TREWINION'S CURSE
I rose from the chair on which I had been sitting during the latter
part of my conversation with my mother, and made one step forward.
"Wilfred!"
"Roger!"
"You here!" I exclaimed bewildered.
"Ah, my presence surprises you, does it?" he said, and every tone of
his voice told of vindictiveness--hatred.
For a moment I could not think; my head whirled and I staggered to my
seat as though I were a drunken man. Wilfred was not dead, the guilt
of his murder did not rest upon me, I was free--free! I had not hurled
him to his death on that awful night; my gloomy forebodings had no real
foundation.
How had he managed to escape? I had stood with him alone on that dizzy
height, and as far as I remembered the cliff was perpendicular there;
he had I felt slipped from me, and I had heard the sound of a falling
body.
"What do you here?" he exclaimed, after a minute of silence; "how dared
you return to your native shore thinking as you did."
"I thought you dead," I gasped, "dead by my hand, and I could not rest.
I wandered from place to place, but I found no peace, until I
determined to confess what I thought I had done."
"And you came home for that?"
"For that."
"Fool, fool that I was not to think of the idiot's conscientiousness,"
he muttered, "then all might have been arranged even yet; but now he
knows all, and I am undone."
"But how did you manage to escape?" I asked, still in a dazed kind of
way.
"I will tell you," he replied, with a bitter, mocking laugh, "for
nothing can be altered now. You thought you knew more than anyone
about our coast, but I had found a place of which you knew nothing.
There is a crevice and a broad ledge beneath that place where we
wrestled, and finding that you were stronger than I, I determined to do
by cunning what I could not do by brute force. So dragging you to this
place I slipped from you, fell down upon this ledge, and allowed you to
think you had murdered me!"
He spoke with all the bitterness and cruelty of which any one could be
capable, and as I thought of what I had suffered, of the hell in which
I had lived through long months, I realised something of the old
feeling which I had entertained for him on that awful night.
"And after all, I have served you out," he went on. "I have enjoyed
Trewinion's wealth for eleven years, and I have made the most of it.
You may claim possession if you will; but precious little you will
have. I have mortgaged it up to every farthing it is worth, and if you
hadn't come soon you would have found another family here. Even now
you will have a difficulty in keeping the house above your head," and
he laughed mockingly.
As he said this, it struck me that he was trying to make me angry, and
as I saw the wickedness and meanness of his heart, I felt a great
bitterness rising within me. Then I remembered what I felt at
Smyrna--how I had prayed that God would help me to love, and in a
second the bitterness was gone, and all harsh feelings were turned to
pity. I saw the veil torn aside, and I knew that, much as I had
suffered, he had suffered more; that deep as I had been in hell, he had
been in a hell yet deeper. I did not remember the deceit, the fraud,
the treachery he had practised towards me, I only thought of the
possible Wilfred, the Wilfred as he might have been, and as God
intended he should be.
"And what do you intend to do?" said my mother, for such I shall
continue to call her.
"Do, mother," I said. "I shall do nothing."
"Do! What can he do?" laughed Wilfred. "His hands are tied. I am
glad on the whole that he has come, for the place is accursed. It has
never given me anything but misery. I have been in a constant fever.
And Roger will suffer more, I am glad to say. As for you, mother,
serve you right if you never have another day's happiness."
"Wilfred, my boy," said mother, "how can you say so?"
"Say so," repeated Wilfred, "because you have been my real curse. Who
taught me first to envy Roger? You. Who taught me to hate him
afterwards? You. Who was ever at my elbow seeking to make me
misrepresent his every action? You. Who taught me how to deceive
Ruth? You. But for you I should have been content to be the younger
son, content to be the vicar of the parish; but bitterness was
instilled into my heart as a child, until I hated him as I hate all the
world. I wish he had killed me a year ago, for then I would have
haunted him until life should be such a ghastly possession that he
should seek death. But, never mind. Trewinion's curse is fulfilled in
him; he has suffered, and he will have to suffer."
"How?" I said, with pain at my heart.
"How?" he said, "You have broken every condition of happiness, you have
violated every law of our people. It is a law that Trewinion's heir
should never be away from the homestead for more than six months at a
time, and you have been away eleven years. It is written in the curse,
at which you have reason to tremble, that if you stray from God's pure
laws you shall be cursed and crushed by a younger brother. The curse
of our people ever rests upon the heir who hates, and you hate me."
I did not believe in the "curse" at this time; I felt that Wilfred had
a purpose in speaking thus, and yet a strange awesome feeling crept
around my heart as he spoke. Did Wilfred really believe in this legend
of our people? I did not know. Certainly all our family had believed
it in the past, and strange things had happened to our race. Was
ill-luck ever to follow me? Was a dark pall ever to rest upon my life?
