At the Mercy of Tiberius Part 66

"Our conversation has disquieted me, and I cannot sleep. Long ago, for my own sake, I made a rule by which to govern my judgment of my fellow beings; and it amounts to this: where I cannot be sure of evil in others, I give them the benefit of the doubt, and sincerely endeavor to think the best. I have watched you very closely. There is much that I cannot understand; much that it appears strange you should hesitate to explain; yet in these years I have had no cause to question your truthfulness, and that is the basis of all human worth. We profess to live here as one family, as sisters, holding each other in love, charity and trust; yet in searching myself to-night, I fear I have gone astray. I have pondered and prayed over this matter, and my heart yearns toward you. I feel as I fancy a mother might, who had too hastily slapped the face of her child; and, my sister, I have come to say, forgive me, if I too harshly refused your request, if I wounded you."

She held out her hand, but Beryl did not see it; she had covered her face, and unable to speak she leaned forward and laid her head on the matron's lap. Gently the thin fingers stroked the shining hair, until they were drawn down and pressed to the girl's lips.

"Again, I asked myself, whether my decision had not been inspired by an overweening pride in the public estimation of our home; rather than by an unselfish regard for the welfare and peace of mind of one of its members? What will the world think of us, must be subordinated to, what is the best for my young sister, whose cross it is my duty to lighten?

I cannot bear to give you up; and I shall, I will trust you. Wear the 'gray' armor, and remember, if any blot stain it, you will bring disgrace upon a holy cause; you will be the first to stain the Umilta uniform; and I shall be blamed, for reposing confidence in one who betrayed us to public scorn. My Sister Beryl, I give you 'the gray'.

G.o.d grant it may shelter you from harm, and bring you home to fill my place with honor, when I have pa.s.sed into the eternal Anchorage."

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

Over the region of the great lakes, her favorite haunt, hung the enchanted stillness, the misty glamour of the purple-cloaked witch--Indian Summer; whose sorcery veiled the dazzling face of the sun, and changed the silver l.u.s.tre of Selene into the vast, solemn red blot that stared wonderingly at its own weird image in the gla.s.sy waters.

Wrapped in that soft, sweet haze, which like the eider down of charity smooths all roughness, rounds all angles, the world of sh.o.r.e and lake presented a magical panorama of towns and villages, herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, spires of churches, masts of vessels,--all flashing past the open window of the car, where Beryl sat, watching the shadows lengthen as the long train thundered eastward, and the tree dials marked the hour record on the golden brown stubble fields.

When the goal is in sight, do we dwell on the hazard, the strained muscles, the blistered feet, and the fierce thirst the long race-course cost us? Who know that they are weary and spent, while the prize brightens, nears as they stretch panting to grasp it?

The certainty of meeting her brother, the antic.i.p.ation of all that she felt a.s.sured he would promise concerning his future, when he learned the severity of the ordeal which she had endured in his behalf, blotted out the costliness of the accomplishment. Like that glorious violet haze of Indian Summer, which was drawing its opalescent drapery along the vanishing iron railway track blackened with cinders, and softly shrouding the grim outlines of wreck, that told where a vessel had foundered on the lake in the early autumn gale, an overruling Providence seemed shedding peace even upon her troubled past. In the swift flash of the divine fire that sanctified the accepted sacrifice, she was too dazzled to remember the moan of the slaughtered victim, the agony of the death struggle; and now, her thoughts spanned the gulf of time, and painted the eternal reunion of the broken and dishonored family group.

From these comforting reflections she was aroused by a piercing cry that made her spring forward, and scan the crowd of human faces collected close to the rails, at a small town where the cars had halted.

On a side track in front of her window, was a train which had just dashed in from Buffalo, and amid the surging ma.s.s of jeering spectators, two officers stepped down from the platform, each with a hand on the arm of a man, who was heavily handcuffed. At the sight, a white-haired, withered woman leaning from a carriage and staring with horror-haunted eyes, had screamed, and was falling back insensible.

"That is his mother. Poor thing, why did they let her come? He is her only boy," said a man to his comrade, who stood near Beryl's seat.

