as hers were regarded
as semi-imbecile, pitied as intellectual cripples, and wisely kept in
the background of society; but, bless me! in this generation they skip
and prance to the very edge of the front, pose in indecent garments
without starch, or crinoline, or even the protection of pleats and
gathers; and insult good, sound, wholesome common sense with the
sickening affectations they are pleased to call 'aesthetics.' Don't
waste your time, and dilute your own mind by quoting the silly twaddle
of a poor girl who was turned loose too early on society, who falls on
her knees in ecstasies before a hideous broken-nose tea-pot from some
filthy hovel in Japan; and who would not dare to admire the loveliest
bit of Oiron pottery, or precious old Chelsea claret-colored china in
Kensington Museum, until she had turned it upside down, and hunted the
potter's mark with a microscope. I say Mr. Dunbar has a domineering and
tyrannical chin, and five years hence, if you do not agree with me, it
will be because 'Ephraim is joined to his idols'--clay feet and all."

"Then follow the Bible injunction to 'let him alone.' I see Lennox
through neither Clara's rosy lenses, nor your jaundiced glasses; and
these circular discussions are as fruitless as they are unpleasant. Let
us select some more agreeable topic. I gave you Leighton's letter. What
think you of his scheme?"

"That it is admirable, worthy of the brain that conceived it. What a
wonderful man he is, considering his age? Such a devout and fervent
spirit, and withal such a marvel of executive ability. Ah! happy the
woman who can command his wise guardianship, and renew her aspirations
after holiness, in his spiritual society. I honor, even more than I
love, Leighton Douglass."

"So do I, Aunt Patty. He is quite my ideal pastor, and when he marries,
I hope his wife will be worthy of him in every respect. Only a very
noble woman would suit my cousin."

A bright spot burned on Miss Dent's wrinkled cheek, and she knitted her
brows, and shook her head.

"He is so absorbed in his holy work that he has no leisure for such
trifles as love-making; but if he should ever honor a woman by the
offer of his consecrated hand, it must be one of large fortune, who
will dedicate herself and her money to the accomplishment of his
ecclesiastical schemes."

The corners of Miss Gordon's mouth twitched mutinously, but she
contrived to throw much innocent surprise and questioning into the
handsome brown eyes, which she lifted from her gold-hearted pansies, to
her Aunt's face.

"Could you possibly associate mercenary motives with any step which he
might take? Such a supposition would be totally incompatible with my
estimate of his character."

"When a man dedicates himself to a solemn mission, he is lifted far
above the ordinary plane, can dispense with sentimental
conventionalities, and must learn to regard all human relations as
merely means to an end. Want of money has palsied many an arm lifted to
advance the good of the Church; and zeal without funds, accomplishes as
little as rusty machinery stiff from lack of oil. If Dr. Douglass could
only control even a hundred thousand dollars, what shining monuments he
would leave to immortalize him! Indeed, it passes my comprehension how
persons who could so easily help him, deliberately turn a deaf ear to
the 'cry from Macedonia'."

"There is far more eclat in trips to Macedonia, but the God of
recompense does not forget the steady, tireless help and sympathy
extended to the needy, who dwell within sight of our own doors.
Organized society work is good, but individual self-sacrifice and labor
are much better; and if every unit did full duty, co-operative systems
would not be so necessary; still, Leighton's scheme commends itself to
every woman's heart, and when I answered his letter, I expressed
cordially my approbation."

"Did you prove your faith by your works, and send him a large check?"

"Auntie, dear, do you expect me to stultify all your training, both
your example and precept--for lo! these many years--by setting my left
hand to gossip about my right? I am very sure."

"Well, Andrew, what is it?"

"A boy from Mr. Dunbar's office has just galloped up, and says I am to
tell you he can't ride to the Falls to-day, as he expected, because of
some pressing business; and he wants to know if the Judge will come
into town right away? Mr. Dunbar will explain when he comes late this
evening."

"Very well. Tell Daniel I shall not want 'Rebel' saddled; and say to
the messenger that my Uncle is not at home. Aunt Patty, do you know
where he has gone?"

"Doubtless to his office; where else should he be? He said he had a
pile of tiresome papers to examine to-day."

Miss Gordon folded up her work, laid it away in a dainty basket lined
with blue satin and flounced with lace; and after pausing a moment to
pet her Aunt's white Maltese cat which lay dozing In the sunshine,
walked away toward a Small hot-house, built quite near the dining-room,
and  connected with it by an arcade, covered in summer by vines, in
winter by glass.

Twenty-four years before that day, when a proud, fond young mother
puffed and tucked the marvel of lace and linen cambric, which was
intended as a christening robe for her baby, and laid it away with
spicery of rose leaves and sachet of lavender and deer tongue, to wait
until a "furlough" allowed the child's father to be present at the
baptism, she had supposed that its delicate folds would one day adorn a
dimpled rosy-faced infant, for whom the name Aurelia Gordon had long
been selected. Fate cruelly vetoed all the details of the programme,
carefully arranged by maternal affection; and the lurid sun that set in
clouds of smoke on one of the most desperate battles of the
Confederacy, saw Colonel Gordon's brave, patriotic soul released on
that long "furlough" which glory granted her heroes; saw his devoted
wife a wailing widow. The red burial of battle had precluded the
solemnization of baptismal rites at the sacred marble font; and when
four days after Colonel Gordon's death, his frail young wife welcomed
the summons to an everlasting re-union, she laid her cold hands on her
baby's golden head, and died, as she whispered:

"Name her Leo, for her father."

So it came to pass, that the clergyman who read the burial service
beside the mother's coffin, lifted the cooing infant in the midst of a
weeping funeral throng, and with a faltering voice baptized her, in the
presence of the dead, Leo Gordon.

To the care of her sister Patty, and of her widowed brother, Judge
Dent, Mrs. Gordon had consigned her child; and transplanted so early to
her uncle's house, the orphan knew no other home.

When the problem of vast numerical preponderance had solved itself in
accordance with the rules of avoirdupois, and history--fond like all
garrulous old crones of repeating even her inglorious episodes--had
triumphantly inscribed on her bloody tablets, that once more the Few
were throttled and trampled by the Many, then the fabled "Ragnarok" of
the Sagas described only approximately the doom of the devastated
South. In the financial and social chaos that followed the invasion by
"loyal" hordes, rushing under "sealed orders" on the mission of
"Reconstruction," and eminently successful in "reconstructing" their
individual fortunes, an anomaly presented itself for the consideration
of political economists. The wealthy classes of ante bellum days were
the most destitute paupers that the newly-risen Union sun shone upon.

The French Revolution and its subsequent eruptions of Communism failed
to destroy the value of land; and the emancipation of Russian serfs may
have stimulated agricultural activity, but that political and social
Communism which the Pandora of "reconstruction" let loose throughout
the conquered States of the South, accomplished all that the victors
could have desired.

Abandoned by the laborers God had fitted to endure toil under climatic
conditions peculiar to the soil, vast silent fields of weeds stared
blankly, and the richer a man found himself in ancestral acres, the
more hopelessly was he manacled by taxes. "Reconstructionists" most
thoroughly inoculated with "Loyal" rabies, held in lofty disdain the
claims of widows and orphans, and the right of minors was as dead as
that of secession. In the general maelstrom, Colonel Gordon's large
estate went to pieces; but after a time, Judge Dent took lessons from
his new political masters in the science of wrecking, and by degrees,
as fragments and shreds stranded, he collected and secreted them.
Certain mining interests were protected, and some valuable plantations
in distant sugar belts, were secured. As guardian of his sister's
daughter, he changed, or renewed investments in stocks which rapidly
increased in value, until an unusually large fortune had accumulated:
and verifying figures justified his boast, that his niece and ward was
the wealthiest heiress in the State.

Reared in a household which consisted of an elderly uncle and aunt, and
a middle-aged governess, Leo Gordon had never known intimate
association with younger people; and while her nature was gentle and
tranquil, she gradually imbibed the grave and rather prim ideas which
were in vogue when Miss Patty was the reigning belle of her county.
Although petted and indulged, she had not been spoiled, and remained
singularly free from the selfishness usually developed in the character
of an only child, nurtured in the midst of mature relatives. When
eighteen years old, Leo, accompanied by her governess, Mrs. Eldridge,
had been sent to New York and Boston for educational advantages, which
it was supposed that her own section of the country could not supply;
and subsequently the two went abroad, gleaning knowledge in the great
centres of European Art. During their sojourn in Munich, Mrs. Eldridge
died after a very brief illness; and returning to her southern home,
Leo found herself the object of social homage.

Thoroughly well-bred, accomplished, graceful and pretty, she commanded
universal admiration; yet her manner was marked by a quiet, grave
dignity, and a peculiar reticence, at variance with the prevailing type
of young ladyhood, now alas! too dominant; whose premature emancipation
from home rule, and old-fashioned canons of decorum renders "American
girlhood" synonymous with flippant pertness. Moulded by two women who
were imbued with the spirit of Richter's admonition: "Girls like the
priestesses of old, should be educated only in sacred places, and never
hear, much less see, what is rude, immoral or violent"; the pate tendre
of Leo's character showed unmistakably the potter's marks.

She shrewdly surmised that the knowledge of her unusual wealth
contributed to swell the number of her suitors, and she was twenty-four
years old when Lennox Dunbar, for whom she had long secretly cherished
a partiality, succeeded in placing his ring on her fair, slender hand.
In character they differed widely, and the deep and tender love that
filled her heart, found only a faint echo in his cold and more selfish
nature, which had carefully calculated all the advantages derivable
from this alliance.

He cordially admired and esteemed his brown-eyed fair-haired fiancee,
considered her the personification of feminine refinement and delicacy;
and congratulated himself warmly on his great good fortune in winning
her affection; but tender emotions found little scope for exercise in
his intensely practical, busy life, which was devoted to the attainment
of eminence in his profession; and the merely dynamic apparatus which
did duty as his heart, had never been disturbed by any feeling
sufficiently deep to quicken his calm, steady pulse.

There were times, when Leo wondered whether all accepted lovers were as
undemonstrative as her own, and she would have been happier had he
occasionally forgotten professional aspirations, in the charm of her
presence; but her confidence in the purity and fidelity of his
affection was unshaken, even by the dismal predictions of Miss Patty,
who found it impossible to reconcile herself to the failure of her
darling scheme, that Leo should marry her second cousin, Leighton
Douglass, D.D., and devote her fortune to the advancement of his church.

To-day, as she sought pleasant work in arranging the ferns and
carnations of her conservatory, her thoughts reverted to the previous
evening, which Mr. Dunbar had spent with her; and she could not avoid
indulging regret, that he should have allowed business affairs to
interfere with their engagement for horseback riding, but her reverie
was speedily interrupted by the excited tones of her aunt's voice.

"Leo! Leo! Where do you hide yourself?"

"Here, Auntie, in the conservatory."

"Oh! my child, such dreadful news! Such a frightful tragedy!"

Pale and panting, Miss Patty ran down the arcade, and stumbled over a
barricade of potted plants on the threshold of the door.

"What is the matter? Is it my Uncle, or--or Lennox?"

Leo sprang to her feet, and caught her aunt's arm.

"Horrible! horrible! General Darrington was robbed, and then most
brutally murdered last night!"

"Murdered! Can it be possible? Murdered--by whom?"

"How should I know? The whole town is wild about it. My brother is at
Elm Bluff, with the body, and I shall take the carriage and drive over
there at once. Dear me; I am so nervous I can't stand still, and my
teeth chatter like a pair of castanets."

"Perhaps there may be some mistake. How did you hear it?"

"Your Uncle Mitchell sent a boy to tell me why he was detained. There
has been a coroner's inquest, and of course, as an old and intimate
friend of General Darrington's, Mitchell feels he must do all he can.
Poor old gentleman! So proud and aristocratic! To be murdered in his
own house, like any common pauper! Positively it makes me sick. May the
Lord have mercy on his soul."

