At the Mercy of Tiberius

CHAPTER XI.

"Madam, I ordered the prisoner's head shaved. Did you understand my instructions?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why were my orders not obeyed?"

"Because I don't intend you shall make a convict of her, before she has been tried and sentenced. She has the most glorious suit of hair I ever looked at, and I shall save it till the last moment. Doctor Moffat, you need not swear and fume, for I don't allow even my husband to talk ugly to me. You directed a blister put on the back of the neck, as close as possible to the skull; it is there, and it is drawing fast enough to satisfy any reasonable person. I divided the hair into four braids and plaited them, and you can see I have hung up the ends here just loose enough to save any pulling, and yet the hair is out of the way, so that I keep her head cool with this India-rubber ice-bag. I will be responsible for the blister."

Mrs. Singleton spread her arms over the sick girl, as a hen shelters her brood from a swooping hawk.

"But, Susie, the Doctor knows better what is—"

"Hush, Ned. Perhaps he does; but I 'detailed' myself to nurse this case; and I don't propose to surrender all my common sense, and all my womanly judgment, and maternal experience, in order to keep the Doctor in a good humor. I will have my own head shaved before hers shall be touched."

Mr. Singleton discreetly withdrew from the conference, softly closing the door behind him; and Doctor Moffat bent over the thermometer with which he was testing the temperature. When he raised his head, a kindly smile lurked in his deep set eyes:

"I can't afford to quarrel with you, madam; you are too faithful and watchful a nurse. After all, the chances are, that it will ultimately make very little difference; she grows worse so rapidly. I will come in again before bed-time, and meanwhile make no change in the medicine."

The warden's wife replenished the ice in a bowl, whence a tube supplied the cap or bag on the head of the sufferer, and taking a child's apron from her work-basket on the floor, resumed her sewing. After a while, the door opened noiselessly, and glancing up, she saw Mr. Dunbar.

"May I come in?"

"Yes. You need repentance; and this is a good place to begin."

"Is there any change?"

"Only for the worse. No need now to tip-toe; she is beyond being disturbed by noise. I think the first sound she will notice, will be the harps of the angels."

"I trust the case is not so hopeless?"

"Queer heart you must have! You are afraid she will slip through your fingers, and get to heaven without the help of the gallows and the black cap? Death cheats even the lawyers, sometimes, and seems to be snatching at your prey. You don't believe in prayer, and you have no time to waste that way. I do; and I get down here constantly on my knees, and pray to my God to take this poor young thing out of the world now, before you all convict her, and punish her for crimes she never committed."

"Madam, her conviction would grieve me as much as it possibly could you; and unless she can vindicate herself, I earnestly hope she may never recover her consciousness."

The unmistakable sincerity of his tone surprised the little woman, and scanning him keenly as he stood, hat in hand, at the foot of the cot, her heart relented toward him.

"You still consider her guilty?"

"Since my last interview with her, I have arrived at no conclusion. Whether she be innocent or guilty, is known only by her, and her God. All human judgments in such cases are but guesses at the truth. Is she entirely unconscious, or has she lucid intervals?"

"Mr. Dunbar, on your honor as a gentleman, answer me. Are you here hunting evidence on a death-bed? Would you be so diabolical as to use against her any utterances of delirium?" The flash of his eyes reminded her of the peculiar blue flame that leaps from a glowing bed of anthracite coal; and she had her reply before his lips moved.

"Am I a butcher, madam? Your insinuations are so insulting to my manhood, that it is difficult for me to remember my interrogator is a lady; doubly difficult for me to show you the courtesy your sex demands. Sooner than betray the secrets of a sick room, or violate the sanctity of the confidence which that poor girl's condition enjoins, I would cut off my right arm."

"I intend no discourtesy, sir; but my feelings are so deeply enlisted, that I cannot stop to choose and pick phrases, in talking to the person who caused that child to be shut up here. She thinks you are the most vindictive and dangerous enemy she has; and I had no reason to contradict her. Don't be offended, Mr. Dunbar."

He deigned no answer, but the dilation of his thin nostrils, and the stern contraction of his handsome lips, attested his wrath. Mrs. Singleton rose and laid her fingers on his coat sleeve.

"If I felt sure I could trust you—"

"I decline your confidence. Madam, if I could only tell you, that your vile suspicions are too contemptible to merit the indignation they arouse, I should to some extent feel relieved."