"What is the matter?" asked a gentleman, sitting immediately in front of her.

"Two of our officers winged a bird, who thought it was safe flying over yonder, with the lake between him and the county jail. Canada is handy hunting-ground, when the game happens to be runaway thieves; and we have bagged one. He was the cashier of our Savings Bank, and not satisfied with tampering with the books, and forcing balances, he finally robbed the vault of a lot of gold, and flew across the line.

His wife met him at St. Catherine's, and he met the iron bracelets he was dodging."

The train moved on, and once more Beryl heard the howling of the wolves, that she had hoped were left forever behind; that now seemed in full cry bearing down upon their prey. Should she return to the "Anchorage", and advertise Bertie's danger? So vague were her ideas relative to the limits of extradition, that she had regarded Canada as a city of refuge; considered its protection of United States' criminal fugitives as efficacious, as meeting a Vestal Priestess on the way to his execution, proved in rescuing a Roman malefactor from the penalty of violated law; but this shred of comfort had parted, when most she required its aid.

"Yes, I understand extradition provisions have been arranged, which are bound to have a wholesome effect; especially in this section, where it is so easy to slip across the lakes any dark night. I am told nearly all felonies will be embraced now--from murder to burglary--and that Her Majesty's Secretaries are more willing to aid our officers, than was the case a few years ago, when no end of quibbling tied up justice."

The gentlemen on the seat in front of her, moved away to the smoking car; and the woman in gray listened to the creak and whirr of the wheel of torturing dread, upon which some malignant fate once more bound her.

Bertie had been safe in his mountain fastness, until her ill-starred advertis.e.m.e.nt coaxed him within reach of the police Briareus. Could she discern the hand of merciful warning in this fortuitous meeting with a captured culprit; which so vividly recalled the maddening incidents of her return to X---, when the sheriff had hurried her from the car? A sickening terror seized her, and along the expanse of pearly mist that united earth and sky, in tke snowy fringe of ripples breaking their teeth on the shelving beach, she seemed to read the doom of her stratagem written in words of menace:

"Go where you may, but I give you fair warning you cannot escape me; and the day on which you meet that guilty vagabond, you betray him to the scouts of justice."

Far away, among the orange groves of Louisiana, would he forget his threat, or fail to execute it? On and on darted the train; people laughed and talked; a tired baby swayed from side to side on the nurse's knees, crooned herself to sleep; and a canary in a cage covered with pink net, broke suddenly into a spasm of trills and roulades.

It was almost four o'clock when the dull roar of Niagara set the air a tremble, and the few remaining pa.s.sengers left the train. The little town was unusually quiet and deserted, the tide of summer travel having ebbed; and not until the crystal fingers of the ice fairy had built her wonderful Giralda out of foam and spray, would that of Winter tourists begin to flow.

Leaving her trunk at the "baggage room" of the station, Beryl engaged a carriage driver to take her to the Suspension Bridge. Drawing her gray bonnet and veil as far as possible over her face, she paid the toll, and noticed that the keeper peered curiously at her, and muttered something in an undertone to a man wearing a uniform, who turned and stared at her.

She hurried away along that iron mesh swinging high in air like a vast spider web, spun from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e across the swirling, snarling caldron of hissing waters. Was the officer the wary spider watching her movements, waiting to slip down the metal snare, and devour her hopes?

Her heart beats sounded as the heavy thuds of a drum; the rush of dire forebodings drowned even the roar of the Falls, and the magnificence of the spectacle vanished before the awful realization of the danger to which she had invited Bertie.

The bridge was deserted; no human being was visible; and now and then she glanced back over her shoulder, dreading she knew not what form of pursuit. At last her flying feet touched British soil, but she knew now, that neither Bezer nor yet Shechcm lay before her; and no sign-post rose to welcome her, with the "Refuge--Refuge"--the water and the bread appointed of old, for spent fugitives. Canada was an ambush that, despite all caution, might betray her. Against the last rail of the bridge she leaned, tried to steady her nerves; and put up one pa.s.sionate prayer:

"Turn not Thy face from me, O my G.o.d! in this last hour! Guide me aright. Overrule all my mistakes, and save my repentant brother."

