I gave a little shudder of repulsion.

“That is a depressing view of life, Alan,” I said. “Does our peace of

mind depend only upon death coming early enough to hide from us the

truth? And, after all, can it? Our spirits do not die. From another world

they may witness the fruits of our lives in this one.”

“If they do,” he answered with sudden violence, “it is absurd to doubt

the existence of a purgatory. There must in such a case be a terrible one

in store for the best among us.”

I was silent. The shadow that lay on his soul did not penetrate to mine,

but it hung round me nevertheless, a cloud which I felt powerless to

disperse.

After a moment he went on,—“Provided that they are distant enough, how

little, after all, do we think of the results of our actions! There are

few men who would deliberately instill into a child a love of drink, or

wilfully deprive him of his reason; and yet a man with drunkenness or

madness in his blood thinks nothing of bringing children into the world

tainted us deeply with the curse as if he had inoculated them with it

directly. There is no responsibility so completely ignored as this one of

marriage and fatherhood, and yet how heavy it is and far-reaching.”

“Well,” I said, smiling, “let us console ourselves with the thought that

we are not all lunatics and drunkards.”

“No,” he answered; “but there are other evils besides these, moral taints

as well as physical, curses which have their roots in worlds beyond our

own,—sins of the fathers which are visited upon the children.”

He had lost all violence and bitterness of tone now; but the weary

dejection which had taken their place communicated itself to my spirit

with more subtle power then his previous mood had owned.

“That is why,” he went on, and his manner seemed to give more purpose to

his speech than hitherto,—“that is why, so far as I am concerned, I mean

to shirk the responsibility and remain unmarried.”

I was hardly surprised at his words. I felt that I had expected them, but

their utterance seemed to intensify the gloom which rested upon us. Alan

was the first to arouse himself from its influence.

“After all,” he said, turning round to me and speaking lightly, “without

looking so far and so deep, I think my resolve is a prudent one. Above

all things, let us take life easily, and you know what St. Paul says

about ‘trouble in the flesh,’—a remark which I am sure is specially

applicable to briefless barristers, even though possessed of a modest

competence of their own. Perhaps one of these days, when I am a fat old

judge, I shall give my cook a chance if she is satisfactory in her clear

soups; but till then I shall expect you, Evie, to work me one pair of

carpet-slippers per annum, as tribute due to a bachelor cousin.”

I don’t quite know what I answered,—my heart was heavy and aching,—but I

tried with true feminine docility to follow the lead he had set me. He

continued for some time in the same vein; but as we approached the house

the effort seemed to become too much for him, and we relapsed again into

silence.

This time I was the first to break it. “I suppose,” I said, drearily,

“all those horrid people will have come by now.”

“Horrid people,” he repeated, with rather an uncertain laugh, and through

the darkness I saw his figure bend forward as he stretched out his

hand to caress my horse’s neck. “Why Evie, I thought you were pining

for gayety, and that it was, in fact, for the purpose of meeting these

‘horrid people’ that you came here.”

“Yes, I know,” I said, wistfully; “but somehow the last week has been so

pleasant that I cannot believe that anything will ever be quite so nice

again.”

We had arrived at the house as I spoke, and the groom was standing at

our horses’ heads. Alan got off and came round to help me to dismount;

but instead of putting up his arm as usual as a support for me to spring

from, he laid his hand on mine. “Yes, Evie,” he said, “it has been indeed

a pleasant time. God bless you for it.” For an instant he stood there

looking up at me, his face full in the light which streamed from the open

door, his gray eyes shining with a radiance which was not wholly from

thence. Then he straightened his arm, I sprang to the ground, and as if

to preclude the possibility of any answer on my part, he turned sharply

on his heel, and began giving some orders to the groom. I went on alone

into the house, feeling, I knew not and cared not to know why, that the

gloom had fled from my spirit, and that the last ride had not after all

been such a melancholy failure as it had bid fair at one time to become.

_III._

In the hall I was met by the housekeeper, who informed me that, owing to

a misunderstanding about dates, a gentleman had arrived whom Lucy had not

expected at that time, and that in consequence my room had been changed.

My things had been put into the East Room,—the haunted room,—the room

of the Closed Cabinet, as I remembered with a certain sense of pleased

importance, though without any surprise. It stood apart from the other

guest-rooms, at the end of the passage from which opened George and

Lucy’s private apartment; and as it was consequently disagreeable to have

a stranger there, it was always used when the house was full for a member

of the family. My father and mother had often slept there: there was a

little room next to it, though not communicating with it, which served

for a dressing-room. Though I had never passed the night there myself, I

knew it as well as any room in the house. I went there at once, and found

Lucy superintending the last arrangements for my comfort.

She was full of apologies for the trouble she was giving me. I told her

that the apologies were due to my maid and to her own servants rather

than to me; “and besides,” I added, glancing round, “I am distinctly a

gainer by the change.”

“You know, of course,” she said, lightly, “that this is the haunted room

of the house, and that you have no right to be here?”

“I know it is the haunted room,” I answered; “but why have I no right to

be here?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “There is one of those tiresome Mervyn

traditions against allowing unmarried girls to sleep in this room. I

believe two girls died in it a hundred and fifty years ago, or something

of that sort.”

“But I should think that people, married or unmarried, must have died in

nearly every room in the house,” I objected.

“Oh, yes, of course they have,” said Lucy; “but once you come across a

bit of superstition in this family, it is of no use to ask for reasons.

However, this particular bit is too ridiculous even for George. Owing to

Mr. Leslie having come to-day, we must use every room in the house: it is

intolerable having a stranger here, and you are the only relation staying

with us. I pointed all that out to George, and he agreed that, under the

circumstances, it would be absurd not to put you here.”

“I am quite agreeable,” I answered; “and, indeed, I think I am rather

favored in having a room where the last recorded death appears to have

taken place a hundred and fifty years ago, particularly as I should think

that there can be scarcely anything now left in it which was here then,

except, of course, the cabinet.”

The room had, in fact, been entirely done up and refurnished by my uncle,

and was as bright and modern-looking an apartment as you could wish to

see. It was large, and the walls were covered with one of those white and

gold papers which were fashionable thirty years ago. Opposite us, as we

stood warming our backs before the fire, was the bed—a large double one,

hung with a pretty shade of pale blue. Material of the same color covered

the comfortable modern furniture, and hung from gilded cornices before

the two windows which pierced the side of the room on our left. Between

them stood the toilet-table, all muslin, blue ribbons, and silver. The

carpet was a gray and blue Brussels one. The whole effect was cheerful,

though I fear inartistic, and sadly out of keeping with the character

of the house. The exception to these remarks was, as I had observed,

the famous closed cabinet, to which I have more than once alluded. It

stood against the same wall of the room as that in which the fireplace

was, and on our right—that is, on that side of the fireplace which was

farthest from the windows. As I spoke, I turned to go and look at it

and Lucy followed me. Many an hour as a child had I passed in front of

it, fingering the seven carved brass handles, or rather buttons, which

were ranged down its center. They all slid, twisted, or screwed with the

greatest ease, and apparently like many another ingeniously contrived

lock; but neither I nor any one else had ever yet succeeded in sliding,

twisting, or screwing them after such a fashion as to open the closed

doors of the cabinet. No one yet had robbed them of their secret since

first it was placed there three hundred years ago by the old lady and

her faithful Italian. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, was this

tantalizing cabinet. Carved out of some dark foreign wood, the doors and

panels were richly inlaid with lapis-lazuli, ivory, and mother-of-pearl,

among which were twisted delicately chased threads of gold and silver.

Above the doors, between them and the cornice, lay another mystery, fully

as tormenting as was the first. In a smooth strip of wood about an inch

wide, and extending along the whole breadth of the cabinet, was inlaid

a fine pattern in gold wire. This at first sight seemed to consist of a

legend or motto. On looking closer, however, though the pattern still

looked as if it was formed out of characters of the alphabet curiously

entwined together, you found yourself unable to fix upon any definite

word, or even letter. You looked again and again, and the longer that you

looked the more certain became your belief that you were on the verge of

discovery. If you could approach the mysterious legend from a slightly

different point of view, or look at it from another distance, the clew

to the puzzle would be seized, and the words would stand forth clear and

legible in your sight. But the clew never had been discovered, and the

motto, if there was one, remained unread.