"Then having said it, I will let you off without an apology; and wipe the slate, and start fresh. You are sensitive about your honor, and I am determined to find out just how much it is worth. Trusting you as an honorable gentleman, I am going to ask you to do something for me, which may be of service to my patient; and I ask it, because I have unlimited faith in your skill. Find out who 'Ricordo' is."

"Why? I must thoroughly understand the import of whatever I undertake, and if your reasons are too sacred to be communicated to me, you must select some other agent. I do not solicit your confidence, mark you; but I must know all, or nothing."

"The day she was taken so ill, I was undressing her, and she looked at me very strangely, and said she believed she was losing her mind. Then she raised her hands and prayed:

"'Lord, be merciful! Lord, seal my lips! Seal my lips!'

"Since then she has not known me, but several times she cried out 'Ricordo'! Last night she sat up suddenly, and stared at something she seemed to see right before her in the air. She shook her head at first, and said—'Oh, no! it cannot be possible'. Then she clutched at some invisible object, and a look of horror came into her eyes. She struck her palms together, and I never heard such an agonizing cry, 'There is no help! I must believe it—oh Ricordo!—Ricordo—Ricordo'. She fell back and shivered as if she had an ague. I tried to soothe her, and told her she had a bad dream. She kept saying: 'Oh, horrible—it was, it was Ricordo!' Once, early this morning, she pulled me down to her and whispered: 'Don't tell mother—it would break her heart to know it was Ricordo!' She has not spoken distinctly since, though she mutters to herself. Now, Mr. Dunbar, if I did not feel as sure of her innocence as I am of my own, I should never tell you this; but I want your aid to hunt and catch this 'Ricordo', because I am satisfied it will help to clear her."

"Was it not 'Ricardo'?"

"No, sir—it sounded as if spelled with an o not an a—and it was 'Ricordo'."

"Ricardo is a proper name, but I am under the impression that 'Ricordo' is an Italian word that means simply a remembrance, a souvenir, sometimes a warning. I am glad, however, to have the clue, and I will do all I can to discover what connection exists between that word, and the crime. Can you tell me nothing more?"

"Sometimes she seems to be drawing and painting, and talks to her father about pictures; and once she said: 'Hush! hush—mother is ill. She must not know I died, because I promised her I would bear everything. She made me promise'."

At this moment the keen wail of a young child, summoned the warden's wife to her own apartment, and Mr. Dunbar sat down in the rocking-chair beside the iron cot.

In that strange terra incognita, the realm of psychology, are there hidden laws that defy alike the ravages of cerebral disease, and the intuitions of the moral nature; inexorable as the atomic affinities, the molecular attractions that govern crystallization? Is the day dawning, when the phenomena of hypnotism will be analyzed and formulated as accurately as the symbols of chemistry, or the constituents of protoplasm, or the weird chromatics of spectroscopy? Beryl's head, that hitherto had turned restlessly on its pillow, became motionless; the closed eyes opened suddenly, fastened upon the lawyer's; and some inexplicable influence impelled her to stretch out her hand to him.

"Tiberius, you have come for me."

"I have come to ask if you are better to-day."

Her burning fingers closed tightly over his, and the fever flame lent an indescribable splendor to eyes that seemed to penetrate his heart. Bending over her, he gently lifted a shining fold of hair from her white temple, and still clasping her hand, said in a low voice:

"Beryl, do you know me? Are you better?"

"Wait till I finish the sketch from San Michele. After I am hung, you will sell it. The light is so lovely."

Up and down, her right hand moved through the air, making imaginary strokes as on canvas, but her luminous gaze, held by some powerful fascination, never left his. The gray depths had darkened, swallowed by the widening pupils that made them almost black; and as Mr. Dunbar recognized the complete surrender of physical and mental faculties, her helplessness stirred some unknown sea of tenderness in the man's hard, practical, realistic nature.

Phlegmatic rather than emotional, and wholly secretive, he had accustomed himself to regard romantic ideality, and susceptibility to sentimentality as a species of intellectual anaemia; holding himself always thoroughly in hand, when subjected to the softening influences that now and then invaded professional existence, and melted the conventional selfish crust over the hearts of his colleagues, as the warm lips and balmy breath of equatorial currents kiss away the jagged ledges of drifting icebergs. In his laborious life, that which is ordinarily denominated "love" had been so insignificant a factor, that he had never computed its potentiality; much less realized its tremendous importance in solving the problem of his social, financial, and professional success. Beauty had not allured, nor grace enthralled his fancy; and his betrothal was a mere incident in the quiet tenor of business routine, a necessary means for the accomplishment of a cherished plan.

