VI

When I again became conscious, I found myself half kneeling, half

lying across the bed, my arms stretched out in front of me, my face

buried in the clothes. Body and mind were alike numbed. A

smarting pain in my left hand, a dreadful terror in my heart, were

at first the only sensations of which I was aware. Slowly, very

slowly, sense and memory returned to me, and with them a more vivid

intensity of mental anguish, as detail by detail I recalled the

weird horror of the night. Had it really happened,--was the thing

still there,--or was it all a ghastly nightmare? It was some

minutes before I dared either to move or look up, and then

fearfully I raised my head. Before me stretched the smooth white

coverlet, faintly bright with yellow sunshine. Weak and giddy, I

struggled to my feet, and, steadying myself against the foot of the

bed, with clenched teeth and bursting heart, forced my gaze round

to the other end. The pillow lay there, bare and unmarked save for

what might well have been the pressure of my own head. My breath

came more freely, and I turned to the window. The sun had just

risen, the golden tree-tops were touched with light, faint threads

of mist hung here and there across the sky, and the twittering of

birds sounded clearly through the crisp autumn air.

It was nothing but a bad dream then, after all, this horror which

still hung round me, leaving me incapable of effort, almost of

thought. I remembered the cabinet, and looked swiftly in that

direction. There it stood, closed as usual, closed as it had been

the evening before, as it had been for the last three hundred

years, except in my dreams.

Yes, that was it; nothing but a dream,--a gruesome, haunting dream.

With an instinct of wiping out the dreadful memory, I raised my

hand wearily to my forehead. As I did so, I became conscious again

of how it hurt me. I looked at it. It was covered with half-dried

blood, and two straight clean cuts appeared, one across the palm

and one across the inside of the fingers just below the knuckles.

I looked again towards the bed, and, in the place where my hand had

rested during my faint, a small patch of red blood was to be seen.

Then it was true! Then it had all happened! With a low shuddering

sob I threw myself down upon the couch at the foot of the bed, and

lay there for some minutes, my limbs trembling, and my soul

shrinking within me. A mist of evil, fearful and loathsome, had

descended upon my girlhood's life, sullying its ignorant innocence,

saddening its brightness, as I felt, for ever. I lay there till my

teeth began to chatter, and I realized that I was bitterly cold.

To return to that accursed bed was impossible, so I pulled a rug

which hung at one end of the sofa over me, and, utterly worn out in

mind and body, fell uneasily asleep.

I was roused by the entrance of my maid. I stopped her

exclamations and questions by shortly stating that I had had a bad

night, had been unable to rest in bed, and had had an accident with

my hand,--without further specifying of what description.

"I didn't know that you had been feeling unwell when you went to

bed last night, miss," she said.

"When I went to bed last night? Unwell? What do you mean?"

"Only Mr. Alan has just asked me to let him know how you find

yourself this morning," she answered.

Then he expected something, dreaded something. Ah! why had he

yielded and allowed me to sleep here, I asked myself bitterly, as

the incidents of the day before flashed through my mind.

"Tell him," I said, "what I have told you; and say that I wish to

speak to him directly after breakfast." I could not confide my

story to any one else, but speak of it I must to some one or go

mad.

Every moment passed in that place was an added misery. Much to my

maid's surprise I said that I would dress in her room--the little

one which, as I have said, was close to my own. I felt better

there; but my utter fatigue and my wounded hand combined to make my

toilet slow, and I found that most of the party had finished

breakfast when I reached the dining-room. I was glad of this, for

even as it was I found it difficult enough to give coherent answers

to the questions which my white face and bandaged hand called

forth. Alan helped me by giving a resolute turn to the

conversation. Once only our eyes met across the table. He looked

as haggard and worn as I did: I learned afterwards that he had

passed most of that fearful night pacing the passage outside my

door, though he listened in vain for any indication of what was

going on within the room.

The moment I had finished breakfast he was by my side. "You wish

to speak to me? now?" he asked in a low tone.

"Yes; now," I answered, breathlessly, and without raising my eyes

from the ground.

"Where shall we go? Outside? It is a bright day, and we shall be

freer there from interruption."

I assented; and then looking up at him appealingly, "Will you fetch

my things for me? I CANNOT go up to that room again."

He seemed to understand me, nodded, and was gone. A few minutes

later we left the house, and made our way in silence towards a

grassy spot on the side of the ravine where we had already indulged

in more than one friendly talk.

