SYBILLA'S TRIUMPH.
It was the night before the execution. In his feebly lighted cell the
condemned man sat alone, trying to read by the palely glimmering lamp.
The New Testament lay open before him, and on this, the last night of
his life, he was reading the story of Gethsemane and Calvary. On this
last night heart and soul were at rest, and an infinite calm illumined
every feature.
Weeks had passed since the day when sentence of death had been
pronounced upon him, and the condemned man had lain burning in the wild
delirium of brain fever.
Sybilla Silver had been his most sleepless, his most devoted attendant.
Her evidence had wrung his heart--had condemned him to the most
shameful death man can die; but she had only told the truth, and truth
is mighty and will prevail. So she came and nursed him now, forgetting
to eat or sleep in her zeal and devotion, and finally wooed him back to
life and reason, while those who loved him best prayed God, by night
and by day, that he might die.
But, while hovering in the "Valley of the Shadow," death had lost all
its terror for him--he rose a changed man.
"And she is there," he said, with his eyes fixed dreamily on the one
patch of blue May sky he could see between his prison bars--"my
wronged, my murdered, my beloved wife! Ah, yes, death is the highest
boon the judges of this world can give me now!"
And so the last night came. He sat alone. The jailer who was to share
his cell on this last, awful vigil had been bribed to leave him by
himself until the latest moment.
"Come in before midnight," he said, smiling slightly, "and guard me
while I sleep, if you wish. Until then, I should like to be left quite
alone."
And the man obeyed, awed unutterably by the sublime look of that marble
face.
"He never did it," he said to his wife. "No murderer ever looked with
such clear eyes and such a sweet smile as that. Sir Everard Kingsland
is as hinnocent as a hangel, and there'll be a legal murder done
to-morrow. I wish it was that she-devil that swore his life away
instead, I'd turn her off myself with the greatest pleasure."
As if his thoughts had evoked her, a tall dark figure stood before
him--Miss Sybilla Silver herself.
"Good Lord!" cried the jailer, aghast; "who'd a-thought it? What do
you want?"
"To see the prisoner," responded Sybilla.
"You can't see him, then," said the jailer, gruffly. "He ain't going
to see anybody this last night, ma'am."
"Mr. Markham"--she came over and laid her velvet paw on his arm, and
magnetized him with her big black eyes--"think better of it. It is his
last night. His mother lies on the point of death. I come here with a
last sacred message from a dying mother to a dying son. You have an
aged mother yourself, Mr. Markham. Ah! think again, and don't be hard
upon us."
A sovereign slipped into his palm.
"For only half an hour, then," he said; "mind that. Come along!"
The key clanked; the door swung back. The pale prisoner lifted his
serene eyes; the tall, dark figure stepped in.
"Sybilla!"
"Yes, Sir Everard."
The great door closed with a bang.
"Half an hour, mind," reiterated the jailer.
The key turned; they were alone together within those massive walls.
"I thought we parted yesterday for the last time in this lower world,"
said the baronet, calmly.
"Did you? You were mistaken, then. We meet again and part again
forever to-night, for the last time in this lower world, or that upper
one either, in which you believe, and which I know to be a very pretty
little fable."
She laughed a low, derisive laugh, and came up close to him. He shut
his book, and looked at her in wonder.
"What do you mean? Why have you come hither to-night? Why do you look
like that? What is it all?"
"It is this! That the mask worn two long years is about to be torn
off. It means that you are to hear the truth; it means that the
purpose of my life is fulfilled; it means that the hour of my triumph
has come."
He sat and looked at her, lost in wonder.
"You do not speak--you sit and stare as though you could not believe
your eyes or ears. It is hard to believe, I know--the humble, the meek
Sybilla metamorphosed thus. But the Sybilla Silver you knew was a
delusion. Behold the real one, for the first time in your life!"
"Woman, who are you? What are you?"
"I am the granddaughter of Zenith the gypsy, the woman your father
wronged to the death, and your bitterest enemy, Sir Everard Kingsland!"
"The granddaughter of Zenith the gypsy?" he repeated. "Then Sybilla
Silver is not your name?"
"The name is as false as the character in which she showed
herself--that of your friend."
"And yet, the first time we met you saved my life."
"No thanks for that. I did not know you, though if I had I would have
saved it, all the same. That was not the death you were to die. I
saved you for the gallows."
"Sybilla, Sybilla!"
