Echo of a Curse

by R. R. Ryan

  A piercing scream, loudest yet . . .

  The parade checked sharply. He waited, watching that door. Holly’s face showed ghostlike in the unearthly light; she shook her head.

  The parade went on.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Gaunt, silent, swift, the old showman, gipsy now in every gesture, opened the bag and took out its par-boiled burden, wrapped lightly in a cashmere shawl, and laid it on a cushion. Vin, picking up the bag, nodded. Neither man spoke . . . and the younger glided out.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Holly stared down in grim amusement at this second birth . . . Had Vin thought of this? And then a vague nausea drove back wonder, mirth, excitement. Like a little spew-forth from some noisome pit of horror. Even in this instant of birth the tiny eyes glinted. There’d be fleas soon in that thick pelt. One hand as gentle as its sister’s, the other—claws . . . Slender, human feet . . .

  She must act. Mother’s coma was bad . . .

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Well?”

  “Twins!”

  Vin growled. Anger? Surprise? Both?

  “Girl—boy. Girl normal. Boy—what you said.”

  He shuddered, dashing sweat from his brow.

  “Quick, then!”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Dark, unseen Intelligence, warm, haunting evil, does not one feel it? Dark, unseen . . . Omni-present at night . . . Odour, to the soul . . . Like savage, unseen rats . . .

  He stared down with tortured eyes at the obscene bundle, threw it in the bag, snapped to the catch and ran lightly down the stairs.

  “Here!” He handed the bag to Chambers whose real name must surely end with -sky, or -ski.

  Without comment the gipsy showman placed the other child in Border’s arms.

  “Boy or girl?”

  “Boy.”

  “Splendid!”

  About to turn away, Border laid a finger on the bag that Chambers held.

  “If I were you,” he whispered, his voice containing a snarl, “I’d run a skewer into its heart.”

  The gipsy’s brooding eyes flickered. Surreptitiously he crossed himself as Vin went out.

  “I’m going for the doctor personally,” the latter told Holly as he handed her Lily’s child. “This is a boy. Marvelous thing, isn’t it? I’m going to rave at the doctor . . .”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Is it a boy or a girl, nurse?” Mary asked faintly. Holly laughed pleasantly as she came to the bedside.

  “Both, Mrs. Border.”

  “Both!”

  “Boy and girl.”

  “Twins? Well!”

  “Are you glad?”

  “I . . . I . . . don’t know. It depends . . . Are they . . . all right . . . Perfectly normal?”

  “Perfectly. Two beautiful babies. Mr. Border’s gone to Dr. Grove’s . . . He was very angry. But I’m sure the doctor’ll have some good reason for his absence. He’s the most conscientious man I ever met.”

  “What does it matter now? You’ve been very skillful and efficient, nurse,” Mary said faintly.

  “And now you must take this and sleep. Then you can see your babies.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Fancy twins, eh, Mary?”

  “Yes, isn’t it awful, Terry?”

  He glanced at her happy, absorbed eyes. Awful? Never had he seen such serenity in any eyes before. All horror was past, for Mary. All woe. She was like some new arrival stepping ashore in a new, lovely land. She was going to live in these children and would never have a fully conscious thought for any other living creature. She’d want and appreciate him, Terry, as the years went by, in the same manner she’d want and appreciate the sun; but she’d never look up and worship the sun as one lover looks up and worships another.

  Well . . . thank God this benign ending to her dreads had been vouchsafed her.

  “And the doctor wasn’t there, eh, Mary?”

  “No. He’s still terribly upset. But who can possibly blame him?”

  “No one in their right senses . . . Exceedingly odd, though, that mysterious call.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Feel like a game of cards, Mary?” he asked a few weeks later. “Or what price pictures?”

  And then he was aware of Vin, walking to and fro, one of the babies in his arms.

  He made a little moue and Mary smiled; but Vin seemed unaware of his presence.

  “Well, if you’re so unsociably-minded,” Terry grumbled, “may I get a book? I’ve run out.”

  “Yes, do, Terry. There’s a boxload come to-day.”

  “Which prodigy is that?” he asked nodding at Vin’s burden.

  “Faith.”

  Faith—always Faith.

  “And where’s my godson?”

  “Where his sister should be, in bed.”

  “Can I go and steal a peep?”

  “Of course, Terry.”

  He smiled and was gone.

  . . . He was a fine boy. Both fine children.

  Murray, their nurse, approved of his godfatherly devotion and stood nodding her head as if she were responsible for the virtues of all human beings.

  “Seem wonderfully healthy kids, Nurse.”

  “They are, sir.”

  “Mr. Border’s got the little girl downstairs, I see.”

  “Yes. I’ve never known a father so devoted to his baby daughter, I . . .”

  Mary’s entrance cut short her confidences.

  “S’sh! She’s asleep. You must go, Terry.”

  “Yes, Ma-ma. I’ll get my book.”

  He grinned as he ran downstairs and turned towards the library door. Who ever’d have expected such domestic harmony in this house.

  The door was ajar. Through the aperture he caught a glimpse of Border, posed before the huge, out-dated overmantel, into whose mirror he stared grimacing and excitedly laughing at his own reflection.

  But almost immediately the fantastic gaiety left his face and he gazed with infinite sadness into the polished glass, whispering; but his words were inaudible to Terry, who stole away.

  What was this odd being? Mad, surely? If not, then who else was sane?

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Years slipping by. Like the rattling of dice, events, Terry thought, were shaken up and thrown down before him, swept away—forgotten. New faces. Old ones vanished—among them his mother’s, Mrs. Thatcher’s . . . And he alone in his unsuitably big house; getting each year richer, watching Mary get poorer—but afraid to help.

  Like many others, Mary’s income had depreciated considerably during these post-war years; but, despite Vin’s offers and Terry’s protests, she would not accept her husband’s help. What he earned he kept to spend upon himself or on toys for the children. This was not only a matter of pride: Mary declined to form any fresh link between herself and a man she still could not trust. The great link—common parenthood—already binding them was unhappy enough, in Mary’s sight. Her struggle therefore was considerable and, when education loomed in sight, it became obvious she must either sell stock or find some other medium of raising the wind.

  “I shall have to get a paying guest, Terry,” she told her adviser.

  He swung round, his eyes alight.

  “And I know the very chap.”

  Relief flooded her face.

  “Oh, good! But I hardly know what to charge.”

  “For full board and all home comforts you must ask five pounds, laundry extra.”

  “That seems a tremendous lot! It’s as much as Vin earns in salary.”

  “It’s not out of the way for a home such as he’ll get here.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “You’ve known him all your life.”

  “You, Terry?”

  “Yes, me, Mary. And don’t begin accusing me of charitable intentions . . . It’s you who has to show charity to me. I’ll confess now, old thing, that I’ve honestly been meditating a change, giving up the house in favour of rooms . . . What do I want with a barn of a place like that? One man. If you’ll accept m
e as a lodger, Mary, you’ll do me a signal favour. Besides, after all I am the kids’ godfather. So, what about it?”

  She glanced up, soft-eyed. It would make her happy to have her old friend constantly with her and the terms he offered would certainly solve her problem. How could she, in face of his sincere pleading, refuse?

  “What’ll you do with your own house, Terry? Let it?”

  “I’ll either let or sell. But I imagine it’ll be a difficult house to let with all these modern flats and estates springing up. Mine’s too big for people who wish to live in a moderate way and not swanky enough for the mushroom class. Time will show.”

  So it came to pass that Terry achieved what had long been his heart’s desire, real membership of Mary’s household. His motive in wishing this was far from merely selfish. Like Mary, he had acquired no greater confidence in Vin’s stability, even after all these years during which the one-time drunkard had lived a model life of sober and excellent fatherhood—an effect often spoilt by outbursts of behaviour which, while harming none, certainly differentiated him from his kind.

