Cruel As The Grave Part 50

"Then it is useless to attempt to conceal yourselves from her. She must be laid hold of, talked with, and won or bribed to keep our secret--to help us if possible. We must find out whether she will serve our purpose. If she will, it will be all quite right, and you may remain here until it is safe to depart; but if she will not, it will be all entirely wrong, and you must leave this place at all hazards," concluded Captain Pendleton.

"Yes, it is very well for you to talk of intercepting her, but you had just as well try to intercept a shadow as it glides past you," put in Sybil, with a wise nod.

"The attempt shall be made, at all events," determined Mr. Berners.

Sybil was in the act of putting the supper--not on the table, for table there was none in the chapel--but on the cloth spread upon the flagstones, when Captain Pendleton, to give a lighter turn to their talk, said:

"You may put a plate for me also, Mrs. Berners! I have not yet supped, and I'm glad I have got here in time to join you."

"I am glad too! We are getting quite comfortably to housekeeping here, Captain. And Lyon has set his traps, and we shall soon have game to offer you when you come to visit us," replied Sybil quickly, responding to his gayety.

"If I had only a gun, and could venture to use it, it would be a great relief, and we should be very well supplied," smiled Lyon.

"Yes! if you had a gun, and should venture to use it, you would soon bring a _posse comitatus_ down upon you; We will have no reverberations of that sort, if you please, Lyon," recommended the Captain.

And then they all sat down around the table-cloth, and Sybil poured out and served the coffee.

Now, whether they were very thirsty, or whether the coffee was unusually good, or whether both these causes combined to tempt them to excess, is not known; but it is certain that the two gentlemen were intemperate in their abuse of this fragrant beverage; which proves that people can be intemperate in other drinks, as well as in alcoholic liquors. This coffee also got into their heads. Their spirits rose; they grew gay, talkative, inspired, brilliant. Even Sybil, who took but one cup of coffee, caught the infection, and laughed and talked and enjoyed herself as if she were at a picnic, instead of being in hiding for her life or liberty.

In a word, some strange exhilaration, some wonderful intoxication pervaded the little party; but the most marvellous symptom of their case was, that they talked no nonsense--that while, under their adverse and perilous circ.u.mstances, such gayety was unnatural and irrational, yet their minds were clear and their utterances brilliant. And this abnormal exaltation of intellect and elevation of spirit continued for several hours, long into the night.

Then the great reaction came. First Sybil grew very quiet, though not in the least degree sad; then Lyon Berners evinced a disposition rather to listen than to talk; and finally Captain Pendleton arose, and saying that this had been one of the strangest and pleasantest evenings he had ever pa.s.sed in his, life, took leave of his friends and departed.

Sybil was very sleepy, and as soon as their guest was gone she asked Lyon to help her with the mattress: that she was so drowsy she could scarcely move. He begged her to sit still, for that he himself would do all that was necessary. And with much good-will, but also much awkwardness, he spread the couch, and then went to tell Sybil it was ready. But he found her with her head upon her knees, apparently fast asleep. He lifted her gently in his arms, and carried her and laid her on the mattress. And then, feeling overcome with drowsiness, he threw himself down beside her, and fell into a profound sleep.

But Sybil, as she afterwards told, did not sleep so deeply. It seemed, indeed, less sleep than stupor that overcame her. She was conscious when her husband raised her up in his arms and laid her on the bed; but she was too utterly oppressed with stupor and weariness to lift her eyes to look, or open her lips to speak, or, even after he had laid her down, to move a limb from the position into which it fell.

So she lay like one dead, except in being clearly conscious of all that was going on around her. She knew when Lyon laid down, and when he went to sleep. And still she lay in that heavy state, which was at once a profound repose and a clear consciousness, for perhaps an hour longer, when suddenly the stillness of the scene was stirred by a sound so slight that it could only have been heard by one whose senses were, like hers at that time, preternaturally acute. The sound was of the slow, cautious turning of a door upon its hinges!

Without moving hand or foot, she just languidly lifted her eyelids, and looked around upon the dim darkness.

There was a faint glow from the smouldering fire on the flagstone floor, and there was a faint light from the starlit night coming through the windows. By the aid of these she saw, as in a dream, the door of the vault wide open!

In her profound state of conscious repose there was no fear of danger, and no wish to move. So, still as in a dream, she witnessed what followed.

First a dark, shrouded figure issued from the vault, and turned around and bent down towards it, as if speaking to some one within. But no word was heard. Then the figure backed a pace, drawing up from the steps of the vault what seemed to be a long narrow box. As this box came up, it was followed by another dark, shrouded figure, who supported its other end. And as the two mysterious apparitions now stood beside the altar, Sybil saw that the box that they held between them was a coffin!

Nor was that all. While they moved a little down the side wall, they were followed by two other strange figures, issuing from the vault in the same order, and bearing between them, in the same manner, a second coffin; and as they, in their turn, filed down the side wall, they also were followed by still two others coming up out of the vault, and bringing with them a third coffin!

