Echo of a Curse

by R. R. Ryan

  He stole a glance. The other’s mocking eyes alarmed him so that the lies died away on his lips.

  “Borstal, Vincent Border. Old Bailey, Vincent Border. Three years rape with battery, eh? Eighteen months fraud, eh?” Terry adjusted his tie. “Thirty-one years is long enough to overcome any foul urge, don’t you think?”

  The drunkard’s mouth hung open. His gaze flickered, stupefied . . . Somehow, almost by magic, it seemed, Terry Cliffe had discovered everything; and Border knew well when words served no purpose.

  He crept to a chair and sat, elbows on knees, chin in hands.

  “Independent means, eh, Border? Not a destitute adventurer, oh no! What lies did you stuff Mary up with about all that?”

  Border did not move. His eyes had grown sullen, his mouth bitter. There was a hint of some eternal quality in his pose. A close student of human beings would have known his mind was no longer grappling with this present urgent problem, but lost in the shadowy world of retrospect.

  “Well, something’s got to be done about things,” Terry said suddenly in businesslike tones.

  The other hunched still closer to himself. His gaze was hard, savage, steady.

  “Nothing’s going to be done about it. We were married in church, Mary and I. She insisted on that. For better or worse—that was her choice . . . I see you’ve had a look at my dossier . . . But that tells very little about the secret history of a man. It announces effects, not causes. To apply human justice in the life we’ve patterned out for ourselves on this planet it is essential to study causes. I was born awry. You weren’t. Mary wasn’t. Lucky you both were. I wasn’t—that’s all it is.”

  “You say nothing’s going to be done about it, but the initiative doesn’t lie with you, Border. That belongs to Mary. The law can and shall separate you. I should imagine it won’t be long before it can divorce you—if the evidence is not already in existence.”

  “Mary won’t do either.”

  “You think not.”

  “I know not. She’s pre-14, not post. Old-fashioned. She couldn’t face up to the scandal.”

  Terry stared at him steadily. With what seemed supernatural insight this outcast had summed Mary up with extraordinary exactness. No, she’d not face up to the scandal—unless almost forced by those who valued her welfare. He would force her.

  “There is one person who has enormous influence over Mary. Myself. I shall exert that influence, and . . .”

  “You’re wasting breath, Terry.” Border raised his face for the first time since sitting and looked—sightlessly, it seemed to Terry—at his angry companion. “Mary’s going to have a child.”

  Terry inhaled deeply, standing rigid.

  “That’s torn it, eh, Captain?”

  The brute was right. He had been wasting his breath, if this was no lie. He knew Mary. She’d suffer drawn-out torment till death intervened rather than degrade her coming child by public exposure.

  “What a pity they didn’t shoot you!” he snarled.

  Border nodded.

  “Yes, it would have solved the problem . . . But they didn’t and life interests me.”

  “It wouldn’t interest you long if I have you back in the trenches for five minutes,” Terry said grimly. “And, if you intend to make Mary suffer, now I’m back, I don’t think it’ll interest you long even here.”

  The blank eyes flickered nervously.

  “I’ll leave her alone. I see I’ve got to. I’ll definitely call off the whisky. I’ll be no more than Mary’s lodger, if that’ll please her. I’ll get work and pay my shot; but I’ll not quit. Not without an exposé. The better or worse has got to stand.”

  Terry lit a cigarette, thinking furiously. Clearly he’d have to see Mary and discuss the situation . . . But he’d not reveal all. No need to fill her with a greater sense of degradation than she must already be enduring.

  Suddenly he saw Border watching him with his curious, occult, prescient eyes—as if the creature were reading his thoughts.

  “I’m in Mary’s life now, Terry. Better to endure me. I’ll make a definite compact—a secret one with you, if you like. You’ll be wise to accept this offer; for if not . . .” He rose abruptly and stood exceedingly straight and still . . . “I have powers you little dream of, powers I’ve never called upon, never dared to call upon, but which I should use if you force me.”

  Was the creature actually mad? Yet there seemed nothing but icy sanity in Border’s eyes now; they were steady, clear, penetrating.

  “Listen, Terry. Sit down. I’ll tell you things about myself that are true. Things that account for me.”

  Despite himself and his wish to retain the ascendency, Terry sat; and Vin sat, too, directly opposite, staring half-mournfully, half-authoritatively into the younger man’s eyes with his own—unblinking eyes. Eyes. Vin’s eyes. Terry was again aware of their oddness, of a kind of animal quality . . .

  “A man, Terry, can only be what his father and mother make him, just as they can only be what their parents made them; with this, that or the other qualities. We are not offered the choice of what qualities we’ll have . . . I’m what my father made me. My mother was a nondescript . . . But father was a strange being. Far shorter than I am. I get my looks from mother. Father had a head like Charley Peace . . . A big head, swelling out enormously at the crown, over-lapping at the forehead. His brain was too big . . . too big . . . and as active as a bed of snakes. He believed in and studied mystery, forbidden mystery: the hidden, dreadful secrets . . . He definitely believed in vampires, had a religion founded upon the undead. He swore by all the gods of his black world he’d still live after he was dead . . . Who knows whether he does not?”

  Border ceased abruptly and sat twitching with closed eyes. Terry glanced at him uncomfortably.

  “If you feel that way, Border, why don’t you open his grave and make sure,” he asked satirically.

  “I would if I knew where he was buried. That’s his secret . . . Well, that’s the sort of father I had. Do you expect me to be normal?”

  There was a momentary silence, then Terry said:

  “You know, Border, there’s been a vague suggestion in what you’ve said, in the way you’ve said it, that you’ve some far-down decent feelings, some human powers of emotion.”

  The other shot up.

  “Don’t appeal! Don’t waste your breath! We’ll make a definite commercial bargain . . .”

  “Who? You, Mary?”

  “You and I. You as the intermediary. You can tell Mary as much or as little as you like. It’s with you I’ll make the bargain; for it’s you alone who can enforce it.”

  “Well? What is this bargain?”

  “This is my home. To all appearances Mary and I will be the ordinary man and wife. I’ll appear the respectable father of this coming child. I’ll get a job. But apart from appearances we’ll be strangers, living our own private lives.”

  “The child may die.”

  Border turned savagely.

  “The child won’t die. By all the dead it shall live.” He paused, stared desperately at the drab kitchen wall. “Oh yes, it will live.”

  He burst into unrestrained laughter.

  “Yes, my dear old thing, it’ll live.”

  “You know, Border, if you’re going on like this, Mary’s simplest way out will be to have you certified.”

  Border became suddenly very still. All excitement died out of his eyes. He smiled and his smile had all its old winning sweetness.

  “Oh, I’m sane, Terry, old man. It’s the bargain or nothing.”

  CHAPTER V

  In a fairly roomy house, Mary had always been allowed her own bedroom, leading off a charming, sunny sitting-room that overlooked the quite extensive and delightful garden.

  It was here Terry found her being soothed into some semblance of tranquility by Thatcher, whose powers of comfort in times of stress he well knew.

  Easier far, even with one’s heart quaking like the drums of a seismometer, to go over t
he top in the face of anti-barrage, than to tackle Mary—with her face looking as it had when she stood in her crucified pose against the drawing-room mantelpiece. Not in all the topsy-turvyism of nightmare had anything ever appeared so incongruous as her appearance then. Mary! Arch. Gay. Radiant. Mary, wearing the aspect of a woman of sorrow!

  The first glance told him she had gone, the Mary of old. This was quite another Mary. But even this Mary was lost to him, Border’s words “Mary’s going to have a child” had sealed the doom of sudden hope. But for that he might have persuaded her to a divorce and to a match, less of passion, more of peace, with him upon whom she had always been accustomed to lean. But the child ruled that out, bound her completely to Border. She’d never divorce him now.

  The latticed windows were uncurtained; the old garden stretched away like a realm of romance, now mysteriously dark, now mysteriously silver; for the moon poured down.