"Amen!" murmured Leo.

"Will you go with me to Elm Bluff?"

"Oh, no! Not for worlds. Why should I? Women will only be in the way;
and who could desire to contemplate so horrible a spectacle? It will
merely harrow your feelings, Aunt Patty, and you can do no good."

"It is my Christian duty as a neighbor; and I was always very fond of
the first Mrs. Darrington, Helena Tracey. What is this wicked world
coming to? Robbery and murder stalking bare-faced through the land. It
will be a dreadful blow to Mitchell, because he and Luke Darrington
have been intimate all their lives. I see the carriage coming round, so
I must get my bonnet and wrap."

"I presume Mr. Dunbar is engaged in the same melancholy details which
occupy my uncle."

"Doubtless he is, because his father was General Darrington's attorney
until his health failed; and Lennox is now his lawyer and business
agent. It is a thousand pities that Prince is away in Europe."

Two hours after the carriage had disappeared on the road leading to Elm
Bluff, Leo crossed the grassy lawn, and sat down near the gate, on a
rustic bench under a cluster of tall lilacs, which gave their name to
her uncle's home.

A keen north wind whistling through neighboring walnut tree tops, drove
the dying leaves like frightened flocks before it, and ever and anon
the ripened nuts pattered down, hiding themselves under the drift of
yellow foliage, that had sheltered them in cool greenery during summer
heats. Overhead a red squirrel barked and frisked, and across the
pale-blue sky, feathered nomads, teal or mallard, moved swiftly en
echelon, their quivering pinions flashing like silver, as they fled
southward. On a distant hillside cattle browsed, and sheep wandered;
and the drowsy tinkle of bells, as the herd wended homeward, seemed a
nocturne of rest, for the closing day.

How serene, harmonious and holy all nature appeared; and yet a few
miles distant, into what a fierce seething whirlpool of conflicting
passions, of hatred and bloodthirsty vengeance, had human crime plunged
an entire community. We plume ourselves upon nineteenth century
civilization, upon ethical advancement, upon Christian progress; we
adorn our cathedrals, build temples for art treasures, and museums for
science, and listen to preludes of the "music of the future;" and we
shudder at the mention of vice, as at the remembrance of the tortures
of Regulus, but will the Cain type ever become extinct, like the dodo,
or the ichthyosaurus? When will the laws of heredity, and the by-laws
of agnation result in an altruism, where human bloodshed is an unknown
horror?

The apostles of Evolution tell us, that in the genealogical ages during
which man has struggled upward, from the lower stages of vertebrate and
mammal to the genus of catarrhine apes, he has gradually thrown off
bestial instincts, and that the tiger taint will ultimately be totally
eliminated; that "original sin is neither more nor less than the brute
inheritance which every man carries with him, and that Evolution is an
advance toward true salvation." Meanwhile what becomes of the "Survival
of the Fittest", which is only a euphemism for the strangling of the
feeble by the strong? We can understand how perfection, or permanence
of type, individual and national, demands carnage, and entails all the
dire catalogue of human woes, but wherein is altruism evolved? How many
aeons shall we wait, to behold the leopard and the lamb pasturing
together in peace?

Pondering this problem, as he rode along the public road outside the
boundary of Judge Dent's lawn, Mr. Dunbar caught a glimpse of his
betrothed, sitting behind the hedge of lilacs, and he lifted his hat,
hoping that she would meet him at the entrance; but although she bowed
in recognition, he was forced to open the gate and admit himself.
Throwing the bridle rein over one of the iron spikes of the fence, and
taking off his gloves, he approached the bench.

"Dare I flatter myself, that my queen deigns to meet me half way?"

He took her outstretched hand, and kissed it softly, while his glance
noted every detail of her handsome fawn-colored dress, with its jabot
of creamy lace, and the cluster of crimson carnations in her belt. The
touch of his lips on her fingers, deepened the flush in her cheeks,
and, making room for him beside her, she replied:

"Sit down, and tell me if this dreadful news about General Darrington
be indeed true? I have hoped there might be some mistake, some
exaggeration."

"Some horrors exceed the possibility of verbal exaggeration, and last
night's tragedy is one of that class. General Darrington was most
brutally murdered."

"Poor old gentleman! How incredible it seems that such awful crimes can
be committed in our quiet neighborhood? who could have been so guilty;
and what motive could have prompted such a fiendish act?"

"The one all-powerful evil passion of mankind--greed of gold; lust of
filthy lucre. He was first robbed, then murdered by the thief, to avoid
detection and punishment. There is unmistakable evidence that the
General was chloroformed while asleep; but he must have awakened in
time to discover the robber, with whom he struggled desperately, and by
whom he was struck down. The coroner's inquest developed some startling
facts."

"Has any clue been discovered which would indicate the murderer?"

"A handful of clues."

"Then you have a theory concerning the person who perpetrated this
awful crime?"

"My dear Leo, not a theory, but a conviction; I might almost say an
absolute knowledge."

"Would it be pardonable for me to ask whom you suspect; would it be a
violation of professional etiquette for you to tell me?"

"Certainly, my dearest, you can ask me anything, only--" he paused a
moment; and she put her hand quickly on his arm.

"I see. Do not tell me mere suspicions; they might cruelly wrong an
innocent person; and I ought not to have asked the question."

"My hesitation arose from a totally different source, and I was merely
wondering whether you, my sweet saint, could believe that a woman
committed the bloody deed."

"Oh, Mr. Dunbar, impossible! A woman guilty of taking that old man's
life? The supposition is as horrible as the crime itself."

Passing his hand lightly over her crimped fair hair, and looking down
into her eyes, as brown as the back of a thrush, her lover replied:

"I find that the nobler and purer a woman's heart is, the less she
credits the existence of vice and the possibility of crime among her
own sex. You doubtless consider the Brinvilliers, Fredegonds, Fulvias
and Faustinas, quite as fabulous as Centaurs, Sirens and Were-wolves;
and I feel as reluctant to shake your fair faith in womanhood, as to
dash the dew from a rose-bud, or rudely brush the bloom a cluster of
tempting grapes; but the grim truth must be told, that our old friend
was robbed and murdered by a woman."

"One of his servants? They all seemed devotedly attached to him."

"No, by his granddaughter, a young and very beautiful woman; Beryl
Brentano, the child of General Darrington's daughter Ellice, whom he
had disowned on account of her wretched marriage with a foreigner, who
taught her music and the languages. Of course you have heard from your
aunt and uncle all the details of that family episode. Yesterday this
girl Beryl suddenly presented herself at Elm Bluff, and demanded money
from her grandfather; alleging that her mother's life was in danger for
want of it. I learn there was a stormy interview, part of the
conversation having been overheard by two persons; and the General, who
was as vindictive as a Modoc, or a Cossack, drove the young lady
through a door leading down to the rosery. This occurred in the
afternoon, immediately after I left Elm Bluff, where I went to obtain
his signature to a deed to some lands recently sold in Texas. I saw the
girl sitting on the front steps, and when she rose and looked at me,
her superb physique impressed me powerfully. She is as beautiful and
stately as some goddess stepping out of the Norse 'Edda', and
altogether a remarkable looking person. It will appear in evidence,
that the General harshly refused her pleadings, and made a point of
assuring her that his will, already prepared, would forever debar her
mother and herself from any inheritance at his death; as he had
bequeathed his entire estate to his adopted son Prince. Unfortunately,
she learned where the will was kept, as during the interview, persons
in the next room distinctly heard the peculiar noise made by the
sliding door of the iron vault, where General Darrington kept all his
valuable papers. She disappeared from Elm Bluff about sunset, going
toward town; and last night at ten o'clock, when I left you and rode
home, I saw her lurking in the pine woods not very far from the bridge
over the branch, near the park gate. She was evidently hiding, as she
sat on the ground half screened by a tree; but my horse shied and
plunged badly, and when she rose, the full moon showed her face and
figure distinctly. There was something so mysterious in her movements,
that I asked her if she had lost her way; to which she curtly replied
that she had not. I learn from Burk, the station agent, that her
actions aroused his suspicion, and that instead of leaving town, as she
said she intended, by the 7:15 train, she hung about the station, and
finally took the 3:05 express this morning. He said she had begged
permission to stay in the waiting-room, but that at 2:30 A.M., when he
went back to open the ticket office, she was nowhere to be found; and
that later, he saw her coming down the railroad track. She must have
gone back to Elm Bluff after I passed her on the road, and effected an
entrance through the window on the front piazza, as it was found open;
and the awful work of robbery and murder was accomplished during the
storm, which you know was so frightful that it drowned all minor
sounds. This morning when the General did not ring for his hot water at
the usual time, it was supposed that he was sleeping late, but finally
old Bedney knocked. Unable to arouse his master, he opened the door,
and found our old friend lying on the floor, near the fireplace. He had
been dead for hours, and close to his head was a heavy brass andiron,
which evidently had been snatched from the hearth by the murderess, who
must have dealt the fatal blow with it, as there was a dark spot on his
temple, and also on the left side near the heart. The room was in
disorder, and two glass vases on the mantel were shivered, as though
some missile had struck them--probably a heavy ledger which was found
on the floor."

"How horrible! But no woman could have overpowered a man like General
Darrington."

"Physically, his granddaughter was more than a match for him,
especially since his last illness; and I assure you she looks like some
daughter of the Vikings. She certainly is a woman of grand proportions,
and wonderfully symmetrical."

"What is her age?"

"About eighteen, I should think; though her size and a certain majestic
bearing might convey the impression that she was older."

"How can you connect so dreadful a crime with a young and beautiful
woman, of whom you know absolutely nothing?"

"My theory is, that she intended merely to get possession of the will,
the contents of which had been made known to her--and of the money,
that she knew or surmised was kept in the vault. When the effect of the
chloroform wore off, and the General waked to find her at the vault; a
struggle evidently took place, and in desperation at the thought of
being detected, she killed him. You do not understand all the bearings
of even slight circumstances in a case like this, but we who make a
study of such sad matters, know the significance of the disappearance
of the will; the destruction of which could benefit only her mother and
herself. The vault was open; the gold, silver, some valuable jewelry,
and the will are missing from the tin box. All the other papers were
left, even a package of bonds, amounting to thousands of dollars. She
seemed to know that the bonds might lead to detection, hence she did
not take them. On the floor, and in the bottom of the tin box were
found two twenty-dollar gold pieces. We are collecting all the
evidence, and it constitutes a powerful array of proof."

"We? Do you mean that you are hunting down a woman?"

Miss Gordon withdrew her hand from her lover's, and instinctively moved
farther from him.

"I am most diligently hunting down the author of a foul and awful
crime; and it is my duty to my friend and client to use every possible
exertion, in discovering and bringing to punishment the person who
robbed and murdered him--be it man, woman or child. Feminine youth and
beauty are no aegis against the barbed javelins of justice and the
District Solicitor (Mr. Churchill) and I, have no doubt of the guilt of
the woman, who will soon be put on trial here for her monstrous and
unnatural crime."




CHAPTER V.


In a deep, narrow "railway cut," through Virginia hills, a south-bound
freight train had been so badly wrecked in consequence of a "washout,"
that the southern passenger express going north was detained fourteen
hours; thereby missing connection at Washington City, where the
passengers were again delayed nearly twelve hours. Tired and very
hungry, having eaten nothing but a sandwich and a cup of coffee for
three days, Beryl felt profoundly thankful when the cars rolled into
Jersey City. In the bustle and confusion incident to arrival in that
Babel, she did not observe the scrutiny to which she was subjected by a
man genteelly dressed, who gave her his hand as she stepped down from
the train, and kept by her side while she hastened in the direction of
the ferry.

