At the Mercy of Tiberius Part 61

With her hands locked around the portfolio, Beryl sat watching the door; and at last the policeman appeared at the threshold, where he paused an instant, then vanished.

A gentleman apparently forty years of age came in, and approached her.

He was short in stature, florid, slightly bald; wore mutton chop whiskers, and a traveling suit of gray tweed broadly checked.

Beryl rose, the stranger bowed.

"Ah, you have my sketch book! Madam, I am eternally your debtor.

Intrinsically worthless, perhaps; yet there are reasons which make it inestimably valuable to me."

"I picked it up from the pavement, and though I opened and examined it, you will find the contents intact. Will you look through it?"

"Oh! I dare say it is all right. No one cares for unfinished sketches, and these are mere studies."

He untied the thongs, turned over a dozen or more papers, then closed the lid, and put his hand in his pocket.

"I offered a reward to--"

"I wish no fee, sir; but the policeman has taken some trouble in the matter, and without his aid I should probably not have been able to restore it. Pay him what you promised, or may deem proper; and then permit me to ask for some information, which I think you can give me."

She beckoned to the officer who looked in just then; and when the money had been counted into his hand, the latter lifted his cap.

"Sister, shall I see you safe on the car?"

"Thank you, no. I can find my way home. I teach drawing at the 'Anchorage', and desire to ask a few questions of this gentleman, who I am sure is an artist."

When the policeman had left them, Beryl took the portfolio and opened it, while the owner watched her curiously, striving to penetrate the silver gray folds of her veil.

"May I ask whether you expect to leave America immediately?"

"I expect to sail on the steamer for Liverpool next Sat.u.r.day."

"Have you relatives in this country?"

"None. I am merely a tourist, seeking glimpses of the best of this vast continent of yours."

"Did you make these sketches?"

"I did, from time to time; in fact, mine has been a sketching tour, and this book is one of several I have filled in America."

With trembling fingers she untied the silk, lifted the sketch, and said in a voice which, despite her efforts, quivered:

"I hope, sir, you will not consider me unwarrantably inquisitive, if I ask, where did you see this face?"

"Ah! My monk of the mountains? That is 'Brother Luke'; looks like one of Il Frate's wonderful heads, does he not? I saw him--let me see?

Egad! Just exactly where it was, that is the rub! It was far west, beyond a.s.siniboia; somewhere in Alberta I am sure."

"Was it on British soil, or in the United States?"

"Certainly in British territory; and on one of the excursions I made from Calgary. I think it was while hunting in the mountains between Alberta and British Columbia. Let me see the sketch. Yes--10th of August; I was in that region until 1st of September."

Beryl drew a deep breath of intense relief, as she reflected that foreign territory might bar pursuit; and leaning forward, she asked hesitatingly:

"Have you any objection to telling me the circ.u.mstances under which you saw him; the situation in which you found him?"

"None whatever; but may I ask if you know him? Is my sketch so good a portrait?"

"It is wonderfully like one I knew years ago; and of whom I desire to receive tidings. My friend is a handsome man about twenty-four years of age."

"I was camping out with a hunting party, and one day while they were away gunning, I went to sketch a bit of fir wood clinging to the side of a rocky gorge. The day was hot, and I sat down to rest in the shadow of a stone ledge, that jutted over the cove where a spring bubbled from the crag, and made a ribbon of water. Here is the place, on this sheet.

Over there, are the fir trees. Very soon I heard a rich voice chanting a solemn strain from Palestrinas' Miserere; the very music I had listened to in the Sistine Chapel, a few months before; and peeping from my sheltered nook, I saw a man clad in monkish garb stoop to drink from the spring. He sat a while, with his arms clasped around his knees, and his profile was so perfect I seized my pencil and drew the outlines; but before I completed it, he suddenly fell upon his knees, and the intense anguish, remorse, contrition--what not--so changed the countenance, that while he prayed, I made rapidly a new sketch. Then the most extraordinary thing happened. He rose, and turning fully toward me, I saw that one-half of his face was n.o.bly regular, cla.s.sically perfect; while the other side was hideously distorted, deformed. Absolutely he was 'Hyperion and Satyr' combined--with one set of features between them. I suppose my astonishment caused me to utter some exclamation, for he glanced up the cliff, saw me, turned and fled.

I shouted and ran, but could not overtake him, and when I reached the open s.p.a.ce, I saw a figure speeding away on a white mustang pony, and knew from the fluttering of the black skirts that it was the same man.

My sketch shows the right side of his face, the other was drawn down almost beyond the lineaments of humanity. Beg pardon, madam, but would you be so good as to tell me whether this freak of nature was congenital, or the result of some frightful accident?"

Beryl had shut her eyes, and her lips were compressed to stifle the moan that struggled in her throat. When she spoke, the stranger detected a change in her voice.

