Echo of a Curse

by R. R. Ryan

Now that was what she had been repeating to herself for months, “It will be a little girl and just like me.”

  She whispered back.

  “Yes, just like me.”

  “Fix it—on your mind. A little girl; like you.”

  She nodded emphatically. Almost immediately he rose, turned and, without a glance at the others, went away.

  “Well, did you ever?” Mrs. Thatcher muttered.

  Her astonishment was shared by Anne, who murmured back: “More like a saint than a devil!”

  And the only rage obtaining in that still room troubled Terry’s heart; for a confounding red jealousy suddenly flourished there. His resentment expressed itself in spite.

  “I’m sure that bird’s batty,” he told himself. “Kneeling like a Romeo at the side of a woman whom he’s pasted like the loser in a fly-weight competition! He’s a disgusting piece of work!”

  And yet he was bound to admit presently, in calmer mood, that Vin had strangely comforted Mary, who hardly seemed to know now why she had cried out suddenly in horror and as suddenly fainted at Terry’s feet.

  Nevertheless, Vin’s behaviour had impressed itself upon Terry’s mind unpleasantly.

  “More of his uncanny acting,” he told himself.

  What was it a prelude to? Did it mean that, now Mary had come home, they might expect more outbursts, more violence? Beautiful behaviour in habitual drunkards invariably makes me think of the calm before the storm, he thought.

  Yet it was clearly not of Vin that Mary was thinking when, in Terry’s company, she wandered round her fairly spacious home, admiring it in the way home-lovers do admire their partly forgotten possessions after long absence. She liked its mellow shabbiness, which had an intrinsic value of its own, and, while admitting that much of her furniture was both clumsy and out of date, she thought all of it suited her home and that many were really beautiful pieces—which they were, in one or two cases actually articles of virtu. Though the carpets were worn, they had been costly carpets and were beautiful still.

  “This is going to be the baby’s room,” she told Terry when they came at last to those windows upon which the sun had seemed, to the home-comer’s eyes, to shed a golden blessing.

  He glanced at her, wondering if she knew how her words wrung his heart . . . Mary’s eyes were rapt. In that moment he realized that her entire happiness depended upon the expected little girl. A feeling of panic startled him . . . If some dreadful termination, some gross termination, to her pregnancy blasted these bright hopes, it might easily wreck a mentality unused to the greater abominations of life and unsuited to face them. She must be vigilantly guarded, but, with Anne permanently established in her home, with Mrs. Thatcher ever on the alert, with himself prepared to tackle any fresh misbehaviour of Vin’s, she should be as safe as was, in the circumstances, possible.

  “You are adhering to our arrangement regarding Ruth?” he asked her a little anxiously over a cup of tea welcomed by both.

  “Oh, yes. Anne will stay. Ruth will take her place in your house, as you suggested. She would not dare to live here now.”

  “And you, Mary?”

  “I have a feeling that the child’s going to make up for everything; and it makes all the difference your being next door.”

  A rush of emotion surged over him. Vehement declarations filled his mouth; but fortunately so many demanded to be heard at once that he had regained control before any had established right of precedence. Nothing could be plainer than that her trust in him was blind, complete and gloriously selfish. Let it be so! Everything else might be left to time and destiny.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Two days later Holly rang Vin up.

  “Everything’s in order,” she told him. “Lily’s on the road. Dr. Grove’s going to call on your wife and will arrange for me to make an examination in due course.”

  But when this took place, the result was unhappy, for Mary took an abrupt dislike to Holly and expressed this dislike quite clearly.

  However, Dr. Grove laughed at her.

  “This is a woman’s time of likes and dislikes,” he told her. “As a matter of fact you’ve my most competent nurse, the coolest head in a crisis among my staff. Moreover, she holds certificates in midwifery as well as in all other branches of nursing. I’d not let mere prejudice interfere with your child’s chance of a successful birth.”

  Here was an argument to which even instinct had no answer and Mary withdrew her objection.