Reaching the slip where the boat awaited passengers, she was vexed to
see it backing out into the stream, and leaned against the chain which
barred egress until the next trip.

"You have only five minutes to wait for the boat. You seem to have had
a long and trying journey, madam?"

Glancing at him for the first time, Beryl perceived that he held a slip
of yellow paper from which he looked now and then to her face. His
features were coarse and heavy, but his eyes were keen as a ferret's;
and without answering his question, she turned away and looked across
the water which teemed with craft of every description, laden with
freight animate and inanimate, passing to and from the vast city, whose
spires, domes and forest of masts rose like a gray cloud against the
sky, etching there their leaden outlines.

"You live at No.--West--Street, between 8th and 9th Avenue?"

"You are a stranger, and your questions are offensive and impertinent."

As she turned and confronted him haughtily, he stepped closer to her,
threw back his blue overcoat, and pointed to the metal badge on his
breast.

"I am an officer of the law, and have a warrant for your arrest. You
are Beryl Brentano."

"I am Beryl Brentano, yes; but there is some blunder, some mistake. How
dare you annoy me? Arrest me? Me!"

"Do not make a scene. My instructions are to deal with you as gently as
possible. Better come quietly into the station near, and I will read
you the warrant, otherwise I shall be obliged to use force. You see I
have two assistants yonder."

"Arrested for what? By whom?"

"I am ordered to arrest you for the murder of General Darrington."

"Murder! General Darrington is alive and well. I have just left him.
Stand back! Do not touch me. I will call on the police to protect me."

Laying his fingers firmly on her arm, he beckoned to two men clad in
police uniform, who promptly approached.

"You see resistance is worse than useless, and since there is no
escape, come quietly."

"You are insulting me, under some frightful mistake. I am a lady. Do I
look like a criminal?"

"General Darrington has been robbed and murdered, and I have
telegraphic orders to arrest and hold a woman named Beryl Brentano, who
corresponds in every respect with the description of the person
suspected of having committed the crime."

Hitherto she had attributed the insult of the interview to some
question of mistaken identity, but as she slowly comprehended the
possibility that she was the person accused, and intended for arrest, a
sickening horror seized and almost paralyzed her, blanching her face
and turning her to stone. As he led her along the street, she staggered
from the numbness that possessed her, and her eyes stared blankly, like
those of a somnambulist. When she had been ushered into a room where
several policemen were lounging and smoking, the intolerable sense of
shame and indignation shook off her apathy.

"This is a cruel and outrageous wrong, and only base cowards could
wantonly insult an unprotected and innocent woman. You call yourselves
men? Have you no mothers, no sisters, whose memory can arouse some
reverence, some respect for womanhood in your brutal souls?"

Electric lamps set in the sockets of some marble face, might perhaps
resemble the blaze that leaped up in her eyes, as she wrenched her arm
from the officer's profaning touch, and her voice rang like the clash
of steel.

"Madam, we are allowed no discretion; we are only the blind and deaf
machines that obey orders. Read the warrant, and you will understand
that our duty is imperative."

Again and again she read the paper, in which the sheriff of the county
where Elm Bluff is situated, demanded her arrest and return to X---, on
the charge of robbery and murder committed during the night which she
had spent at the station. Then several telegrams were placed before
her. The description of herself, her dress, even of the little basket
and shawl, was minutely accurate; and by degrees the horror of her
situation, and her utter helplessness, became frightfully distinct. The
papers fell from her nerveless fingers, and one desperate cry broke
from her white lips:

"O just God! Will you permit such a shameful, cruel outrage? Save me
from this horrible injustice and disgrace!"

Seeing neither the men, nor the room, her strained gaze seemed in her
great agony fixed upon the face of Him, who, silvering the lilies of
the field and watching the flight of sparrows, has tender care for all
who trust Him. Even in this terrible trial, the girl's first thought
was of her mother; and of the disastrous effect that the misfortune
would produce upon the invalid.

"I am sorry to tell you, that we are required to search all persons
arrested under similar charges, and in the next room a female detective
will receive and retain every thing in your possession, except your
clothing. You are suspected of having secreted money, jewelry and some
very valuable papers."

"Suspected of being a common thief! I am as innocent as any angel
beside the throne of Christ! Save me at least from the degradation of
being searched. Here is my basket, and here is my purse."

She handed him the worn leather pocket-book, which contained only the
few pennies reserved to pay her passage across the ferry, and turned
the pocket of her dress inside cut.

At the tap of a hand-bell, a tall, angular woman opened the door of an
adjoining room.

"Mrs. Foster, you will very carefully examine the prisoner, and search
her clothing for papers, as well as valuables."

"Spare me at least this indignity!" cried the shuddering girl.

"Come with me, madam. We have no choice."

When the door closed behind her, the constable walked up and down the
floor.

"How deceitful appearances are! That woman looks as pure and innocent
as an angel, and I half believed her protestations; but here in the
basket, sure enough, hidden at the bottom, are the jewelry and the
gold. No sign of the papers, but she may have destroyed them.

"Thief or not, she is a grand beauty; and if her heart was not in that
prayer she put up just now, she is a grand actress also. This is a
beastly trade of ours, hunting down and trapping the unwary. Sometimes
I feel no better than a sleuth-hound, and that girl's eyes went through
and through me a while ago like a two-edged dirk."

As he vented his views of his profession, one of the policemen lighted
his pipe and puffed vigorously.

Mrs. Foster came back, followed by her victim.

"I find absolutely nothing secreted on the prisoner."

"No papers of any description?"

"None, sir."

"Madam, your basket contains the missing jewelry and money, at least a
portion of it, and I shall place it in the hands of the sheriff."

"The money and jewels are not mine. They belong to my mother, to whom
they were given by her father; and she needs the money at this moment--"

"Let me advise you to say as little as possible for your own sake;
because your words will be weighed against you."

"I speak only the truth, and it will, it must, vindicate me. What
papers are you searching for?"

"General Darrington's will. It was stolen with the money. Here is
yesterday's paper, with an account of the whole affair, telegraphed
from X----. If you need to learn anything, you will understand when you
read it."

The sight of the capital letters in the Telegraphic Despatches,
coupling her name with a heinous and revolting crime, seemed to stab
her eyes with red-hot thrusts; and shivering from head to foot, she
slowly realized the suspicious significance of the disappearance of the
will, which was the sole obstacle that debarred her from her
grandfather's wealth. Although sustained by an unfaltering trust in the
omnipotence of innocence, she was tormented by a dread spectre that
would not "down" at her bidding; how could she prove that the money and
jewels had been given to her? Would the shock of the tidings of her
arrest kill her mother? Was there any possible way by which she might
be kept in ignorance of this foul disgrace?

Beryl hid her face in her hands, and tried to think, but the whole
universe appeared spinning into chaos. She had opposed the trip South
so steadily and vehemently: had so sorrowfully and reluctantly yielded
at last to maternal solicitation, and had been oppressed with such dire
forebodings of some resultant evil. So bitter was her repugnance to the
application to her grandfather, that she had set out on her journey
feeling as though it were a challenge to fate; and this was the answer?
The vague distrust, the subtle sombre presentiment, the haunting shadow
of an inexplicable ill, had all meant this; this bloody horror,
dragging her fair name down to the loathsome mire of the slums of
crime. Had some merciful angel leaned from the parapets of heaven and
warned her; or did her father's spirit, in mysterious communion of
deathless love and prescient guardianship, stir her soul to oppose her
mother's scheme? Sceptical and heedless Tarquins are we all, whom our
patient Sibylline intuitions finally abandon to the woes which they
sought to avert.

In the maddening rush and whirl of Beryl's reflections, her mother's
image was the one centre around which all things circled; and at
length, rallying her energies, she turned to her captor.

"You intend to take me to prison?"

"I am obliged to detain and deliver you to the officer who has come
from X---with the warrant, and who will carry you back there for trial.
He knew from the detentions along the route, that he could easily
overhaul you here, so he went straight to Trenton with a requisition
from the Governor of his State upon Governor Mansfield, for your
surrender. It is but a short run to the Capital, and he expects to get
here in time to catch the train going South to-day. We had a telegram a
while ago, saying the papers were all right, and that he would meet us
at the train, as there will be only a few moments to spare."

"But I must first see my mother. I must give her the money and
explain--"

"The money will be claimed by the officer who takes charge of you."

"Have you no mercy? My mother is ill, destitute; and she will die
unless I can go to her. Oh! I beg of you, for the sake of common
humanity, carry me home, if only for five minutes! Just let me see
mother, let me speak to her!"

In the intensity of her dread, she fell upon her knees, and lifted her
hands imploringly; and the anguish in her white quivering face was so
piteous that the man turned his head away.

"I would oblige you if I could, but it is impossible. The law is cruel,
as you say, but it is intended as a terror to evil-doers. Things look
awfully black for you, but all the same I am sorry for you, if your
mother is to suffer for your deeds. If you wish to write to her, I will
see that she receives your note; but you have very little time left."

"O God! how hard! What a foul, horrible wrong inflicted upon the
innocent!"

She cowered on the floor, unconscious that she still knelt; seeing only
the suffering woman in that dreary attic across the river, where sunken
feverish eyes watched for her return.

Accidentally Beryl's gaze fell on the bunch of faded chrysanthemums
which had dropped unnoticed on the floor, and snatching them she buried
her face in their petals. Their perfume was the potent spell that now
melted her to tears, and the tension of her overtaxed nerves gave way
in a passionate burst of sobs. When she rose a few moments later, the
storm had passed; the face regained its stony rigidity, and henceforth
she fronted fate with an unnatural calmness.

"Will you give me some paper and a pen?"

"You can write here at the desk."

Mrs. Foster approached her, and said hesitatingly:

"Would it comfort you at all, for me to go and see your mother and
explain why you could not return to her? I am very sorry for you, poor
thing."

"Thank you, but--you could not explain, and the sight of a stranger
would startle her. In one way you can help me; do you know Dr. Grantlin
of New York?"

"Only by reputation; but I can find him."

"Will you deliver into his hand the note I am writing?"

"I certainly will."

"How soon?"

"Before nine o'clock to-night."

"Thank you--a thousand times."

After a while she folded a sheet containing these words:

"DEAR DR. GRANTLIN:

"In the extremity of my distress, I appeal to you as a Christian
gentleman, as a true physician, a healer of the suffering, and under
God, the guardian of my mother's life. You know why I went to my
grandfather. He gave me the money, one hundred dollars, and some
valuable jewels. When in sight of home, I have been arrested on the
charge of having murdered my grandfather, and stolen his will. Need I
tell you that I am as innocent as you are? The thought of my mother is
the bitterest drop in my cup of shame and sorrow. You can judge best,
how much it may be expedient to tell her, and you can devise the
kindest method of breaking the truth, if she must know it. Have her
removed to the hospital, and do not postpone the operation. O Doctor!
be pitiful, be tender to her, and do not let her need any little
comforts. Some day I will pay you for all expenses incurred in her
behalf, but at present I have not a dollar, as the money has been
seized. I am sure you will not deny my prayer, and may God reward and
bless you, for your mercy to my precious mother.

"In grateful trust,

"BERYL BRENTANO.

"P.S.--If you approve, deliver the enclosed note."

On a separate sheet she wrote:

"MY DARLING MOTHER:

"Finding it necessary to return to X---, I have requested Dr. Grantlin
to take particularly good care of you for a few days. Your father will
never forgive, never receive you, but he kindly complied with your
request and gave me one hundred dollars. Try to be patient until I can
come and tell you everything, and believe that God will not forsake us.
With these hurried lines, I send you a few chrysanthemums--your
favorite flowers--which I gathered in the rose garden of your old home.
When you smell them, think of your little girl who loves you better
than her own life, and who will hasten home at the earliest possible
moment, to take you in her arms. Mother, pray for me, and may God be
very merciful to you, my dearest, and to--

"Your devoted child,

"BERYL."

