SWOOPING DOWN.
Twice it called, so loudly called
With horrid strength beyond the pitch of nature;
And murder! murder! was the dreadful cry.
A third time it returned with feeble strength,
But o' the sudden ceased; as though the words
Were smothered rudely in the grappled throat.
And all was still again, save the wild blast
Which at a distance growled--
Oh, it will never from the heart depart!
That dreadful cry all in the instant stilled.--BAILLIE.
Lyon Berners remained walking up and down the room some time longer. The
lights were all out, and the servants gone to bed. Yet still he
continued to pace up and down the parlor floor, until suddenly piercing
shrieks smote his ear.
In great terror he started forward and instinctively rushed towards
Rosa's room, when the door was suddenly thrown open by Rosa herself,
pale, bleeding from a wound in her breast.
"Great Heaven! What is this?" he cried, as, aghast with amazement and
sorrow, he supported the ghastly and dying form, and laid it on the
sofa, and then sunk on his knees beside it.
"Who, who has done this?" he wildly demanded, as, almost paralyzed with
horror, he knelt beside her, and tried to stanch the gushing wound from
which her life-blood was fast welling.
"Who, who has done this fiendish deed?" he reiterated in anguish, as he
gazed upon her.
She raised her beautiful violet eyes, now fading in death; she opened
her bloodless lips, now paling in death, and she gasped forth the words:
"She--Sybil--your wife. I told you she would do it, and she has done it.
Sybil Berners has murdered me," she whispered. Then raising herself
with a last dying effort, she cried aloud, "Hear, all! Sybil Berners has
murdered me." And with this charge upon her lips, she fell back DEAD.
Even in that supreme moment Lyon Berners' first thought, almost his only
thought, was for his wife. He looked up to see who was there--who had
heard this awful, this fatal charge.
_All_ were there! guests and servants, men and women, drawn there by the
dreadful shrieks. All had heard the horrible accusation.
And all stood panic-stricken, as they shrank away from one who stood in
their midst.
It was she, Sybil, the accused, whose very aspect accused her more
loudly than the dying woman had done; for she stood there, still in her
fiery masquerade dress, her face pallid, her eyes blazing, her wild
black hair loose and streaming, her crimsoned hand raised and grasping a
bloodstained dagger.
"Oh, wretched woman! most wretched woman! What is this that you have
done?" groaned Lyon Berners, in unutterable agony--agony not for the
dead beauty before him, but for the living wife, whom he felt that he
had driven to this deed of desperation. "Oh, Sybil! Sybil! what have you
done?" he cried, grinding his hands together.
"I? I have done nothing!" faltered his wife, with pale and tremulous
lips.
"Oh, Sybil! Sybil! would to Heaven you had died before this night! Or
that I could now give my life for this life that you have madly taken!"
moaned Lyon.
"I have taken no life! What do you mean? This is horrible!" exclaimed
Sybil, dropping the dagger, and looking around upon her husband and
friends, who all shrank from her. "I have taken no life! I am no
assassin! Who dares to accuse me?" she demanded, standing up pale and
haughty among them.
And then she saw that every lowered eye, every compressed lip, every
shuddering and shrinking form, silently accused her.
Mr. Berners had turned again to the dead woman. His hand was eagerly
searching for some pulsation at the heart. Soon he ceased his efforts,
and arose.
"Vain! vain!" he said, "all is still and lifeless, and growing cold and
stiff in death. Oh! my wretched wife!"
"The lady may not be dead! This may be a swoon from loss of blood. In
such a swoon she would be pulseless and breathless, or seem so! let me
try! I have seen many a swoon from loss of blood, as well as many a
death from the same cause, in my military experience," said Captain
Pendleton, pushing forward and kneeling by the sofa, and beginning his
tests, guided by experience.
His words and actions unbound the spell of horror that had till then
held the assembled company still and mute, and now all pressed forward
towards the sofa, and bent over the little group there.
"Air! air! friends, if you please! Stand farther off. And some one open
a window!" exclaimed Captain Pendleton, peremptorily.
