Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 61, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1907 — The Child of the Cave [ARTICLE]

The Child of the Cave

By FRANK BARRETT

CHAPTER XXIV. _ ♦ Rh« lit* in tin* churchyard at EcrlcaRam. On the stone over her grave is one •word, “Psyche'’—no more. Her loss was • terrible blow to all who had known fcer. Even my grandfather followed up to the grave as we' left it, and dropped in the flowers he had gathered for that purpose; but the one most prostrated was Sir - Henry Duncan. He looked like a ■nan who never slept. Morally and physically he seemed unable to hold up his head, and looked as if he had risen from a bed of sickness against his will, His condition perplexed Ethel, as much as it alarmed her. “He has always suffered from oecaaional fit»of dejection," Ethel said to me, “and hitherto 1 have been able to give him relief. But now my efforts fail; It seems as if he did not hear my voice. 1 wish you could persuade him to have nodical advice." Finding him alone in the park that evening I told him what she had said. “Yea,” he said, “it is time I did something. I can't go on like this, blighting the happiness of all I love. You will be aver early to-morrow morning; tell her ] have gone to consult the best physician 1- know, and shall act on bis advice, no matter what ft is. T can’t toll her niy•elf; she’d ask questions, and I have ■ever told her a lie.” He was absent the next day. and I told Ethel what he had promised to do; hat l knew that he had gone no farther than the rocks where Psyche perished, and that Conscience was the only physician whose guidance he sought and intended to follow. We met him in the evening as he was coming home, his hands feAind him, his chin almost on his breast. “I’Ve seen him. love,” he said, taking Ethel’s hand with more tenderness than Ac had lately displayed. “Says I need a change. Tells ihe I must go away as . coon as possible."

“I thought he would advise that,” Ethel said. “Whore shall we go?" ihaii he said firmly, and then with an abrupt change: "When shall you be married?” “It is almost too early to think of that,” she replied, looking down at the «Tepe on her dress. “I suppose conventional considerations must be studied evetffn a quiet wedding. I should have liked to wait until you were married, dear; but I don't think I must delay tliis ; —this journey. I want to avoid anything like a parting,” he continued,-after a.pause, “My sister is coming down with her youngsters next •week —perhaps I shall go then, perhaps before, as 1 can't stand children. Anyhow. I shall not say good-bye to you.” One night at the ned of the week, after I had parted from Ethel, I found Sir Henry in the drive, where he waited purposely for me. 1 “I want to talk to you." he said. “Let r..i go on to the dowtif. This path is the most direct." _ We turned fiom the drive, and walked in silence througa the shade. “l>o you believe in expiation, Thorne?” he cried suddenly. “If you mean reparation for injury dene ” 1 began. lie interrupted me impatiently, -.■ _ “Tla-re are some injuries that can never be repaired. Do you believe that, a man may get his sou! out of torment by cl net of self sacrifice —that is what 4mean'.-” “No. To injure oneself for having injured another Roubles the offense.” “If a man hi ay cry quits with society when he has served dtts term hi gaol for breaking society's laws, why should not* a man's conscience b< at peace when he has inflicted upon himself the punishment he deserves? llow else is ho to get liis •onl out of that torment when the vulture of reproach tears at it night and day? There is no other way by which he may hope to meet those he loves hereafter.”

“But for that fear of something after death.',’ he continued in a lower tone, •peaking to himself rather than addressirg me, “the fear of facing one palejic ired, sweet-faced child, and but for the hope of meeting my dear daughter—escape from this purgatory would be easy •nd quick enough !” The park was bounded by a deep ditch; w<- leapt it; but on the other side Sir Henry stopped as if it had recalled something to his mind ; and instead of striking over the downs, as had seemed liis intention, he followed the edge of the khtch -ttU it an iuu a deep deft in the cliff, whence the drainage was carried off. The cleft was deep, but not more than «iv or eight fe?t wide at the surface, and it grew deeper as it went down to the cutlet on the shore. Following the cleft for some twenty paces. Sir Henry stop»ed at a point where the turf showed that a load of lime had been thrown there. “I had lime shot in " he said, “because there is something dead and putrid down there. Peter Beamish is down there. I shot him through the head that night— r jon remember 1” “la that the crime you are going to egyiate?" I cried. V He laughed hoarsely. “Crime!" he exclaimed. “I think nc more of shooting that villain ihrough the head than if he had been a mnd dog." He kicked a clod down the cleft, and at it fell with a thud on the lime that covered old Peter, he said : “Fancy a thing like that —a vile, ignorant ruffian, ninety and odd. keeping me ander hia thumb for a dozen years, holdfag me at hia mercy, threatening my daughter with lifelong disgrace.' With a little more wit he might hare taken every penny of ndy 111-gotten fortune from ■«e. You must know by this time that I am the man who gyve him that chest So sink ont at sea Every meeting we