  It was partly on account of these periods that Terry felt increasingly thankful to be at hand so he could watch over Mary and her children. Never could he eliminate from his mind a sense of living over a powder magazine that might explode at any instant. Again and again as the years passed he had reason to doubt Border’s sanity and twice took ingenious precautions to reassure himself—if that were possible. For this purpose he arranged that experienced mental experts should observe Vin and spent, unknown to Mary, large sums in a vain desire to know the best or worst. Unfortunately, however, he obtained little, if any, satisfaction. One specialist merely contradicted another. On the first occasion he heard that Vin’s was a subtle and extraordinary case, that the subject was unquestionably an incipient maniac, who would die raving. And this opinion was endorsed by the great man’s young but brilliant protégé. Yet, two or three years later, a celebrated French alienist laughed at these opinions and pronounced Vin completely sane. After a further lapse of time Julius Von Hermann, the Prussian psychiatrist, who spent three weeks as Terry’s guest studying Vin, plainly considered him deranged, but in a way difficult to explain in words.

  “If I believed in definite influences of which we have and can have no knowledge, I should be inclined to say that your friend has somehow or other got his abstract self entangled.”

  “Do you predict future violence?”

  “I can do no less than put you on your guard. He may die raving.”

  Nevertheless, Vin caused no actual unhappiness. On the contrary, he seemed to be a pattern father, whose devotion to Faith, Von Hermann declared, went beyond the limits of healthy parental love; was morbid and even alarming. True, Vin could not bear the child out of his sight, fussed over her strangely and suffered to a strange degree if she acquired even a common cold; but it was also true that at times he told her queer fables, propounded impossible doctrines of eternal life. And these tales of future existence were far from being founded upon orthodox principles of religious people, but were odd, outré, grotesque. Mankind in the bulk died—but there were those who need not die. The secret was vouchsafed to few; but he, Vin, possessed it. He would live forever and Faith should share his eternity.

  “But won’t Mummy and Uncle Terry and Don (the boy) live forever, too?”

  “No,” Vin would whisper. “Only you and I . . .Think of it. You and I—always together.”

  Faith did think of it and cried bitterly; for, though bound by strange ties to Vin, all her impulsive childish love was Mary’s.

  BOOK TWO

  CHAPTER I

  Years pass so quickly now. With the speeding up of engines, with the intensifying of the rate at which we live life, with the crowding one upon another of major events, one easily gets the illusion that time, our greatest illusion, has speeded up.

  Certainly it seemed so to Terry and Mary when, at breakfast and before Vin joined them, they both realized that ten years had passed since the first-named became a permanent paying-guest in Mary’s home. Ten years. The children grown up. An enormous deal had happened and yet nothing seemed to have happened. We both, Terry thought, appear to have been expecting some tremendous event, some enormous fulfilment, and yet, when I examine my life and Mary’s too, we might both have been flies in treacle for all that life’s brought us. And that, he supposed, was the most common experience of all who suddenly cease looking ahead and—look back.

  Surreptitiously they examined each other. Mary, Terry thought, was improved by time. In some way she had subtly altered and had a spiritual air that determined her claims to beauty. The passing years had granted her grace of both feature and form together with a strange, fascinating dignity. But Terry had altered. He had aged. Mary saw that. His face was rather gaunt, his hair was greyish. He had lines.

  It was, perhaps, because she felt in an examining mood that her mind concentrated upon Vin, who at this instant, with his arm round Faith, entered in his usual rather spectacular fashion

  . . . Of course, Mary told herself, that was what she had been trying to comprehend for all these years. Everything he did was to some extent spectacular. He was like some one cast for the part of a human being. And yet, immediately, it was plain to her clear and special seeing that he was deeply preoccupied, not with his effect upon others, but with some trouble in his mind. His eyes were full of alarm. It was seldom she thought of Vin, seldom, for that matter, she saw him; and, therefore, it seemed curious even to herself at this moment that she should know that something of enormous import troubled the strange being whom once she had loved, in whose arms she had slept and whose children she had borne.