All this time I had been living in a sort of dream. I had as yet
scarcely realised that Wilfred was not dead, as yet the awful weight
that had so long rested upon my shoulders was scarcely lifted.
"Wilfred," I said at length, "why you speak thus I do not know. For my
own part I have ceased to believe in that old story which has been
handed down from generation to generation. Or if I believe it, I
believe that it is as applicable to the rest of the world as to me. If
we sin we suffer, if we hate we live in hell. I have sinned, and I
have suffered, I have hated and I have been in hell. But I trust it is
over now. I have repented of my sin, and I believe God has forgiven
me. I do not believe a curse can rest upon those whose hearts are full
of love."
"But that does not free you, for you hate--you hate me."
"No, Wilfred, no, I love you."
"Love me! You do not know. I have always schemed to ruin you. All my
life I have hated you; all my life I have sought to thwart your every
purpose. All the misery you have had has been through me, your years
of homeless wandering have been due to me. It was I who sought to take
away the love of the woman to whom you had given your heart, and since
you left the last time, and she believed that you did not intend to
kill me, I have been to her and told her that you used the basest means
to kill me, and that I only escaped by a miracle. I tell you I have
blackened your life at every possible opportunity, I have robbed you of
the best part of your manhood, through me you will die lonely,
forsaken, despairing; do you hate me now?"
"And does Ruth believe you?" I said.
"Yes," he shrieked, "and she shudders at the mention of your name. You
are the terror of her life, and I have made you so."
Again I had to struggle or I should have hated him again. Ay, I began
to hate him in spite of my trouble, and then I prayed as I had prayed
away in Smyrna, "Lord, help me to love," and even as I prayed all my
bitter feelings passed away, as they had passed away then.
"Brother Wilfred, I love you still," I said.
He seemed staggered at my words, and he turned to his mother as though
in astonishment.
"Are you going to be a fool?" cried she, "are you going to yield to his
folly? Surely, if he is a fool you need not be one. He believes that
Trewinion's curse is an old wives' fable--let him believe it. But you
are the younger brother, and according to it you have the power to
curse him. Curse him, then; let all the darkness that can befall a
Trewinion fall on him. If he be married, let curses fall on him and
his wife. If he has children, let curses rest upon them. While he
lives let darkness ever be in him and around him, and when he dies may
powers of darkness attend him even as they attended his father's
father."
My mother spoke in a voice full of passion, and I knew if such a curse
could take effect she would hurl it at me. Her words, too, seemed to
fan Wilfred's hate into a flame, a hatred which, I thought, lessened
when I told him I loved him.
"Ah, yes," he cried, "you do not believe in those lines our father
showed you on your fifteenth birthday They have become to you but an
idle tale, but you will know they are true, and you will know, too,
that Wilfred cannot be thwarted without making you suffer. Listen to
them:--
If from God's pure laws he stray,
Trewinion's power shall die away,
His glory given to another,
And he be cursed by younger brother.
Then this son, though born the first,
By the people shall be cursed;
And for generations three,
Trewinion's heirs shall cursed be.
I tell you you cannot escape, and if there is any power in the curse of
the younger brother, I call it upon you now."
"Doan't'ee be a vool no longer," said a voice at the door; "Stop!" said
a strange, croaking voice, and turning, I saw the form of Deborah
Teague, more bent and more wrinkled than when I last saw her.
"I seed Maaster Roger comin' up here," said the old dame, "and I
vollied un. You've a gived me a good dail of liberty in this ere
'ouse, and so no noatice was took of me when I stopped and 'arkened at
the door. I knaw every word that ev bin zed, and this I can tell 'ee,
no curse can hurt Maaster Roger now."
"Why?" asked my mother.
"Why? Because you ca'ant hurt nobody who's heart es vull of love.
Curse hes cheldren you may if ever he do 'ave any, ay even to the third
generation; because you be a Trewinion, but he you ca'ant curse, for
'ee do love hes enemies, and he do bless them that do curse him. Ef he
were ere with hes heart full of revenge and hatred, then 'twould be
defferent, but you ca'ant hurt un now."
"Then," cried Wilfred, "if there is truth in this story, I curse his
children and his children's children, for he has robbed me of
everything that makes life worth the living."
When the old woman had gone I turned and looked at my mother's face. A
marked change had come over it in the last few minutes. She seemed to
be making a great resolve.
"Mother," said Wilfred, "what are we to do?"
But she did not speak; a stony stare had settled on her face.
"What is the matter with you?" asked Wilfred, anxiously; "tell me?"
Still she did not answer him, but instead stepped out into the hall,
where old Peter Polperrow stood waiting as if he expected some
wonderful transformation.
"Tell every servant to come at once into the library," she said quietly.
Meanwhile Wilfred and I waited, wondering what she intended to do when
her order was obeyed.