As we went, the Dead Stone came for a moment into view. I seized

Alan's arm in an almost convulsive grip. "Tell me," I whispered,--

"you refused to tell me yesterday, but you must now,--who is buried

beneath that rock?"

There was now neither timidity nor embarrassment in my tone. The

horrors of that house had become part of my life for ever, and

their secrets were mine by right. Alan, after a moment's pause, a

questioning glance at my face, tacitly accepted the position.

"I told you the truth," he replied, "when I said that I did not

know; but I can tell you the popular tradition on the subject, if

you like. They say that Margaret Mervyn, the woman who murdered

her husband, is buried there, and that Dame Alice had the rock

placed over her grave,--whether to save it from insult or to mark

it out for opprobrium, I never heard. The poor people about here

do not care to go near the place after dark, and among the older

ones there are still some, I believe, who spit at the suicide's

grave as they pass."

"Poor woman, poor woman!" I exclaimed, in a burst of uncontrollable

compassion.

"Why should you pity her?" demanded he with sudden sternness; "she

WAS a suicide and a murderess too. It would be better for the

public conscience, I believe, if such were still hung in chains, or

buried at the cross-roads with a stake through their bodies."

"Hush, Alan, hush!" I cried hysterically, as I clung to him; "don't

speak harshly of her: you do not know, you cannot tell, how

terribly she was tempted. How can you?"

He looked down at me in bewildered surprise. "How can I?" he

repeated. "You speak as if YOU could. What do you mean?"

"Don't ask me," I answered, turning towards him my face,--white,

quivering, tear-stained. "Don't ask me. Not now. You must answer

my questions first, and after that I will tell you. But I cannot

talk of it now. Not yet."

We had reached the place we were in search of as I spoke. There,

where the spreading roots of a great beech-tree formed a natural

resting place upon the steep side of the ravine, I took my seat,

and Alan stretched himself upon the grass beside me. Then looking

up at me--"I do not know what questions you would ask," he said,

quietly; "but I will answer them, whatever they may be."

But I did not ask them yet. I sat instead with my hands clasping

my knee, looking opposite at the glory of harmonious color, or down

the glen at the vista of far-off, dream-like loveliness, on which

it opened out. The yellow autumn sunshine made everything golden,

the fresh autumn breezes filled the air with life; but to me a

loathsome shadow seemed to rest upon all, and to stretch itself out

far beyond where my eyes could reach, befouling the beauty of the

whole wide world. At last I spoke. "You have known of it all, I

suppose; of this curse that is in the world,--sin and suffering,

and what such words mean."

"Yes," he said, looking at me with wondering pity, "I am afraid

so."

"But have you known them as they are known to some,--agonized,

hopeless suffering, and sin that is all but inevitable? Some time

in your life probably you have realized that such things are: it

has come home to you, and to every one else, no doubt, except a few

ignorant girls such as I was yesterday. But there are some,--yes,

thousands and thousands,--who even now, at this moment, are feeling

sorrow like that, are sinking deep, deeper into the bottomless pit

of their soul's degradation. And yet men who know this, who have

seen it, laugh, talk, are happy, amuse themselves--how can they,

how can they?" I stopped with a catch in my voice, and then

stretching out my arms in front of me--"And it is not only men.

Look how beautiful the earth is, and God has made it, and lets the

sun crown it every day with a new glory, while this horror of evil

broods over and poisons it all. Oh, why is it so? I cannot

understand it."

My arms drooped again as I finished, and my eyes sought Alan's.

His were full of tears, but there was almost a smile quivering at

the corners of his lips as he replied: "When you have found an

answer to that question, Evie, come and tell me and mankind at

large: it will be news to us all." Then he continued--"But, after

all, the earth is beautiful, and the sun does shine: we have our

own happiness to rejoice in, our own sorrows to bear, the suffering

that is near to us to grapple with. For the rest, for this

blackness of evil which surrounds us, and which we can do nothing

to lighten, it will soon, thank God, become vague and far off to

you as it is to others: your feeling of it will be dulled, and,

except at moments, you too will forget."

"But that is horrible," I exclaimed, passionately; "the evil will

be there all the same, whether I feel it or not. Men and women

will be struggling in their misery and sin, only I shall be too

selfish to care."

"We cannot go outside the limits of our own nature," he replied;

"our knowledge is shallow and our spiritual insight dark, and God

in His mercy has made our hearts shallow too, and our imagination

dull. If, knowing and trusting only as men do, we were to feel as

angels feel, earth would be hell indeed."