She had bound the withered flowers together with a strip of fringe from
her shawl, and now, with dry eyes and firm white lips, she kissed them
twice, pinned the last note around them and laid the whole in Mrs.
Foster's hand.

"I trust you to deliver them in person to Dr. Grantlin before you sleep
to-night; and if I survive this awful outrage, perpetrated under the
name of law, I will find you some day, and thank you."

Looking at the lovely face, pure in its frozen calm, as some marble
lily in the fingers of a monumental effigy, Mrs. Foster felt the tears
dimming her own vision and said earnestly:

"Keep as silent as possible. The less you say, the safer you will be;
and run no risk of contradicting your own statements."

"I appreciate your motive, but I have nothing to conceal."

Beryl laid her hand on her shawl, then drew back.

"Am I allowed the use of my shawl?"

"Oh, certainly, madam."

The officer would have opened and put it around her, but with an
indescribable movement of proud repulsion, she shook it out, then
wrapped it closely about her, and sat down, keeping her eyes fixed on
the face of the clock ticking over the fireplace. After a long and
profound silence, the man who had arrested her, said gravely and gently:

"Time is up. I must deliver you to Officer Gibson at the train. Come
with me."

She rose, gave her hand to Mrs. Foster, and stooping suddenly touched
with her lips the withered flowers, then followed silently.

In subsequent years, when she attempted to recall consecutively the
incidents of the ensuing forty-eight hours, they eluded her, like the
flitting phantasmagoria that throng delirium; yet subtle links fastened
the details upon her brain, and sometimes most unexpectedly, that
psychic necromancer--association of ideas--selected some episode from
the sombre kaleidoscope of this dismal journey, and set it in lurid
light before her, as startling and unwelcome as the face of an enemy
long dead. Life and personality partook in some degree of duality; all
that she had been before she saw Elm Bluff, seemed a hopelessly
distinct existence, yet irrevocably chained to the mutilated and
blackened Afterward, like the grim and loathsome unions enforced by the
Noyades of Nantes.

The sun did not forget to shine, nor the moon to keep her appointment
with the throbbing stars that signalled all along her circuit. Men
whistled, children laughed; the train thundered through tunnels, and
flew across golden stubble fields, where grain shocks and hay stacks
crowded like tents of the God of plenty, in the Autumnal bivouac; and
throughout the long days and dreary lagging nights. Beryl was fully
conscious of a ceaseless surveillance, of an ever-present shadow, which
was tall and gaunt, wore a drab overcoat and slouched hat, and was
redolent of tobacco. As silent as two mummies in the crypts of Karnac
they sat side by side; and twice when the officer touched her arm and
asked if she would take some refreshments, she merely shook her head,
and tightened the folds of her veil; shrinking closer to the window
against which she leaned. Not until they approached X---, and she
recognized some features of the landscape, were her lips unsealed:

"What persons are responsible for my arrest?"

"Our District Solicitor, Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Dunbar, the lawyer, who
made the affidavit under which the warrant was issued. I am only a
deputy, acting under orders from the sheriff."

"You are taking me to prison?"

"Perhaps not; it depends on the result of the preliminary examination,
and you may be allowed bail."

A ray of hope silvered the shrouding gloom; there was a possibility of
escaping the stain of incarceration.

"When will the examination take place?"

"About noon to-day. You will have time to eat something and freshen up
a little. Here we are. What a crowd to welcome us! Don't stir. We will
just wait a while, and I will get you into a carriage as quietly as
possible."

He whispered some directions to the conductor of the train, and
standing in the aisle with his arm across the seat, screened her from
the gaze of a motley crew of men and boys who rushed in to stare at the
prisoner, whose arrival had been impatiently expected. On the railway
platform and about the station house surged a sea of human heads,
straining now in the direction of the first passenger coach; and when
in answer to some question, the conductor pointed to the sleeping car
which was at the rear of the train, the mass swayed down the track.

"Quick! Now is our time!"

The deputy sheriff hurried her out, almost lifted her from the steps,
and pushing her forward, turned a corner of the street, and handed her
into a carriage which awaited them.




CHAPTER VI.


To Beryl many hours seemed to have crept away, since she had been left
alone in a small dusty apartment, adjoining the office where the chief
magistrate of X---daily held court. Too restless to sit still, she
paced up and down the floor, trying to collect her thoughts, and at
last knelt by the side of a table, and laid her weight of dread and
peril before the Throne of the God she trusted. The Father of the
fatherless and Friend of the friendless, would surely protect her in
this hour of intolerable degradation.

"O, Thou that hearest prayer; unto Thee shall all flesh come."

The door opened, and a venerable, gray-haired man approached the table,
where her head was bent upon her crossed arms. When she lifted her
white face, with the violet circles under her dry eyes, making them
appear preternaturally large and luminous, and the beautiful mouth
contracted by a spasm of intense pain, a deep sigh of compassion passed
the stranger's lips.

"I am Mitchell Dent, an old friend of General Darrington's, and of your
mother, who has often sat upon my knee. Because of my affection for
your grandfather, I have asked permission to see you for a few moments.
If you are unjustly accused, I desire to befriend you, and offer you
some advice. I am told you assert your innocence of the great crime of
which you are suspected. I hope you can prove it; but for your own sake
I advise you to waive an examination, and await the action of the Grand
Jury, as you have had no opportunity of consulting counsel, or
preparing your defence."

"You knew my mother? Then you should require no other proof that her
child is not a criminal. I am innocent of every offence against General
Darrington, except that of being my father's daughter; and my
unjustifiable arrest is almost as foul a wrong as his murder."

She drew herself proudly to her full height, and as his eyes dwelt in
irrepressible admiration upon her, his manhood did homage to her grace
and dignity, and he took off his hat.

"I earnestly hope so; and the law holds every person innocent until her
guilt be fully proved and established."

"Of the significance of law terms I know nothing; and of the usages of
courts I am equally ignorant. If, as you suggest, I should waive an
examination, should I escape imprisonment?"

"No."

"Then I must be tried at once; because I want to hurry back to my
mother who is ill, and needs me."

"But you have no counsel as yet, and delay is your best policy."

"Delay might cost my mother's life. I have no money to pay a lawyer to
stand up and mystify matters, and my best policy is to defend myself,
by telling the simple truth."

Again Judge Dent sighed. Could guilt be masked by this fair semblance
of childlike guilelessness?

"Can you summon any witnesses to prove that you were not at Elm Bluff
on the night of the storm?"

"Yes, the ticket agent knows I was in the waiting-room during that
storm."

He shook his gray head.

"He will be one of the strongest witnesses against you."

"Then I have no witnesses except--God, and my conscience."

The door opened, and with his watch in his hand the deputy sheriff
entered.

"Sorry to shorten your interview, Judge, but you know we have a
martinet in yonder, a regular Turk, and he splits seconds into
fractions."

As Judge Dent withdrew, Beryl realized that her hour of woe had
arrived, and she began to pin her veil tightly over her face.

"Come along--You can't keep your veil on. Try to be as non-committal as
possible when they ask you crooked questions. Of course I want justice
done, and I hope I am a faithful servant of the law; but if you are as
innocent as a flock of ring-doves, the lawyers will try to confuse you."

He attempted to lead her, but she drew back.

"I will follow you; but please do not hold my arm; do not touch me."

A moment later, a door opened and closed, a glare of light showed her a
crowded room; a monotonous hum like the swell of the sea fell on her
ear; then stifled ejaculations, to which succeeded a sudden, deathlike
hush. The officer placed a chair for her in front of the platform where
the magistrate sat, and retired to the rear of the room. With some
difficulty Judge Dent made his way through the throng of spectators,
and seated himself beside Mr. Dunbar.

"Well, sir, how did the prisoner impress you?" asked the latter, as he
folded up a paper.

"Dunbar, you have made a mistake. I have spent the best of my life in
the study of criminals; and if that woman yonder is not innocent, I am
in my dotage."

"Pardon me, Judge, if I dispute both propositions. I made no mistake;
and you are merely, in the goodness of your heart, and the fervor of
your chivalry, dazzled momentarily by the glamour of extraordinary
beauty and touching youth."

When Beryl recovered in some degree from the shock of finding herself
actually on trial, she endeavored to collect her faculties; but the
violent palpitation of her heart was almost suffocating, and in her
ears the surging as of an ocean tide, drowned the accents of the
magistrate. At first the words were as meaningless as some Sanskrit
formula, but gradually her attention grasped and comprehended. In a
strident incisive voice he read from a paper on the desk before him:

"At an inquisition held at X---, T---county, on the twenty-seventh day
of October, before me, Jeremiah Bateman, Coroner of said county, on the
body of Robert Luke Darrington, there lying dead, by the jurors whose
names are hereto subscribed; the said jurors upon their oath do say
that Robert Luke Darrington came to his death on the night of Thursday,
October twenty-sixth, by a murderous assault committed upon him by
means of a heavy brass andiron. And from all the evidence brought
before them, the jury believe that the fatal blow was feloniously given
by the hand of his granddaughter, Beryl Brentano.

"In testimony whereof, the said jurors have hereunto set their hands,
this twenty-seventh day of October, A.D., 18--.

"Signed------

"Attest,

"JEREMIAH BATEMAN, Coroner."

"In consequence of this verdict, and by virtue of a warrant issued at
the request of the District Solicitor, Governor Glenbeigh made a prompt
requisition for the arrest and detention of the said Beryl Brentano,
who has been identified and returned to this city, to answer the
charges brought against her. The prisoner will unveil and stand up.

"Beryl Brentano, you are charged with the murder of Robert Luke
Darrington, by striking him with a brass andiron. Are you guilty, or
not guilty?"

"Not guilty." Her voice was unsteady, but the words were distinct.

Mr. Dunbar, Mr. Burk, and a middle-aged woman lean as Cassius, came
nearer to the platform, and after a leisurely survey of the girl's face
and figure, pronounced her the person whom they had severally accused
of the crime of causing the death of General Darrington.

The canons that govern psychical phenomena are as occult as the
abstraction of the "fourth division of space"; and they defy the
realism of common-place probability, mock all analysis, and annihilate
distance. When Beryl had first met the keen scrutiny of Mr. Dunbar's
glittering blue eyes, their baleful influence made her shiver slightly;
and now at the instant in which he approached, and inspected her
closely, she forgot that she was on trial for her life, became
temporarily oblivious of her dismal entourage, and stood once more
before a marble image in the Vatican, where the light streamed full on
the cold face, that for centuries has been the synonym of blended
beauty and cruelty. In her ears rang again the words her father had
rend aloud at her side, while she sketched: "But he does not inspire
confidence, by the smile that would like to express goodness. The
finely cut underlip that rises from the strongly marked hollow over the
chin ought to sharpen with a dash of contempt the conscious superiority
that lies upon his broad, magnificent forehead. His smile is in strong
contrast with the cold gaze of the large open eyes; a gaze that
hesitates not, but without mercy verifies a judgment fixed in advance,
that gives up every one to condemnation."

The dusty crowded court-room appeared to swim in the rich aroma
distilled from the creamy hearts of Roman hyacinths; and the velvet
lips of purple Roman violets suddenly babbled out the secret of the
mysterious repulsion which had puzzled her, from the hour in which she
first looked into Mr. Dunbar's face; his strange resemblance to the
Chiaramonti Tiberius, which she had studied and copied so carefully. In
days gone by, the subtle repose, the marvelous beauty of that marble
face, where as yet the demon of destruction had cast no stain,
possessed a singular fascination for her; and now the haunting likeness
which had perplexed her at Elm Bluff, became associated inseparably
with old Bedney's description of Mr. Dunbar's merciless treatment of
witnesses, and Beryl realized with alarming clearness that in her
grandfather's lawyer she had met the incarnation of her cruel fate.

