"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."