It was cold comfort, but at that moment anything warmer or brighter

would have been unreal and utterly repellent to me. I hardly took

in the meaning of his words, but it was as if a hand had been

stretched out to me, struggling in the deep mire, by one who

himself felt solid ground beneath him. Where he stood I also might

some day stand, and that thought seemed to make patience possible.

It was he who first broke the silence which followed. "You were

saying that you had questions to ask me. I am impatient to put

mine in return, so please go on."

It had been a relief to me to turn even to generalizations of

despair from the actual horror which had inspired them, and to

which my mind was thus recalled. With an effort I replied, "Yes, I

want to ask you about that room--the room in which I slept, and--

and the murder which was committed there." In spite of all that I

could do, my voice sank almost to a whisper as I concluded, and I

was trembling from head to foot.

"Who told you that a murder was committed there?" Something in my

face as he asked the question made him add quickly, "Never mind.

You are right. That is the room in which Hugh Mervyn was murdered

by his wife. I was surprised at your question, for I did not know

that anyone but my brothers and myself were aware of the fact. The

subject is never mentioned: it is closely connected with one

intensely painful to our family, and besides, if spoken of, there

would be inconveniences arising from the superstitious terrors of

servants, and the natural dislike of guests to sleep in a room

where such a thing had happened. Indeed it was largely with the

view of wiping out the last memory of the crime's locality, that my

father renewed the interior of the room some twenty years ago. The

only tradition which has been adhered to in connection with it is

the one which has now been violated in your person--the one which

precludes any unmarried woman from sleeping there. Except for

that, the room has, as you know, lost all sinister reputation, and

its title of 'haunted' has become purely conventional.

Nevertheless, as I said, you are right--that is undoubtedly the

room in which the murder was committed."

He stopped and looked up at me, waiting for more.

"Go on; tell me about it, and what followed." My lips formed the

words; my heart beat too faintly for my breath to utter them.

"About the murder itself there is not much to tell. The man, I

believe, was an inhuman scoundrel, and the woman first killed him

in desperation, and afterwards herself in despair. The only detail

connected with the actual crime of which I have ever heard, was the

gale that was blowing that night--the fiercest known to this

countryside in that generation; and it has always been said since

that any misfortune to the Mervyns--especially any misfortune

connected with the curse--comes with a storm of wind. That was why

I so disliked your story of the imaginary tempests which have

disturbed your nights since you slept there. As to what

followed,"--he gave a sigh,--"that story is long enough and full of

incident. On the morning after the murder, so runs the tale, Dame

Alice came down to the Grange from the tower to which she had

retired when her son's wickednesses had driven her from his house,

and there in the presence of the two corpses she foretold the curse

which should rest upon their descendants for generations to come.

A clergyman who was present, horrified, it is said at her words,

adjured her by the mercy of Heaven to place some term to the doom

which she had pronounced. She replied that no mortal might reckon

the fruit of a plant which drew its life from hell; that a term

there should be, but as it passed the wisdom of man to fix it, so

it should pass the wit of man to discover it. She then placed in

the room this cabinet, constructed by herself and her Italian

follower, and said that the curse should not depart from the family

until the day when its doors were unlocked and its legend read.

"Such is the story. I tell it to you as it was told to me. One

thing only is certain, that the doom thus traditionally foretold

has been only too amply fulfilled."

"And what was the doom?"

Alan hesitated a little, and when he spoke his voice was almost

awful in its passionless sternness, in its despairing finality; it

seemed to echo the irrevocable judgment which his words pronounced:

"That the crimes against God and each other which had destroyed the

parents' life should enter into the children's blood, and that

never thereafter should there fail a Mervyn to bring shame or death

upon one generation of his father's house.