Standing quite near her, he gravely related, with emphatic distinctness
and careful detail, his first meeting with the prisoner on the piazza
at Elm Bluff, and the vivid impression she left on his mind; his return
to Elm Bluff about half-past nine the same evening, in order to get a
deed which he had forgotten to put into his pocket at the first visit.
Learning that General Darrington had not yet retired for the night, he
sent in to ask for the deed, and was summoned "to come and get it
himself." On entering the bedroom, he found his client wrapped in a
cashmere dressing-gown, and sitting in an easy chair by the window,
which opened on the north or front piazza. He appeared much perturbed
and harassed, and in reply to inquiries touching his health, answered
that he was "completely shaken up, and unnerved, by a very stormy and
disagreeable interview held that afternoon with the child of his
wayward daughter Ellice. "When witness asked: "Did not the great beauty
of the embassadress accomplish the pardon and restoration of the erring
mother?" General Darrington had struck his cane violently on the floor,
and exclaimed: "Don't talk such infernal nonsense! Did you ever hear of
my pardoning a wrong against my family name and honor? Does any man
live, idiotic enough to consider me so soft-hearted? No, no. On the
contrary, I was harsh to the girl; so harsh that she turned upon me,
savage as a strong cub defending a crippled helpless dam. They know now
that the last card has been played, and the game ended; for I gave her
distinctly to understand that at my death, Prince would inherit every
iota of my estate, and that my will had cut them off without a cent. I
meant it then, I mean it now. I swear that lowborn fiddler's brood
shall never darken these doors; but somehow, I am unable to get rid of
the strange, disagreeable sensation the girl left behind her, as a
farewell legacy. She stood there at that glass door, and raised her
hand like a prophetess. 'General Darrington, when you lie down to die,
may God have more mercy on your poor soul than you have shown to your
suffering child.'"

Witness advised him to go to bed, and sleep off the unpleasant
recollections of  the day, but he said it was so oppressively hot, he
wanted to sit at the window, which was wide open. Witness having
secured the deed, which was on the table in the room, bade his client
good-night, and left the house.

He was riding toward town, and thought it was about ten o'clock, when
he saw the prisoner sitting under a pine tree near the road, and not
more than a half a mile from the bridge over the "Branch" that runs at
the foot of Elm Bluff. His horse had shied and plunged at sight of her,
and, the moonlight being bright as day, witness easily recognized her
as the same person he had seen earlier in the afternoon. Thinking her
appearance there at that hour was rather mysterious, he asked her if
she had lost her way; to which she replied "No, sir." On the following
morning, when the mournful news of the murder of General Darrington had
convulsed the entire community with grief and horror, witness had
smothered his reluctance to proceed against a woman, and a solemn sense
of duty forced him to bring these suspicious circumstances to the
knowledge of the District Solicitor.

While he gave his testimony, Mr. Dunbar watched her closely for some
trace of emotion, but she met his gaze without the movement of a
muscle, and he detected not even a quiver of the jet lashes that
darkened her proud gray eyes.

Antony Burk next testified that he had given the accused instructions
about the road to Elm Bluff, when she arrived at X--; and that after
buying her return ticket, she told him it was necessary she should take
the 7:15 train, and that she would be sure to catch it. The train was a
few minutes late, but had pulled out of the station twenty minutes
before the prisoner came back, when she appeared much annoyed at having
missed it.

Then she had sent a telegram (a copy of which was in the possession of
the Solicitor), and requested him to allow her to remain in the ladies'
waiting-room until the next train at 3:05. He had directed her to a
hotel close by, but she declined going there. Thinking she was fatigued
and might relish it, he had, after supper, carried a pitcher of iced
tea to the waiting-room, but though he remained there until nine
o'clock she was nowhere visible. He went home and went to sleep, but
the violence of the storm aroused him; and when he took his lantern and
went back to unlock the ticket office, he searched the whole place, and
the prisoner was not in the building. This was at half-past two A.M.,
and the pitcher of tea remained untouched where he had placed it. It
was not raining when he returned, and a few minutes after he had hunted
for the prisoner, he was standing in the door of his office and he saw
her coming down the railway track, from the direction of the water tank
and the bridge. She was breathing rapidly as if she had been running,
and witness noticed that her clothes were damp, and that some drops of
water fell from the edge of her hat. A lamp-post stood in front of the
station, and he saw her plainly; asked her why she did not stay in the
room, which he had left open for her? Prisoner said she had remained
there. Witness told her he knew better; that she was not there at nine
nor yet at half-past two o'clock. The accused did not appear inclined
to talk, and gave no explanation, but got aboard the 3:05 train.
Witness considered her actions so suspicious, that he had related all
he knew to Mr. Dunbar, who had summoned him before the magistrate. He
(witness) was very loath to think evil of a woman, especially one so
beautiful and noble looking, and if he wronged her, he hoped God would
forgive him; but he never dodged telling the truth.

Here the female Cassius rose, and gave her name as Angeline Dobbs.

"She had for several years attended to the sewing and mending at Elm
Bluff, being summoned there whenever her services were required. On the
afternoon previous to General Darrington's death she was sitting at her
needlework in the hall of the second story of his house. As the day was
very hot, she had opened the door leading out to an iron balcony, which
projected just over the front hall door downstairs; and since the
piazza was open from the roof to the floor, she had peeped over, and
seen the prisoner when she arrived and had watched her while she sat on
the steps, waiting to be admitted. After the accused had been inside
the house some time, she (witness) recollected that she had seen a hole
in one of the lace curtains in the library downstairs, and thought this
would be such a nice time to darn it. The library was opposite the
drawing room, and adjoined General Darrington's bed-room. The door was
open and witness heard what she supposed was a quarrel, as General
Darrington's voice was loud and violent; and she distinctly heard him
say: 'My will is so strong, no contest can touch it! and it will stand
forever between your mother and my property.' Soon after, General
Darrington had slammed the door, and though she heard loud tones for
some time, she could not make out the words. The impression left on
witness's mind was that the prisoner was very impudent to the old
gentleman; and not long afterward she saw accused standing in the rose
garden, pretending to gather some flowers, but really looking up and
down at the front windows. Witness knew the prisoner saw the vault
where the General kept his papers, because she heard it opened while
she was in the bed-room. The door of the vault or safe did not open on
hinges, but was iron, and slid on a metal rod, which made a very
peculiar squeaking sound. When she heard the noise she thought that
General Darrington was so enraged that he got the will to show prisoner
it was all fixed forever, against her and her mother."

When Miss Dobbs sat down, a lame man, disfigured by a scar on his
cheek, learned upon a stick and testified:

"My name is Belshazzar Tatem. Was an orderly sergeant attached to
General Darrington's staff dtiring the war; but since that time have
been a florist and gardener, and am employed to trim hedges and vines,
and transplant flowers at Elm Bluff." On the afternoon of the
prisoner's visit there, he was resetting violet roots on a border under
the western veranda, upon which opened the glass door leading out from
the General's bed-room. He had heard an angry altercation carried on
between General Darrington and some one, and supposed he was scolding
one of the servants. He went to a shed in the barn yard to get a spade
he needed, and when he came back he saw the prisoner walk down the
steps, and thought it singular a stranger should leave the house that
way. Wondered whom she could be, and wondered also that the General had
quarrelled with such a splendid looking lady. Next morning when he went
back to his work, he noticed the glass door was shut, but the red
curtain inside was looped back. He thought it was half-past eight
o'clock, when he heard a loud cry in the bed-room, and very soon after,
somebody screamed. He ran up the steps, but the glass door was locked
on the inside, and when he went around and got into the room, the first
thing he saw was General Darrington's body lying on the floor, with his
feet toward the hearth, and his head almost on a line with the iron
vault built in the wall. The servants were screaming and wringing their
hands, and he called them to help him lift the General, thinking that
he had dropped in a fit; but he found him stone cold and stiff. There
was no sign of blood anywhere, but a heavy, old-fashioned brass andiron
was lying close to the General's head, and he saw a black spot like a
bruise on his right temple. General Darrington wore his night clothes,
and the bed showed he had been asleep there. Some broken vases were on
the floor and hearth, and the vault was wide open. The tin box was
upside down on the carpet, and some papers in envelopes were scattered
about.

Witness had picked up a leather bag carefully tied at the top with red
tape, drawn into hard knots; but in one side he found a hole which had
been cut with a knife, and at the bottom of the bag was a twenty-dollar
gold piece. Two more coins of the same value were discovered on the
floor, when General Darrington's body was lifted; and on the bolster of
the bed lay a bottle containing chloroform. Witness immediately sent
off for some of General Darrington's friends, and also notified the
coroner; and he did not leave the room again until the inquest was
held. The window on the front piazza was open, and witness had searched
the piazza and the grounds for tracks, but discovered no traces of the
burglar and murderer, who had escaped before the rain ceased, otherwise
the tracks would have been found. Witness was positive that the
prisoner was the same person whom he had seen coming out of the
bed-room, and with whom General Darrington had quarrelled.

The sheriff here handed to the magistrate, the gold pieces found on the
floor at Elm Bluff, by the last witness; then the little wicker basket
which had been taken from the prisoner when she was arrested. The coins
discovered therein were taken out, and careful comparison showed that
they corresponded exactly with those picked up after the murder. The
case of sapphires was also shown, and Mr. Dunbar rose to say, that "The
prosecution would prove by the attorney who drew up General
Darrington's will, that these exceedingly valuable stones had been
bequeathed by a clause in that will to Prince Darrington, as a bridal
present for whomsoever he might marry."

A brief silence ensued, during which the magistrate pulled at the
corner of his tawny mustache, and earnestly regarded the prisoner. She
stood, with her beautiful white hands clasped before her, the slender
fingers interlaced, the head thrown proudly back. Extreme pallor had
given place to a vivid flush that dyed her cheeks, and crimsoned her
delicate lips; and her eyes looking straight into space, glowed with an
unnatural and indescribable lustre. Tadmor's queen Bath Zabbai could
not have appeared more regal in her haughty pose, amid the exulting
shouts that rent the skies of conquering Rome. The magistrate cleared
his throat, and addressed the accused.

"You are Beryl Brentano, the granddaughter of General Darrington?"

"I am Beryl Brentano."

"You have heard the charges brought against you. What have you to say
in defence?"

"That I am innocent of every accusation."

"By what witnesses will you prove it?"

"By a statement of the whole truth in detail, if I may be allowed to
make it."

Here the Solicitor, Mr. Churchill, rose and said:

"While faithfully discharging my official duties, loyalty to justice
does not smother the accents of human sympathy; and before proceeding
any further, I hope your Honor will appoint some counsel to confer with
and advise the prisoner. Her isolation appeals to every noble instinct
of manhood, and it were indeed puerile tribute to our lamented General
Darrington, to bring his granddaughter before this tribunal, without
the aid and defence of legal advisers. Justice itself would not be
welcome to me, if unjustly won. My friend, Mr. Hazelton, who is
present, has expressed his desire to defend the prisoner; and while I
am aware that your Honor is under the impression she refuses to accept
counsel, I trust you will nevertheless commit her, until she can confer
with him."

Mr. Hazelton rose and bowed, in tacit approval.

Beryl advanced a few steps, and her clear pure voice thrilled every
heart in the crowded room.

"I need no help to tell the truth, and I want to conceal nothing. Time
is inexpressibly valuable to me now, for a human life more precious
than my own is at stake; and if I am detained here, my mother may die.
May I speak at once, and explain the circumstances which you consider
so mysterious as to justify the shameful indignity put upon me?"

"Since you assume the responsibility of your own defence, you may
proceed with your statement. Relate what occurred from the hour you
reached Elm Bluff, until you left X---next morning."

