THE MERCIFUL INSANITY.
| Every sense |
| Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense, |
| And each frail fibre of her brain, |
| (As bowstrings when, relaxed by rain, |
| The erring arrow launch aside,) |
| Sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide.—Byron. |
They were awakened by the drawing of bolts and turning of locks outside their door, and by the voice of the warden, saying:
"Go in, Kitty, and see if they are up. I will stay outside and guard the door."
And then the same middle-aged widow whom they had seen on the previous night entered the room.
Beatrix being fully awakened, turned anxiously to look at her friend.
Sybil was lying also wide awake, but very quiet.
"What sort of a place is this, Beatrix?" she inquired, and then immediately relapsed into lethargy, as if she had forgotten her question.
"Thank Heaven!" fervently exclaimed Sybil's friend, "she is still shielded."
"Which of you two ladies is in for it?" inquired the warden's daughter, coming forward.
"We are both 'in for it,'" answered Beatrix, a little scornfully, "and one of us is about as guilty as the other."
"Oh, I didn't know that," muttered the woman, who took the lady's words in good faith. "I didn't know there was more than one concerned; but what I meant to ask was, which is Mrs. Berners? Because there is a trunk come for her, which father thinks it contains clothes and other necessaries that she may need at once."
"Very likely. Let your father push it through the door, and I will see to its contents. And oh! for Heaven's sake, my good woman, let us have some breakfast as soon as possible," entreated Miss Pendleton.
The woman promised to comply with her request, and left the room.
The trunk was pushed in, and the door closed, locked, and bolted again.
Beatrix went to examine the consignment. There was a letter directed to Mrs. Berners, unsealed and tied to the handle, together with the key of the trunk.
Beatrix took both off and carried them to her friend, saying "Here is the key of a box that has come for you, and here is a letter, dear Sybil, from your husband, I suppose; will you read it?"
Sybil opened the letter, gazed at it with dreamy eyes, and followed the lines with her glances, but without taking in their meaning.
Sad enough this would have seemed to Miss Pendleton at any other time; but now, every evidence of her friend's failing mind was welcome to her, and to all who loved the unhappy young wife.
"Shall I read it for you, dear?" inquired Beatrix, tenderly, taking the letter from her hand.
"Yes, read it," answered Sybil, rousing herself, for an instant, to some little interest in the matter, and then sinking back into indifference.
Beatrix read aloud. The letter was only an earnestly affectionate greeting from the husband to the wife, telling her that he had sent her a box of needful articles, and that he himself would come to see her as soon as the doors should be opened to visitors. It was a cautiously written letter, so worded as to humor her hallucination, in case she should still imagine herself to be in a country house instead of the county prison.
As Beatrix ended each sentence, she looked around to see if Sybil was listening.
Ah! no; after the first few lines had been read, her attention wandered, and at the end of the note she astonished the reader, by saying:
"I am very thirsty, Beatrix."
"Then, dear, let me help you to rise and dress; and you shall have some tea. They are rough people we are stopping with, so I requested them to bring our breakfast up here," said Miss Pendleton, artfully, and laying aside the note.
Sybil submitted to the services of her friend. And then for the first time Beatrix noticed that in this victim's case physical weakness was now added to mental infirmity. Body and mind were both failing together. "Well, so best," thought Sybil's true friend.
By the time they were both dressed, there was another sound of turning locks and drawing bolts, and then the warden's daughter brought in the tray of breakfast, while the warden himself stood outside on guard.
Notwithstanding the awful situation, both these young women were able to take a little breakfast—poor Sybil because she was quite insensible of the horrors of her position, and Miss Pendleton because, with all her sorrowful sympathy for her companion, she had the appetite of a healthy young woman who had been fasting some eighteen hours.
Soon after the breakfast was over and the service cleared away, Mr. Berners came. Again bolts and bars were drawn, and the husband was ushered in by the warden to see his wife.
Lyon Berners shook hands with Beatrix Pendleton, and then passed at once to Sybil, who sat in a state of reverie on the side of her bed.
"You have come for me at last, Lyon?" she said. "The people here are very kind, but I am very glad you have come, for I want to go home."
"Dear Sybil," he replied, embracing her, and humoring her delusion. "You are not well enough to go home yet; you must stay here a little longer."
"Yes," she said, looking up for a moment, and then relapsing into silence and reverie.
Mr. Berners exchanged a glance with Miss Pendleton.
At the same moment the warden put his head in at the door, and beckoned Mr. Berners to come out into the passage.
"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 passage 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 nobody 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 associations 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 passed away. And now we must be very careful to foster this merciful insanity that shields 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 passed, 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 passed 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 passed, 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.
"For Heaven's sake, compose yourself now! You will need all your self-possession, for her sake, as well as for your own. Come into the warden's office with me. He also must go with us to her cell."
In great distress of mind, Mr. Berners followed the sheriff into the warden's office.
Old Mr. Martin, who was at his desk, came to meet the visitors.
"One moment, Martin. I will see you in one moment. Just now, I wish to speak to Mr. Berners," said the sheriff, as he drew Lyon Berners aside.
"What is it now?" inquired Sybil's husband, in an agony of alarm for her sake.
"Can you not surmise?" compassionately suggested the sheriff.
"I—Oh, great Heaven!—I dare not!" he exclaimed, throwing up his hands and clasping his head.
"You must know that the petition sent up to the Governor for her pardon has been returned with an adverse decision."
"I feared it! Oh, heaven!"
"Oh, try to be firm! I must now tell you the worst. The petition did not come down alone—" The speaker paused an instant, and then added gravely and compassionately:
"There was another document came down with it—a document that I must read to her."
"The death warrant!"
Lyon Berners uttered these words with such a groan of anguish and despair as seemed to have rent his soul and body asunder as he reeled and caught at the window frame for support, and then dropped into a chair by its side.
"Mr. Berners, for her sake! for heaven's sake! bear up now! Martin, a glass of brandy here! quick!"
The warden who always kept a bottle on his desk, hurriedly filled a tumbler half full of brandy, and hastened up with it.
"Drink it! drink it all!" said the sheriff, putting the glass into Mr. Berners' hand.
Lyon Berners drank the strong and fiery spirit, feeling it no more than if it had been water.
A few moments passed, during which Mr. Berners struggled hard for self-control, while the warden in a low voice inquired:
"What is it?"
"The death warrant!"
As the sheriff whispered these awful words, the warden clasped his hands, saying fervently:
"Now may the Lord help them both!"
Then the sheriff turned to Mr. Berners, who had again sank upon a chair, and was still striving to recover himself, and he kindly inquired:
"Are you ready now to go with us to her cell? She will need your support in this trying hour."
"Heaven give me strength! Yes, I am ready!" said Mr. Berners.
And the ministers of fate went to take the death warrant to the cell of Sybil Berners.