"There were two sons of that ill-fated marriage," he went on after

a pause, "boys at the time of their parents' death. When they grew

up they both fell in love with the same woman, and one killed the

other in a duel. The story of the next generation was a peculiarly

sad one. Two brothers took opposite sides during the civil

troubles; but so fearful were they of the curse which lay upon the

family, that they chiefly made use of their mutual position in

order to protect and guard each other. After the wars were over,

the younger brother, while traveling upon some parliamentary

commission, stopped a night at the Grange. There, through a

mistake, he exchanged the report which he was bringing to London

for a packet of papers implicating his brother and several besides

in a royalist plot. He only discovered his error as he handed the

papers to his superior, and was but just able to warn his brother

in time for him to save his life by flight. The other men involved

were taken and executed, and as it was known by what means

information had reached the Government, the elder Mervyn was

universally charged with the vilest treachery. It is said that

when after the Restoration his return home was rumored the

neighboring gentry assembled, armed with riding whips, to flog him

out of the country if he should dare to show his face there. He

died abroad, shame-stricken and broken-hearted. It was his son,

brought up by his uncle in the sternest tenets of Puritanism, who,

coming home after a lengthened journey, found that during his

absence his sister had been shamefully seduced. He turned her out

of doors, then and there, in the midst of a bitter January night,

and the next morning her dead body and that of her new-born infant

were found half buried in the fresh-fallen snow on the top of the

wolds. The 'white lady' is still supposed by the villagers to

haunt that side of the glen. And so it went on. A beautiful,

heartless Mervyn in Queen Anne's time enticed away the affections

of her sister's betrothed, and on the day of her own wedding with

him, her forsaken sister was found drowned by her own act in the

pond at the bottom of the garden. Two brothers were soldiers

together in some Continental war, and one was involuntarily the

means of discovering and exposing the treason of the other. A girl

was betrayed into a false marriage, and her life ruined by a man

who came into the house as her brother's friend, and whose infamous

designs were forwarded and finally accomplished by that same

brother's active though unsuspecting assistance. Generation after

generation, men or women, guilty or innocent, through the action of

their own will or in spite of it, the curse has never yet failed of

its victims."

"Never yet? But surely in our own time--your father?" I did not

dare to put the question which was burning my lips.

"Have you never heard of the tragic end of my poor young uncles?"

he replied. "They were several years older than my father. When

boys of fourteen and fifteen they were sent out with the keeper for

their first shooting lesson, and the elder shot his brother through

the heart. He himself was delicate, and they say that he never

entirely recovered from the shock. He died before he was twenty,

and my father, then a child of seven years old, became the heir.

It was partly, no doubt, owing to this calamity having thus

occurred before he was old enough to feel it, that his comparative

skepticism on the whole subject was due. To that I suppose, and to

the fact that he grew up in an age of railways and liberal

culture."

"He didn't believe, then, in the curse?"

"Well, rather, he thought nothing about it. Until, that is, the

time came when it took effect, to break his heart and end his

life."

"How do you mean?"

There was silence for a little. Alan had turned away his head, so

that I could not see his face. Then--

"I suppose you have never been told the true story of why Jack left

the country?"

"No. Was he--is he--?"

"He is one victim of the curse in this generation, and I, God help

me, am the other, and perhaps more wretched one."

His voice trembled and broke, and for the first time that day I

almost forgot the mysterious horror of the night before, in my pity

for the actual, tangible suffering before me. I stretched out my

hand to his, and his fingers closed on mine with a sudden, painful

grip. Then quietly--

"I will tell you the story," he said, "though since that miserable

time I have spoken of it to no one."

There was a pause before he began. He lay there by my side, his

gaze turned across me up the sunbright, autumn-tinted glen, but his

eyes shadowed by the memories which he was striving to recall and

arrange in due order in his mind. And when he did speak it was not

directly to begin the promised recital.

"You never knew Jack," he said, abruptly.

"Hardly," I acquiesced. "I remember thinking him very handsome."

"There could not be two opinions as to that," he answered. "And a

man who could have done anything he liked with life, had things

gone differently. His abilities were fine, but his strength lay

above all in his character: he was strong,--strong in his likes and

in his dislikes, resolute, fearless, incapable of half measures--a

man, every inch of him. He was not generally popular--stiff, hard,

unsympathetic, people called him. From one point of view, and one

only, he perhaps deserved the epithets. If a woman lost his

respect she seemed to lose his pity too. Like a mediaeval monk, he

looked upon such rather as the cause than the result of male

depravity, and his contempt for them mingled with anger, almost, as

I sometimes thought, with hatred. And this attitude was, I have no

doubt, resented by the men of his own class and set, who shared

neither his faults nor his virtues. But in other ways he was not

hard. He could love; I, at least, have cause to know it. If you

would hear his story rightly from my lips, Evie, you must try and

see him with my eyes. The friend who loved me, and whom I loved

with the passion which, if not the strongest, is certainly, I

believe, the most enduring of which men are capable,--that perfect

brother's love, which so grows into our being that when it is at

peace we are scarcely conscious of its existence, and when it is

wounded our very life-blood seems to flow at the stroke. Brothers

do not always love like that: I can only wish that we had not done

so.