"I came here to deliver in person a letter written by my mother to her
father, General Darrington, because other letters sent through the
mail, had been returned unread. It contained a request for one hundred
dollars to pay the expense of a surgical operation, which we hoped
would restore her health. When I reached Elm Bluff, I waited on the
steps, until General Darrington's attorney finished his business and
came out; then I was led by an old colored man to the bed-room where
General Darrington sat. I gave no name, fearing he might refuse to
admit me, and he was very courteous in his manner until I laid the
letter before him. He immediately recognized the handwriting, and threw
it to the floor, declaring that no human being had the right to address
him as father, except his son Prince. I picked up the letter, and
insisted he should at least read the petition of a suffering, and
perhaps dying woman. He was very violent in his denunciation of my
parents, and his voice was loud and angry. So painful was the whole
interview, that it was a bitter trial to me to remain in his presence,
but knowing how absolutely necessary it was that mother should obtain
the money, I forced myself to beg him to read the letter. Finally he
consented, read it, and seemed somewhat softened; but he tore it into
strips and threw it from him. He drank several glasses of wine from a
decanter on the table, and offered me some, expressing the opinion that
I must be tired from my journey. I declined it. General Darrington then
questioned me about my family, my mode of living; and after a few
moments became very much excited, renewing his harsh invectives against
my parents. It was at this stage of the interview that he uttered the
identical words quoted by the witness: 'My Will is so strong, no
contest can touch it, and it will stand forever between your mother and
my property.'

"Immediately after, he went to the door leading into the library and
called 'Bedney!' No one answered, and he shut the door, kicking it as
it closed. When he came back to his chair, he said very bitterly: 'At
least we will have no eavesdroppers at this resurrection of my dead.'
He told me all the story of my mother's girlhood; of her marriage,
which had infuriated him; that he had sent her a certain proportion of
property, and then disowned and disinherited her. Afterward he
described his lonely life, his second marriage which was very happy,
and his adoption of his wife's son, who, he repeatedly told me, had
usurped my mother's place in his affections. Finally he said:

"'Your mother has asked for one hundred dollars. You shall have it; not
because I recognize her as child of mine, but because a sick woman
appeals to a Southern gentleman.'

"He took a bunch of keys from his pocket, and with one of them opened a
safe or iron closet on the wall near the chimney, and from that vault
he brought a square black tin box to the table, where he opened it. He
took out a leather bag, and counted into my hand five gold pieces of
twenty dollars each. The money was given so ungraciously that I told
him I would not accept it, save as a loan for mother's benefit; and
that as soon as I could earn it I would return the amount to him. I was
so anxious to get away, I started toward the library door, but he
called me back, and gave me the morocco case which contains the
sapphires. He said my mother's mother had bought them as a gift for her
daughter, to be worn when she was graduated at school; but as she
married and left school without his knowledge, the jewels had never
been seen by her. He told me he had intended to give them to his son
Prince, for his bride, but that now he would send them to mother, who
could sell them for a handsome sum, because they were valuable. He
showed so much sorrow at this time, that I begged him to give me some
message of pardon and affection, which she would prize infinitely more
than money or jewels; but he again became angry and bitter, and so I
left him. I came away by the door leading out on the iron veranda,
because he directed me to do so, saying that he did not wish me to meet
the servants, who would pry and tattle. When I closed the glass door I
saw him standing in the middle of the room, leaning on his cane, and he
had the black tin box in his hand. The sun was setting then, and now--"

She ceased speaking for some seconds, then raised her hands toward
heaven, and with uplifted eyes that seemed in their strained gaze to
pierce beyond the veil, she added with solemn emphasis:

"I call God to witness, that was the last and only time I ever saw
General Darrington. That was the last and only visit I ever made to Elm
Bluff."

There was a general movement among the spectators, and audible
excitement, which was promptly quelled by the magistrate.

"Silence there in front, or I shall order the room cleared."

Turning toward Beryl, he said:

"If you left Elm Bluff at sunset, why did you not take the 7:15 train?"

"I tried to do so, but missed it because I desired to obey my mother's
injunctions as strictly as possible. She gave me a small bunch of
flowers, and asked me to be sure to lay them for her on her mother's
grave. When I reached the cemetery, which you know is in sight of the
road from Elm Bluff, the gate was locked, and it required some time to
enable me to climb over the wall and find the monument. It was growing
dark, and when I arrived at the station, I learned the train had just
gone."

"Why did you not go to a hotel, as you were advised to do?"

"Because after sending the telegram to my mother, I had no money to pay
for lodging; and I asked permission to stay in the ladies'
waiting-room."

"State where and how you spent the night."

"It was very hot and sultry in that room, and as there was a bright
moon shining, I walked out to get some fresh air. The pine woods had
appeared so pretty and pleasant that afternoon, that I went on and on
toward them, and did not realize how far they were. I met people
passing along the road, and it did not seem lonely. The smell of the
pines was new to me, and to enjoy it, I sat down on the straw. I was
tired, and must have fallen asleep at once, for I remember nothing till
some noise startled me, and there I saw the same man on horseback in
the road, whom I had met at Elm Bluff. He asked me if I had misled my
way, and I answered 'No, sir.' The height of the moon showed me it was
late, and as I was frightened at finding myself alone in the woods, I
almost ran back to the railway station, where I saw no one, except a
telegraph operator, who seemed to be asleep in his chair. I cannot say
what time it was, because I could not see the clock. Soon after, it
began to thunder, and all through that terrible storm I was alone in
the waiting-room. So great was my relief when the wind and lightning
ceased, that I went to sleep, and dreamed of a happy time when I lived
in Italy, and of talking with one very dear to me. Just then I awoke
with a start, and heard a voice talking outside, which seemed very
familiar. There were two persons; one, a negro, said:

"'There ain't no train 'till daylight, excepting the through freight.'

"The other person asked: 'When is it due?' The negro answered:

"'Pretty soon, but it don't stop here; it goes to the water tank where
it blows for the railroad bridge; and that is only a short distance up
the track.'

"I think I must have been only half awake, and with my mind fixed on my
dream, I ran out in front of the station house. An old negro man
limping down the street was the only person visible, and while I
watched him he suddenly vanished. I went along the track for some
distance but saw no one; and when I came back, the ticket agent was
standing in the door of his office. I cannot explain to you the
singular impulse which carried me out, when I heard the dialogue,
because it is inexplicable to myself, save by the supposition that I
was still dreaming; and yet I saw the negro man distinctly. There was a
lamp-post near him, and he had a bundle on his shoulder. When the 3:05
train came, I went aboard and left X---."

A smile parted Mr. Dunbar's lips, and his handsome teeth glittered as
he whispered to Judge Dent:

"Even your chivalrous compassion can scarcely digest this knotty
solution of her movements that night. As a fabrication, it does little
credit to her ingenuity."

"Her statement impresses me differently. She is either entirely
innocent, or she had an accomplice, whose voice she recognized; and
this clue should be investigated."

The District Solicitor rose and bowed to the Magistrate.

"With your Honor's permission, I should like to ask the prisoner whom
she expected to see, when she recognized the voice?"

"A person who is very dear to me, but who is not in the United States."

"What is the name of that person?"

Her lips moved to pronounce his name, but some swift intuitive warning
restrained the utterance. Suddenly a new horror, a ghastly possibility,
thrust itself for the first time before her, and she felt as though
some hand of ice clutched her heart.

Those who watched her so closely, saw the blood ebb from cheeks and
lips; noted the ashy pallor that succeeded, and the strange groping
motion of her hands. She staggered toward the platform, and when the
Magistrate caught her arm, she fell against him like some tottering
marble image, entirely unconscious.

                       *       *       *       *       *

So prolonged and death-like was the swoon, and so futile the usual
methods of restoration, that the prisoner was carried into the small
ante-room, and laid upon a wooden bench; where a physician, who chanced
to be in the audience, was summoned to attend her. Finding restoratives
ineffectual, he took out his lancet:

"This is no ordinary fainting fit."

He attempted to roll up one of her sleeves, but seeing this was
impracticable, would have unfastened her dress, had not Judge Dent
arrested his hand.

"No, doctor; cut out the sleeve if necessary, but don't touch her
otherwise."

"Let me assist you; I can easily bare the arm."

As he spoke, Mr. Dunbar knelt beside the bench, and with a small, sharp
pen-knife ripped the seam from elbow to shoulder, from elbow to wrist,
swiftly and deftly folding back the sleeve, and exposing the perfect
moulding of the snowy arm.

"Just hold the hand, Dunbar, so as to keep it steady."

Clasping closely the hand, which the physician laid in his palm the
attorney noted the exquisite symmetry of the slender fingers and oval
nails. He bent forward and watched the frozen face. When the heavily
lashed lids quivered and lifted, and she looked vacantly at the grave
compassionate countenances leaning over her, a certain tightening of
the hold upon her fingers, drew her attention. Her gaze fastened on the
lawyer's blue eyes as if by a subtle malign fascination. The veil that
shrouded consciousness was rent, not fully raised; and as in some dream
the solemn eyes appeared to search his. A strange shivering thrill shot
along his nerves, and his quiet, well regulated heart so long the
docile obedient motor, fettered vassal of his will, bounded, strained
hard on the steel cable that held it in thrall.

"You feel better now?" asked the physician, who was stanching the flow
of blood.

Still her gaze seemed to penetrate the inmost recesses of the lawyer's
nature, calling into sudden revolt dormant elements that amazed and
defied him.

A shadowy smile curved her pale lips.

"At the mercy of Tiberius. At the mercy of Tiberius."

Those present looked inquiringly at each other.

"Her mind wanders a little. Sheriff, give her some of that brandy. She
is as weak as a baby."

Judge Dent raised her head, and the officer held the tumbler to her
mouth; while the former said gently:

"My poor girl, drink a little, it will strengthen you."

With a gesture of loathing, she rejected it; and as she attempted to
raise herself, all the dire extremity of her peril rushed back upon her
mind, like a black overwhelming tide from the sea of the past.

"Lie still, until I have bandaged your arm. Here, Dunbar, you acquitted
yourself so dexterously with your knife, just lend a hand. Hold the arm
until I secure the bandage."

To find herself surrounded by men, helpless in the grasp of strangers,
with no womanly touch or glance to sustain her, served to intensify her
misery; and wrenching herself free, she struggled into a sitting
posture, then staggered to her feet. The heavy coil of hair loosened
when they bore her from the court-room, now released itself from
restraining pins, and fell in burnished waves to her knees, clothing
her with a glory, such as the world's great masters in art reserve for
the beatified. Had all the blood that fed her heart been drained, she
would not have appeared more deadly pale, and in her wide eyes was the
desperate look of a doomed animal, that feels the hot fangs of the
hounds, and the cold steel of the hunters.

"Be persuaded for your own sake, to swallow some stimulant, of which
you are sadly in need. You will require all your strength, and, as a
physician, I insist upon your taking my prescription."

"If I might have some water. Just a little water."

Some one brought a brown stone pitcher, and she drank long and
thirstily; then looked for a moment at the faces of those who crowded
about her.

"What will be done now?"

Every eye fell to the floor, and after a painful silence Judge Dent
said very gently:

"For the present, the Magistrate will retain you in custody, until the
action of the Grand Jury. Should they fail to indict you, then you will
at once be released."

"I am to go to prison? I am to be thrust among convicts, vile
criminals! I--? My father's Beryl? O, righteous God! Where is Thy
justice? O, Christ! Is Thy mercy a mockery?"

She stood, with her chin resting on her clenched hands, and twice a
long violent shudder shook her from head to foot.

"I hope your imprisonment will be only temporary. The Grand Jury will
be in session next week. Meantime diligent search may discover the
persons whose conversation you overheard at the station; and if you be
innocent, we are all your friends, and the law, which now seems so
stern, will prove your strongest protector and vindicator."