  “As far as I can see, everything is perfectly normal,” Holly told Vin. “It lies correctly and if anything’s wrong it’ll not be in the birth, which I imagine will be an easy one.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Day by day Terry anxiously awaited some violent demonstration from Vin as a signal that his old habit had triumphed over his present control; but he waited vainly. The culprit’s conduct was exemplary. Day followed day without his even seeing Mary, who now had her breakfast in bed.

  “He might not be in the house,” she told Terry. “His comings and goings are quieter than a thief’s.”

  Terry welcomed her news as much as he disliked her simile.

  “It all depends,” Vin told Holly at a meeting, “upon the two births coinciding. You think they will?”

  “Everything points that way,” she assured him. “Dr. Grove agrees with me about your wife; and dad agrees with me about Lily; and his opinion’s as dependable as Grove’s, you take my word.”

  “I hope this weather holds,” Mary said when her time was very near.

  But it did not. Clear skies grew leaden and very slowly the conditions patterned themselves upon that tragic time when THE INEXPLICABLE appeared, as it seemed, in answer to Mary’s curse.

  Three days before that upon which, according to all calculations, her child should be born, Vin paid what Mary afterwards described to Terry as a formal visit.

  “I might have been Queen Victoria and he Prince Albert.”

  But she did not recount the actual conversation that followed. The interview took place in her own sitting-room, now littered with articles advertising the expected event. He tapped quietly at the door and Mary, thinking this was Anne or maybe Mrs. Thatcher, who was almost as much in the house as Anne, said ‘come in’ absent-mindedly, but looked up in somewhat startled surprise to see Vin hesitating in the manner of one unsure of welcome.

  “Oh, it’s you, Vin. Won’t you sit down?”

  However, though he came further into the room, he did not sit down. Mary was struck, as Holly had not long since been struck, by a depth in his personality to which his usual flippancy seemed utterly opposed. Power. Yes, she saw there was that in him. Mystery. Of this she was exceedingly aware. Inscrutability. It was impossible to judge the nature of his mysteriousness, which might be either good or bad.

  But the change was there. And it was profound. He might have called into activity a second nature that had lurked behind the first. What had been sinisterly faunish had vanished, temporarily at least; or was strongly held in abeyance.

  And yet, strangely enough, he had lost in attraction. A light had left his beauty, which, to some degree, seemed leaden. Gravity did not suit his delicate features. She had a powerful impression that his purpose here was exceedingly important to him; that he was deeply in earnest.

  “How are you, Mary?”

  The question brought rushing upon her a flood of realizations. Prominent among these, that it was hard in this weighted atmosphere to breathe; that with the atmosphere’s oppression had come depression; and fear. She had fought the fear; vainly. She realized this now.

  “You look distressed, Mary.”

  “It’s this sultriness . . . It’s like—like—before . . .”

  He looked at her sharply, licked his lips and said:

  “You’re not imagining things?”

  She paused, then:

  “Perhaps . . . unconsciously.”

  “What is it you fear?”

  She knew. She had not known, but, now, she knew.

/>   “I think . . . it’s the similarity of weather . . . I think I’m afraid that thing, you know . . .” Her voice faltered. “ . . . Never found—was it? Perhaps it may come back.”

  “It won’t come back.”

  “If only I felt sure.”

  “It can’t come back.”

  “Why not?”

  “It—no longer exists.”

  Something awesome in his tone silenced her. She stared. His face was livid. His eyes were enormous. Lips—taut. And his entire body rigid.

  So!

  He had killed that thing.

  Why had she not known before? That was why he had lied, said she had not seen it.

  Cold horror overcame her. A killer! This father. The father of her child . . . soon to be born . . . Then sense said, but think what he killed. Yes, but that was it. What had he killed? A man? A beast? A “Thing?” One could not justly call him a murderer. In fairness one should say, Deliverer . . . And all men of her generation, all of her father’s, were killers; all hands bloodstained. If not in fact, by consent.