To-day, while those hot slender fingers clung to his, and he leaned over the pillow, watching his victim, a rising tide surged, rolled up from some unexplored ocean of strange sensations, and its devouring waves threatened to demolish and engulf the stately structure pride and ambition had combined to rear. A brilliant alliance that insured great wealth, that promised a secure stepping-stone to political preferment, was apparently a substantial bulwark against the swelling billows of an unaccountable whim; yet he was impotent to resist the yearning tenderness which impelled him to forget all else, in one determined effort to rescue and shelter the life he had been the chief agent in imperilling. Clear eyed, keen witted, he did not for an instant deceive himself; and he knew that neither compassion for misfortune, nor yet a chivalrous remorse for having consigned a helpless woman to a dungeon, explained this new emotion that threatened to dominate all others.

Cool reason assured him that under existing entanglements, the girl's speedy death would prove the most felicitous solution of this devouring riddle, which so unexpectedly crossed his smooth path; then what meant the vehement protest of his throbbing heart, the passionate longing to snatch her from disease, and disgrace, and keep her safe forever in the close cordon of his arms?

The door was cautiously opened and closed, and noiselessly as a phantom, Leo Gordon stood within the room. One swift survey enabled her to grasp all the details. The small, comfortless, dismal apartment, the barred narrow window, the bare floor, the low iron cot in one corner, with its beautiful burden; the watching attitude of the man, who for years had possessed her heart. Resting one elbow on his knee, his chin leaned on his left hand, but the light fell full on his handsome face, and she started, marvelled at the expression of the brilliant eyes fixed upon the sufferer; eyes suffused and eloquent with tenderness, never before seen in their cold sparkling depths.

Mighty indeed must be the compassion, evocative of that intense yearning look in his usually guarded, irresponsive countenance. A painfully humiliating sense of her own personal incompetence to arouse the feeling, so legibly printed on her lover's features, jarred upon Leo's heart like a twanging dissonance breaking the harmonious flow of minor chords; but a noble pity strangled this jealous thrill, and she softly approached the cot.

The rustle of her dress attracted his attention, and glancing up, he saw his betrothed at his side. One might have counted ten, while they silently regarded each other; and as if conscious of having unmasked some disloyalty, scarcely yet acknowledged to himself, haughty defiance hardened and darkened his face. Involuntarily his hold on Beryl's fingers tightened.

"Prison wards are not proper fields for the cultivation and display of Miss Gordon's amateur kid glove charity. I hope, at least, it was a species of exaggerated high-flown sentimentality, rather than mere feminine curiosity that tempted you to precincts revolting to the delicacy and refinement with which my imagination invested you."

"My motives I shall not submit to the crucible of your criticism; and a little reflection will probably suggest to you, that perhaps you are unduly enlarging the limits, and prematurely exercising the rights of anticipated censorship. There are blunders that trench closely upon the borders of crime, and if professional zeal has betrayed you into the commission of a great wrong upon an innocent woman, it is a sacred duty to your victim, as well as my privilege as your betrothed, to alleviate her suffering as much as possible, and to repair the injury for which you are responsible. When human life and reputation are at stake, hypercritical fastidiousness is less pardonable than the deplorable mistake that endangers both."

"And if I have not blundered; and she be guilty?"

"Then your presence here, can only be explained by motives so malignant and contemptible, that I blush to ascribe them to you."

"If I am morbidly sensitive about your line of conduct you should understand and pardon my jealous espionage."

"If I, realizing that you are act infallible, entertain a nervous dread that unintentionally you may have inflicted an irreparable wrong, you at least should not feel offended, because I am sensitive as regards reflections upon your honor as a gentleman, and your astuteness as a lawyer."

Her fair face had flushed; his grew pale.

"Leo, is this to be our first quarrel?"

"If so, you are entitled to the role of protagonist."

He put out his left hand, and took hers, while his right was closely clasping one that lay upon the chintz coverlid.