Judge Dent stood close beside her, as he essayed these words of
comfort, and saw that she caught her breath as though in mortal agony.
Her face writhed, and she shut her eyes, unable to contemplate some
hideous apparition. He suspected that she was fighting desperately an
impulse that suggested succor; and he was sure she had strangled it,
when her hands fell nerveless at her side, and she raised her bowed
head. If the finger of paralysis had passed over her features, they
would not have appeared more hopelessly fixed. Mechanically she twisted
and coiled her hair, and took the hat and shawl which the officer held
out to her.

"If I can assist you in any way, you have only to send for me."

She looked at Judge Dent intently, for an instant, then shook her head.

"No one can help me now."

She tied her veil over her face, and silently followed the deputy
sheriff to a carriage, that stood near the pavement.

When he would have assisted her, she haughtily repelled him.

"I will follow you, because I must; but do not put your hands on me."




CHAPTER VII.


In ante bellum days, when States' Rights was a sacred faith, a revered
and precious palladium, State pride blossomed under Southern skies, and
State coffers overflowed with the abundance wherewith God blessed the
land. During that period, when it became necessary to select a site for
a new Penitentiary, the salubrity and central location of X---had so
strongly commended it, that the spacious structure was erected within
its limits, and regarded as an architectural triumph of which the State
might justly boast. Soon after this had been completed, the old county
jail, situated on the border of the town, was burned one windy March
night; then the red rain of war deluged the land, and when the ghastly
sun of "Reconstruction" smiled upon the grave of States' Rights,
Municipal money disappeared in subterranean channels. Thus it came to
pass, that with the exception of a small "lockup" attached to Police
Headquarters, X--had failed to rebuild its jail, and domiciled its
dangerous transgressors in the great stone prison; paying therefor to
the State an annual amount per capita.

Built of gray granite which darkened with time and weather stains, its
massive walls, machicolated roof, and tall arched clock-tower lifted
their leaden outlines against the sky, and cast a brooding shadow over
the town, lying below; a grim perpetual menace to all who subsequently
found themselves locked in its reformatory arms. Separated from the
bustling mart and busy traffic, by the winding river that divided the
little city into North and South X--, it crested an eminence on the
north; and the single lower story flanking the main edifice east and
west, resembled the trailing wings of some vast bird of prey, an
exaggerated simulacrum of a monstrous gray condor perched on a "coigne
of vantage," waiting to swoop upon its victims. Encircled by a tall
brick wall, which was surmounted by iron spikes sharp as bayonets, that
defied escalade, the grounds extended to the verge of the swift stream
in front, and stretched back to the border of a heavily timbered tract
of pine land, a bit of primeval forest left to stare at the encroaching
armies of Philistinism.

Within the precincts of the yard, the tender conservatism of our
great-hearted mother Nature, gently toned the savage stony features;
and even under the chill frown of iron barred windows, golden sunshine
bravely smiled, soft grasses wove their emerald velvet tapestries
starred and flushed with dainty satin petals, which late Autumn roses
showered in munificent contribution, to the work of pitying love.

In a comfortably furnished room situated in the second story of the
main building, sat a woman apparently thirty-five years old, who was
singing to a baby lying face downward on her lap, while with one hand
she rocked the wicker cradle beside her, where a boy of four years was
tossing. Her hazel eyes were full of kindly light, the whole face
eloquent with that patient, limitless tenderness, which is the magic
chrism of maternity, wherewith Lucina and Cuba abundantly anoint
Motherhood. The blessed and infallible nepenthe for all childhood's
ills and aches, mother touch, mother songs, soon held soothing sway;
and when the woman laid the sleeping babe on her own bed, and covered
her with a shawl, she saw her husband leaning against the partly open
door.

"Come here, Susie. The kids are snug and safe for the present, and I
want you."

"For shame, Ned! To call our darlings such a beastly name. Kids,
indeed! My sweetest, loveliest lambs!"

"There! Hear yourself! If I can see any choice of respectability
between kids and lambs, may I turn to a thoroughbred Southdown, and
take the blue ribbon at the next Fair. Beasts of the field, all of
them. The always-wide-awake-contrariness of womankind is a curious and
fearful thing. If I had called our beloved towheads, lambs, you would
have sworn through blue ruin that they were the cutest, spryest pair of
spotted kids, that ever skipped over a five-railed fence!"

"So much the worse for you, Ned Singleton, that you are such a hopeless
heathen; you do not even know where the Elect are appointed to stand,
at that great day when the sheep come up on the right hand of the Lord,
and the goats go down to the left. If you read your Bible more, I
should have less to teach you."

"Oh! but let me tell you, I thought of all that before I made up my
mind to marry the daughter of a Presbyterian preacher. I knew your dear
little blue-nose would keep the orthodox trail; and being one of the
Elect you could not get the points of the celestial compass mixed.
Don't you forget, that it is part of the unspoken marriage contract,
that the wife must not only keep her own soul white, but bleach her
husband's also; and no matter what a reprobate a man may be, he always
expects his better-half, by hook or by crook, to steer him into heaven."

He put his hands on his wife's shoulders, shook her, in token of
mastery, and kissed her.

"What do you want of my 'always-wide-awake-contrariness'? I have half a
mind not to help you out of your scrape; for of course you have mired
somewhere. What is the matter now, Ned?"

"Yes--stuck hard and fast; so my dear little woman, don't you go back
on your wedding-day promises, but just lend a helping hand. I don't
know what is to be done with that poor young woman in No. 19. One of
the under-wardens, Jarvis, sleeps this week right under her cell, and
he tells me that all night long she tramps up and down, without
cessation, like some caged animal. This is her third day in, and she
has not touched a morsel; though at Judge Dent's request I ordered some
extras given her. Jarvis said she was not sullen, but he thought it
proper to report to me that she seemed to act very strangely; so I went
up to see after her. When I opened the door she was walking up and down
the floor, with her hands locked at the back of her head, and I
declare, Susie, she looks five years older than when she came here.
There are great dark hollows under her eyes, and two red spots like
coals of fire on her cheeks. I said: 'Are you sick, that you reject
your meals?' To which she replied: 'Don't trouble yourself to send me
food; I cannot eat!' Then I told her I understood that she was restless
at night, and I advised her to take a mixture which would quiet her
nerves. She shook her head, and I could not bear to look at her; the
eyes seemed so like a wounded fawn's, brimful of misery. I asked her if
there was anything I could do, to make her more comfortable; or if she
needed medicine. All this time she kept up her quick walk to and fro,
and she answered: 'Thank you. I need nothing--but death; and that will
come soon.' Now what could I say? I felt such a lump in my throat, that
if Solomon had whispered to me some kind speech, I could not have
uttered it, so I got out of the room just as fast as possible, to dry
the tears that somehow would blur my eyes. When they are surly, or
snappish, or violent, or insolent, I know exactly what to do, and have
no trouble; but hang me, if I can cope with this lady--there it is out!
She is a lady every inch, and as much out of place here as I should be
in Queen Victoria's drawing-room. Men are clumsy brutes, even in kid
gloves, and bruise much oftener than they heal. Whenever I am in that
girl's presence, I have a queer feeling that I am walking on eggs, and
tip-toe as I may, shall smash things. If something is not done, she
will be ill on our hands, and a funeral will balk the bloodhounds."

"O, hush, Ned! You give me the shivers. My heart yearns toward that
beautiful young creature, and I believe she is as innocent as my baby.
It is a burning shame to send her here, unless there is no doubt of her
guilt. Judge Dent is too shrewd an old fox to be baited with chaff, and
I am satisfied from what he told you, that he believes her statement.
There is nothing I would not do to comfort her, but I would rather have
my ears boxed than witness her suffering. The day I carried to her a
change of clothes, until her own could be washed, and sewed up her
dress sleeve. I did nothing but cry. I could not help it, when she
moaned and wrung her hands, and said her mother's heart would break. I
have heard all my life that justice is blind; I have learned to believe
it, for it stumbles, and gropes, and lays iron claws on the wrong
person. As for the lawyers? They are fit pilots: and the courts are
little better than blind man's buff. Don't stand chewing your mustache,
Ned. Tell me what you want me to do, while baby is asleep. She has a
vexatious habit of taking cat naps."

"Little woman, I turn over the case to you. Just let your heart loose,
and follow it."

"If I do, will you endorse me?"

"Till the stars fall."

"Can you stay here awhile?"

"Yes, if you will tell Jarvis where he can find me."

"Mind you, Ned, you are not to interfere with me?"

"No--I swear I won't. Hurry up, or there will be much music in this
bleating fold; and you know I am as utterly useless with a crying
child, as a one-armed man in a concert of fiddlers."

The cell assigned to the new prisoner was in the centre of a line,
which rose tier above tier, like the compartments in a pigeon house, or
the sombre caves hewn out of rock-ribbed cliffs, in some lonely Laura.
Iron stairways conducted the unfortunates to these stone cages, where
the dim cold light filtered through the iron lattice-work of the upper
part of the door, made a perpetual crepuscular atmosphere within. The
bare floor, walls, and low ceiling were spotlessly clean and white; and
an iron cot with heavy brown blankets spread smoothly and a wooden
bench in one corner, constituted the furniture. Scrupulous neatness
reigned everywhere, but the air was burdened with the odor of carbolic
acid, and even at mid-day was chill as the breath of a tomb. Where the
doors were thrown open, they resembled the yawning jaws of rifled
graves; and when closed, the woful inmates peering through the black
lattice seemed an incarnation of Dante's hideous Caina tenants.

When Mrs. Singleton stopped in front of No. 19, and looked through the
grating, Beryl was standing at the extremity of the cell, with her face
turned to the wall, and her hands clasping the back of her neck. The
ceiling was so low she could have touched it, had she lifted her arms,
and she appeared to have retreated as far in the gloomy den as the
barriers allowed. Thinking that perhaps the girl was praying, the
warden's wife waited some minutes, but no sound greeted her; and so
motionless was the figure, that it might have been only an alto rilievo
carved on the wall. Pushing the door open, Mrs. Singleton entered, and
deposited on the iron bed a waiter covered with a snowy napkin. At the
sound, Beryl turned, and her arms fell to her side, but she shrank back
against the wall, as if solitude were her only solace, and human
intrusion an added torture.

Mrs. Singleton took both hands, and held them firmly:

"Do you believe it right to commit suicide?"

"I believe in everything but human justice, and Divine mercy."

"Your conscience tells you that--"

"Am I allowed a conscience? What ghastly mockery! Thieves and murderers
are not fit tenements for conscience, and I--I--am accused of stealing,
and of bloodshed. Justice! What a horrible sham! We--her victims--who
adored the beneficent and incorruptible attribute of God Himself--we
are undeceived, when Justice--the harpy--tears our hearts out with her
hideous, foul, defiling claws."

She spoke through set teeth, and a spasm of shuddering shook her from
head to feet.

"Listen to me. Suspicion is one thing, proof something very different.
You are accused, but not convicted, and--"

"I shall be. Justice must be appeased, and I am the most convenient and
available victim. An awful crime has been committed, and outraged law,
screaming for vengeance, pounces like a hungry hawk on an innocent and
unsuspecting prey. Does she spare the victim because it quivers, and
dies hard?"

"Hush! You must not despair. I believe in your innocence; I believe
every word you uttered that day was true, and I believe that our
merciful God will protect you. Put yourself in His hands, and His mercy
will save, for 'it endureth forever.'"

"I don't ask mercy! I claim justice--from God and man. The wicked
grovel, and beg for mercy; but innocence lays hold upon the very throne
of God, and clutches His sword, and demands justice!"

"I understand how you feel, and I do not wonder; but for your own sake,
in order to keep your mind clear and strong for your vindication, you
certainly ought to take care of your health. Starvation is the surest
leech for depleting soul and body. Do you want to die here in prison,
leaving your name tarnished, and smirched with suspicion of crime, when
you can live to proclaim your innocence to the world? Remember that
even if you care nothing for your life, you owe something to your
mother. You have two chances yet; the Grand Jury may not find a true
bill--"

"Yes, that tiger-eyed lawyer will see that they do. He knows that the
law is a cunning net for the feet of the innocent and the unwary. He
set his snare dexterously, and will not fail to watch it."

