CHAPTER XIX.
It must have been about one o’clock in the morning when Reuel started out of a fitful slumber by the sound of that terrible scream. He sprang to his feet and listened. He heard not a sound; all was silence within the palace. But his experience was so vivid that reason could not control his feelings; he threw wide the dividing curtains, and fled out upon the balcony. All was silence. Themoonlight flooded the landscape with the strength of daylight. As he stood trying to calm himself, a shadow fell across his path, and raising his eyes, he beheld the form of Mira; she beckoned him on, and he, turning, followed the shadowy figure, full of confidence that she would show him the way to that fearful scream.
On they glided like two shadows, until the phantom paused before what seemed a solid wall, and with warning gaze and uplifted finger, bade him enter. It was a portion of the palace unfamiliar to him; the walls presented no hope of entrance. What could it mean? Mira faded from his gaze, and as he stood there puzzling over this happening, suddenly the solid wall began to glide away, leaving a yawning space, in which appeared Ai’s startled and disturbed face.
“Back!” he cried, as he beheld his King. “Back, Ergamenes! how come you here?”
“What was the cry I heard, Ai? I cannot rest. I have been led hither,” he continued, significantly. Then, noticing the other’s disturbed vision, he continued, “Tell me. I command you.”
With a murmured protest, Ai stepped aside, saying, “Perhaps it is best.”
Reuel advanced into the room. The hole in the floor was securely closed, and on the divans lay Charlie Vance, white and unconscious, and Jim Titus, crushed almost to a jelly but still alive. Abdallah and a group of natives were working over Vance, trying to restore consciousness. Reuel gave one startled, terrified glance at the two figures, and staggered backward to the wall.
Upon hearing that cry, Jim Titus stirred uneasily, and muttered, “It’s him!”
“He wishes to speak with you,” said Ai, gravely.
“How came they here, and thus?” demanded Reuel in threatening anger.
“They were searching for you, and we found them, too, in the pyramid. We confined them here, debating what was best to do, fearing you would become dissatisfied. They tried to escape and found the treasure and the snakes. The black man will die.”
“Are you there,Mr.Reuel?” came in a muffled voice from the dying man.
Reuel stood beside him and took his hand,—“Yes, Jim, it is I; how came you thus?”
“The way of the transgressor is hard,” groaned the man. “I would not have been here had I not consented to take your life. I am sure you must have suspected me; I was but a bungler, and often my heart failed me.”
“Unhappy man! how could you plot to hurt one who has never harmed you?” exclaimed Reuel.
“Aubrey Livingston was my foster brother, and I could deny him nothing.”
“Aubrey Livingston! Was he the instigator?”
“Yes,” sighed the dying man. “Return home as soon as possible and rescue your wife—your wife, and yet not your wife—for a man may not marry his sister.”
“What!” almost shrieked Reuel. “What!”
“I have said it. Dianthe Lusk is your own sister, the half-sister of Aubrey Livingston, who is your half-brother.”
Reuel stood for a moment, apparently struggling for words to answer the dying man’s assertion, then fell on his knees in a passion of sobs agonizing to witness. “You know then, Jim, that I am Mira’s son?” he said at length.
“I do. Aubrey planned to have Miss Dianthe from the first night he saw her; he got you this chance with the expedition; he kept you from getting anything else to force you to a separation from the girl. He bribed me to accidentally put you out of the way. He killed Miss Molly to have a free road to Dianthe. Go home, Reuel Briggs, and at leastrescue the girl from misery. Watch, watch, or he will outwit you yet.” Reuel started in a frenzy of rage to seize the man, but Ai’s hand was on his arm.
“Peace, Ergamenes; he belongs to the ages now.”
One more convulsive gasp, and Jim Titus had gone to atone for the deeds done in the flesh.
With pallid lips and trembling frame, Reuel turned from the dead to the living. As he sat beside his friend, his mind was far away in America looking with brooding eyes into the past and gazing hopelessly into the future. Truly hath the poet said,—
“The evil that men do lives after them.”
And Reuel cursed with a mighty curse the bond that bound him to the white race of his native land.
One month after the events narrated in the previous chapter, a strange party stood on the deck of the out-going steamer at Alexandria, Egypt—Reuel and Charlie Vance, accompanied by Ai and Abdallah in the guise of servants. Ai had with great difficulty obtained permission of the Council to allow King Ergamenes to return to America. This was finally accomplished by Ai’s being surety for Reuel’s safe return, and so the journey was begun which was to end in the apprehension and punishment of Aubrey Livingston.
Through the long journey homeward two men thought only of vengeance, but with very different degrees of feeling. Charlie Vance held to the old Bible punishment for the pure crime of manslaughter, but in Reuel’s wrongs lay something beyond the reach of punishment by the law’s arm; in it was the accumulation of years of foulest wrongs heaped upon the innocent and defenceless women of a race, added to this last great outrage. At night he said, as he paced the narrow confines of the deck, “Thank God, it is night;” and when the faint streaks of dawn glowed in the distance, gradually creeping across the expanse of waters, “Thank God, it is morning.” Another hour, and he would say, “Would God it were night!” By day or night some phantom in his ears holloes in ocean’s roar or booms in thunder, howls in the winds or murmurs in the breeze, chants in the voice of the sea-fowl—“Too late, too late. ’Tis done, and worse than murder.”
Westward the vessel sped—westward while the sun showed only as a crimson ball in its Arabian setting, or gleamed through a veil of smoke off the English coast, ending in the grey, angry, white-capped waves of the Atlantic in winter.