“And I knew the story,—I knew it!” he cried. “As boys we were not allowed
to hear much of our family traditions, but this one I knew. When my
father redid the interior of the east room, he removed at the same time
a board from above the doorway outside, on which had been written—it
is said by Dame Alice herself—a warning upon this very subject. I
happened to be present when our old housekeeper, who had been his nurse,
remonstrated with him warmly upon this act; and I asked her afterwards
what the board was, and why she cared about it so much. In her excitement
she told me the story of those unhappy girls, repeating again and again
that, if the warning were taken away, evil would come of it.”
“And she was right,” I said, dully. “Oh, if only your father had left it
there!”
“I suppose,” he answered, speaking more quietly, “that he was impatient
of traditions which, as I told you, he at that time more than half
despised. Indeed he altered the shape of the doorway, raising it, and
making it flat and square, so that the old inscription could not have
been replaced, even had it been wished. I remember it was fitted round
the low Tudor arch which was previously there.”
My mind, too worn with many emotions for deliberate thought, wandered on
languidly, and as it were mechanically, upon these last trivial words.
The doorway presented itself to my view as it had originally stood, with
the discarded warning above it; and then, by a spontaneous comparison of
mental vision, I recalled the painted board which I had noticed three
days before in Dame Alice’s tower. I suggested to Alan that it might have
been the identical one—its shape was as he described. “Very likely,” he
answered, absently. “Do you remember what the words were?”
“Yes, I think so,” I replied. “Let me see.” And I repeated them slowly,
dragging them out as it were one by one from my memory:
“Where the woman sinned the maid shall win;
But God help the maid that sleeps within.”
“You see,” I said, turning towards him slowly, “the last line is a
warning such as you spoke of.”
But to my surprise Alan had sprung to his feet, and was looking down at
me, his whole body quivering with excitement. “Yes, Evie,” he cried, “and
the first line is a prophecy;—where the woman sinned the maid _has_ won.”
He seized the hand which I instinctively reached out to him. “We have
not seen the end of this yet,” he went on, speaking rapidly, and as if
articulation had become difficult to him. “Come, Evie, we must go back to
the house and look at the cabinet—now, at once.”
I had risen to my feet by this time, but I shrank away at those words,
“To that room? Oh, Alan—no, I cannot.”
He had hold of my hand still, and he tightened his grasp upon it. “I
shall be with you; you will not be afraid with me,” he said. “Come.” His
eyes were burning, his face flushed and paled in rapid alternation, and
his hand held mine like a vice of iron.
I turned with him, and we walked back to the Grange, Alan quickening his
pace as he went, till I almost had to run by his side. As we approached
the dreaded room my sense of repulsion became almost unbearable; but I
was now infected by his excitement, though I but dimly comprehended its
cause. We met no one on our way, and in a moment he had hurried me into
the house, up the stairs, and along the narrow passage, and I was once
more in the east room, and in the presence of all the memories of that
accursed night. For an instant I stood strengthless, helpless, on the
threshold, my gaze fixed panic-stricken on the spot where I had taken
such awful part in that phantom tragedy of evil; then Alan threw his
arm round me, and drew me hastily on in front of the cabinet. Without
a pause, giving himself time neither to speak nor think, he stretched
out his left hand and moved the buttons one after another. How or in
what direction he moved them I know not; but as the last turned with a
click, the doors, which no mortal hand had unclosed for three hundred
years, flew back, and the cabinet stood open. I gave a little gasp of
fear. Alan pressed his lips closely together, and turned to me with eager
questioning in his eyes. I pointed in answer tremblingly at the drawer
which I had seen open the night before. He drew it out, and there on its
satin bed lay the dagger in its silver sheath. Still without a word he
took it up, and reaching his right hand round me, for I could not now
have stood had he withdrawn his support, with a swift strong jerk he
unsheathed the blade. There in the clear autumn sunshine I could see the
same dull stains I had marked in the flickering candle-light, and over
them, still ruddy and moist, were the drops of my own half-dried blood.
I grasped the lapel of his coat with both my hands, and clung to him
like a child in terror, while the eyes of both of us remained fixed as
if fascinated upon the knife-blade. Then, with a sudden start of memory,
Alan raised his to the cornice of the cabinet, and mine followed. No
change that I could detect had taken place in that twisted goldwork; but
there, clear in the sight of us both, stood forth the words of the magic
motto:
“Pure blood shed by the blood-stained knife
Ends Mervyn shame, heals Mervyn strife.”
In low steady tones Alan read out the lines, and then there was
silence—on my part of stunned bewilderment, the bewilderment of a spirit
overwhelmed beyond the power of comprehension by rushing, conflicting
emotions. Alan pressed me closer to him, while the silence seemed to
throb with the beating of his heart and the panting of his breath. But
except for that he remained motionless, gazing at the golden message
before him. At length I felt a movement, and looking up saw his face
turned down towards mine, the lips quivering, the cheeks flushed, the
eyes soft with passionate feeling. “We are saved, my darling,” he
whispered; “saved, and through you.” Then he bent his head lower, and
there in that room of horror, I received the first long lover’s kiss from
my own dear husband’s lips.
* * * * *
My husband, yes; but not till some time after that. Alan’s first act,
when he had once fully realized that the curse was indeed removed,
was—throwing his budding practice to the winds—to set sail for America.
There he sought out Jack, and labored hard to impart to him some of his
own newfound hope. It was slow work, but he succeeded at last; and only
left him when, two years later, he had handed him over to the charge
of a bright-eyed Western girl, to whom the whole story had been told,
and who showed herself ready and anxious to help in building up again
the broken life of her English lover. To judge from the letters that we
have since received, she has shown herself well fitted for the task.
Among other things she has money, and Jack’s worldly affairs have so
prospered that George declares that he can well afford now to waste some
of his superfluous cash upon farming a few of his elder brother’s acres.
The idea seems to smile upon Jack, and I have every hope this winter of
being able to institute an actual comparison between our small boy, his
namesake, and his own three-year-old Alan. The comparison, by the way,
will have to be conditional, for Jacket—the name by which my son and heir
is familiarly known—is but a little more than two.
I turn my eyes for a moment, and they fall upon the northern corner of
the East Room, which shows round the edge of the house. Then the skeleton
leaps from the cupboard of my memory; the icy hand which lies ever near
my soul grips it suddenly with a chill shudder. Not for nothing was that
wretched woman’s life interwoven with my own, if only for an hour; not
for nothing did my spirit harbor a conflict and an agony, which, thank
God, are far from its own story. Though Margaret Mervyn’s dagger failed
to pierce my flesh, the wound in my soul may never wholly be healed. I
know that that is so; and yet as I turn to start through the sunshine
to the cedar shade and its laughing occupants, I whisper to myself with
fervent conviction, “It was worth it.”