And he was immediately obeyed by the falling off of the crowd, one of
whom threw open a window.
"Some one should fetch a physician!" suggested Beatrix Pendleton, whose
palsied tongue was now at length unloosed.
And half a dozen gentlemen immediately started for the stables to
dispatch a messenger for the village doctor from Blackville.
"And while they are fetching the physician, they should summon the
coroner also," suggested a voice from the crowd.
"No! no! not until we have ascertained that life is actually extinct,"
exclaimed Captain Pendleton, hastily; at the same time seeking and
meeting the eyes of Mr. Berners, with a meaning gaze said:
"If we cannot restore the dead woman to life, we must at least try to
save the living woman from unspeakable horrors!"
Mr. Berners turned away his head, with a deep groan.
And Captain Pendleton continued his seeming efforts to restore
consciousness to the prostrate form before him, until he heard the
galloping of the horse that took the messenger away for the doctor, and
felt sure that the man could not now receive orders to fetch the coroner
also.
Then Captain Pendleton arose and beckoned Miss Tabby Winterose to come
towards him. That lady came forward, whimpering as usual, but with an
immeasurably greater cause than she had ever possessed before.
"Close her eyes, straighten her limbs, arrange her dress. She is quite
dead," said the Captain.
Miss Tabby's voice was lifted up in weeping.
But wilder yet arose the sound of wailing, as the Scotch girl, with the
child in her arms, broke through the crowd and cast herself down beside
her dead mistress, crying:
"Oh! and is it gone ye are, my bonny leddy? Dead and gone fra us, a' sae
suddenly! Oh, bairnie! look down on your puir mither, wham they have
murthered--the born deevils."
The poor child, frightened as much by the wild wailing of the nurse as
by the sight of his mother's ghastly form, began to scream and to hide
his head on Janet's bosom.
"Woman, this is barbarous. Take the boy away from this sight," exclaimed
Captain Pendleton, imperatively.
But Janet kept her ground, and continued to weep and wail and
apostrophize the dead mother, or appeal to the orphan child. And all the
women in the crowd whose tongues had hitherto been paralyzed with
horror, now broke forth in tears and sobs, and cries of sympathy and
compassion, and--
"Oh, poor murdered young mother! Oh, poor orphaned babe!" or
lamentations to the same effect, broke forth on all sides.
"Mr. Berners, you are master of the house. I earnestly exhort you to
clear the room of all here, except Miss Winterose and ourselves," said
Captain Pendleton in an almost commanding tone.
"Friends and neighbors," cried Lyon Berners, lifting up his voice, so
that it could be heard all over the room, "I implore you to withdraw to
your own apartments. Your presence here only serves to distress
yourselves and embarrass us. And we have a duty to do to the dead."
The crowd began to disperse and move toward the doors when suddenly
Sybil Berners lifted her hand on high and called, in a commanding tone:
"STOP!"
And all stopped and turned their eyes on her.
She was still very pale, but now also very calm; the most self-collected
one in that room of death.
"I have somewhat to say to you," she continued. "You all heard the dying
words of that poor dead woman, in which she accused me of having
murdered her; and your own averted eyes accuse me quite as strongly, and
my own aspect, perhaps, more strongly than either."
She paused and glanced at her crimsoned hand, and then looked around and
saw that her nearest neighbors and oldest friends, who had known her
longest and loved her best, now turned away their heads, or dropped
their eyes. She resumed:
"The dead woman was mistaken; you are misled; and my very appearance is
deceptive. I will not deny that the woman was my enemy. Driven to
desperation, and in boiling blood, I might have been capable of doing
her a deadly mischief, but bravely and openly, as the sons and daughters
of my fiery race have done such things before this. But to go to her
chamber in the dead of night, and in darkness and secrecy--! No! I could
not have done that, if she had been ten times the enemy she was. Is
there one here who believes that the daughter of Bertram Berners could
be guilty of that or any other base deed?" she demanded, as her proud
glance swept around upon the faces of her assembled friends and
neighbors.
But their averted eyes too sorrowfully answered her question.