  Suddenly, because in this considering mood, she contrasted the two men, Terry, Vin; and, in doing so, realized all that she owed to her one faithful friend; the service, both material and spiritual; the immense encouragement; the never-failing comfort; the admirable counsel of a skilled, trained mind; the almost unbelievable loyalty. Love. She had been living beside a love so immense that surely it could have few counterparts! And what had she given in exchange? Nothing . . . Or very little. She had merely accepted all these years. Yet she had something to give. Yes. Love, with time, had not only grown within her, but had changed. Preoccupation with her children had always come first; but now, suddenly, astoundingly, Terry came before everybody. In one instant. One flashing instant. What would it be like to be Terry’s wife? What would it have been like all these years? A sharp pang pierced her heart. What fools humans were! How they neglected the present for an empty future; made the mistake of feeling the colder years with the ardour of youth’s hot blood. Believing joys then would seem as urgent as joys now . . . Whereas . . . whereas . . . Oh!

  But Vin had changed—with a vivid difference. His alteration came from within and had left its mark mysteriously, for she searched in vain to find objective evidence of this change. He looked hardly any older—yet had aged profoundly. His hair was unstreaked. His lips remained red. Where was there a line on his smooth skin?

  Her gaze wandered to Faith. Ah! Now here was true human loveliness. The girl was so beautiful that Mary thought it strange such a face should have escaped publicity. Thank God it had! Such a shrinking, dreaming creature was not made for public stares.

  Strange how Faith had captured all their hearts! It fell to the lot of few human creatures, surely, to be so loved. Don—nice boy. Wholesome. Clever. Go-ahead. But curiously detached from them all. And not, in his thin, gipsyish saturninity, like either herself or Vin. Satisfactory son—yes. Good to her. Hard worker. Terry said he would make a sound, perhaps a brilliant, lawyer—if, after obtaining his articles, he was still content to be merely a lawyer. There was a hard determination in Don; Terry suspected a hard ambition. He would go away, make a name, forget them, become relatively forgotten. His very absence from this breakfast table, because he chose on rising to snatch a frugal bite and study alone, showed that. Every warm impulse was shriveled by Don’s cold
self-sufficiency. Work, that was his love. But no one had ever suggested that Faith should work; no one ever would. Her rôle was loveliness.

  Mary’s preoccupation grew deeper. They were all preoccupied; Mary with this survey, Terry with some office problem, Faith with her insubstantial dreams, and Vin—with the cutting in his vest pocket.

  Already it was imprinted on his mind, word for word.

  “Marburg, Styria, Austria has been the venue of a remarkable drama. A curious and, according to description, exceedingly unpleasant freak which was being exhibited to astonished crowds, has disappeared after killing its entrepreneur, believed to be an English-woman, whom it tore literally to pieces. The creature, whose nature cannot be determined, is still at large, despite the most exhaustive efforts to recapture it. Described as an indeterminable mixture of wolf, man and ape, it has been popularly stigmatized a supernatural embodiment.”

  As a sun-spot eventually returns to tantalize observers, as certain tides eventually return after long years to astonish the ignorant, and as shadows slowly creep round a dial to symbolize inevitability, so this dark event had gradually been completing its cycle before menacing the clear prospect that they all—Mary, Terry, he, the children—had for so long enjoyed. Deep in the mysteries of his nature the knowledge had always lurked since that torrid night when into the gipsy’s bag he had flung that matted little body, which was tainted with hyperphysical virus.

  And now, as surely as the padding of paws in stilly night heralds a wolf’s approach, so surely did each fleeting moment herald the coming of his son.

  He glanced at the absorbed faces round him. What would they say if he suddenly shouted, it’s coming, INEXPLICABLE Number Two is on its way? They’d pity him. Cool-brained Terry would be more than ever convinced that madness explained everything that was unusual in the conduct of his rightless landlord.