University of Virginia Library

51. CHAPTER LI.
THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.

But Beatrice stayed not to watch the departure
of the God-stricken sinner, nor to discuss
the story he had told with those who
remained behind. The few words of stern
reproof with which Brent had met her attempt
to soothe the culprit's terrors by suggesting a
doubt as to their foundation had smitten her
sorely, and while the attention of every one
was absorbed in Brewster's movements, she
stole softly from the room and the house.

“O Marston! if I have lost faith, and hope,
and all Christian graces, it is your fault, only
yours,” murmured she, gliding along the wood-path
where the shades of evening already lay.
“If you had but held me in your keeping, you
might have made of me what you would.
But cold reason, unwarmed by love, yields
only bitter fruit. Why should I believe in a
God who has denied me every thing?”

And then as if terrified at her own question,
she stood still, glancing timidly into the dusky
coverts of the wood, and hesitating whether
to venture farther from the human companionship
which was at once an accusation and a
protection.

While she stood thus hesitating, the miners
employed by her husband, under Brent's permission,
came trooping along the path, laughing
and singing with the boisterous mirth of
rude health and animal spirits. Any thing
so tangible restored the poise of Mrs. Chappelleford's
mind at once, and she moved
slowly forward to meet them. The foreman
stopped to speak to her.

“Good-evening, ma'am. Has Mr. Chappelleford
come out of the mine?”

“I have not seen him. Have not you been
with him?”

“No, ma'am. He said he didn't want any
one to come anigh him unless he called, and
as we didn't hear any thing, we concluded he'd
come out, and gone home. Was you going up
there, ma'am?”

“No—yes, I think I will go and meet him.
He is in the path to the right of the entrance,
is he not?”

“Yes, ma'am. Some ways in, I judge,
though he didn't want to be followed, and I
don't know justly where he is. Maybe you'd
like to have me go with you, ma'am, as it's
getting kind of latish for the mines.”

“No, thank you, I am not at all afraid; and
Mr. Chappelleford, you say, asked you not to
come?”

“Yes, ma'am, he said so; but, any way, you
had better take my lantern. It's dark as
Egypt after you get in a piece; long before
you'll see his light you will lose the daylight,
every glimpse of it.”

“Thank you, I will take the lantern,” said
Beatrice, with the courteous smile that won
for her the hearts of such men as this—too far
beneath her to feel the scorn and satire with

which she too often visited the faults and
foibles of her equals.

“Say, Mike,” asked the foreman of one of
his companions, as they passed on, “don't the
Queen you're so fond of talking about look
something like that?”

“Only she a'n't so purty nor so ginteel in
her figger. This un 'ould make the better
queen of the two if she had the luck,” replied
the Irishman.

But Beatrice, moving swiftly on toward the
deserted mine, was thinking:

“Yes; I will go to him and ask him to pity
and help me; for what else have I left in
heaven or earth? His teachings have deprived
me of any faith in the love of God, and
my own folly has cut me off from the love of
man. What is left to me but the cold intellectual
companionship he has so far given me?
I cannot lose that too.” And hastily, as one
who fears to feel her purpose fail before it is
accomplished, she glided along the darkening
path beneath the rustling shadow of the fir-trees,
past the broken well where the mur
derer had lain that morning concealed, and
up the steep and stony hill, until, breathless
and with palpitating heart, she stood in the
entrance of the mine, the daylight all behind
her, and impenetrably dark before.

Listening eagerly, she heard no sound except
the slow dripping of water oozing through
the loose slatestone and plashing upon the floor
beneath.

“Mr. Chappelleford!” called she timidly,
and an echo far within the arched passage returned
the cry in a strange, mocking tone, like
that of the demon of the mine daring her to
enter.

“Oh! I cannot go in,” whispered Beatrice,
shrinking back, and trembling nervously, and
then the bitter thought of a few moments before
returned upon her.

“He is my husband—he is all I have left for
this life or another. I must not shrink from
following where he leads; I must make my
peace with him before the sun sets.”

And with trembling fingers she lighted her
lantern, and with desperate courage pushed
forward into the dismal darkness and mocking
echoes of the mine. A hundred rods and
she had lost the daylight, and felt as if miles
of darkness and desolation separated her from
her fellow-men. Holding her breath with
terror, guarding her steps that they should
make no sound, glancing now at this side, now
at that, catching reflections of the light she
carried from the glittering surface of quartz
or mica, or from the brilliant eyes of some
bloated toad squatted beside her path, shrinking
from the spectral flight of bats and night-birds
haunting the place, she hurried on, feeling
as if she was moving in a dream, in a
dismal nightmare which presently must culminate
in some fantastic horror never yet
imagined or experienced by human mind.

On, and on, and on, until her limbs shook
with weariness, and her swimming brain
threatened to give way beneath the pressure
it sustained; and as she paused, leaning
against the slimy rock for support, and dimly
wondering, if she were to die there, what
Marston Brent would feel in finding her, her
straining ears caught a faint sound, and she
fancied a yet fainter gleam of light far down
the noisome tunnel she was traversing.

“Thank God, I have reached him!” was
the cry of the desolate woman's whole heart,
and then she hurried on, running now, and
never heeding the echoes that mocked and the
shadows which came crowding after her, never
heeding bruises, or soil, or fatigue, for every
moment the far light grew nearer and more
certain, and every moment Beatrice expected
to catch sight of her husband at his work or
coming toward her.

But the journey was over, the friendly
beacon reached, and still she could not see
him; only just opposite the light which stood
upon a projecting shelf of slate lay a great
mass of rock almost filling the passage, while
above it a corresponding chasm in the wall
of the gallery showed whence it had fallen.