Then she turned to her husband and lowered her voice to an almost
imploring tone as she inquired:
"Lyon Berners, do YOU believe me guilty?"
He looked up, and their eyes met. If he had really believed her guilty
he did not now. He answered briefly and firmly:
"No, Sybil! Heaven knows that I do not. But oh! my dear wife! explain,
if you can, how that dagger came into your possession, how that blood
came upon your hands; and, above all, why this most unhappy lady should
have charged you with having murdered her."
"At your desire, and for the satisfaction of the few dear old friends
whom I see among this unbelieving crowd, the friends who would deeply
grieve if I should either do or suffer wrong, _I will_ speak. But if it
were not for you and for them, I would die before I would deign to
defend myself from a charge that is at once so atrocious and so
preposterous--so monstrous," said Sybil, turning a gaze full of haughty
defiance upon those who stood there before her face, and dared to
believe her guilty.
A stern voice spoke up from that crowd.
"Mr. Lyon Berners, attend to this. A lady lies murdered in your house.
By whom she has been so murdered we do not know. But I tell you that
every moment in which you delay in sending for the officers of justice
to investigate this affair, compromises you and me and all who stand by
and silently submit to this delay, as accessories, after the fact."
Lyon Berners turned towards the speaker, a grave and stern old man of
nearly eighty years, a retired judge, who had come to the mask ball
escorting his grand-daughters.
"An instant, Judge Basham. Pardon us, if in this dismay some things are
forgotten. The coroner shall be summoned immediately. Captain Pendleton,
will you oblige me by despatching a messenger to Coroner Taylor at
Blackville?" he then inquired, turning to the only friend upon whose
discretion he felt he could rely.
Captain Pendleton nodded acquiescence and intelligence, and left the
room, as if for the purpose specified.
"Now, dear Sybil, with Judge Basham's permission, give our friends the
explanation that you have promised them," said Lyon Berners
affectionately, and confidingly taking her hand and placing himself
beside her.
For all his anger as well as all her jealousy had been swept away in the
terrible tornado of this evening's events.
"The explanation that I promised _you_, and those who wish me well," she
said emphatically. And then her voice arose clear, firm, and distinct,
as she continued:
"I was in my chamber, which is immediately above that occupied by Mrs.
Blondelle. My chamber is approached by two ways, first by the front
passage and stairs, and secondly by a narrow staircase running up from
Mrs. Blondelle's room. And the door leading from her room up this
staircase and into mine, she has been in the habit of leaving open.
To-night, as I said, I was sitting in my chamber; from causes not
necessary to explain now and here, I was too much disturbed in mind to
think of retiring to rest, or even of undressing. I do not know how long
I had sat there, when I heard a piercing shriek from some one in the
room below. Instinctively I rushed down the communicating stairs and
into Mrs. Blondelle's room, and up to her bed, where I saw by the light
of the taper she was lying. Her eyes were closed, and I thought at first
that she had fainted from some fright until, almost at the same instant,
I saw this dagger--" here Sybil stooped and picked up the dagger that
she had dropped a few minutes before--"driven to its haft in her chest.
I drew it out. Instantly the blood from the opened wound spirted up,
covering my hand and sleeve with the accusing stains you see! With the
flowing of the blood her eyes flew wildly open! She gazed affrightedly
at me for an instant, and then with the last effort of her life, for
which terror lent her strength, she started up and fled shrieking to
this room. I, still holding the dagger that I had drawn from her bosom,
followed her here. And--you know the rest," said Sybil; and overcome
with excitement, she sank upon the nearest chair to rest.
Lyon Berners still held her hand.
Her story had evidently made a very great impression upon the company
present. But Lyon Berners suddenly exclaimed:
"Good Heavens! that lady's mistaken charge has put us all off the scent,
and allowed the murderer to escape. But it may not yet be too late! Some
clue may be left in her room by which we may trace the criminal! Come,
neighbors, and let us search the premises."
And Lyon Berners, leaving the shuddering women of the party in the room
with Sybil and the dead, and followed by all the men, went to search the
house and ground for traces of the assassin.