Echo of a Curse

by R. R. Ryan

  “Our meetings will have to cease when she does come, Holly.”

  “Without question. I can’t afford the slightest suspicion of scandal . . .” She paused and looked at Vin through narrowed eyes. “By the way, Dr. Grove told me to-day that I’m to attend Mrs. Border.”

  They both stared a while, then laughed.

  “We’ll have to make the most of what time’s left, old thing,” Vin said. “What about to-night?”

  “I shan’t be seeing you to-night.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I’m going to see Lily and won’t be back till to-morrow morning.”

  She saw the strange, dark look that so often warned her to take care in judging this man. Suddenly he was remote, miles from her; lost in some black jungle of thought. But she had the invaluable gift of being able to wait. She waited; and presently he asked:

  “Does your father ever take jobs?”

  The question was so unexpected and startling that she stared—used as she was to his non-àpropos remarks.

  “In his own line d’you mean?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “He hasn’t done, although he still hankers after the show business . . .” She stole another inquisitive glance at her companion. “But he might be tempted if the pay was good. Why? Have you a job for him?”

  “There’s the possibility of a really good job for him—if he’s the right man.”

  “What d’you mean, ‘The right man’?”

  Vin stared at his finger-nails, a sly smile flitting about his lips.

  “What sort of man is your father?”

  “Tall, handsome like me.”

  “I don’t mean in appearance . . . Is he a Bible sort?”

  “Oh, I get you! You mean, is he unscrupulous . . . Well, I’ll tell you: he’s me all over again.”

  Vin grinned.

  “A thoroughly bad lot?”

  There was a moment’s horseplay between them; but presently Vin became profoundly serious, so serious that he impressed Holly and for the first time she felt fear of him. More than once she had suspected sinister depths in his nature, but never till now had she believed him dangerous and that his debonair exterior masked potent evil.

  “I might find a job for your father . . . A curious piece of work . . .”

  “Not criminal?”

  He laughed. “Do you associate me with criminality?”

  “We’ve agreed we’re both unscrupulous. We are. But I’m careful, too.”

  “Take heart, sister. This job’s not one of common crime. It is indeed practically without risk, but it’ll be lucrative if he’s the sort of man who’s not squeamish . . . and can hold his tongue.”

  “Do I play a part in it?”

  “A big part.”

  “H’m, I thought so. Well?”

  “As a matter of fact we can be mutually useful . . .”

  “Hedging on the offer of payment?”

  “Certainly not. I mean that by helping me you help yourselves.”

  “You thinking of Lily?”

  “Well that’s your trouble, isn’t it?”

  It was now Holly’s turn to sit very still. She began to see light.

  Speaking softly and with precision, Vin reconstructed the events of Mary’s gestation thus far. She listened carefully and when he paused said:

  “You’re afraid that your wife’s mental torment over that freak, her brooding and definite fright when she saw the thing . . .”

  “When she thought she saw the thing . . .” he murmured.

  Holly glanced at him. Vin was watching her from under lowered lids.

  “When she thought she saw the thing,” she repeated carefully, “may result in a . . .”

  “Quite . . . Well, you’re exceedingly quick in the up-take, Hol . . . You’re already on to my plan.”

  “You suggest substituting Lily’s baby for . . .”

  “Exactly.”

  “But supposing your child’s born normal?”

  For a fleeting instant his face, she thought, changed unrecognizably. A spasm passed through his entire body and distorted his features. It might have been either mental agony or rage. He leaned forward and his lips dithered before utterance came.

  “It won’t be,” he said harshly.

  A bold, downright person, Holly wanted to contradict, ask, How can you be sure? But something stayed her . . . And from that instant a conviction settled in her mind that Mary Border’s child would come into the world a monster.

  “Well, you may be right,” she agreed; “but even so, what you suggest sounds practically impossible . . . It’s all very well in books and plays to outwit the law, but extremely difficult in everyday life; especially where infants are concerned. Birth is the prerogative of all the nosey-parkers. Then there’s the doctor . . .”

  “The doctor would not be present.”

  “What, you propose to tap him on the head with a hammer, or something?” she asked derisively.

  He ignored her mockery, merely repeated very quietly, “The doctor would not be present. Only you would be present at the birth.”

  “Huh! . . . Well, I couldn’t be present at the birth of Lily’s child. And how are you going to fix the authorities in regard to that?”

  “The authorities would never know of its birth. According to what you’ve told me, your sister’s baby is due to be born . . .”

  “Almost to the hour at the same time as your wife’s according to the data we have in both cases. Of course an examination in each instance will . . .”

  Suddenly Border sprang up with a velocity that checked Holly’s calculations and held wide both her gaze and mouth. Again he seemed hardly recognizable; and there crept into her mind a suspicion of his sanity, a suspicion his words were not suited to allay.

  “Has it never dawned upon you, Holly, that I am psychic? Are you dull, like most people, regarding the exceptional in human mentality? The two births will take place in the same hour.”

  He stared at her with a steadiness that bore down her own usually dauntless gaze.

  “Anyhow, an examination will show whether he’s right or wrong,” she told herself practically. “The fortunate thing is both Lily and Vin know the exact dates of conception . . . And one can always help things along.”

  Nevertheless, after this she found herself accepting the fact that both births would approximate, not because she knew the dates of conception, or because subsequent examinations fully suggested that they would be practically simultaneous, but because Vin’s pronouncement had established itself—unknown to Holly—in her mind as an irrefutable fact.

  “Well, providing that the two births come together or as near as needs be, how are you going to conceal Lily’s condition and the ultimate birth of her child?”

  “That’s where your father comes in. Your sister is quite an obscure person, with few friends. No one knows of her condition. I understand your father still has his touring caravan. He picks her up and goes on a definite tour of isolated districts, returning to our vicinity at the prescribed time . . . The only ugly part of my plan is who would superintend Lily’s confinement? That means chancing a stranger.”

  “Not at all. Dad’s had every experience in the world, including the birth of children. He’s a better doctor than most practitioners and has gipsy blood in him. She’d be safe in his care.”

  “Then, do you think he’d undertake the job?”

  Holly’s hard mouth tautened, a crafty expression crept into her eyes. But beyond the craft lurked a soupçon of fear; an instinctive rather than a conscious fear. The gipsy in her had, perhaps, uttered some warning against the secrets of Vin’s nature. Nevertheless, since her four-square, practical courage was at any instant prepared to face the traditional image of evil himself, she did not shirk her present determination.

  “Well, as to that, what are the terms you suggest?”

  There was silence, then Vin said:

  “They will be as generous as I am able to make them.
I’ve already told you I’m not well off.” Again a considerable pause; and once more: “I’ll pay your father a pound a week for his life and continue it to you should your father pre-decease you.”

  Holly grinned to herself. Her crafty, scheming brain saw distant possibilities in Vin’s proposal that had nothing to do with his pocket. A pound a week was contemptible in view of what her father and possibly herself were supposed to saddle themselves with.

  “What’s your income?” she asked curtly.

  He hesitated then answered:

  “I earn a fiver a week.”

  “Five pounds. Then you can afford to make your offer thirty shillings. You have your wage to yourself, that I know.”

  He smiled coldly, his eyes dilated and, she observed with a touch of almost superstitious awe, gleamed as if from some inward source—though she knew very well the true source was a reflection from the actual fire leaping and spitting in the grate.

  “You’re not contemplating any future advances?” he asked smoothly.

  The implication left Holly cold.

  “We’re not blackmailers.”

  “I can take care of myself,” he whispered, his fire-lit gaze flickering over her. “I’ll make it thirty shillings per week; never more.”

  “Okay, Mr. Poe. Now about myself . . .”

  “You!”

  “Yes. I’m the one who takes most risk; I’m the most important actor in your little drama. Think it over.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “Five hundred pounds; and cheap at that.”

  They wrangled; but he agreed.

  “And, if your wife’s baby is born normal and Lily’s is left on our hands, we get two hundred, to help us place it.”

  His laughter, she thought, sounded like oil falling onto velvet. “If it’s born normal, I’ll pay you a million.”

  Despite all her cool self-assurance, Holly shuddered.

  Never, she determined, should there, from now on, be any but formal business relations between Vin and herself. She had reckoned up her man wrong. She knew when it was time to get off. Moreover, despite her new repulsion, Holly was conscious of intense excitement. Both the showman and the gipsy in her responded to possibilities as yet hardly adumbrated in her mind; the first because her inherited judgment whispered that a source of considerable profit was coming her way, the second because always she had desired to see the world, tour all the picturesque towns and townlets that her father knew so well; and here was her immaterial wish assuming corporeal proportions before her secret vision. Given the right monstrosity, one could travel the whole world over on a fast, deep stream of profit. And how she had always hated the humdrum! How sick she was of nursing!

  The arrangement suggested by Vin was, from her point of view, admirable in every way. It disposed of Lily’s unpleasant problem. It ensured what she knew would prove a most welcome addition of income for her father. It provided her with a solid lump of capital, which would be necessary if her foreshadowed plan was to eventuate. She would set about arrangements without delay. That very night she’d fix things with Lily and she’d send her father a wire immediately.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  This meeting between the retired showman and Vin was a momentous one. A tall, lean, wolf of a man, the former clearly revealed traces of gipsy ancestry. One thought of great water-ways, plains, heights, forests and gorges when one looked in his eyes—restless, haughty, lawless; and one understood why this man had on his retirement chosen the rugged coast of Cornwall as his sanctuary. It was astonishing to Holly, a witness of the meeting, that Vin should show to so little advantage in her father’s presence. His beauty seemed less, his stature less, his personality less. Added to which, she observed an odd uneasiness about his manner of approaching the older man, who, on his part, revealed to Holly—an expert in weighing-up her father’s reactions—a curious and humanly fastidious hostility. Presently, too, she realized he was reluctant to conclude the bargain, a very surprising change in his attitude to this affair, since till now he had, in agreement with his daughter, seen remarkable possibilities in the acquisition of an exhibit that should appeal powerfully to the millions of morbid minds throughout the world. Certainly he not only agreed at last, but even signed a contract of sorts, yet, it was plain, under protest by his silent judgment.

