Cruel As The Grave Part 51

Mr. Berners shook him roughly, while Sybil dipped up a double handful of water from a little spring at their feet, and threw it up into his face.

This fairly aroused him.

"Whew-ew! Phiz! What's that for? What the demon's all this? What's the matter?" he exclaimed, sneezing, coughing, and sputtering through the water that Sybil had flung into his face.

"What's all this?" exclaimed Lyon Berners, echoing his question. "It is that we are all robbed and murdered, and carried into captivity, for all I know," he added, smiling, as he could not fail to do, at the droll figure cut by his friend.

"How the deuce came I here?" demanded Pendleton, glaring around with his mouth and eyes wide open. "Is this enchantment?"

"Something very like it, Pendleton. But come, man, this is no laughing matter. It is very serious. Therefore rouse yourself and collect your faculties. You will need them all, I a.s.sure you," gravely replied Lyon Berners.

"But--how in thunder, came I here?" again demanded the Captain, shivering and staring around him.

"We can not tell. My wife found you here about half an hour ago. You are supposed to have been overcome by drowsiness, while on your way to your horse, and to have sunk down here and slept from that time to this--some sixteen hours."

"Good--! I remember taking leave of you both, after our lively supper of last evening, and starting for the thicket, and giving way just here to an irresistible feeling of drowsiness, and sinking down with the dreamy idea that I would not go to sleep, but would soon arise and pursue my journey. And I have lain here all night!" he exclaimed in astonishment.

"Yes, and all day!" added Lyon, solemnly.

"How is it that I was not awakened before?" demanded the Captain, with an injured look.

"Because we ourselves were in the same condition. It is not more than fifteen minutes since my wife awakened me."

"In the name of heaven, then, what has befallen us all?" demanded the Captain in amazement.

"That is what we must try to find out. You must help us. I have been thinking rapidly while standing here, and the result is, that I judge we have all been drugged with opium; but whether by accident or with design, or if with design, by whom, or with what purpose, I cannot even imagine; though I do vaguely connect the fact with the mysterious visitant of the chapel," replied Mr. Berners.

While he spoke they all turned their steps towards the chapel. And with his concluding words, they entered it in company.

The "housekeeping corner" of the chapel was in a state of confusion very much at variance with the young housekeeper's fastidiously tidy habits.

The supper dishes lay upon the table-cloth on the floor, where they had been uncared for by the drugged and drowsy pair. And the little bed remained unmade, as it had been left by them when they ran out to look after Captain Pendleton.

Sybil saw all this at a glance, and with a flush; and forgetting for a moment everything else, she bade her husband and his guest stop where they were until she had put her "house" in order.

In this limited manner of domestic economy, it took Sybil but ten minutes to make the bed and wash the dishes. And, meanwhile, Lyon Berners made up the fire, and Clement Pendleton brought a pail of fresh water from the fountain.

Sybil began to prepare the breakfast, but none of the party felt like eating it.

"And that is another sign of opium! We have no appet.i.te," observed Lyon Berners, as they sat down around the table-cloth; and instead of discussing the viands before them, they discussed the events of the preceding day and night.

Lyon Berners remembered that Sybil and himself had spent nearly the whole of the preceding afternoon in rambling through the woods; and he suggested as the only solution of the mystery that, during their absence some one had entered the chapel, and put opium in their food and drink.

"'Some one;' but whom?" inquired Captain Pendleton, incredulously.

"Most probably the girl whom we have seen here," answered Mr. Berners.

"But for what purpose do you think she drugged your drink?"

"To throw us into a deep sleep for many hours, which would enable her to come and go, to and from the chapel, undiscovered and unmolested."

"But why should she wish to come back and forth to such a dreary, empty old place as this?"

"Ah! that I cannot tell; at that point conjecture is utterly baffled,"

answered Lyon.

"Yes; because conjecture has been pursuing a phantom--a phantom that vanishes upon being nearly approached. I cannot accept your theory of the mystery, Berners; and what is worse, I cannot subst.i.tute one of my own," said Captain Pendleton, shaking his head.

"And now I have something to reveal," said Sybil, solemnly.

"Another morning dream?" inquired Lyon, while Pendleton looked up with interest.

"No; a reality--a ghastly, horrible reality," she answered.

And while both looked at her with strange, deep interest and curiosity, she related her sepulchral experiences of the night. When with pale cheeks and shuddering frame she described the six dark, shrouded forms that had come up out of the vault, bearing long shadowy coffins, which they carried in a slow procession down along the east wall, past the Gothic windows and out at the front door, her two listeners looked at her, and then at each other, in amazement and incredulity.

"It was an opium dream," said Mr. Berners, in a positive manner.

"It would be useless, dear Lyon, for me to tell you that I was rather wider awake then than I am now, yet I really was," said Sybil, with equal a.s.surance.

"And yet you did not lift hand or voice to call my attention to what was going on."

"I did not wish to do it; my will seemed palsied. I could only gaze at the awful procession and think how ghastly it was, and thinking so, I sank into a dreamless sleep, and knew no more until I woke up this afternoon."

"Meanwhile let us go and look at the door of the vault. You say the door was wide open?" inquired Captain Pendleton.

"Of course it was wide open: that is, wide open last night when those horrible forms came up out of the vault; but this morning it was fast enough," answered Sybil.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Berners.

"I know what that 'oh!' means, Lyon. But I hope before we leave this chapel that you will find out that I can distinguish a dream from a dreadful reality," observed his wife.

Meanwhile they had reached the iron door of the vault. It was fast.

Pendleton took hold of the iron bars and tried to shake it; but the bars were bedded in solid stone, and the door was immovable. Then he looked through the grating down into the depths below, but he only saw the top of the staircase, the bottom of which disappeared in the darkness.

"My dear Mrs. Berners," he then said, turning to Sybil, "I do not like to differ with a lady in a matter of her 'own experience'; but as we are in search of the truth, and the truth happens to be of the most vital importance to our safety, I feel constrained to a.s.sure you that this door, from its very appearance, a.s.sures us that it can not have been opened within half a century, and that consequently your 'own experience' of the last night cannot have been a reality, but must have been a dream."

"I wish you could dream such a one, and then you would know something about it," answered Sybil.

"I think you will have to come to my theory about the opium," put in Mr.

Berners, "especially as I have pursued my 'phantom' one stage farther in her flight, and am able to a.s.sign a possible motive for her secret visits to the chapel."

"Ah! do that, and we will think about agreeing with your views. Now then the motive," exclaimed Pendleton.

"A lover."

"Oh!"