Cruel as the grave
She waved her hand towards him, as if to implore or command silence.
"I have nothing to say to you," she muttered, in low and husky tones,
as if ashes were in her throat. "But to YOU!" she said, and her voice
rose clear and strong as she turned and stretched out her arm towards
Rosa, who was leaning in a fainting condition against the wall--"TO YOU,
viper, who has stung to death the bosom that warmed you to life--TO YOU,
traitress, who has come between the true husband and his wife--TO YOU,
thief! who has stolen from your benefactress the sole treasure of her
life--TO YOU I have this to say: I will not drive you forth in dishonor
from my door this night, nor will I publish your infamy to the world
to-morrow, though you have deserved nothing less than these from my
hands; but in the morning you must leave the house you have desecrated!
for if you do not, or if ever I find your false face here again, I will
tread down and crush out your life with less remorse than ever I set
heel upon a spider! I will, as I am a Berners! And now, begone, and
never let me see your form again!"
Rosa Blondelle, who had stood spell-bound by the terrible gaze and
overwhelming words of Sybil, the wronged wife, now suddenly threw up her
hands, and with a low cry, fled from the room.
And Sybil dropped her arm and her voice at the same instant, and stood
dumb and motionless.
And now, at length, Lyon Berners spoke again.
"Sybil! you have uttered words that nothing on the part of that poor
lady should have provoked from you--words that I fear may never be
forgotten or forgiven! But--I know that she has a gentle and easy
nature. When you are cooler and more rational, I wish you to go to her
and be reconciled with her."
"With _her_! I am a Berners!" answered Sybil, haughtily.
"But you bitterly wrong that lady in your thoughts!"
"Bah! I caught her in your arms! on your breast! her lips clinging to
yours!"
"The first and last kiss! I swear it by all my hopes of Heaven,
Sybil--a brother's kiss!"
Sybil made a gesture of scorn and disgust.
"If I were not past laughing, I should have to laugh now," she said.
"And you will not believe this?"
She shook her head.
"And you will not be reconciled to this injured young stranger?"
"I! I am a lady--'or long have dreamed so,'" answered Sybil, haughtily.
"At least the daughter of an honest mother. And I will not even permit
such a woman as that to live under the same roof with me another day.
She leaves in the morning."
"The house is yours! You must do as you please! But this I tell you:
that in the same hour which sees that poor and friendless young creature
driven from the shelter of this roof, I leave it too, and leave it for
ever."
If Lyon Berners really meant this, or thought to bring his fiery-hearted
wife to terms by the threat, he was mistaken in her character.
"Oh, go!" she answered bitterly--"go! I _will_ not harbor _her_. And why
should I seek to detain you? Your heart has left me already; why should
I wish to retain its empty case? Go as soon as you like, Lyon Berners.
Good-night, and--good-bye," she said, and with a wave of her hand she
passed from the room.
He was mad to have spoken as he did; madder still to let her leave him
so! how mad, he was soon to learn.
CHAPTER XIX.
SWOOPING DOWN.
Twice it called, so loudly called
With horrid strength beyond the pitch of nature;
And murder! murder! was the dreadful cry.
A third time it returned with feeble strength,
But o' the sudden ceased; as though the words
Were smothered rudely in the grappled throat.
And all was still again, save the wild blast
Which at a distance growled--
Oh, it will never from the heart depart!
That dreadful cry all in the instant stilled.--BAILLIE.
Lyon Berners remained walking up and down the room some time longer. The
lights were all out, and the servants gone to bed. Yet still he
continued to pace up and down the parlor floor, until suddenly piercing
shrieks smote his ear.
In great terror he started forward and instinctively rushed towards
Rosa's room, when the door was suddenly thrown open by Rosa herself,
pale, bleeding from a wound in her breast.
"Great Heaven! What is this?" he cried, as, aghast with amazement and
sorrow, he supported the ghastly and dying form, and laid it on the
sofa, and then sunk on his knees beside it.
"Who, who has done this?" he wildly demanded, as, almost paralyzed with
horror, he knelt beside her, and tried to stanch the gushing wound from
which her life-blood was fast welling.
"Who, who has done this fiendish deed?" he reiterated in anguish, as he
gazed upon her.
She raised her beautiful violet eyes, now fading in death; she opened
her bloodless lips, now paling in death, and she gasped forth the words:
"She--Sybil--your wife. I told you she would do it, and she has done it.
Sybil Berners has murdered me," she whispered. Then raising herself
with a last dying effort, she cried aloud, "Hear, all! Sybil Berners has
murdered me." And with this charge upon her lips, she fell back DEAD.
Even in that supreme moment Lyon Berners' first thought, almost his only
thought, was for his wife. He looked up to see who was there--who had
heard this awful, this fatal charge.
_All_ were there! guests and servants, men and women, drawn there by the
dreadful shrieks. All had heard the horrible accusation.
And all stood panic-stricken, as they shrank away from one who stood in
their midst.
It was she, Sybil, the accused, whose very aspect accused her more
loudly than the dying woman had done; for she stood there, still in her
fiery masquerade dress, her face pallid, her eyes blazing, her wild
black hair loose and streaming, her crimsoned hand raised and grasping a
bloodstained dagger.