"The person whose countenance was recalled by your sketch, was afflicted by no physical blemish, when last I saw him."

"His appearance was so singular, that I made sundry inquiries about him, but only one person seemed ever to have encountered him; and that was a half-breed Indian driver, belonging to our party. He told me, 'Brother Luke' belonged to a band of monks living somewhere beyond the mountains; and that he sometimes crossed, searching for stray cattle.

That is the history of my sketch, and since I am indebted to you for its recovery, I regret for your sake that it is so meagre."

"It was last August that you made the sketch?"

"Last August. And now may I ask, to whom my thanks are due?"

"I am merely an humble member of a sisterhood of working women, and my name could possess no interest for you. I owe you an apology for trespa.s.sing upon your time, and prying into the mysteries of your portfolio; but the beauty of your sketch, and its startling resemblance to one in whom I have long felt an interest, must plead my pardon. I am grateful, sir, for your courtesy, and will detain you no longer."

He bowed profoundly; she bent her head, and walked quickly away, keeping her face lowered, dreading observation.

For the first time since her trial and conviction, a sensation of perfect tranquillity shed rest upon her anxious and foreboding heart.

Bertie was safe from capture, on foreign soil; and the testimony of the traveller that he prayed in the solitude of the wilderness, brought her the comforting a.s.surance, that the fires of remorse had begun the purification of his sinful soul from the crime that had blackened so many lives. Trained in his early youth at a Jesuit College, his sympathies had ever been with the priesthood to whom his tutors belonged; and his sister readily understood how swiftly he fled to their penitential, expiatory system, when the blood of his grandfather had stained his hands, and the scouts of the law hunted him to desert wilds.

Vain of the personal beauty that had always distinguished him, she comprehended the keenness of the humiliation, which would goad him to screen in a cloister, the facial mutilation, that punished him more excruciatingly than hair shirt, or flagellation. Beyond the reach of extradition (as she fondly hoped), inviolate beneath the cowl of some Order which, in protecting his body, essayed also to cleanse, regenerate and sanctify his imperilled soul, could she not now dismiss the tormenting apprehension that sleeping or waking had persistently dogged her, since the day when she saw the fuchsias on the handkerchief, and the mother-of-pearl grapes on the sleeve b.u.t.ton, in the penitentiary cell?

In a crisis of dire extremity, overborne by adversity, terrified by the realization of human helplessness, we fly to G.o.d, and barter by promise all our future, for the boon of temporary succor.

How different, how holy the mood that brings us in tearful grat.i.tude to dedicate our lives to His service, when having abandoned all hope, His healing hand lifts us out of long agony into unexpected rest?

When an ignominious death stared this woman in the face, she had cried to her G.o.d: "Though You slay me, yet will I trust You!" and to-night she bowed her head in prayer, thankful that the uplifted hand held no longer a dagger, but had fallen tenderly in benediction.

Far away in the heart of the city, the clock in its granite tower was striking two; yet Beryl knelt at her oriel window, with her arms crossed on the wide sill, and her eyes fixed upon the shimmering sea, where a soft south wind ruffled it into ridges of silver, beneath a full May moon. Beyond those silent waters, hidden in some lonely, snow-girt eyry, where perhaps the m.u.f.fled thunder of the Pacific responded to the midnight chants of his oratory, dwelt Bertie; and to touch his hand once more, to hear from his own lips that he had made his peace with G.o.d, to kiss him good-bye seemed all that was left for accomplishment.

Poor and unknown, she lacked apparently every means requisite for this attainment; but faith, patience, and courage were hers. Daily work for daily wage was the present duty; and in G.o.d's good time she would find her brother. How, or when, so expensive and difficult a quest could be successfully prosecuted, disquieted her not; she had learned to labor and to trust; she remembered: "Their strength is to sit still."

The symphony of her life was set in minors, yet subtle and perfect was the harmony that dwelt therein; and because she had sternly shut love out of her lonely heart, she kept votive lights burning ceaselessly on the cold altar of duty. The solitary red rose of happiness that might have brightened and perfumed her th.o.r.n.y path, she had cut off, ere the bud expanded, and offered it as a loyal tribute to broaden the garland that crowned Miss Gordon. At the mandate of conscience, she had unmurmuringly surrendered this precious blossom, but memory was tantalizingly tenacious; and in sorrowful hours of sore temptation, the brave, pure soul came swiftly to the rescue of famishing heart: "What?

Is it so hard for us to keep the Ten Commandments? Do we covet our neighbor's lover?"

In the garden of earthly existence, some are ordained to bloom as human plantae tristes, shedding their delicate aroma like the "Pretty-by-nights", only when the glory of the day is done, and twilight shadows coax open their pure hearts.

To-night she seemed cradled in the arms of peace, soothed by an unfaltering trust that whispered: