"'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; "Imust 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."I could not speak, but I clutched his hand with an almost convulsive grip.
"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.