  Sitting in one of the latticed windows, in the curiously mingled lights provided from within by a table-lamp, from without by the moon, Mary herself seemed a study in light and shade. Her eyes were pools of shadow. The hollows beneath her cheek-bones looked like deep smudges, yet here and there her face proffered nuances of silver and gold. Thatcher was bustling; but when had he known Thatcher not bustling? However, as Terry entered, she turned an inquiring gaze upon him.

  “Vincent’s all in,” he said quietly. “I’ve just put him to bed in the spare room.”

  “But . . .”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. T. He’s sleeping. You can take my word for it he’s all right; we shall not be disturbed. There’s another patient downstairs who needs your attention; and I want to talk with Mrs. Border.”

  “Another patient?”

  “That girl. She’s come over and looks rotten.”

  “Shock.”

  “Exactly, and in need of your motherly ministrations.”

  When he was alone with her, Terry, for the first time in his life, felt awkward, self-conscious in Mary’s presence. Suffering lends a halo. Motherhood lends a halo. The Mary to whom he was used had never worn a halo—though she’d often worn his shorts, in days when shorts were naughty. But Mary had been naughty—as naughty as nice.

  When directly opposite her, he could plainly see the bruise on her forehead. There was an animal look in her eyes. Contact with pain—man-inflicted. She had lost caste with herself; he could see that. And yet she had gained in beauty. She might have been painted by a master in a dream. Few women are lovely. Mary was lovely; but the source of this new quality did not appear. She had an elusive look; as if, at any moment, she might vanish. Yes, that was it, an evanescent look.

  She did not smile at him and made no attempt to. Terry was glad. He could not have borne that—Mary trying to smile. Once an attempt upon her part to be serious had been cause for mirth.

  “I needn’t say anything about being sorry?” he asked quietly.

  At this instant she knew that he loved her, had always loved her. And she knew that, in being blind to his love, she had suffered irreparable loss. She recently had knowledge of values thrust upon her. Explanations between these two had never been necessary; understanding had been mutual, telepathic. Therefore they had no skirmishing to do; he had no need of tactful approaches, but only to go straight to the point.

  “Will you consider a divorce, Mary?”

  A tortured expression twisted her features; but she shook her head.

  “I can’t.”

  “Because of—the child?”

  “He told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve made my bed and must lie on it.”

  “He won’t interfere with you again, Mary.”

  She smiled a little bitterly.

  “You’re thinking of the whisky; but he’ll forego it now; you can rely on that, definitely. With your present approval it is arranged that you and he will ‘keep up appearances’ but otherwise will lead absolutely separate lives. There is a rather ugly aspect of the whole affair, yet one that offers some explanation. He told you a tale about the will from which he derives his income being suddenly involved in Chancery proceedings?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was a misstatement. He has no money. It is a very long and unpleasant story. If you will accept my advice, you’ll not hear it.”

  “I’m not surprised. But—what will he do?”

  “Get a job. You can count on it. I can guarantee one. He’ll pay so much, say two pounds, to household expenses. Otherwise your life and his, except in appearances, will not touch.”

  There was a long pause, then Mary asked:

  “Do you think he’s normal, Terry?”

  “No.”

  Another long pause, broken by a wail.

  “Oh, Terry, think of it, a child by him!”

  “I shouldn’t think of it—not that way. Remember it’s your child, too. Goodness is inherited as readily as evil.”

  “Shall you be staying home now, Terry?”

  “Yes.”

  She made no comment, other than a prolonged indrawn breath of exquisite relief; but that was eloquent enough.

  “I shall be next door. I shall be at the office to help with your investments. You must get your Aunt back. And you must wish for a little girl . . .”

  “Oh, yes! I want it to be a girl!”

  “She’ll take absolutely after you. And then you’ll be happy.”

  It sounded simple, he thought—but was it?

  Mrs. Thatcher bustled in.

  “I’ve made you some broth and put a little wine in it,” she told Mary. “I’ll bring it to you in bed.”

  “I’m just off, Mrs. T.,” Terry said. “What about your staying here? I shall be all right. Anne will be duenna enough, eh?”

  “I was going to propose it, Mr. Terry. I can sleep in the other bed,” she told Mary.

  “I’d like to sleep with the missus.”

  Both Terry and Mrs. Thatcher swung round, while Mary looked up startled.