What strange obliquity of vision, what inscrutable perversity possessed him, he asked himself, as he looked up at the slight elegant figure, clad in costly camel's-hair garments, with Russian sables wrapped about her delicate throat, with a long drifting plume casting flickering shadows over her sweet flowerlike face; the attractive embodiment of patrician birth and environment of riches, and all that the world values most—then down at the human epitome of wretchedness, represented by a bronze-crowned head, with singularly magnetic eyes, crimsoned cheeks, and a perfect mouth, whose glowing, fever-rouged lips were curved in a shadowy smile, as she muttered incoherently of incidents, connected with the life of a poverty-stricken adventuress? Was friendly fate flying danger signals by arranging and accentuating this vivid contrast, in order to recall his vagrant wits, to cement his wavering allegiance?

He was a brave man, but he shivered slightly, as he confronted his own insurgent and defiant heart; and involuntarily, his fingers dropped Leo's, and his right hand tightened on the hot palm throbbing against it.

On that dark tossing main, where delirium drove Beryl's consciousness to and fro like a rudderless wreck, did some mysterious communion of spirits survive? Did some subtle mesmeric current telegraph her soul, that her foul wrongs were at last avenged? Whatever the cause, certainly a strangely clear, musical laugh broke suddenly from her lovely lips, mingled with a triumphant "Che sara, sara!" The heavy lids slowly drooped, the head turned wearily away.

Smothering a long drawn sigh, which his pride throttled, Mr. Dunbar rose and stood beside his fiancee.

"You have been feeling her pulse, how is the fever?" asked Leo.

"About as high as it can mount. The pulse is frightfully rapid. I did not even attempt to count it."

"Mrs. Singleton tells me she is entirely unconscious—recognizes no one."

"At times, I think she has partly lucid glimpses; for instance, a little while ago she called me 'Tiberius', the same appellation she unaccountably bestowed on me the day of her preliminary examination. Evidently she associates me with every cruel, brutal monster, and even in delirium maintains her aversion."

Miss Gordon's hand stole into his, pressing it gently in mute attestation of sympathy. After a moment, she said in a low tone:

"She is very beautiful. What a noble, pure face? How exquisitely turned her white throat, and wrists, and hands."

He merely inclined his head in assent.

"It seems a profanation to connect the idea of crime with so lovely and refined a woman. Lennox?"

He turned, and looked into her brown eyes, which were misty with tears.

"Well, my dear Leo, what is burdening your generous heart?"

"Do you, can you, believe her guilty? Her whole appearance is a powerful protest."

"Appearances are sometimes fatally false. I think you told me, that the purest and loveliest face, guileless as an angel's, that you saw in Europe, was a portrait of Vittoria Accoramboni; yet she was veritably the 'White Devil', 'beautiful as the leprosy, dazzling as the lightning'. Do I believe her guilty? From any other lips than yours, I should evade the question; but I proudly acknowledge your right to an expression of my opinion, when—"

"I withdraw the question, because I arrogate no 'rights'. I merely desire the privilege of sympathizing, if possible, with your views; of sharing your anxiety in a matter involving such vital consequences. Privilege is the gift of affection; right, the stern allotment of law. Tell me nothing now; I shall value much more the privilege of receiving your confidence unsolicited."

He took both her hands, drew her close to him, and looked steadily down into her frank tender eyes.

"Thank you, my dear Leo. Only your own noble self could so delicately seek to relieve me from a painful embarrassment; but our relations invest you with both rights and privileges, which for my sake at least, I prefer you should exercise. You must allow me to conclude my sentence; you are entitled to my opinion—when matured. As far as I am capable of judging, the evidence against her is—overwhelmingly condemnatory. I thought so before her arrest; believed it when her preliminary examination ended, and subsequent incidents strengthen and confirm that opinion; yet a theory has dawned upon me, that may possibly lighten her culpability. I need not tell you, that I feel acutely the responsibility of having brought her here for trial, and especially of her present pitiable condition, which causes me sleepless nights. If she should live, I shall make some investigation in a distant quarter, which may to some extent exculpate her, by proving her an accessory instead of principal. My—generous Leo, you shall be the first to whom I confide my solution—when attained. I am sorely puzzled, and harassed by conflicting conjectures; and you must be patient with me, if I appear negligent or indifferent to the privileges of that lovely shrine where my homage is due."

"If you felt less keenly the distressing circumstances surrounding you, I should deeply regret my misplaced confidence in your character; and certainly you must acquit me of the selfishness that could desire to engross your attention at this juncture."

Desirous of relieving him of all apprehension relative to a possible misconstruction of his motives and conduct, she left one hand in his, and laid the other with a caressing touch on his arm; an unprecedented demonstration, which at any other time would have surprised and charmed him.