had was in the 'dark, and under a disgi ‘fso. —l believed he cou-kl-Bot -r-ecognize nu—but he did. He was used to the night; it wns part of his old business to penetrate disguises, and know what sort of man he had to deal with. He told me how they had discovered her and brought her to life. But no bribe would induce him to give her up to me, or tell me where I would find her. Perhaps your grandfather’s mercy had something to do with that. He thought, maybe, that having tried to destroy her once, I only r anted to get her again to do the deed effectually. For twelve years that went on. Then I saw yoiir advertisement in the Tiines, and answered it through a firm of solicitors in London. When I heard from them that the girl you had found was the child I had tried to .murder. I lost my head, nnd Peter Beamish coming to me at that. yery moment for .teoney, and with his usual threats of exposure, I defied him to produce the girl, and so like a fool put him on the scent. He had told me that the child was a stout, healthy wench in service. I expected to find her vulgar, coarse and robust. You can imagine the shock when 1 heard the truth, and found the sweet, frail little thing, whose wasted life I lad to answer for. Heaven knows I did not mean to bury her alive. You ask *by 1 tried to kill the child. I have brought you here to tell. Not that I. may excuse myself, but that it may lessen in;- child's shame when the truth is fc.own.~T married" in direct defiance to my father’s wish. He disinherited me. I. "a spendthrift, a ne’er-do-well, Who had never occupied myself with one serious consideration, found myself unable to earn a living. My wife died. Ethel was sick. My last guinea was paid for the advice of a physician. He declared that Ethel could be saved by being taken to Madeira for a time, but could never live through the winter in this climate. At that juncture- my father died, leaving everything to an adopted infant, for he, like me, was a friendless, unlovable man. By a strange coincidence the adopted child was weak- —not expected to outlive childhood. My father knew this, and left l.is fortune to her with a reversion to me, simply ns a means of prolonging my punishment for a few years longer. And now this question was presented to me:, Should I suffer my own child to die, when I might save her life by destroying the child who was not expected to live? I did not hesitate an instant. My child was everything to me. the other was nothing to anybody. I stole the xilitid, and rs I believed look her life away with an opiate. I believed that she was dead when I gave her into the hands of Peter Beamish. May heaven deny me mercy if this is untrue.” He paused, and then, in a softened tone, he said: “I do not wish to exonerate myself. Time will show that 1 have paid the penalty for the woe I brought upon poor unhappy Psyche.”

lie did not return to the Chase. Ethel tried to believe that her father was securing relief from physical sufferings abroad. A month passed, and we heard no tidings of him. One day my grandfather came to me with a scared look on his face. “Sonny," he said, in the hectoring tone he had learned from his father, "you've got to come along of me. You’ve got to' put on your hat and ask no questions, hut just hear what I've got to give you as we goes along.” I put on my hat and went with him. We turned in the direction of the Halfway House. • t • rrrnTir

"1 don't see much good in reforming," he began, as we trudged along. “Seems to me if you go a bit out o’ your right course at the first start, not all the tracts or total abstemiating in life ain't going* to put you straight agaiu.” “What's the matter':'* 1 asked. “You speak wheu you're spoke to and not before, sonny, or you'll go wrong like the rest of The family.” Having walked on some distance to let this warning sink, he recommenced. “1 don't see what’s the use on it. Here's father been out on the loose over *a month and never come anigh me. You've got to go down in that cave again, sonny.” I stopped short, chilled to the heart at the very thought of revisiting the scene of my poor Psyche's captivity. “C<fcue on —you’ve got to go," he said, doggedly. "I'd go myself if I'd got the strength, and it aiu't the fear of not cornin' up a gen stops me. neither.' I’d know what's the good of an old fellow like me a hanging on in this world." “Who is down there?” I asked, the truth flashing'’upon me. "lie's down there —Sir Henry Dun? can.” "Ilow long has he been there?” “A month, sonny. He came to me and tolff me I should hare the old cottage as long as I lived if I served him as I served the young 'un. And seein’ it was kinder right and pious he should do by hisself as others had been done by through him, I agreed to it. Day by day. Eve whistled to him, well, as near as I could like I whistled to her; but there wasn't no pretty sopg came back; but he emptied the b-sker all right ‘ hut with never a sound, till it come yesterday, and all day long I Was a-calling him and whistling, but no answer came, and this morning the victuals is in the basket just as I left ’em. So you’ve got to go down, sonny, and see what's amiss.” I went down sick with apprehension and the dull pain of awakened uneasiness. Once more I lit a candle and groped along the passage into the shadowy cave. I found him stretched and dead u|K>n Psyche's bed, with the evidence of Esj<rhe'* life about him. In the alcove his head hung strips of the colored rags she had hung there for ornament; in the wall the scroll she cut; in the sand a print of her little foot. What

place, wjiat, means, could he have found more fitting for his terrible'expiation? The clouds have lifted ; the sun shines now. Ethel* is my wife, andwhen I hold her hand in mine I feel that I possess all the happiness heaven can give. •Last night we lingered; long in the garden after the afterglow" faded away; the heavens filled with st-i rs; and "we watch - ed them in silent happiness. "Hush,” murmured' Ethel, stopping. “Did you hear it?” —■ “ ■ —A—firin't sound far away rose and fell, and so died away imperceptibly. “There it is again,” she whispered low. “It is the first nightingale.” It sounded to my ear the lost voice of Psyche singing of the new happiness of a new world.