Tried for Her Life Part 39

"Well," inquired the latter, when he was outside.

"Well, sir," said the warden, "you know she must go into a regular cell to-day. I can't help it. I wish I could. I pity the poor lady! I do! I pity her, whether she did it or not! And I can't help _that_ either! So please the Lord, I'll do all I can to comfort her and her friends, consistent with my duty to the higher powers. So come along, sir, if you please, and I'll show you a corridor where there is no other prisoner now confined, and you can choose the best cell for her yourself."

Lyon Berners bowed and followed his conductor across the broad pa.s.sage and down another one which was at right angles with the first. Here all the cells were vacant. The warden unlocked several for inspection.

The last cell opened was at the north-east angle of the building. It was twice the size of the others, and had, beside its door, two narrow grated windows--one on the north, looking out upon the Black river, and the other on the east, upon Bird creek.

"Here, sir, now, is a large, cool, well-aired cell, where we used to confine as many as a half a dozen prisoners together, when we was full.

But as you see, there is n.o.body at all in all this corridor. So we can put her in this, and if you like to go to the cost of having it scrubbed and white-washed, why, I'll have it done this morning. Likewise, if you would wish to put in a comfort or two, in way of furniture, there'll be no objection to that neither. There'll be no objection to nothing that don't interfere with her safe keeping, you understand, sir?"

"Yes, I understand and thank you. Pray, have every article of this furniture removed, have the room thoroughly ventilated and cleansed, and while you are doing that I will go up to Black Hall, and send down all that is necessary to make this room decent for my poor wife. Heaven grant that it may prove her death-room!" added the heart-broken husband to himself.

The warden promised compliance with all these requests, and then the two returned to Sybil's room.

"I must leave you, dear, now, for a few hours, but I will certainly be back at the end of that time," said Mr. Berners, caressing his enfeebled wife as he took leave of her.

In the course of that day, the large north-east cell was transformed into as clean and comfortable a bed-room as money and labor could make it. The floor was covered with straw matting, the windows shaded with white muslin curtains.

Besides the fresh bed and bedding, there was a small bureau, a washstand, a toilet set, book-table, writing-desk, dressing-case, and work-box; a guitar, with some music, and a small choice collection of books.

All these comforts were collected there as much for Miss Pendleton's sake as for Sybil's.

The room did not look in the least like a prison-cell, nor was there any legal necessity that it should.

It was late in the afternoon when Sybil and her devoted friend were transferred to the new quarters.

"What is this for?" inquired Sybil, rousing herself a little, when she found she was about to be removed.

"Oh, you know, dear, that we have been sleeping in the daughter's room, and keeping her out of it, and now she wants her own, and so they have fixed up another one for us," said Miss Pendleton, soothingly, as she drew her friend's arm within her own and led her on after the warden, who walked before them with a large bunch of keys in his hand.

"Why, here are all my things!" said Sybil, startled to unusual interest by the sight of her personal effects arranged in the new cell.

"Yes, dear," whispered Miss Pendleton, as she put Sybil gently down into the rocking-chair--"yes, dear. You know Lyon fears that it will be some time before you are able to go home, and these people are too poor to make you comfortable, so he sent these things for them to fix up this room for you."

"Beatrix," said Sybil, putting her hands up to her temples.

"What is it, dear?"

"My head is very bad."

"Does it ache?"

"No; but it is so queer; and I have had a horrid dream--oh! a horrid, ghastly dream; but I can't recall it."

"Don't try, my darling; you took cold in the storm last night, and you are not well now; so turn your thoughts away from your disagreeable dream, and fix them upon something else," said Beatrix soothingly, although at heart she was very much alarmed, as it was probable that the sight of her favorite little effects had started a train of a.s.sociations that might bring her back to perfect sanity and to utter agony.

At that moment, too, there was a diversion. Lyon Berners entered the cell, bringing in a basket of fruit and flowers.

"From your own garden and conservatories, my dear Sybil. Until you are well enough to go home, you must have some of your home comforts brought here," he said, as he set the elegant basket down on a stand, and went and embraced her.