"I saved you for the gallows!" she repeated. "I come here to-night to
tell you the truth, and you shall hear it. Did I not swear your life
away? Did I not nurse you back from the jaws of death? All for what?
That the astrologer's prediction might be fulfilled--that the heir of
Kingsland Court might die a felon's death on the scaffold!"
"The astrologer's prediction?" he cried, catching some of her
excitement. "What do you know about that?"
"Everything--everything!" she exclaimed, exultingly. "Far more than
you do, for you only know such a thing exists--you know nothing of its
contents. Oh, no! mamma guarded her darling boy too carefully for
that, notwithstanding your dying father's command. But in spite of her
it has come true."
"What was the astrologer's prediction--that terrible prediction that
shortened my father's life?"
"It was this--that his only son and heir, born on that night, would die
by the hand of the common hangman, a murderer's death on the scaffold.
Enough to blight any father's life who believed in it, was it not?"
"It was devilish. My poor father! Tell me the name of the fiend
incarnate who could do so diabolical a deed, for you know?"
"I do. That man was my father."
"Your father?"
"Ay, Achmet the Astrologer. Ha! ha! As much an astrologer as you or
I. It was his part of our vengeance--my part was to see it carried
out. I swore, by my dying mother's bedside, to devote my life to that
purpose. Have I not kept my oath?"
She folded her arms and looked at him with a face of devilish
malignity. He recoiled from her as from a visible demon.
"For God's sake, go! You bring a breath of hell into this prison.
Go--go! You have done your master's work. Leave me!"
"Not yet; you have heard but half the truth. Oh, potent Prince of
Kingsland, hear me out! You will be hanged tomorrow morning for
murdering your wife! You didn't murder her, did you? Who do you
suppose did it?"
He rose to his feet, staggered back against the wall, his eyes starting
from their sockets.
"Great God!"
"Ah, you anticipate, I see. Yes, my lord of Kingsland, I murdered your
pretty little wife! Keep off! I have a pistol here, and I'll blow
your brains out if you come one step nearer--if you utter a word! I
don't want to cheat Jack Ketch, if I can. And it is no use your crying
for help--there is no one to hear, and these stone walls are thick.
Stand there, my rich, my noble, my princely brother, and listen to the
truth."
He stood, holding by the wall, paralyzed with horror.
"Yes, I murdered her!" Sybilla reiterated, with sneering triumph.
"Disguised in your clothes, using your dagger; and she died, believing
it to be you. All I told, and all the boy Dawson told at the trial was
true as the Heaven you believe in. Your wife was true as truth, pure
as the angels. She loved only you--she loved you with her whole heart
and soul. Her vow by the bedside of her dying father chained her
tongue. To save you the shame, the humiliation of learning the truth
about her degraded mother, she met in secret this Mr. Parmalee. On
that night she went to the stone terrace to see her mother, for the
first, the last, the only time. I arranged it all--I lured her
there--I stabbed her, and flung her over into the sea! I hated her for
your sake--I hated her for her own. And to-morrow, for my crime, you
will die!"
And still he gazed, paralyzed, stunned, speechless.
"Poor fool!" she said, with unutterable scorn--"poor, blind, besotted
fool! and this is the end of all! Young, handsome, rich, high-born,
surrounded by friends, the wealthy and the great, one woman's work
brings you to this! I have said my say, and now I leave you; here we
part, Sir Everard Kingsland. Call the jailer; tell him what I have
told you--tell it through the length and breadth of the land, if you
choose. Not one will believe you. It is an utterly mad and impossible
tale. I have only to calmly and scornfully deny it. And to-morrow,
when the glorious sun rises I will be far away. In Spain, the land of
my mother and my grandmother, I go to join our race--to become a
dweller in tents--a gypsy, free as the wind that blows. The gold your
lavish hand has given me will make me and my tribe rich for life. I go
to be their queen. Farewell, Sir Everard Kingsland. My half hour has
expired; the jailer comes to let me out. But first I go straight from
here to Kingsland Court, to tell your mother what I have just told
you--to tell her her idolized son dies for my crime, and to kill her,
if I can, with the news."
The door swung open--Miss Silver flitted out. It broke the spell. The
prisoner started forward, tried hoarsely, vainly to speak. Enfeebled
by long illness, by repeated shocks, he staggered a pace or two and
fell face forward at the jailer's feet like a log.