On the wide gallery of the "Clifton House" stood a gardener engaged in removing the flower baskets that hung between the columns; and as he paused in his work, to observe the quaint gray figure below, she asked, in a voice that was strained beyond its customary sweetness:

"Please direct me to the Museum."

"Follow the street along the cliff, and you can't miss it. Behind those trees yonder, on the right hand side. To the best of my belief, it is shut up this week."

Turning south, she walked more leisurely, lest undue haste should excite suspicion; and all the solemn sublimity of the scene confronted her. The green crescent of the Horseshoe blanched to foam, as it leaped to the stony gulf below, the wreaths of mist floating up, gilded by the sunshine; the maddened rush of the tossing, frothing, whirling rapids seething like melted gold as the western radiance smote the bubbling surface; the scarlet flakes of foliage clinging to the trees on Goat Island, and far above, on the wooded height beyond, the picturesque outlines of the Convent, lifting its belfry against the azure sky. As doomed swimmers lost in those rapids, swept head downward to destruction, nearing the last wild plunge catch the glimmer of that consecrated tower held aloft, so to Beryl's eyes it now seemed a symbol of comfort; and faith once more girded her.

A woman wearing a blue plaid handkerchief tied over her head and knotted under her chin, and carrying a basket of red apples on one arm, while with the other she led a lowing cow along the dusty road, paused at a signal, in front of the gray clad stranger.

"Which is the Museum?"

"Yonder, where the goats are huddled."

The building was closed, but in those days a garden lay to the north of it; and a small gate that gave admittance to seats and flowers connected with the Museum, now stood open.

The walks were strewn with pale yellow poplar leaves, and bordered with belated pink hollyhocks, and crimson chrysanthemums blighted by frost, shivering in their death chill; and from a neighboring willow stripped of curtaining foliage, a lonely bird piped its plaintive threnody, for the loss of one summer's mate. At the extremity of the little garden, under shelter of an ancient, gnarled tree, that screened a semicircular seat from the observation of those pa.s.sing on the street, Beryl sat down to rest; to collect her thoughts.

In the solitude, she threw back her veil, leaned her head against the trunk of the tree where wan lichens made a pearly cushion, and shut her eyes. The afternoon was wearing away; a keen wind shook the bare boughs; only the ceaseless, unchanging chant of waters rose from the vast throat of nature, invoking its G.o.d.

She heard no footsteps; but some strange current attacked her veins, thrilled along her nerves, strung as taut as the wires of a harp, and starting up she became aware that a man was standing on the clover sward close to her. A dark brown overcoat, a broad brimmed, soft wool hat, drawn as a mask down to the bridge of the nose, and a bare hand covering the mouth, was all she saw.

Stretching out her arms, she sprang to meet him:

"O Bertie! At last! At last!"

The figure drew back slightly, lifted his hat; and where she had expected to see her brother's golden curls, the crisp, black locks of Mr. Dunbar met her gaze.

"You! Here?"

She staggered, and sank back on the bench; the realization of Bertie's peril throttling the joy that leaped up in her heart, at sight of the beloved features.

"I am here. I come as promptly to fulfil my promise as you to keep your tryst. Do you understand me so little, that you doubted my word?"

Her bonnet had slipped back, and as all the chastened beauty of her face framed in the dainty cap, became fully exposed, a heavy sigh escaped him, and he set his teeth, like one nerved to endure torture.

For months he had nourished the germ of a generous purpose, had tried to accustom himself to the idea of ultimately surrendering her; but in her presence, a certain bitter fury swept away the wretched figment, and he remembered only how fair, how holy, how dear she was to him.

Once more the cry of his famishing heart was: "Death may part us. I swear no man's arms ever shall."

"Why waylay and torment me? Have I not suffered enough at your hands?

Between me and mine not even you can come."

"Take care! For your sake I am here, hoping to spare you some pangs; to allow you at least an opportunity to see him--"