"Yes; thank you very much, dear Lyon. When do you think I will be well enough to go home?" she asked, and then, without giving the slightest attention to her husband's affectionate answer, she dropped at once into a deep and dreamy state of abstraction.

Miss Pendleton beckoned Mr. Berners to come to her at one of the windows.

"What is it?" inquired Lyon, anxiously.

"She came very near a consciousness of her position just now, when she first recognized her property, but the peril pa.s.sed away. And now we must be very careful to foster this merciful insanity that s.h.i.+elds her from misery. And as one precaution, I wish you would ask the warden to oil these rusty bolts and bars, and make them work noiselessly. She has never noticed that she is locked and bolted in, and I wish her never to notice it, or to suspect it."

"Thanks, a thousand thanks, dear Beatrix! I will follow your suggestions," said Mr. Berners, warmly grasping her hand.

Then the warden turned to the visitor, and told him that the hour had come for locking up the prison for the night.

Mr. Berners went back to his wife and took an affectionate leave of her.

She let him go, with even less of opposition than on the preceding evening, for it seemed as if her fitful rise towards sensibility had reacted in a deeper fall into apathy.

Lyon Berners returned to his desolate home. Among all who were affected by the condemnation of Sybil Berners, there was none who suffered such agony of mind as that which nearly drove her husband to frenzy. If Sybil's terrible trials and unspeakable sorrows had resulted in a mild and merciful insanity, that vailed her mind from any knowledge of the deep horrors of her position, Lyon's utter anguish of spirit had stung him to a state of desperation that incited the wildest schemes and the most violent remedies.

As he lay tossing in his sleepless bed each night, he felt tempted to go and seek out that band of outlaws, and to bribe them to the half of his fortune to make a night attack upon the prison, and forcibly rescue his beloved wife.

There was, however, a serious objection to this plan; for besides its unlawfulness and its uncertainty of success, it was impracticable, from the fact that no one--not even the most experienced thief-catchers--had been able to find the lost clue to the retreat of the robbers. Since their flight from the ruined house, four months previous, they had never been heard of.

Sometimes, as Sybil's husband lay groaning in anguish on his pillow, he was strongly tempted to procure some drug that would give her a quick and easy death, and save her from the horrors to come.

But Lyon Berners resisted this dark temptation to commit a deadly sin.

More frequently still, when his agony seemed greater than he could bear, he would feel a desperate desire to put a period to his own wretched existence.

But then came the devoted spirit that whispered for _her_ sake he must live and suffer, as long as she should have to live and suffer.

All these dark trials and temptations tortured Lyon Berners in those sleepless, awful nights he spent alone in his desolate home.

But in the morning, when he would go and visit Sybil in the prison, he not only exerted all his mental powers of self-control, but he called in the aid of powerful sedative drugs to produce the calmness of manner with which he wished to meet his wife.

Meanwhile, as the days pa.s.sed, Sybil sank deeper and deeper into apathy.

Her hallucination was now complete. She imagined that, in company with her husband and their friends, she had been at church one Sabbath afternoon, when a tremendous storm of thunder, lightning, rain, and wind came up, and that they had all been obliged to take refuge in a country house for the night, and that she herself had been taken ill from the exposure, and had to remain there until she could get well enough to go home. As the days pa.s.sed and the hallucination grew, she lost all count of time, and always thought that she had arrived "last Sunday," and was going home "to-morrow!"

Miss Pendleton was permitted to remain with her, and Mr. Berners was allowed to visit her every day.

So some weeks had pa.s.sed, when one day a terrible event occurred.

It was early in the morning: the prison doors were just opened for the admission of visitors, and Lyon Berners had just entered the lower hall, on his way to the warden's office, to get that old man to conduct him to Sybil's cell, when he was overtaken and accosted by the sheriff:

"On your way to your wife, Mr. Berners? That is well. She will need you at this hour," said Mr. Fortescue, after the usual morning greeting.

"What is the matter?" inquired Lyon Berners hurriedly, and in great alarm.