"You mean Mr. Dunbar? Yes, you certainly have cause to dread him; but
even if you should be indicted, you have twelve human hearts full of
compassion to appeal to--and I can't think it possible a jury of sane
men could look at you and condemn you. You must fight for your life;
and what is far more to you than life, you must fight for your good
name, for your character. Suspicion is not proof of crime, and there is
no taint on you yet; for sin alone stains, and if you will only be
brave and clear yourself as I know you can, what a grand triumph it
will be. If you starve yourself you seal your doom. An empty stomach
will do you more harm than the Grand Jury and all the lawyers; for it
utterly upsets your nerves, and makes your brain whirl like a top. For
three days and nights you have not tasted food: now just to please me,
since I have taken so much trouble, sit down here by me, and eat what I
have brought. I know you would rather not; I know you don't want it;
but, my dear child, take it like any other dose, which will strengthen
you for your battle. It is very fine to rant about heroism, but
starvation is the best factory for turning out cowards: and even the
courage of old Caesar would have had the 'dwindles,' if he had been
stinted in his rations."

She removed the napkin, and displayed a tempting luncheon, served in
pretty, gilt-banded white china. What a contrast it presented, to the
steaming tin platter and dull tin quart cups carried daily to the
adjoining cell?

Beryl laid her hand on Mrs. Singleton's shoulder, and her mouth
trembled.

"I thank you, sincerely, for your sympathy--and for your confidence;
and to show my appreciation of your kindness, I wish I could eat that
dainty luncheon; but I think it would strangle me--I have such a
ceaseless aching here, in my throat. I feel as if I should stifle."

"See here! I brought you some sweet rich milk in my little boy's cup.
He was my first-born, and I lost him. This was his christening present
from my mother. It is very precious, very sacred to me. If you will
only drink what is in it, I shall be satisfied. Don't slight my angel
baby's cup. That would hurt me."

She raised the pretty "Bo-Peep" silver cup to the prisoner's lips, and
seeing the kind hazel eyes swimming in tears, Beryl stooped her head
and drank the milk.

The warden's wife lifted the cup, looked wistfully at it, and kissed
the name engraved on the metal:

"You know now I must think you pure and worthy. I have given you the
strongest possible proof; for only the good could be allowed to touch
what my dead boy's lips have consecrated. Now come out with me, and get
some pure fresh air."

Beryl shrank back.

"These close walls seem a friendly shelter from the horrible faces that
cluster outside. You can form no idea how I dread contact with the vile
creatures, whose crimes have brought them here for expiation. The
thought of breathing the same atmosphere pollutes me. I think the
loathsomeness of perdition must consist in association with the
depraved and wicked. Not the undying flames would affright me, but the
doom of eternal companionship with outcast criminals. No! No! I would
sooner freeze here, than wander in the sunshine with those hideous
wretches I saw the day I was thrust among them."

"Trust me, and I will expose you to nothing unpleasant. Take your hat
and shawl; I shall not bring you back here. There is time enough for
cells when you have been convicted and sentenced; and please God, you
shall never stay in this one again. Come."

"Stay, madam. What is your purpose? I have been so hunted down, I am
growing suspicious of the appearance of kindness. What are you going to
do?"

Mrs. Singleton took her hand and pressed it gently.

"I am going to trust, and help, and love you, if you will let me; and
for the present, I intend to keep you in a room adjoining mine, where
you will have no fear of wicked neighbors."

"That will be merciful indeed. May God bless you for the thought."

Down iron staircases, and through dim corridors bordered with dark
cells, gloomy as the lairs of wild beasts whom the besotted inmates
resembled, the two women walked; and once, when a clank of chains and a
hoarse human cry broke the dismal silence, Beryl clutched her
companion's arm, and her teeth chattered with horror.

"Yes, it is awful! That poor woman is the saddest case we have. She
waylaid and stabbed her husband to death, and poisoned his mother. We
think she is really insane, and as she is dangerous at times, it is
necessary to keep her chained, until arrangements can be made to remove
her to the insane asylum."

"I don't wonder she is mad! People cannot dwell here and retain their
reason; and madness is a mercy that blesses them with forgetfulness."

Beryl shivered, and her eyes glittered with an unnatural and ominous
brilliance.

The warden's wife paused before a large door with solid iron panels,
and rang a bell. Some one on the other side asked:

"What is the order? Who rang?"

"Mrs. Singleton; I want to get into the chapel. Let me out, Jasper."

The door swung slowly back, and the guard touched his hat respectfully.

Through an open arcade, where the sunlight streamed, Mrs. Singleton led
her companion; then up a short flight of stone steps, and they found
themselves in a long room, with an altar railing and pulpit at one end,
and rows of wooden benches crossing the floor from wall to wall. Even
here, the narrow windows were iron barred, but sunshine and the sweet,
pure breath of the outside world entered freely. Within the altar
railing, and at the right of the reading desk where a Bible lay, stood
a cabinet organ. Leaving the prisoner to walk up and down the aisle,
Mrs. Singleton opened the organ, drew out the stops, and after waiting
a few moments, began to play.

At first, only a solemn prelude rolled its waves of harmony through the
peaceful sunny room, but soon the strains of the beautiful Motet "Cast
thy burden on the Lord," swelled like the voice of some divine
consoler. Watching the stately figure of the prisoner who wandered to
and fro, the warden's wife noticed that like a magnet the music drew
her nearer and nearer each time she approached the chancel, and at last
she stood with one hand on the railing. The beautiful face, sharpened
and drawn by mental agony, was piteously wan save where two scarlet
spots burned on her cheeks, and the rigid lips were gray as some
granite Statue's, but the eyes glowed with a strange splendor that
almost transfigured her countenance.

On and on glided the soft, subtle variations of the Motet, and
gradually the strained expression of the shining eyes relaxed, as if
the soul of the listener were drifting back from a far-off realm; the
white lids quivered, the stern lines of the pale lips unbent. At that
moment, the face of her father seemed floating on the sunbeams that
gilded the pulpit, and the tones of her mother's voice rang in her
ears. The terrible tension of many days and nights of torture gave way
suddenly, like a silver thread long taut, which snaps with one last
vibration. She raised her hands:

"My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?"

The cry ended in a wail. Into her burning eyes merciful tears rushed,
and sinking on her knees she rested against the railing, shaken by a
storm of passionate weeping.

Mrs. Singleton felt her own tears falling fast, but she played for a
while longer; then stole out of the chapel, and sat down on the steps.

Across the grass plot before the door, burnished pigeons cooed, and
trod their stately minuet, their iridescent plumage showing every
opaline splendor as the sunlight smote them; and on a buttress of the
clock tower, a lonely hedge-sparrow poured his heart out in that
peculiarly pathetic threnody which no other feathered throat
contributes to the varied volume of bird lays. Poised on the point of
an iron spike in the line that bristled along the wall, a mocking bird
preened, then spread his wings, soared and finally swept downward,
thrilling the air with the bravura of the "tumbling song"; and over the
rampart that shut out the world, drifted the refrain of a paean to
peace:

"Bob White!" "Peas ripe?" "Not quite!"

In the vast epic of the Cosmos, evoked when the "Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters"--an epic printed in stars on blue abysses
of illimitable space; in illuminated type of rose leaf, primrose petal,
scarlet berry on the great greenery of field and forest; in the
rainbows that glow on tropical humming birds, on Himalayan pheasants,
on dying dolphins in purple seas; and in all the riotous carnival of
color on Nature's palette, from shifting glory of summer clouds, to the
steady fires of red autumn skies--we find no blot, no break, no blurred
abortive passages, until man stepped into creation's story. In the
material, physical Universe, the divine rhythm flows on, majestic,
serene as when the "morning stars sing together" in the choral of
praise to Him, unto whom "all seemed good"; but in the moral and
spiritual realm evolved by humanity, what hideous pandemonium of
discords drowns the heavenly harmony? What grim havoc marks the swath,
when the dripping scythe of human sin and crime swings madly, where the
lilies of eternal "Peace on earth, good will to man," should lift their
silver chalices to meet the smile of God?

A vague conception of this vexing problem, which like a huge
carnivorous spectre, flaps its dusky wings along the sky of sociology,
now saddened Mrs. Singleton's meditations, as she watched the
lengthening shadow cast by the tower upon the court-yard; but she was
not addicted to abstract speculation, and the words of her favorite
hymn epitomized her thoughts: "Though every prospect pleases, and only
man is vile."

The brazen clang of the deep-throated bell rang out on the quiet air,
and a moment later, the piercing treble of a child's cry made her
spring to her feet. She peeped into the chapel all was still.

On tiptoe she passed swiftly down the aisle to the chancel, and saw the
figure crouched at the altar, with one arm twined through the railing.
For many days and nights the tortured woman had not known an instant of
repose; nervous dread had scourged her to the verge of frenzy, but when
the flow of long-pent tears partly extinguished the fire in her brain,
overtaxed Nature claimed restitution, and the prisoner yielded to
overwhelming prostration. Death might be hovering near, but her twin
sister sleep intervened, and compassionately laid her poppies on the
snowy eyelids.

Stooping close, Mrs. Singleton saw that tears yet hung on the black
lashes which swept the flushed cheeks, but the parted lips were at
rest, and the deep regularly drawn breath told her that at last the
weary soul reposed in the peaceful domain of dreams. Deftly, and softly
as thistledown falls, she spread her own shawl over the drooping
shoulders, then noiselessly hurried back to the door. Locking it, she
took the key, ran across the grass, into the arcade, and up to the
great iron barrier, which the guard opened as she approached. With
flying feet she neared her own apartments, whence issued the indignant
wail of her implacable baby girl. As she opened the door, her husband
held the disconsolate child toward her.

"You are in time for your share of the fun; I have had enough and to
spare. How you stand this diabolical din day in, day out, passes my
comprehension. You had not been gone fifteen minutes when Missy tuned
up. I patted and, 'She-e-d' her, but she got her head above cover,
squinted around the room, and not finding you, set up a squall that
would have scared a wildcat. The more I patted, the worse she screamed,
and her feet and hands flew around like a wind-mill. I took her up, and
trotted her on my knee, but bless you! she squirmed like an eel, and
her little bald head bobbed up and down faster than a di-dapper. Then I
walked her, but I would as soon try to swing to a greased snake. She
wriggled and bucked, and tied herself up into a bow knot, and yelled--.
Oh! a Comanche papoose is a dummy to her. As if I had not hands full,
arms full, and ears full, Dick must needs wake up and pitch head
foremost out of the cradle, and turn a double summerset before he
landed upside down on the floor, whereupon he lifted up his voice, and
the concert grew lively. I took him under one arm, so, and laid Missy
over my shoulder, and it struck me I would join the chorus in self
defence, so I opened with all my might on 'Hold the Fort'; but great
Tecumseh! I only insulted them both, and finding my fifth fiddle was
nowhere in the fray, I feared Jarvis would hear the howling and ring
the alarm bell, so I just sat down. I spread out Dick in a soft place,
where he could not bump his brains out, and laying my lady across my
lap, I held her down by main force, while she screamed till she was
black in the face. If you had not come just when you did, I should have
turned gray and cross-eyed. Hello, Missy! If she is not cooing and
laughing! Little vixen! Oh! but--'lambs'!--I believe they are!
Hereafter tend your own flock; and in preference I will herd young
panthers."

He wiped his forehead where the perspiration stood in drops, and
watched with amazement the sudden lull in the tempest.

Clasped in her mother's arms, the baby smiled and gurgled, and Dick,
drying his eyes on the maternal bosom, showed the exa

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