"Oh, wretched woman! most wretched woman! What is this that you have
done?" groaned Lyon Berners, in unutterable agony--agony not for the
dead beauty before him, but for the living wife, whom he felt that he
had driven to this deed of desperation. "Oh, Sybil! Sybil! what have you
done?" he cried, grinding his hands together.
"I? I have done nothing!" faltered his wife, with pale and tremulous
lips.
"Oh, Sybil! Sybil! would to Heaven you had died before this night! Or
that I could now give my life for this life that you have madly taken!"
moaned Lyon.
"I have taken no life! What do you mean? This is horrible!" exclaimed
Sybil, dropping the dagger, and looking around upon her husband and
friends, who all shrank from her. "I have taken no life! I am no
assassin! Who dares to accuse me?" she demanded, standing up pale and
haughty among them.
And then she saw that every lowered eye, every compressed lip, every
shuddering and shrinking form, silently accused her.
Mr. Berners had turned again to the dead woman. His hand was eagerly
searching for some pulsation at the heart. Soon he ceased his efforts,
and arose.
"Vain! vain!" he said, "all is still and lifeless, and growing cold and
stiff in death. Oh! my wretched wife!"
"The lady may not be dead! This may be a swoon from loss of blood. In
such a swoon she would be pulseless and breathless, or seem so! let me
try! I have seen many a swoon from loss of blood, as well as many a
death from the same cause, in my military experience," said Captain
Pendleton, pushing forward and kneeling by the sofa, and beginning his
tests, guided by experience.
His words and actions unbound the spell of horror that had till then
held the assembled company still and mute, and now all pressed forward
towards the sofa, and bent over the little group there.
"Air! air! friends, if you please! Stand farther off. And some one open
a window!" exclaimed Captain Pendleton, peremptorily.
And he was immediately obeyed by the falling off of the crowd, one of
whom threw open a window.
"Some one should fetch a physician!" suggested Beatrix Pendleton, whose
palsied tongue was now at length unloosed.
And half a dozen gentlemen immediately started for the stables to
dispatch a messenger for the village doctor from Blackville.
"And while they are fetching the physician, they should summon the
coroner also," suggested a voice from the crowd.
"No! no! not until we have ascertained that life is actually extinct,"
exclaimed Captain Pendleton, hastily; at the same time seeking and
meeting the eyes of Mr. Berners, with a meaning gaze said:
"If we cannot restore the dead woman to life, we must at least try to
save the living woman from unspeakable horrors!"
Mr. Berners turned away his head, with a deep groan.
And Captain Pendleton continued his seeming efforts to restore
consciousness to the prostrate form before him, until he heard the
galloping of the horse that took the messenger away for the doctor, and
felt sure that the man could not now receive orders to fetch the coroner
also.
Then Captain Pendleton arose and beckoned Miss Tabby Winterose to come
towards him. That lady came forward, whimpering as usual, but with an
immeasurably greater cause than she had ever possessed before.
"Close her eyes, straighten her limbs, arrange her dress. She is quite
dead," said the Captain.
Miss Tabby's voice was lifted up in weeping.
But wilder yet arose the sound of wailing, as the Scotch girl, with the
child in her arms, broke through the crowd and cast herself down beside
her dead mistress, crying:
"Oh! and is it gone ye are, my bonny leddy? Dead and gone fra us, a' sae
suddenly! Oh, bairnie! look down on your puir mither, wham they have
murthered--the born deevils."
The poor child, frightened as much by the wild wailing of the nurse as
by the sight of his mother's ghastly form, began to scream and to hide
his head on Janet's bosom.
"Woman, this is barbarous. Take the boy away from this sight," exclaimed
Captain Pendleton, imperatively.
But Janet kept her ground, and continued to weep and wail and
apostrophize the dead mother, or appeal to the orphan child. And all the
women in the crowd whose tongues had hitherto been paralyzed with
horror, now broke forth in tears and sobs, and cries of sympathy and
compassion, and--
"Oh, poor murdered young mother! Oh, poor orphaned babe!" or
lamentations to the same effect, broke forth on all sides.
"Mr. Berners, you are master of the house. I earnestly exhort you to
clear the room of all here, except Miss Winterose and ourselves," said
Captain Pendleton in an almost commanding tone.
"Friends and neighbors," cried Lyon Berners, lifting up his voice, so
that it could be heard all over the room, "I implore you to withdraw to
your own apartments. Your presence here only serves to distress
yourselves and embarrass us. And we have a duty to do to the dead."
The crowd began to disperse and move toward the doors when suddenly
Sybil Berners lifted her hand on high and called, in a commanding tone:
"STOP!"
And all stopped and turned their eyes on her.
She was still very pale, but now also very calm; the most self-collected
one in that room of death.
"I have somewhat to say to you," she continued. "You all heard the dying
words of that poor dead woman, in which she accused me of having
murdered her; and your own averted eyes accuse me quite as strongly, and
my own aspect, perhaps, more strongly than either."
She paused and glanced at her crimsoned hand, and then looked around and
saw that her nearest neighbors and oldest friends, who had known her
longest and loved her best, now turned away their heads, or dropped
their eyes. She resumed:
"The dead woman was mistaken; you are misled; and my very appearance is