  His lips were moving, rapidly. His eyes glowed, dully. She could not catch the words . . . till, suddenly, quite clear and strong, came two words.

  “ . . . The stake.”

  He was not looking at her now and not, she felt very sure, thinking of her, or even aware of her; for his glazed stare was looking into—what? . . .

  Then she heard:

  “And may I not have buried half of myself, too?”

  Drops of sweat appeared on his brow; his lips twisted in a tortured way.

  Whatever it was he came to tell her, he left unsaid and, as abruptly as he had come, turned and went.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Agony endured in clement weather is no one’s envy, but agony borne when the sky is like flowing blood, when at any instant it may shower the earth with all its violence; when the air is like the stagnant breath of death—then agony is trebled. And such were the conditions when Mary’s labour began . . . at mid-night.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Anne, like Mary, did not take to the nurse by whom Dr. Grove swore; but, being a just creature, admired her businesslike efficiency. Nor was there anything in Holly’s manner of address to which Anne—or Mrs. Thatcher, so often in Mary’s house—could take exception. Moreover, when, as she so often did, Anne endured one of her appalling heads, it was not to Holly and her rapidly relieving remedies that she owed surcease.

  So, on this night, when Mary’s first sharp pang heralded the coming of her child and Anne, distraught with, it seemed, a cleaving head, paced her room, this way, that, it was with almost frantic joy she heard Nurse Chambers’ voice simultaneously with a quiet tapping on her door.

  “Anne!”

  Anne ran to and threw open the door, disclosing Holly with a wineglass in which was a small but familiar draught.

  “I heard you walking about and guessed your head had come on worse; so I brought you this.”

  “Well, it’s exceedingly kind of you, nurse.”

  She almost snatched the glass from Holly’s hand and drained its contents.

  “Is she all right?”

  “Oh, quite!”

  “No sign?”

  Holly laughed.

  “Not yet. Probably to-morrow morning.”

  “Well, thank heaven, then, I can sleep. I promised to let Mrs. Thatcher know if her pains start in the night . . . If they do, you’ll wake me?”

  “But they won’t.”

  “I hope not . . . Though heaven knows, I want the poor thing to be over it.”

  She yawned heavily.

  “You go and lie down, Anne. You’ll be asleep in ten minutes.”

  And she was.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Vin stood in his open doorway as Holly approached with an unmistakable question in his eyes.

  “It’s begun.”

  “What about Anne?”

  “I’ve given her a dose. She’s asleep. Safe for hours.”

  “When will it actually be?”

  “Not for three or four hours.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Dr. Grove did not recognize the voice.

  “Who is speaking?”

  “I’m John Brotherton, Tennyson Farm. My wife’s dying. Fell from top to bottom of the front stairs. Please come at once—or it may be too late!”

  “How long will it take to get there?”

  “Forty minutes.”

  “By car?”

  “Might be less. I don’t know. I’m out of my head. Can’t think. Are you coming?”

  “Of course. How do I get there?”

  “Dighton Road. Seldon Road. Then first to left. Keep on till you come to a black and white gate with a stile beside it. You’ll have to leave the car, climb the stile and follow the footpath right up to the farm gates.”

  “Right! I’ve jotted those directions down. I’ll come at once.”

  A conscientious and a kindly man, Dr. Grove did put his best leg forward. Though well able to do so, he employed no chauffeur. Big, hale and hearty, he liked nothing better than using his hands, fiddling with engines and discovering faults to be repaired. The only job he left to another was the cleaning.

  Night work held no grumbles for him. He was a man who needed little sleep and possessed the power to sleep where and when he pleased.

  Nevertheless, even his cheery nature was somewhat daunted by this night when the sky seemed to be converging upon the earth and annihilation easy to imagine. He found it hard to fill his lungs. But it took a lot to impair either Dr. Grove’s efficiency or his optimism. A few moments of rapid preparation and he was on his way, headlights blazing. Without them, he would have been puzzled, so deep the dark, to find his way.

  “ ’Pon my word,” he told himself, “the smell of petrol’s absolutely welcome for once. Attar of roses in this atmosphere.”

  Dighton Road. Seldon Road. First to left . . . Damn car running queerly; smell of petrol strangely strong. Anyhow, here was the stile, next to a black and white gate.

  The road was narrow, going had been slow . . . Woman might be dead by now . . . Anyhow he’d wasted no time. Climbing the stile, he made his way, aided by a powerful torch, yet with some difficulty, along an uncertain track. He could see no light ahead. P’raps the farm was in a dip. Fellow’d been so full of emotion that he had most likely left out some important detail.

  Presently, however, it became clear he was lost in a wilderness of fields, that there was no farmhouse within many miles. Yet he had followed his instructions faultlessly . . . If fault there were, it lay with the anxious being who . . . Surely it could not have been a hoax? Why? Besides, who’d be so wicked as to hoax a medical man?

  However, there was nothing for it but to return. His watch told him he had wasted well over an hour and a half. Approaching his car the smell of petrol struck him afresh . . . The tank, he hoped, wasn’t leaking . . . But the tank was leaking.

  The doctor raised his massive frame.

  “Heavens alive, the tank’s been bored!”

  Moreover it was all but empty . . . There was merely one outlook, shanks’ pony, send for car to-morrow.

  Worried, he set out. Why this trick? Burglary? Well, no use anticipating trouble; besides, no burglar’d make a haul from his place of any value . . . P’raps it was some trick to get him out of the way and rifle his drugs. But such an opportunity often occurred without all this elaborate preparation . . . It was to be hoped no serious call had come in during his absence . . . Would have been away at the very least five hours when he got back . . .

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “I’ve phoned for the doctor,” Vin’s clear whisper said, as he came up the stairs to Holly, looking down. “He’s gone out on a call. Some farm in the country, they say . . . No one seems to have the foggiest notion when he’ll be back . . . You’d better let Mary know . . .”

  “She’s past worrying . . . Funny,” she said with a choked giggle, “you prophesied the doctor’d not be present at the birth . . .�
��

  Any reply he might have made was checked by the fierce shrilling of the phone.

  “Doctor?” Holly whispered.

  “Impossible . . . I’ll see . . .”

  A long wail directed their eyes towards Mary’s all but closed door. Silently Holly glided away and as silently Vin glided down.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  And now began la danse macbre of the heavens. As Holly slipped into Mary’s stifling room, there greeted her through the gaping windows raucous bursts of giant laughter, followed immediately by violent scurries, fierce glints, gusts of gargantuan passion all at a faster and faster measure . . .

  The jagged flashes showed Mary’s pang-arched body glistening . . . Her scream was one partly of fear, partly of pain . . . Her wild eyes sought the open window and into them darted a determination as fierce as supernatural temper.

  Holly’s spring was in time, but only that. The struggle waxed fierce; yet was short; Holly’s physical power equaled most men’s. Her hypnotic murmuring began again and, as the pang passed, Mary grew calmer; but every hair dripped water and lay dankly flat, a component of this or that tangled mass . . . It was dangerous to leave her, but that phone call could only be either the doctor or her father. And it must be the latter; or their plans would fail. Here, in this torment-pit of a chamber, birth was imminent.

  “I think the doctor has phoned,” she whispered to Mary; but no answer came.

  “She’s exhausted . . . doped with exhaustion . . . I’ll risk it!”

  Holly stole out.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Vin—up and down, up and down, up and down, like a wolf in a cage. So many paces, one swift, graceful turn making a continuous movement of the parade . . . so, on, on, on . . .

  He looked up fiercely as Holly stole out, his whole attitude inquiry.

  “It was your father . . . Lily’s child’s born . . . He’s on his way . . . Go back!”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Vulpine, with something cruel in its precision, the parade began again, very, very faintly growing faster—as if symbolizing the process of birth . . .