Beatrice stood for a moment viewing this
scene in wonder and dismay, and then a sudden
horror seized upon her, and she called
sharply:

“Mr. Chappelleford! Oh! speak, if you are
here!”

“Who is it?” asked a voice dim with
anguish—a voice that seemed to come from
beneath the huge mass of rock, and to feel its
weight in every tone.

Her muscles tense with horror, her eyes
wild with dread of what they must behold,
Beatrice passed between the rock and the side
of the gallery, and came upon a sight that
had well-nigh killed her as she stood. Her
husband lay beneath that crushing weight,
only his head, his right arm, and a small portion
of his chest visible—the rest of his body

mercifully hidden, save that a slow stream of
blood trickled out from beneath the rock, and
stagnated in a ghastly pool beside her feet.

Unable to stand, unable to speak, Beatrice
sank down beside that livid head, and felt
that the horror which had led her so far had
culminated here, and that the worst was upon
her.

“Is it you, Beatrice?” whispered the white
lips of the dying man.

“Yes. I must go for help. But what help
can move this rock?”

“None. Do not go. I should be dead long
before you could return. Sit quietly there,
and see me off. I have been thinking of you.
I am glad you came.”

“But something must be done—we must at
all events try,” gasped Beatrice, wringing her
hands and looking piteously at the tons of
torture piled upon that poor crushed body.

“Nothing can be done. Do not speak of
that again. It is the ichthyosaurus. He is
on this surface next me, and he is lost. The
roof is too low to admit of turning the rock,
and they cannot blast without burying it,
besides they will never take the trouble. I
wish you could have seen it, and then you
could describe it in the work upon Saurians.
I want you to finish that book, Beatrice. I
am afraid you could not manage the philology,
although you would have helped me amazingly.
You may give the papers collected for that
to Arnold, and let him see what he can do. I
won't play dog in the manger. It is getting
very cold here. Beatrice, I am sorry I told
the story of the monkey—it was not courteous,
and your manner toward me has always been
perfect—”

“Oh! sir, I wished my heart had been more
so,” sighed Beatrice, and she stooped to press
her cold lips upon the colder forehead of the
dying man.

“Nonsense. Your heart, child—it is a muscle,
nothing more. You have been all to me
that I wished or asked. I was vexed at you
to-day, because I thought you were past such
follies as you hinted, and when I am dead,
I suppose you will relapse completely, and
marry this man, and prattle of love and moonshine,
as you did at seventeen. Well, the
time grows short—finish the Saurians first.
Promise me that Beatrice.”

“I will finish it—I promise you.”

“Before you marry Brent?”

“I shall never marry again.”

“Pho! nonsense. And perhaps, after all,
Beatrice, perhaps it is as well for you women.
I thought I could place you above your sex,
and I have; but it is an isolation—love, kisses,
dress, cooking, babies, they are your natural
delights, and you miss them. It was an experiment,
and I shall make no more.”

“Dear friend and teacher! Forgive me
that I have not better rewarded your care—for-give
me that I have not held myself steadfast
in your path! But this is not the moment to
think of me. Tell me, have you no message,
no trust to confide to me?”

“None. My worldly affairs are in order,
and you know all my plans. If not what other
men call wife, you have been a dear and
valued comrade to me, Beatrice. I have not
cared to say how dear—”

“And, O my friend! how desolate you are
leaving me!” cried Beatrice, made selfish by
despair. “Oh! that I too were dying, that I
might follow you to that other world, as I have
through this.”

“Other world—do you believe it, dear? I
am sorry I uprooted that simple faith of yours,
for now I want it. Beatrice, is there no God?”

“Oh! sir, do you ask me?”

“And you dare not answer! It is my
own work, my own work, and it turns upon
me now. Woman, it is for you to hold your
faith steadfast and shining while man gropes
blindly through the labyrinth of reason. It
is my doing, but it is your disgrace that you
have not a word of comfort for me now. Oh! if
I could hear my mother praying beside me as
I heard her once when I was a child, and as
she thought dying. She begged my life of
God that night so piteously, so passionately,
that He gave it her. If she were here, she
would beg my soul's life even more fervently.”

“But you do not believe—you derided my
faith—you reasoned away my hope—you
rooted out all the pious teaching of my
youth,” moaned Beatrice, writhing beneath
the sense of her own powerlessness in this extremity.

“To reason, and deride, and uproot were
my gifts; yours should have been to cling fast
to your faith. If only I had my mother here—
my mother—how her eyes shone as she lifted
them heavenward! Where is she now? Do
you believe, do I believe, that saintly woman
is mere dust and daisies? O Beatrice, Beatrice!
speak a word of hope—tell me that dear
mother lives, and I shall see her—tell me I

am not going to annihilation—what, lose all
that I have learned so painfully!—this mind,
this memory, these heaped thoughts, all going
to oblivion in one brief hour! O woman!
argue with me, force belief upon me—at the
least, pray for me—pray—pray—call upon
God to shine in upon the black despair which
overwhelms me! O woman! if you are a
woman indeed, like those who lay the night
through at the foot of the cross, say one word
of prayer to God, for I—I dare not!”

And kneeling there, her head humbly down
dropt, her voice choked with anguish and
terror for his soul and for her own, Beatrice
faintly murmured the words that she had
learned, an innocent child, long years before,
and had never spoken since her marriage.

“Amen!” whispered the white lips of the
dying man, and then death laid his finger
upon them, and they spoke no more.