For a few minutes we stood looking at the cabinet in silence, and then

Lucy gave a discontented little sigh. “There’s another tiresome piece of

superstition,” she exclaimed; “by far the handsomest piece of furniture

in the house stuck away here in a bedroom which is hardly ever used.

Again and again have I asked George to let me have it moved downstairs,

but he won’t hear of it.”

“Was it not placed here by Dame Alice herself?” I inquired a little

reproachfully, for I felt that Lucy was not treating the cabinet with the

respect which it really deserved.

“Yes, so they say,” she answered; and the tone of light contempt in

which she spoke was now pierced by a not unnatural pride in the romantic

mysteries of her husband’s family. “She placed it here, and it is said,

you know, that when the closed cabinet is opened, and the mysterious

motto is read, the curse will depart from the Mervyn family.”

“But why don’t they break it open?” I asked, impatiently. “I am sure that

I would never have remained all my life in a house with a thing like

that, and not found out in some way or another what was inside it.”

“Oh, but that would be quite fatal,” answered she. “The curse can only be

removed when the cabinet is opened as Dame Alice intended it to be, in an

orthodox fashion. If you were to force it open, that could never happen,

and the curse would therefore remain forever.”

“And what is the curse?” I asked, with very different feelings to those

with which I had timidly approached the same subject with Alan. Lucy was

not a Mervyn, and not a person to inspire awe under any circumstances. My

instincts were right again, for she turned away with a slight shrug of

her shoulders.

“I have no idea,” she said. “George and Alan always look portentously

solemn and gloomy whenever one mentions the subject, so I don’t. If you

ask me for the truth, I believe it to be a pure invention, devised by

the Mervyns for the purpose of delicately accounting for some of the

disreputable actions of their ancestors. For you know, Evie,” she added,

with a little laugh, “the less said about the character of the family

into which your aunt and I have married the better.”

The remark made me angry, I don’t know why, and I answered stiffly, that

as far as I was acquainted with them, I at least saw nothing to complain

of.

“Oh, as regards the present generation, no,—except for that poor,

wretched Jack,” acquiesced Lucy, with her usual imperturbable good-humor.

“And as regards the next?” I suggested, smiling, and already ashamed of

my little temper.

“The next is perfect, of course,—poor dear boys.” She sighed as she

spoke, and I wondered whether she was really as unconscious as she

generally appeared to be of the strange dissatisfaction with which her

husband seemed to regard his children. Anyhow the mention of them had

evidently changed her mood, and almost directly afterwards, with the

remark that she must go and look after her guests, who had all arrived by

now, she left me to myself.

For some minutes I sat by the bright fire, lost in aimless, wandering

thought, which began with Dame Alice and her cabinet, and which ended

somehow with Alan’s face, as I had last seen it looking up at me in

front of the hall-door. When I had reached that point, I roused myself

to decide that I had dreamt long enough, and that it was quite time to

go down to the guests and to tea. I accordingly donned my best teagown,

arranged my hair, and proceeded towards the drawing-room. My way there

lay through the great central hall. This apartment was approached from

most of the bedrooms in the house through a large, arched doorway at

one end of it, which communicated directly with the great staircase. My

bedroom, however, which, as I have said, lay among the private apartments

of the house, opened into a passage which led into a broad gallery,

or upper chamber, stretching right across the end of the hall. From

this you descended by means of a small staircase in oak, whose carved

balustrade, bending round the corner of the hall, formed one of the

prettiest features of the picturesque old room. The barrier which ran

along the front of the gallery was in solid oak, and of such a height

that, unless standing close up to it, you could neither see nor be seen

by the occupants of the room below. On approaching this gallery I heard

voices in the hall. They were George’s and Alan’s, evidently in hot

discussion. As I issued from the passage, George was speaking, and his

voice had that exasperated tone in which an angry man tries to bring to

a close an argument in which he has lost his temper. “For heaven’s sake

leave it alone, Alan; I neither can nor will interfere. We have enough

to bear from these cursed traditions as it is, without adding one which

has no foundation whatever to justify it—a mere contemptible piece of

superstition.”

“No member of our family has a right to call any tradition contemptible

which is connected with that place, and you know it,” answered Alan; and

though he spoke low, his voice trembled with some strong emotion. A first

impulse of hesitation which I had had I checked, feeling that as I had

heard so much it was fairer to go on, and I advanced to the top of the

staircase. Alan stood by the fireplace facing me, but far too occupied

to see me. His last speech had seemingly aroused George to fury, for the

latter turned on him now with savage passion.

“Damn it all, Alan!” he cried, “can’t you be quiet? I will be master in

my own house. Take care, I tell you; the curse may not be quite fulfilled

yet after all.”

As George uttered these words, Alan lifted his eyes to him with a glance

of awful horror: his face turned ghastly white; his lips trembled for a

moment; and then he answered back with one half-whispered word of supreme

appeal—“George!” There was a long-drawn, unutterable anguish in his tone,

and his voice, though scarcely audible, penetrated to every corner of the

room, and seemed to hang quivering in the air around one after the sound

had ceased. Then there was a terrible stillness. Alan stood trembling in

every limb, incapable apparently of speech or action, and George faced

him, as silent and motionless as he was. For an instant they remained

thus, while I looked breathlessly on. Then George, with a muttered

imprecation, turned on his heel and left the room. Alan followed him

as he went with dull lifeless eyes; and as the door closed he breathed

deeply, with a breath that was almost a groan.

Taking my courage in both hands, I now descended the stairs, and at the

sound of my footfall he glanced up, startled, and then came rapidly to

meet me.

“Evie! you here,” he said; “I did not notice you. How long have you been

here?” He was still quite white, and I noticed that he panted for breath

as he spoke.

“Not long,” I answered, timidly, and rather spasmodically; “I only heard

a sentence or two. You wanted George to do something about some tradition

or other,—and he was angry,—and he said something about the curse.”

While I spoke Alan kept his eyes fixed on mine, reading through them,

as I knew, into my mind. When I had finished he turned his gaze away

satisfied, and answered very quietly, “Yes, that was it.” Then he went

back to the fireplace, rested his arm against the high mantelpiece above

it, and leaning his forehead on his arm, remained silently looking into

the fire. I could see by his bent brow and compressed lips that he was

engaged upon some earnest train of thought or reasoning, and I stood

waiting—worried, puzzled, curious but above all things, pitiful, and oh!

longing so intensely to help him if I could. Presently he straightened

himself a little, and addressed me more in his ordinary tone of voice,

though without looking round. “So I hear they have changed your room.”

“Yes,” I answered. And then, flushing rather, “Is that what you and

George have been quarreling about?” I received no reply, and taking this

silence for assent, I went on deprecatingly, “Because you know, if it

was, I think you are rather foolish, Alan. As I understand, two girls are

said to have died in that room more than a hundred years ago, and for

that reason there is a prejudice against putting a girl to sleep there.

That is all. Merely a vague, unreasonable tradition.”

Alan took a moment to answer.

“Yes,” he said at length, speaking slowly, and as if replying to

arguments in his own mind as much as to those which I had uttered. “Yes,

it is nothing but a tradition after all, and that of the very vaguest and

most unsupported kind.”

“Is there even any proof that girls have not slept there since those two

died?” I asked. I think that the suggestion conveyed in this question was

a relief to him, for after a moment’s pause, as if to search his memory,

he turned round.

“No,” he answered, “I don’t think that there is any such proof; and I

have no doubt that you are right, and that it is a mere prejudice that

makes me dislike your sleeping there.”

“Then,” I said, with a little assumption of sisterly superiority, “I

think George was right, and that you were wrong.”