"Ah, what a melancholy sight! So much delicate refined beauty, in this horrible lair of human beasts! Lennox, let us hope that the mercy of God will call her speedily to His own bar of justice, before she suffers the torture and degradation of trial, by earthly tribunals."

She felt the slight shudder that crept over him, the sudden start with which he dropped her hand, and bent once more over the cot.

"God forbid she should die now, leaving the burden of her murder on my soul!"

His countenance was averted, but the ferver of his adjuration filled her with a vague sense of painful foreboding.

"Is it friendly to desire the preservation of a life, whose probable goal seems the gallows, or perpetual imprisonment? Poor girl! In the choice of awful alternatives, death would come here as an angel of mercy."

Leo took Beryl's hand in hers, and tears filled her eyes as she noted the symmetry of the snowy fingers, the delicate arch of the black brows, the exceeding beauty of the waving outline where the rich mahogany-hued hair touched the forehead and temples, that gleamed like polished marble.

"Is it friendly to wish an innocent girl to go down into her grave, leaving a name stained for all time by suspicion, if not absolute conviction of a horrible crime?"

Mr. Dunbar spoke through set teeth, and Leo's astonishment at the expression of his countenance, delayed an answer, which was prevented by the entrance of Mrs. Singleton.

"Miss Gordon, your uncle wishes to know whether you are ready to go home; as he has an engagement that calls him away?"

Did Leo imagine the look of relief that seemed to brighten Mr. Dunbar's face, as he said promptly:

"With your permission, I will see you safely down stairs, and commit you to Judge Dent's care."

Standing beside the cot, she watched Mrs. Singleton measure the medicine from a vial into a small glass. When the warden's wife knelt down, and putting one arm under the pillow elevated it slightly, while she held the glass to the girl's lips, Beryl attempted to push it aside.

"Take it for me, dear child; it will make you sleep, and ease your pain."

The beautiful eyes regarded her wistfully, then wandered to the face of the lawyer and rested, spellbound.

"Here, swallow this. It is not bad to take."

Mrs. Singleton patted her cheek and again essayed to administer the draught, but without success.

"Let me try."

Mr. Dunbar took the glass, but as he bent down, the girl began to shiver as though smitten with a mortal chill. She writhed away, put out her shuddering hands to ward it off; and starting up, her eyes filled with a look of indescribable horror and loathing, as she cried out:

"Ricordo! Oh, mother—it is Ricordo! I see, it! Father—it was my Pegli handkerchief!—with the fuchsias you drew! Father—ask Christ to pity me!"

She sank back quivering with dread, pitiable to contemplate; but after a few moments her hands sought each other, and her trembling lips moved evidently in prayer, though the petition was inaudible. Mrs. Singleton sponged her forehead with iced water, and by degrees the convulsive shivering became less violent. The wise nurse began in a subdued tone to sing slowly, "Nearer my God to Thee," and after a little while, the sufferer grew still, the heavy lids lifted once or twice, then closed, and the laboring brain seized on some new vision in the world of fevered dreams.

Mrs. Singleton took the medicine from the attorney, and put it aside.

"Sleep is her best physic. When these nervous shivers come on, I find a hymn chanted, soothes her as it does one of my babies. Poor child! she makes my heart ache so sometimes, that I want to scream the pain away. How people with any human nature left in them, can look at her and listen to her pitiful cries to her dead father, and her dying mother, and her far-off God, and then believe that her poor beautiful hands could shed blood, passes my comprehension; and all such ought to go on four feet, and browse like other brutes. I am poor, but I vow before the Lord, that I would not stand in your shoes, Mr. Dunbar, for all the gold in the Government vaults, and all the diamonds in Brazil."

Tears were dripping on the costly furs about Leo's neck, as she moved closer to the attorney, and linked her arm in his:

"Mr. Dunbar, we will detain my uncle no longer. Mrs. Singleton has told me, that one of her children is ill, had a spasm last night; and since maternal duties are most imperative, it is impossible for her to give undivided attention to this poor sufferer. If you will kindly take me down stairs, I will call at the 'Sheltering Arms', and secure the services of one of the 'Sisters' who is an experienced nurse. This will relieve Mrs. Singleton, and we shall all feel assured that our poor girl has careful and tender watching, and every comfort that anxious sympathy can provide."