  It was Ruth, flushed, lovely, like a truant petal that had yielded to a summer breeze. Her eyes were as blue as a summer sky; but just now they looked aghast with fear. Mary had obtained her from the severe and sheltered atmosphere of an orphanage and she still had the untouchable air of an innocente, of one more tenuously open to odd impressions than another better accustomed to life, better equipped to resist influences. She looked as if fairies whispered in her ears—and devils tried to. Now, she seemed afraid of more than she could see, more than she could hear, more than she could ordinarily know. She was AFRAID.

  “What are you doing here?” Mrs. Thatcher, accustomed to handling domestic situations, who had mothered Mary quite as much as Terry, asked imperatively.

  “I followed you, ma’am,” the girl whispered in a way and in a voice that hardly suited even Mary’s old-fashioned home.

  “As if she’d stepped out of a cloister into a tomb,” Terry thought.

  “Mrs. Border is ill,” he told the girl kindly. “Mrs. Thatcher’s staying to look after her. You look as if you need someone to look after you, yourself. Now be a good girl and go to bed.”

  Ruth, awed by the kindly authority in his voice and at even being addressed at all by a cultured “gent,” muttered something and respectfully withdrew. Yet, though she obeyed so quietly, Terry felt she went with fear about her like a shroud. A curious, uneasy feeling settled in his own mind.

  “Nothing’s ever going to be the same again,” his spirit told him. He was thinking of the past: days of fun, uncorrupt adventure.

  But there was something in Mary’s eyes, when he said good night, that re-inflamed his faith that life is worth while so long as the immaterial you is worth while. He was not one of those who think that spiritual wishes must be confirmed by physical acts. In losing Mary he had found her and was sufficiently a survival to love once and forever. Mary was his now in all save physical contact, a satisfaction, he told himself, that was withered before the spiritual has matured.

  ~
~ ~ ~ ~

  Strangely one of the most profound sources from which Mary derived comfort during the ensuing days was the company of her life-forgotten little orphan, as unmalicious as spring’s first snowdrop and as unaccustomed to earthly contacts. A chatterbox, too.

  There was in herself, Mary found, a deep maternity, the fostering of which lent her not only tranquillity, but considerable occupation. She took Ruth under her wing, wondering that anyone could, these days, be so ingenuous and candid—until, with a shock, she realized that even in this almost transparent soul there were reticences. Perhaps her condition deepened her maternal inclination; or perhaps Ruth was an “escape” from personal consideration; for that she found to be alternately bliss and torment. Torment more often, perhaps. At times she felt fundamentally foul because inside her might be a little beast who would grow to a big beast like Vincent.

  Between these two there existed a barrier almost tangible, a vague, protoplasmic sheet, transparent and, except in the imagination, unfingerable. He was there, in the house, yet he was not there. He came down to breakfast, spoke, smiled, was courtesy itself; but it was, somehow, like sitting down to breakfast with a film-figure, not a flesh and blood being. There might have been no bruise on Mary’s forehead, no horror in her eyes.

  Border talked with the defined courtesy with which he would have talked to a guest at a banquet, on board ship, in an hotel, and was triumphantly impersonal. His eyes reflected nothing. His smile was fixed. He was seldom in the house.

  And yet, that man over there eating crisp bacon was the father of the foreshadowed life within her. In those long, slender arms she had lain. Those smiling lips had adored hers in moments of intimacy . . . She watched Ruth offer him coffee in a strange, mechanical fashion, as if compelled to do so by every iota of her will, but keeping as far from him as was compatible with duty and as if her whole body, together with the spirit in it, was rigid with abhorrence.

  Was Ruth merely affected by what she had seen and heard, or had she a greater sensitiveness of instinct than his wife?

  She let the girl sit with her, talked about the past, wondered about the future. Ruth could sew and darn with proficiency, an occupation inducing idle talk. Soon Ruth was committing those blunders, taking those liberties that only the naïve commit and take; but these rather appealed to Mary’s softened heart. She liked the girl, was touched by her loneliness and recognized a sort of innate refinement that was not to be expected from her beginnings.