Alan smiled,—a smile which sat oddly on the still pale face, and in the

wearied, worn-looking eyes. “Very likely,” he said; “I daresay that I

am superstitious. I have had things to make me so.” Then coming nearer

to me, and laying his hands on my shoulders, he went on, smiling more

brightly, “We are a queer-tempered, bad-nerved race, we Mervyns, and you

must not take us too seriously, Evie. The best thing that you can do with

our odd ways is to ignore them.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” I answered, laughing, too glad to have won him back

to even temporary brightness, “as long as you and George don’t come

to blows over the question of where I am to sleep; which after all is

chiefly my concern,—and Lucy’s.”

“Well, perhaps it is,” he replied, in the same tone; “and now be off to

the drawing-room, where Lucy is defending the tea-table single-handed all

this time.”

I obeyed, and should have gone more cheerfully had I not turned at the

doorway to look back at him, and caught one glimpse of his face as he

sank heavily down into the large arm-chair by the fireside.

However, by dinner-time he appeared to have dismissed all painful

reflections from his mind, or to have buried them too deep for discovery.

The people staying in the house were, in spite of my sense of grievance

at their arrival, individually pleasant, and after dinner I discovered

them to be socially well assorted. For the first hour or two, indeed,

after their arrival, each glared at the other across those triple

lines of moral fortification behind which every well-bred Briton takes

refuge on appearing at a friend’s country-house. But flags of truce

were interchanged over the soup, an armistice was agreed upon during

the roast, and the terms of a treaty of peace and amity were finally

ratified under the sympathetic influence of George’s best champagne. For

the achievement of this happy result Alan certainly worked hard, and

received therefor many a grateful glance from his sister-in-law. He was

more excited than I had ever seen him before, and talked brilliantly

and well—though perhaps not as exclusively to his neighbors as they may

have wished. His eyes and his attention seemed everywhere at once: one

moment he was throwing remarks across to some despairing couple opposite,

and the next he was breaking an embarrassing pause in the conversation

by some rapid sally of nonsense addressed to the table in general. He

formed a great contrast to his brother, who sat gloomy and dejected,

making little or no response to the advances of the two dowagers between

whom he was placed. After dinner the younger members of the party spent

the evening by Alan’s initiative, and chiefly under his direction, in a

series of lively and rather riotous games such as my nursery days had

delighted in, and my schoolroom ones had disdained. It was a great and

happy surprise to discover that, grown up, I might again enjoy them. I

did so, hugely, and when bedtime came all memories more serious than

those of “musical chairs” or “follow my leader” had vanished from my

mind. I think, from Alan’s glance as he handed me my bed candle, that the

pleasure and excitement must have improved my looks.

“I hope you have enjoyed your first evening of gayety, Evie,” he said.

“I have,” I answered, with happy conviction; “and really I believe that

it is chiefly owing to you, Alan.” He met my smile by another; but I

think that there must have been something in his look which recalled

other thoughts, for as I started up the stairs I threw a mischievous

glance back at him and whispered, “Now for the horrors of the haunted

chamber.”

He laughed rather loudly, and saying “Good-night, and good-luck,” turned

to attend to the other ladies.

His wishes were certainly fulfilled. I got to bed quickly, and—as soon

as my happy excitement was sufficiently calmed to admit of it—to sleep.

The only thing which disturbed me was the wind, which blew fiercely and

loudly all the earlier portion of the night, half arousing me more than

once. I spoke of it at breakfast the next morning; but the rest of the

world seemed to have slept too heavily to have been aware of it.

_IV._

The men went out shooting directly after breakfast, and we women passed

the day in orthodox country-house fashion,—working and eating; walking

and riding; driving and playing croquet; and above, beyond, and through

all things, chattering. Beyond a passing sigh while I was washing my

hands, or a moment of mournful remembrance while I changed my dress, I

had scarcely time even to regret the quiet happiness of the week that

was past. In the evening we danced in the great hall. I had two valses

with Alan. During a pause for breath, I found that we were standing

near the fireplace, on the very spot where he and George had stood on

the previous afternoon. The recollection made me involuntarily glance

up at his face. It looked sad and worried, and the thought suddenly

struck me that his extravagant spirits of the night before, and even his

quieter, careful cheerfulness of to-night, had been but artificial moods

at best. He turned, and finding my eyes fixed on him, at once plunged

into conversation, discussed the peculiarities of one of the guests,

good-humoredly enough, but with so much fun as to make me laugh in spite

of myself. Then we danced again. The plaintive music, the smooth floor,

and the partner were all alike perfect, and I experienced that entire

delight of physical enjoyment which I believe nothing but a valse under

such circumstances can give. When it was over I turned to Alan, and

exclaimed with impulsive appeal, “Oh, I am so happy,—you must be happy

too!” He smiled rather uncertainly, and answered, “Don’t bother yourself

about me, Evie, I am all right. I told you that we Mervyns had bad

nerves; and I am rather tired. That’s all.” I was passionately determined

just then upon happiness, and his was too necessary to mine for me not to

believe that he was speaking the truth.

We kept up the dancing till Lucy discovered with a shock that midnight

had struck, and that Sunday had begun, and we were all sent off to bed. I

was not long in making my nightly preparations, and had scarcely inserted

myself between the sheets when, with a few long moans, the wind began

again, more violently even than the night before. It had been a calm,

fine day, and I made wise reflections as I listened upon the uncertainty

of the north-country climate. What a tempest it was! How it moaned, and

howled, and shrieked! Where had I heard the superstition which now came

to my mind, that borne upon the wind come the spirits of the drowned,

wailing and crying for the sepulture which had been denied them? But

there were other sounds in that wind, too. Evil, murderous thoughts,

perhaps, which had never taken body in deeds, but which, caught up in

the air, now hurled themselves in impotent fury through the world. How I

wished the wind would stop. It seemed full of horrible fancies, and it

kept knocking them into my head, and it wouldn’t leave off. Fancies, or

memories—which?—and my mind reverted with a flash to the fearful thoughts

which had haunted it the day before in Dame Alice’s tower. It was dark

now. Those ghastly intangible shapes must have taken full form and color,

peopling the old ruin with their ageless hideousness. And the storm had

found them there and borne them along with it as it blew through the

creviced walls. That was why the wind’s sound struck so strangely on my

brain. Ah! I could hear them now, those still living memories of dead

horror. Through the window crannies they came shrieking and wailing.

They filled the chimney with spirit sobs, and now they were pressing on,

crowding through the room,—eager, eager to reach their prey. Nearer they

came;—nearer still! They were round my bed now! Through my closed eyelids

I could almost see their dreadful shapes; in all my quivering flesh I

felt their terrors as they bent over me,—lower, lower....

With a start I aroused myself and sat up. Was I asleep or awake? I was

trembling all over still, and it required the greatest effort of courage

I had ever made to enable me to spring from my bed and strike a light.

What a state my nerves or my digestion must be in! From my childhood

the wind had always affected me strangely, and I blamed myself now for

allowing my imagination to run away with me at the first. I found a

novel which I had brought up to my room with me, one of the modern,

Chinese-American school, where human nature is analyzed with the patient,

industrious indifference of the true Celestial. I took the book to bed

with me, and soon under its soothing influences fell asleep. I dreamt a

good deal,—nightmares, the definite recollection of which, as is so often

the case, vanished from my mind as soon as I awoke, leaving only a vague

impression of horror. They had been connected with the wind, of that

alone I was conscious, and I went down to breakfast, maliciously hoping

that others’ rest had been as much disturbed as my own.

To my surprise, however, I found that I had again been the only sufferer.