  “If you had not been so set upon the matter, girl,” he told Holly afterwards, “I’d have taken the train back to Cornwall without this sheet of paper.”

  Seldom had she seen her father so fundamentally disturbed.

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “No good will come of this bargain.” He was silent for a while. Lore, occultism, prophecy—these were gifts from his lineage. Presently he added: “Reason and judgment are acquired products, acquired by slow process. Instinct lies, often tongueless, behind both. Instinct, a knowledge not so clearly defined as the artificial one of civilization, but actually more subtle, more accurate, obedient to more precise laws. Men have all but smothered instinct. Events have ignored it. To an enormous extent it is an atrophied asset. But it is there, in man’s nature. It plays its part in world affairs—a more powerful part than many realize. It seldom raises its voice, so its part passes unobserved. I am one of those who recognize its infallibility. My instinct advises you to have nothing to do with this birth, with this bargain, with that bi-man. I know places where he’d be instantly destroyed by the so-called ignorant . . . And what’s about to be born should be burnt . . .”

  He paused, then added:

  “You are my child. You have your way to go as I had mine. Your will is free. I shall stand by my word, if you wish; but not one penny of that man’s money will I touch, nor will I handle the—the—the issue. It will not belong to life as we know it. It should go back—to the dark.”

  Holly shrugged and eyed her father coldly.

  “Nonsense! You get word-drunk. Some of your utterances are absolutely meaningless. And probably the child will be born normal. If not, it’ll be just another freak.”

  Father and daughter both somewhat alike in nature as well as in looks, both compounded of knowledge and ignorance, both prone as much to superstition as to clear-sighted science, and both reticent, authoritative, brief, characteristically turned to the consideration of practical details of their undertaking. Both agreed that the first thing that must happen was for the old showman to put his caravan into commission and collect Lily.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Terry, observing Vin during the days immediately preceding Mary’s return, thought him strange. He seemed exalted by some odd excitement and at the same time, wildly anxious; yet what he was anxious about, Terry could not guess, but noticed that his neighbour often smiled as if immensely amused, and at other times muttered furiously and to all seeming senselessly.

  “ ’Pon my soul,” Terry reflected, “if I didn’t know that Runder’s one of the world’s authorities on mental matters, I’d begin to doubt his assurance that Border’s sane.”

  CHAPTER X

  Returning after her long absence to old familiar scenes, Mary felt a rush of sentiment sweep into her heart. Her home! Her garden! Her shining windows! Her waving trees! Those sturdy chimney stacks, hers! Those mossy walls, here golden, there grey, hers!

  And that window up there, catching the sun from the south, catching it from the west—in which ever direction it might be—hers and the little girl’s; for surely all her prayers to that great Negative, Fate, must result in a whole and healthy teeny, tiny Mary the Second, heiress to this teeny, tiny estate, to that ruddy, warm, friendly house, to that smiling, damelike, bright and happy garden; and to the sunny nursery whose window she gazed upon.

  The dreadful brooding had long since departed. Her morbid acceptance that her earlier state of mind and the appalling shock she had sustained must inevitably record itself in what was then a sensitive embryo had given place to a sunny optimism, so that she was even prepared to meet Vin in happier mood; especially in view of the fact that Terry sa
id he, Vin, no longer drank. Granted that fear finally removed, granted a healthy, perfect baby girl, she could still find a full happiness in life. Mary’s experience at Vin’s hands of sexual relations had shocked her own generative impulses into latency. Love henceforth would represent her child and Terry, whom she now cared for consciously but without passion. He was to her a refuge for the spirit, just as the old home of her childhood’s days was a refuge for her body.

  Somewhat in advance of Terry and Ruth, Mary slowly walked round her quaint little red-gravelled drive to the rather worn, shallow, wide steps on the top of which both Mrs. Thatcher and Anne stood in smiling welcome. But, as she advanced in the full glare of a jolly noon sun and in an entirely composed state of mind, the most astounding experience of her short life came to her. As certainly as if a black mist had swept up from the unemotional gravel upon which she stood, invaded and possessed her entire being, she knew that the grossest evil not only impended, but actually lived within her, she had a swift recurrence of what Vin had previously declared a mere phenomenal vision and, as at the first “seeing” she had fainted, so she fainted now.

  And thus she was carried into her friendly, sheltering home. Nor was it Terry who accorded her renewed peace of mind and soul, but him whom she had associated only with strife and horror—Vin. He knelt beside her when her eyes opened. His eyes, she saw, were entirely without the old askance oddity, his lips were gentle instead of faunish, and from his brow there seemed to emanate a wave of peace, as if from his mind to hers; a message of peace which his lips immediately made audible in authoritative tones.

  His eyes held her. Even had she wished to remove her gaze she could not, Mary felt, have done so. Perhaps because her will just then was weak, his stare imposed complete subjection upon her mind and slowly all horror faded. A calm, enduring content took its place.

  Presently Vin leaned down and whispered in her ear.

  “Don’t worry. It will be a little girl and like you.”