And then a ghastly procession formed against the side wall. Three long shadowy coffins borne by six dark shrouded figures, filed past the gothic windows, and disappeared through the open chapel door.

Sybil clearly saw all this, as in a nightmare from which she could not escape; she still lay motionless, speechless, and helpless, until she quite lost consciousness in a profound and dreamless sleep. So deep and heavy was this sleep, that she had no sense of existence for many hours.

When at length she did awake, it seemed almost to a new life, so utterly, for a time, was all that had recently past forgotten. But as she arose and looked around, and collected her faculties, and remembered her position, she was astonished to see by the shining of the sun into the western windows, that it was late in the afternoon, and that they had slept nearly all day, for her husband was still sleeping heavily.

Then she remembered the horrible vision of the night, and she looked anxiously towards the door of the vault. It seemed fast as ever. She got up and went to look at it. It _was_ fast, the bars firmly bedded in the solid masonry, as they had been before.

What then had been the vision? She shuddered to think of it. Her first impulse was now to arouse her husband and tell him what had happened.

But her tenderness for him pleaded with her to forbear.

"He sleeps well, poor Lyon! let him sleep," she said, and she threw a shawl around her shoulders, and went out of the chapel to get a breath of the fresh morning air.

She had to pa.s.s among the gray old gravestones lying deep in the bright-colored dew-spangled brushwood. As she picked her way past them, she suddenly stopped and screamed.

Captain Pendleton was lying prostrate, like a dead man at the foot of an old tree!

With a strong effort of the will, she controlled herself sufficiently to enable her to approach and examine him. He was not dead, as she had at first supposed; but he was in a very death-like sleep.

She arose to her feet, and clasped her forehead with both hands while she tried to think. What could these things mean? The unnatural exhilaration of their little party on the previous evening; the powerful reaction that prostrated them all in heavy stupor or dreamless sleep, that had lasted some fifteen hours; the ghastly procession she had seen issue from the open door of the old vault, and march slowly down the east wall of the church, past all the gothic windows, and disappear through the front door; the spell that had so deeply bound her own faculties, that she had neither the power nor the will to call out; their visitor overtaken by sleep while on his way to mount his horse, and now lying prostrate among the gravestones? What could all these things mean?

She could not imagine.

However much she might have wished to spare her husband's rest up to this moment, she felt that she must arouse him now. She hurried back into the church, and went up to the little couch and looked at Lyon.

He was moving restlessly, and muttering sadly in his sleep. And now she felt less reluctance to wake him from his troubled dream. She shook him gently, and called him.

He opened his eyes, gazed at her, arose up in a sitting posture, and stared around for a moment, and then seeing his wife, exclaimed:

"Oh! is it you, Sybil? What is this? the chapel seems to be turned around." And he gazed again at the western windows, where the sun was shining, and which he mistook for the eastern, supposing the time to be morning.

"The chapel has not turned around, Lyon; but the sun has. It is late in the afternoon, and that is the declining and not the rising sun that you see."

"Good gracious, Sybil! Have I slept so late as this? Why did you let me?"

"Because I slept myself; we all slept; even to Captain Pendleton, who must have been overpowered by sleep on his way to his horse; for I have just found him lying among the gravestones."

"What? Who? Pendleton asleep among the gravestones? Say that again. I don't understand."

Sybil briefly repeated her statement.

Lyon started up, shook himself as if to arouse all his faculties, and then went and douched his head and face with cold water, and finally, as he dried them, he turned to Sybil and said:

"What is all this that you tell me? Where is Pendleton? Come and show me."

Sybil led the way to the spot where their friend lay in his heavy sleep.

"Good Heaven! He must have fallen down, or sunk down here, within three minutes of leaving the church!" exclaimed Lyon Berners, gazing on the sleeper.

"Something must have happened to us all, dear Lyon. Do you remember how unreasonably gay we all were at supper last evening? We, too, who had every reason to be very grave and even sad? And do you remember the reaction? When we all grew so drowsy that we could hardly keep our eyes open? And then there was something else, which I will tell you of by and by. And now we have all slept fifteen or sixteen hours. Something strange has happened to us, Lyon," said Sybil, slowly.

"Something has, indeed. But now we must arouse Pendleton. Good Heaven!

he may have caught his death by sleeping out all night," exclaimed Mr.

Berners, as he stooped down and shook the sleeper.

But it was not without difficulty that Lyon succeeded in arousing Captain Pendleton, who, when he was fairly upon his feet, reeled like a drunken man.

"Pendleton, Pendleton, wake up! What, man! what has happened to you?"

exclaimed Lyon, trying to steady the other upon his feet.

"Too late for roll-call. Bad example to the rank and file," murmured the Captain, with some remnant of a camp-dream lingering in his mind.