Indeed, so impressed were most of the party with the quiet in which

their night had been passed, that they boldly declared my storm to have

been the creature of my dreams. There is nothing more annoying when

you feel yourself aggrieved by fate than to be told that your troubles

have originated in your own fancy; so I dropped the subject. Though the

discussion spread for a few minutes round the whole table, Alan took

no part in it. Neither did George, except for what I thought a rather

unnecessarily rough expression of his disbelief in the cause of my

night’s disturbance. As we rose from breakfast I saw Alan glance towards

his brother, and make a movement, evidently with the purpose of speaking

to him. Whether or not George was aware of the look or action, I cannot

say; but at the same moment he made rapidly across the room to where

one of his principal guests was standing, and at once engaged him in

conversation. So earnestly and so volubly was he borne on, that they were

still talking together when we ladies appeared again some minutes later,

prepared for our walk to church. That was not the only occasion during

the day on which I witnessed as I thought the same by-play going on.

Again and again Alan appeared to be making efforts to engage George in

private conversation, and again and again the latter successfully eluded

him.

The church was about a mile away from the house, and as Lucy did not

like having the carriages out on a Sunday, one service a week as a rule

contented the household. In the afternoon we took the usual Sunday walk.

On returning from it, I had just taken off my outdoor things, and was

issuing from my bedroom, when I found myself face to face with Alan.

He was coming out of George’s study, and had succeeded apparently in

obtaining that interview for which he had been all day seeking. One

glance at his face told me what its nature had been. We paused opposite

each other for a moment, and he looked at me earnestly.

“Are you going to church?” he inquired at last, abruptly.

“No,” I answered, with some surprise. “I did not know that any one was

going this evening.”

“Will you come with me?”

“Yes, certainly; if you don’t mind waiting a moment for me to put my

things on.”

“There’s plenty of time,” he answered; “meet me in the hall.”

A few minutes later we started.

It was a calm, cloudless night, and although the moon was not yet

half-full, and already past her meridian, she filled the clear air with

gentle light. Not a word broke our silence. Alan walked hurriedly,

looking straight before him, his head upright, his lips twitching

nervously, while every now and then a half-uttered moan escaped

unconsciously from between them. At last I could bear it no longer, and

burst forth with the first remark which occurred to me. We were passing

a big black, queer-shaped stone standing in rather a lonely uncultivated

spot at one end of the garden. It was an old acquaintance of my

childhood; but my thoughts had been turned towards it now from the fact

that I could see it from my bedroom window, and had been struck afresh by

its uncouth, incongruous appearance.

“Isn’t there some story connected with that stone?” I asked. “I remember

that we always called it the Dead Stone as children.”

Alan cast a quick, sidelong glance in that direction, and his brows

contracted in an irritable frown. “I don’t know,” he answered shortly;

“they say that there is a woman buried beneath it, I believe.”

“A woman buried there!” I exclaimed in surprise; “but who?”

“How should I know? They know nothing whatever about it. The place is

full of stupid traditions of that kind.” Then, looking suspiciously round

at me, “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know; it was just something to say,” I answered plaintively. His

strange mood so worked upon my nerves, that it was all that I could do

to restrain my tears. I think that my tone struck his conscience, for he

made a few feverish attempts at conversation after that. But they were so

entirely abortive that he soon abandoned the effort, and we finished our

walk to church as speechlessly as we had begun it.

The service was bright, and the sermon perhaps a little commonplace,

but sensible as it seemed to me in matter, and adequate in style. The

peaceful evening hymn which followed, the short solemn pause of silence

prayer at the end, soothed and refreshed my spirit. A hasty glance at

my companion’s face as he stood waiting for me in the porch, with the

full light from the church streaming round him, assured me that the same

influence had touched him too. Haggard and sad he still looked, it is

true; but his features were composed, and the expression of actual pain

had left his eyes.

Silent as we had come we started homeward through the waning moonlight,

but this silence was of a very different nature to the other, and after a

minute or two I did not hesitate to break it.

“It was a good sermon?” I observed interrogatively.

“Yes,” he assented, “I suppose you would call it so; but I confess that I

should have found the text more impressive without its exposition.”

“Poor man!”

“But don’t you often find it so?” he asked. “Do you not often wish, to

take this evening’s instance, that clergymen would infuse themselves

with something of St. Paul’s own spirit? Then perhaps they would not

water all the strength out of his words in their efforts to explain them.”

“That is rather a large demand to make upon them, is it not?”

“Is it?” he questioned. “I don’t ask them to be inspired saints. I don’t

expect St. Paul’s breadth and depth of thought. But could they not have

something of his vigorous completeness, something of the intensity of his

feeling and belief? Look at the text of to-night. Did not the preacher’s

examples and applications take something from its awful unqualified

strength?”

“Awful!” I exclaimed, in surprise; “that is hardly the expression I

should have used in connection with those words.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The text is very beautiful, of course, and at times,

when people are tiresome and one ought to be nice to them, it is very

difficult to act up to. But——”

“But you think that ‘awful’ is rather a big adjective to use for so small

a duty,” interposed Alan, and the moonlight showed the flicker of a smile

upon his face. Then he continued, gravely, “I doubt whether you yourself

realize the full import of the words. The precept of charity is not

merely a code of rules by which to order our conduct to our neighbors;

it is the picture of a spiritual condition, and such, where it exists

in us, must by its very nature be roused into activity by anything that

affects us. So with this particular injunction, every circumstance in our

lives is a challenge to it, and in presence of all alike it admits of one

attitude only: ‘Beareth all things, endureth all things.’ I hope it will

be long before that ‘all’ sticks in your gizzard, Evie,—before you come

face to face with things which nature cannot bear, and yet which must be

borne.”

He stopped, his voice quivering; and then after a pause went on again

more calmly, “And throughout it is the same. Moral precepts everywhere,

which will admit of no compromise, no limitation, and yet which are

at war with our strongest passions. If one could only interpose some

‘unless,’ some ‘except,’ even an ‘until,’ which should be short of the

grave. But we cannot. The law is infinite, universal, eternal; there is

no escape, no repose. Resist, strive, endure, that is the recurring cry;

that is existence.”

“And peace,” I exclaimed, appealingly. “Where is there room for peace, if

that be true?”

He sighed for answer, and then in a changed and lower tone added,

“However thickly the clouds mass, however vainly we search for a

coming glimmer in their midst, we never doubt that the sky is still

beyond—beyond and around us, infinite and infinitely restful.”

He raised his eyes as he spoke, and mine followed his. We had entered

the wooded glen. Through the scanty autumn foliage we could see the

stars shining faintly in the dim moonlight, and beyond them the deep

illimitable blue. A dark world it looked, distant and mysterious, and my

young spirit rebelled at the consolation offered me.

“Peace seems a long way off,” I whispered.

“It is for me,” he answered, gently; “not necessarily for you.”

“Oh, but I am worse and weaker than you are. If life is to be all

warfare, I must be beaten. I cannot always be fighting.”

“Cannot you? Evie, what I have been saying is true of every moral law

worth having, of every ideal of life worth striving after, that men have

yet conceived. But it is only half the truth of Christianity. You know

that. We must strive, for the promise is to him that overcometh; but

though our aim be even higher than is that of others, we cannot in the

end fail to reach it. The victory of the Cross is ours. You know that?

You believe that?”

“Yes,” I answered, softly, too surprised to say more. In speaking

of religion he, as a rule, showed to the full the reserve which is

characteristic of his class and country, and this sudden outburst was in

itself astonishing; but the eager anxiety with which he emphasized the

last words of appeal impressed and bewildered me still further. We walked

on for some minutes in silence. Then suddenly Alan stopped, and turning,

took my hand in his. In what direction his mind had been working in the

interval I could not divine; but the moment he began to speak I felt that

he was now for the first time giving utterance to what had been really

at the bottom of his thoughts the whole evening. Even in that dim light

I could see the anxious look upon his face, and his voice shook with

restrained emotion.

“Evie,” he said, “have you ever thought of the world in which our spirits

dwell, as our bodies do in this one of matter and sense, and of how it

may be peopled? I know,” he went on hurriedly, “that it is the fashion

nowadays to laugh at such ideas. I envy those who have never had cause to

be convinced of their reality, and I hope that you may long remain among

the number. But should that not be so, should those unseen influences

ever touch your life, I want you to remember then, that, as one of the

race for whom Christ died, you have as high a citizenship in that spirit

land as any creature there: that you are your own soul’s warden, and that

neither principalities nor powers can rob you of that your birthright.”

I think my face must have shown my bewilderment, for he dropped my hand,

and walked on with an impatient sigh.

“You don’t understand me. Why should you? I daresay that I am talking

nonsense—only—only——”

His voice expressed such an agony of doubt and hesitation that I burst

out—

“I think that I do understand you a little, Alan. You mean that even from

unearthly enemies there is nothing that we need really fear—at least,

that is, I suppose, nothing worse than death. But that is surely enough!”

“Why should you fear death?” he said, abruptly; “your soul will live.”

“Yes, I know that, but still——” I stopped with a shudder.

“What is life after all but one long death?” he went on, with sudden

violence. “Our pleasures, our hopes, our youth are all dying; ambition

dies, and even desire at last; our passions and tastes will die, or will

live only to mourn their dead opportunity. The happiness of love dies

with the loss of the loved, and, worst of all, love itself grows old in

our hearts and dies. Why should we shrink only from the one death which

can free us from all the others?”

“It is not true, Alan!” I cried, hotly. “What you say is not true. There

are many things even here which are living and shall live; and if it were

otherwise, in everything, life that ends in death is better than no life

at all.”

“You say that,” he answered, “because for you these things are yet

living. To leave life now, therefore, while it is full and sweet,

untainted by death, surely that is not a fate to fear. Better, a thousand

times better, to see the cord cut with one blow while it is still whole

and strong, and to launch out straight into the great ocean, than to

sit watching through the slow years, while strand after strand, thread

by thread, loosens and unwinds itself—each with its own separate pang

breaking, bringing the bitterness of death without its release.”

His manner, the despairing ring in his voice, alarmed me even more than

his words. Clinging to his arm with both hands, while the tears sprang to

my eyes—

“Alan,” I cried, “don’t say such things,—don’t talk like that. You are

making me miserable.”

He stopped short at my words, with bent head, his features hidden in the

shadow thus cast upon them,—nothing in his motionless form to show what

was passing within him. Then he looked up, and turned his face to the

moonlight and to me, laying his hand on one of mine.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said; “it is all right, my little David. You have

driven the evil spirit away.” And lifting my hand, he pressed it gently

to his lips. Then drawing it within his arms, he went on, as he walked

forward, “And even when it was on me at its worst, I was not meditating

suicide, as I think you imagine. I am a very average specimen of

humanity,—neither brave enough to defy the possibilities of eternity nor

cowardly enough to shirk those of time. No, I was only trying idiotically

to persuade a girl of eighteen that life was not worth living; and more

futilely still, myself, that I did not wish her to live. I am afraid that

in my mind philosophy and fact have but small connection with each other;

and though my theorizing for your welfare may be true enough, yet,—I

cannot help it, Evie,—it would go terribly hard with me if anything were

to happen to you.”

His voice trembled as he finished. My fear had gone with his return to

his natural manner, but my bewilderment remained.

“Why _should_ there anything happen to me?” I asked.

“That is just it,” he answered, after a pause, looking straight in front

of him and drawing his hand wearily over his brow. “I know of no reason

why there should.” Then giving a sigh, as if finally to dismiss from his

mind a worrying subject—“I have acted for the best,” he said, “and may

God forgive me if I have done wrong.”

There was a little silence after that, and then he began to talk again,

steadily and quietly. The subject was deep enough still, as deep as

any that we had touched upon, but both voice and sentiment were calm,

bringing peace to my spirit, and soon making me forget the wonder and

fear of a few moments before. Very openly did he talk as we passed on

across the long trunk shadows and through the glades of silver light; and

I saw farther then into the most sacred recesses of his soul than I have

ever done before or since.

When we reached home the moon had already set; but some of her beams

seemed to have been left behind within my heart, so pure and peaceful was

the light which filled it.

The same feeling continued with me all through that evening. After

dinner some of the party played and sang. As it was Sunday, and Lucy was

rigid in her views, the music was of a sacred character. I sat in a low

arm-chair in a dark corner of the room, my mind too dreamy to think, and

too passive to dream. I hardly interchanged three words with Alan, who

remained in a still darker spot, invisible and silent the whole time.

Only as we left the room to go to bed, I heard Lucy ask him if he had a

headache. I did not hear his answer, and before I could see his face he

had turned back again into the drawing-room.

_V._

It was early, and when first I got to my room I felt little inclined for

sleep. I wandered to the window, and drawing aside the curtains, looked

out upon the still, starlit sky. At least I should rest quiet to-night.

The air was very clear, and the sky seemed full of stars. As I stood

there scraps of schoolroom learning came back to my mind. That the stars

were all suns, surrounded perhaps in their turn by worlds as large or

larger than our own. Worlds beyond worlds, and others farther still,

which no man might number or even descry. And about the distance of those

wonderful suns too,—that one, for instance, at which I was looking,—what

was it that I had been told? That our world was not yet peopled, perhaps

not yet formed, when the actual spot of light which now struck my sight

first started from the star’s surface! While it flashed along, itself the

very symbol of speed, the whole of mankind had had time to be born, and

live, and die!

My gaze dropped, and fell upon the dim, half-seen outline of the Dead

Stone. That woman too. While that one ray speeded towards me her life

had been lived and ended, and her body had rotted away into the ground.

How close together we all were! Her life and mine; our joys, sufferings,

deaths—all crowded together into the space of one flash of light! And yet

there was nothing there but a horrible skeleton of dead bones, while I——!

I stopped with a shudder, and turned back into the room. I wished that

Alan had not told me what lay under the stone; I wished that I had never

asked him. It was a ghastly thing to think about, and spoilt all the

beauty of the night to me.

I got quickly into bed, and soon dropped asleep. I do not know how long

I slept; but when I woke it was with the consciousness again of that

haunting wind.

It was worse than ever. The world seemed filled with its din. Hurling

itself passionately against the house, it gathered strength with every

gust, till it seemed as if the old walls must soon crash in ruins round

me. Gust upon gust; blow upon blow; swelling, lessening, never ceasing.

The noise surrounded me; it penetrated my inmost being, as all-pervading

as silence itself, and wrapping me in a solitude even more complete.

There was nothing left in the world but the wind and I, and then a weird

intangible doubt as to my own identity seized me. The wind was real, the

wind with its echoes of passion and misery from the eternal abyss; but

was there anything else? What was, and what had been, the world of sense

and of knowledge, my own consciousness, my very self—all seemed gathered

up and swept away in that one sole-existent fury of sound.

I pulled myself together, and getting out of bed, groped my way to the

table which stood between the bed and the fireplace. The matches were

there, and my half-burnt candle, which I lit. The wind penetrating the

rattling casement circled round the room, and the flame of my candle

bent and flared and shrank before it, throwing strange moving lights and

shadows in every corner. I stood there shivering in my thin nightdress,

half stunned by the cataract of noise beating on the walls outside, and

peered anxiously around me. The room was not the same. Something was

changed. What was it? How the shadows leaped and fell, dancing in time to

the wind’s music. Everything seemed alive. I turned my head slowly to

the left, and then to the right, and then round—and stopped with a sudden

gasp of fear.

The cabinet was open!

I looked away, and back, and again. There was no room for doubt. The

doors were thrown back, and were waving gently in the draught. One of the

lower drawers was pulled out, and in a sudden flare of the candle-light

I could see something glistening at its bottom. Then the light dwindled

again, the candle was almost out, and the cabinet showed a dim black

mass in the darkness. Up and down went the flame, and each returning

brightness flashed back at me from the thing inside the drawer. I stood

fascinated, my eyes fixed upon the spot, waiting for the fitful glitter

as it came and went. What was there? I knew that I must go and see, but I

did not want to. If only the cabinet would close again before I looked,

before I knew what was inside it. But it stood open, and the glittering

thing lay there, dragging me towards itself.

Slowly at last, and with infinite reluctance, I went. The drawer was

lined with soft white satin, and upon the satin lay a long, slender

knife, hilted and sheathed in antique silver, richly set with jewels. I

took it up and turned back to the table to examine it. It was Italian

in workmanship, and I knew that the carving and chasing of the silver

were more precious even than the jewels which studded it, and whose

rough setting gave so firm a grasp to my hand. Was the blade as fair as

the covering, I wondered? A little resistance at first, and then the

long thin steel slid easily out. Sharp, and bright, and finely tempered

it looked with its deadly, tapering point. Stains, dull and irregular,

crossed the fine engraving on its surface and dimmed its polish. I bent

to examine them more closely, and as I did so a sudden stronger gust

of wind blew out the candle. I shuddered a little at the darkness and

looked up. But it did not matter: the curtain was still drawn away from

the window opposite my bedside, and through it a flood of moonlight was

pouring in upon floor and bed.

Putting the sheath down upon the table, I walked to the window to examine

the knife more closely by that pale light. How gloriously brilliant it

was, darkened now and again by the quickly passing shadows of wind-driven

clouds! At least so I thought, and I glanced up and out of the window

to see them. A black world met my gaze. Neither moon was there nor

moonlight. The broad silver beam in which I stood stretched no farther

than the window. I caught my breath, my limbs stiffened as I looked. No

moon, no cloud, no movement in the clear, calm starlit sky; while still

the ghastly light stretched round me, and the spectral shadows drifted

across the room.

But it was not all dark outside. One spot caught my eye, bright with a

livid unearthly brightness—the Dead Stone shining out into the night

like an ember from hell’s furnace! There was a horrid semblance of life

in the light—a palpitating, breathing glow—and my pulses beat in time to

it, till I seemed to be drawing it into my veins. It had no warmth, and

as it entered my blood my heart grew colder, and my muscles more rigid.

My fingers clutched the dagger-hilt till its jeweled roughness pressed

painfully into my palm. All the strength of my strained powers seemed

gathered in that grasp, and the more tightly I held the more vividly did

the rock gleam and quiver with infernal life. The dead woman! The dead

woman! What had I to do with her? Let her bones rest in the filth of

their own decay, out there under the accursed stone.

And now the noise of the wind lessens in my ears. Let it go on—yes,

louder and wilder, drowning my senses in its tumult. What is there with

me in the room—the great empty room behind me? Nothing; only the cabinet

with its waving doors. They are waving to and fro, to and fro—I know it.

But there is no other life in the room but that—no, no; no other life in

the room but that.

Oh! don’t let the wind stop. I can’t hear anything while it goes on—but

if it stops! Ah! the gusts grow weaker, struggling, forced into rest.

Now—now—they have ceased.

Silence!

A fearful pause.

What is that I hear? There, behind me in the room?

Do I hear it? Is there anything?

The throbbing of my own blood in my ears.

No, no! There is something as well—something outside myself.

What is it?

Low; heavy; regular.

God! it is—it is the breath of a living creature! A living creature

here—close to me—alone with me!

The numbness of terror conquers me. I can neither stir nor speak. Only my

whole soul strains at my ears to listen.

Where does the sound come from?

Close behind me—close.

Ah-h!

It is from there—from the bed where I was lying a moment ago!...

I try to shriek, but the sound gurgles unuttered in my throat. I clutch

the stone mullions of the window, and press myself against the panes. If

I could but throw myself out—anywhere, anywhere—away from that dreadful

sound—from that thing close behind me in the bed! But I can do nothing.

The wind has broken forth again now; the storm crashes round me. And

still through it all I hear the ghastly breathing—even, low, scarcely

audible—but I hear it. I shall hear it as long as I live!...

Is the thing moving?

Is it coming nearer?

No, no; not that—that was but a fancy to freeze me dead.

But to stand here, with that creature behind me, listening, waiting for

the warm horror of its breath to touch my neck! Ah! I cannot. I will

look. I will see it face to face. Better any agony than this one.

Slowly, with held breath, and eyes aching in their stretched fixity, I

turn. There it is? Clear in the moonlight I see the monstrous form within

the bed—the dark coverlet rises and falls with its heaving breath.... Ah!

heaven have mercy! Is there none to help, none to save me from this awful

presence?...

And the knife-hilt draws my fingers round it, while my flesh quivers,

and my soul grows sick with loathing. The wind howls, the shadows chase

through the room, hunting with fearful darkness more fearful light; and I

stand looking ... listening....

* * * * *

I must not stand here forever; I must be up and doing. What a noise the

wind makes, and the rattling of the windows and the doors. If he sleeps

through this he will sleep through all. Noiselessly my bare feet tread

the carpet as I approach the bed; noiselessly my left arm raises the

heavy curtain. What does it hide? Do I not know? The bestial features,

half-hidden in coarse, black growth; the muddy, blotched skin, oozing

foulness at every pore. Oh, I know them too well! What a monster it is!

How the rank breath gurgles through his throat in his drunken sleep. The

eyes are closed now, but I know them too; their odious leer, and the

venomous hatred with which they can glare at me from their bloodshot

setting. But the time has come at last. Never again shall their passion

insult me, or their fury degrade me in slavish terror. There he lies;

there at my mercy, the man who for fifteen years has made God’s light

a shame to me, and His darkness a terror. The end has come at last—the

only end possible, the only end left me. On his head be the blood and the

crime! God almighty, I am not guilty! The end has come; I can bear my

burden no farther.

“Beareth all things, endureth all things.”

Where have I heard those words? They are in the Bible; the precept of

charity. What has that to do with me? Nothing. I heard the words in

my dreams somewhere. A white-faced man said them, a white-faced man

with pure eyes. To me—no, no, not to me; to a girl it was—an ignorant,

innocent girl, and she accepted them as an eternal, unqualified law. Let

her bear but half that I have borne, let her endure but one-tenth of what

I have endured, and then if she dare let her speak in judgment against me.

Softly now; I must draw the heavy coverings away, and bare his breast

to the stroke—the stroke that shall free me. I know well where to plant

it; I have learned that from the old lady’s Italian. Did he guess why

I questioned him so closely of the surest, straightest road to a man’s

heart? No matter, he cannot hinder me now. Gently! Ah! I have disturbed

him. He moves, mutters in his sleep, throws out his arm. Down; down;

crouching behind the curtain. Heavens! if he wakes and sees me, he will

kill me! No, alas, if only he would. I would kiss the hand that he struck

me with; but he is too cruel for that. He will imagine some new and

more hellish torture to punish me with. But the knife! I have got that;

he shall never touch me living again.... He is quieter now. I hear his

breath, hoarse and heavy as a wild beast’s panting. He draws it more

evenly, more deeply. The danger is past. Thank God!

God! What have I to do with Him? A God of Judgment. Ha, ha! Hell cannot

frighten me; it will not be worse than earth. Only he will be there too.

Not with him, not with him—send me to the lowest circle of torment, but

not with him. There, his breast is bare now. Is the knife sharp? Yes; and

the blade is strong enough. Now let me strike—myself afterwards if need

be, but him first. Is it the devil that prompts me? Then the devil is my

friend, and the friend of the world. No, God is a God of love. He cannot

wish such a man to live. He made him, but the devil spoilt him; and let

the devil have his handiwork back again. It has served him long enough

here; and its last service shall be to make me a murderess.

How the moonlight gleams from the blade as my arm swings up and back:

with how close a grasp the rough hilt draws my fingers round it. Now.

A murderess?

Wait a moment. A moment may make me free; a moment may make me—that!

Wait. Hand and dagger droop again. His life has dragged its slime over my

soul; shall his death poison it with a fouler corruption still?

“My own soul’s warden.”

What was that? Dream memories again.

“Resist, strive, endure.”

Easy words. What do they mean for me? To creep back now to bed by his

side, and to begin living again tomorrow the life which I have lived

today? No, no; I cannot do it. Heaven cannot ask it of me. And there is

no other way. That or this; this or that. Which shall it be? Ah! I have

striven, God knows. I have endured so long that I hoped even to do so

to the end. But today! Oh! the torment and the outrage: body and soul

still bear the stain of it. I thought that my heart and my pride were

dead together, but he has stung them again into aching, shameful life.

Yesterday I might have spared him, to save my own cold soul from sin; but

now it is cold no longer. It burns, it burns and the fire must be slaked.

Ay, I will kill him, and have done with it. Why should I pause any

longer? The knife drags my hand back for the stroke. Only the dream

surrounds me; the pure man’s face is there, white, beseeching, and God’s

voice rings in my heart—

“To him that overcometh.”

But I cannot overcome. Evil has governed my life, and evil is stronger

than I am. What shall I do? What shall I do? God, if Thou art stronger

than evil, fight for me.

“The victory of the Cross is ours.”

Yes, I know it. It is true, it is true. But the knife? I cannot loose the

knife if I would. How to wrench it from my own hold? Thou God of Victory

be with me! Christ help me!

I seize the blade with my left hand; the two-edged steel slides through

my grasp; a sharp pain in my fingers and palm; and then nothing....

_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, forever. 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 know—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 forever, 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.”

“Yea,” 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 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 wickedness 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.

_VII._

“Well, about five years ago, before I had taken my degree, I became

acquainted with a woman whom I will call ‘Delia,’—it is near enough

to the name by which she went. She was a few years older than myself,

very beautiful, and I believed her to be what she described herself—the

innocent victim of circumstance and false appearance, a helpless prey

to the vile calumnies of worldlings. In sober fact, I am afraid that

whatever her life may have been actually at the time that I knew her—a

subject which I have never cared to investigate—her past had been not

only bad enough irretrievably to fix her position in society, but bad

enough to leave her without an ideal in the world, though still retaining

within her heart the possibilities of a passion which, from the moment

that it came to life, was strong enough to turn her whole existence

into one desperate reckless straining after an object hopelessly beyond

her reach. That was the woman with whom, at the age of twenty, I

fancied myself in love. She wanted to get a husband, and she thought

me—rightly—ass enough to accept the post. I was very young then even for

my years,—a student, an idealist, with an imagination highly developed,

and no knowledge whatever of the world as it actually is. Anyhow, before

I had known her a month, I had determined to make her my wife. My parents

were abroad at the time, George and Lucy here, so that it was to Jack

that I imparted the news of my resolve. As you may imagine, he did

all that he could to shake it. But I was immovable. I disbelieved his

facts, and despised his contempt from the standpoint of my own superior

morality. This state of things continued for several weeks, during the

greater part of which time I was at Oxford. I only knew that while I was

there, Jack had made Delia’s acquaintance, and was apparently cultivating

it assiduously.

“One day, during the Easter vacation, I got a note from her asking me to

supper at her house. Jack was invited too. We lodged together while my

people were away.

“There is no need to dwell upon that supper. There were two or three

women there of her own sort, or worse, and a dozen men from among the

most profligate in London. The conversation was, I should think, bad even

for that class; and she, the goddess of my idolatry, outstripped them all

by the foul, coarse shamelessness of her language and behavior. Before

the entertainment was half over, I rose and took my leave, accompanied

by Jack and another man—Legard was his name—who I presume was bored.

Just as we had passed through into the anteroom, which lay beyond the

one in which we had been eating, Delia followed us, and laying her hand

on Jack’s arm, said that she must speak with him. Legard and I went into

the outer hall, and we had not been there more than a minute when the

door from the anteroom opened, and we heard Delia’s voice. I remember the

words well—that was not the only occasion on which I was to hear them. ‘I

will keep the ring as a record of my love,’ she said, ‘and understand,

that though you may forget, I never shall.’ Jack came through, the door

closed, and as we went out I glanced towards his left hand, and saw, as

I expected to see, the absence of the ring which he usually wore there.

It contained a gem which my mother had picked up in the East, and I knew

that he valued it quite peculiarly. We always called it Jack’s talisman.

“A miserable time followed, a time for me of agonizing wonder and doubt,

during which regret for my dead illusion was entirely swallowed up in the

terrible dread of my brother’s degradation. Then came the announcement

of his engagement to Lady Sylvia Grey; and a week later, the very day

after I had finally returned to London from Oxford, I received a summons

from Delia to come and see her. Curiosity, and the haunting fear about

Jack, which still hung round me, induced me to consent to what otherwise

would have been intolerably repellent to me, and I went. I found her

in a mad passion of fury. Jack had refused to see her or to answer her

letters, and she had sent for me, that I might give him her message—tell

him that he belonged to her and her only and that he never should marry

another woman. Angry at my interference, Jack disdained even to repudiate

her claims, only sending back a threat of appealing to the police if

she ventured upon any further annoyance. I wrote as she told me, and

she emphasized my silence on the subject by writing back to me a more

definite and explicit assertion of her rights. Beyond that for some

weeks she made no sign. I have no doubt that she had means of keeping

watch upon both his movements and mine; and during that time, as she

relinquished gradually all hopes of inducing him to abandon his purpose,

she was being driven to her last despairing resolve.

“Later, when all was over, Jack told me the story of that spring and

summer. He told me how, when he found me immovable on the subject, he

had resolved to stop the marriage somehow through Delia herself. He had

made her acquaintance, and sought her society frequently. She had taken

a fancy to him, and he admitted that he had availed himself of this fact

to increase his intimacy with her, and, as he hoped ultimately, his power

over her, but he was not conscious of ever having varied in his manner

towards her of contemptuous indifference. This contradictory behavior—his

being constantly near her, yet always beyond her reach—was probably the

very thing which excited her fancy into passion, and the one strong

passion of the poor woman’s life. Then came his deliberate demand that

she should by her own act unmask herself in my sight. The unfortunate

woman tried to bargain for some proof of affection in return, and on this

occasion had first openly declared her feelings towards him. He did not

believe her; he refused her terms; but when as her payment she asked for

the ring which was so especially associated with himself, he agreed to

give it to her. Otherwise hoping, no doubt against hope, dreading above

all things a quarrel and final separation, she submitted unconditionally.

And from the time of that evening, when Legard and I had overheard

her parting words, Jack never saw her again until the last and final

catastrophe.

“It was in July. My parents had returned to England, but had come

straight on here. Jack and I were dining together with Lady Sylvia at her

father’s house—her brother, young Grey, making the fourth at dinner. I

had arranged to go to a party with your mother, and I told the servants

that a lady would call for me early in the evening. The house stood in

Park Lane, and after dinner we all went out on to the broad balcony which

opened from the drawing-room. There was a strong wind blowing that night,

and I remember well the vague, disquieted feeling of unreality that

possessed me—sweeping through me, as it were, with each gust of wind.

Then, suddenly, a servant stood behind me, saying that the lady had come

for me, and was in the drawing-room. Shocked that my aunt should have

troubled herself to come so far, I turned quickly, stepped back into the

room, and found myself face to face with Delia. She was fully dressed for

the evening, with a long silk opera-cloak over her shoulders, her face

as white as her gown, her splendid eyes strangely wide open and shining.

I don’t know what I said or did. I tried to get her away, but it was too

late. The others had heard us, and appeared at the open window. Jack came

forward at once, speaking rapidly, fiercely; telling her to leave the

house at once; promising desperately that he would see her in his own

rooms on the morrow. Well I remember how her answer rang out—

“‘Neither tomorrow nor another day. I will never leave you again while I

live.’

“At the same instant she drew something swiftly from under her cloak,

there was the sound of a pistol shot and she lay dead at our feet, her

blood splashing upon Jack’s shirt and hands as she fell.”

Alan paused in his recital. He was trembling from head to foot; but he

kept his eyes turned steadily downwards, and both face and voice were

cold—almost expressionless.

“Of course there was an inquest,” he resumed, “which, as usual, exercised

its very ill-defined powers in inquiring into all possible motives for

the suicide. Young Grey, who had stepped into the room just before the

shot had been fired, swore to the last words Delia had uttered; Legard

to those he had overheard the night of that dreadful supper. There

were scores of men to bear witness to the intimate relations which had

existed between her and Jack during the whole of the previous spring. I

had to give evidence. A skillful lawyer had been retained by one of her

sisters, and had been instructed by her on points which no doubt she

had originally learnt from Delia herself. In his hands, I had not only

to corroborate Grey and Legard, and to give full details of that last

interview, but also to swear to the peculiar value which Jack attached to

the talisman ring which he had given Delia; to the language she had held

when I saw her after my return from Oxford; to her subsequent letter,

and Jack’s fatal silence on the occasion. The story by which Jack and I

strove to account for the facts was laughed at as a clumsy invention, and

my undisguised reluctance in giving evidence added greatly to its weight

against my brother’s character.

“The jury returned a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind, the

result of desertion by her lover. You may imagine how that verdict was

commented upon by every Radical newspaper in the kingdom, and for once

society more than corroborated the opinions of the press. The larger

public regarded the story as an extreme case of the innocent victim and

the cowardly society villain. It was only among a comparatively small set

that Delia’s reputation was known, and there, in view of Jack’s notorious

and peculiar intimacy, his repudiation of all relations with her was

received with contemptuous incredulity. That he should have first entered

upon such relations at the very time when he was already courting Lady

Sylvia was regarded even in those circles as a ‘strong order,’ and they

looked upon his present attitude with great indignation, as a cowardly

attempt to save his own character by casting upon the dead woman’s memory

all the odium of a false accusation. With an entire absence of logic,

too, he was made responsible for the suicide having taken place in Lady

Sylvia’s presence. She had broken off the engagement the day after the

catastrophe, and her family, a clan powerful in the London world, furious

at the mud through which her name had been dragged, did all that they

could to intensify the feeling already existing against Jack.

“Not a voice was raised in his defense. He was advised to leave the

army; he was requested to withdraw from some of his clubs, turned out of

others, avoided by his fast acquaintances, cut by his respectable ones.

It was enough to kill a weaker man.

“He showed no resentment at the measure thus dealt out to him. Indeed,

at the first, except for Sylvia’s desertion of him, he seemed dully

indifferent to it all. It was as if his soul had been stunned, from the

moment that that wretched woman’s blood had splashed upon his fingers,

and her dead eyes had looked into his own.

“But it was not long before he realized the full extent of the social

damnation which had been inflicted upon him, and he then resolved to

leave the country and go to America. The night before he started he came

down here to take leave. I was here looking after my parents—George,

whose mind was almost unhinged by the family disgrace, having gone

abroad with his wife. My mother at the first news of what had happened

had taken to her bed, never to leave it again; and thus it was in my

presence alone, up there in my father’s little study, that Jack gave him

that night the whole story. He told it quietly enough; but when he had

finished, with a sudden outburst of feeling he turned upon me. It was I

who had been the cause of it all. My insensate folly had induced him to

make the unhappy woman’s acquaintance, to allow and even encourage her

fatal love, to commit all the blunders and sins which had brought about

her miserable ending and his final overthrow. It was by means of me that

she had obtained access to him on that dreadful night; my evidence which

most utterly damned him in public opinion; through me he had lost his

reputation, his friends, his career, his country, the woman he loved,

his hopes for the future; through me, above all, that the burden of that

horrible death would lie forever on his soul. He was lashing himself to

fury with his own words as he spoke; and I stood leaning against the

wall opposite to him cold, dumb, unresisting, when suddenly my father

interrupted. I think that both Jack and I had forgotten his presence;

but at the sound of his voice, changed from what we had ever heard it,

we turned to him, and I then for the first time saw in his face the

death-look which never afterwards quitted it.

“‘Stop, Jack,’ he said; ‘Alan is not to blame; and if it had not been in

this way, it would have been in some other. I only am guilty, who brought

you both into existence with my own hell-stained blood in your veins. If

you wish to curse anyone, curse your family, your name, me if you will,

and may God forgive me that you were ever born into the world!’”

Alan stopped with a shudder, and then continued, dully, “It was when I

heard those words, the most terrible that a father could have uttered,

that I first understood all that that old sixteenth-century tale might

mean to me and mine—I have realized it vividly enough since. Early the

next morning, when the dawn was just breaking, Jack came to the door of

my room to bid me good-by. All his passion was gone. His looks and tones

seemed part and parcel of the dim gray morning light. He freely withdrew

all the charges he had made against me the night before; forgave me all

the share that I had had in his misfortunes; and then begged that I would

never come near him, or let him hear from me again. ‘The curse is heavy

upon us both,’ he said, ‘and it is the only favor which you can do me.’ I

have never seen him since.”

“But you have heard of him!” I exclaimed; “what has become of him?”

Alan raised himself to a sitting posture. “The last that I heard,” he

said, with a catch in his voice, “was that in his misery and hopelessness

he was taking to drink. George writes to him, and does what he can; but

I—I dare not say a word, for fear it should turn to poison on my lips—I

dare not lift a hand to help him, for fear it should have power to strike

him to the ground. The worst may be yet to come; I am still living, still

living. There are depths of shame to which he has not sunk. And oh, Evie,

Evie, he is my own, my best-loved brother!”

All his composure was gone now. His voice rose to a kind of wail with

the last words, and folding his arms on his raised knee, he let his

head fall upon them, while his figure quivered with scarcely restrained

emotion. There was a silence for some moments while he sat thus, I

looking on in wretched helplessness beside him. Then he raised his head,

and, without looking round at me, went on in a low tone: “And what is

in the future? I pray that death instead of shame may be the portion of

the next generation, and I look at George’s boys only to wonder which of

them is the happy one who shall some day lie dead at his brother’s feet.

Are you surprised at my resolution never to marry? The fatal prophecy is

rich in its fulfillment; none of our name and blood are safe; and the day

might come when I too should have to call upon my children to curse me

for their birth,—should have to watch while the burden which I could no

longer bear alone pressed the life from their mother’s heart.”

Through the tragedy of this speech I was conscious of a faint suggestion

of comfort, a far-off glimmer, as of unseen home-lights on a midnight

sky. I was in no mood then to understand, or to seek to understand, what

it was; but I know now that his words had removed the weight of helpless

banishment from my spirit—that his heart, speaking through them to my

own, had made me for life the sharer of his grief.

_VIII._

Presently he drew his shoulders together with a slight determined

jerk, threw himself back upon the grass, and turning to me, with that

tremulous, haggard smile upon his lips which I knew so well, but which

had never before struck me with such infinite pathos, “Luckily,” he said,

“there are other things to do in life besides being happy. Only perhaps

you understand now what I meant last night when I spoke of things which

flesh and blood cannot bear, and yet which must be borne.”

Suddenly and sharply his words roused again into activity the loathsome

memory which my interest in his story had partially deadened. He noticed

the quick involuntary contraction of my muscles, and read it aright.

“That reminds me,” he went on; “I must claim your promise. I have told

you my story. Now, tell me yours.”

I told him; not as I have set it down here, though perhaps even in

greater detail, but incoherently, bit by bit, while he helped me out with

gentle questions, quickly comprehending gestures, and patient waiting

during the pauses of exhaustion which perforce interposed themselves. As

my story approached its climax, his agitation grew almost equal to my

own, and he listened to the close, his teeth clenched, his brows bent,

as if passing again with me through that awful conflict. When I had

finished, it was some moments before either of us could speak; and then

he burst forth into bitter self-reproach for having so far yielded to his

brother’s angry obstinacy as to allow me to sleep the third night in that

fatal room.

“It was cowardice,” he said, “sheer cowardice! After all that has

happened, I dared not have a quarrel with one of my own blood. And yet if

I had not hardened my heart, I had reason to know what I was risking.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Those other two girls who slept there,” he said, breathlessly; “it was

in each case after the third night there that they were found dead—dead,

Evie, so runs the story, with a mark upon their necks similar in shape

and position to the death-wound which Margaret Mervyn inflicted upon

herself.”