Roger Trewinion Part 49

"Do! I'll do anything," he cried.

"I'm going down to the library," I said; "will you go and tell my mother to come there? but don't tell her it is I who want to see her.

Simply say that a stranger is asking for her."

I found my way into the library. Candles which cast a flickering light were placed on the table, making the room ghostly enough.

How well I remembered the old place, and how memory after memory came back to me as I waited there. I often thought of the time my father had led me there on my fifteenth birthday, and told me of the curse of my race, and many other things which seemed to have cast a shadow over my life. Then I thought of how terribly his words had been fulfilled.

The story of the curse was no meaningless jargon. It contained awful truths, which had been fulfilled in me. And yet I was not sure.

Perhaps what had happened was the simple outcome of broken laws; perhaps Trewinion's curse was an old wives' fable. Still, the truth that my life was cursed was ever before me. I felt that even then I was, humanly speaking, branded with the hand of Cain. G.o.d had forgiven me, but man never would; the sin of my life could only be wiped out by yielding myself up to the hands of justice.

And this I had come home to do. I was waiting there to tell my mother that I had murdered her dearest son, that I had taken all joy and brightness from her life, and then, having brought the greatest sorrow a son can bring upon a mother, I would go to meet my righteous judgment.

Presently I heard the sound of footsteps, and soon my mother entered the room.

I had no difficulty in recognising her. Ten years had worked but little change in her appearance. Certainly her hair was tinged with grey, and the lines on her face were deeper, but otherwise there was no difference. There was still the cold expression--which was ever the same, except when her eyes rested on Wilfred--still the same stately carriage.

She glanced at me for a second, and then asked my business.

"Mother," I said, standing up.

She looked at me keenly for a few seconds, then she cried hoa.r.s.ely, "My G.o.d, what brought you here?"

"Mother, forgive me," I said.

I thought she recoiled from me as if in abhorrence. I know that she stepped back from me.

"Why have you come?" she said, and I saw fierce hate gleaming from her eyes. "Have you not caused misery enough? Are you not content with the lives you have poisoned? You went away; why did you ever come back?"

"I could not rest, mother," I said, humbly, for I felt I deserved her reproach. "I wanted to tell you all; I wanted your forgiveness."

"Tell me!" she cried, "as though I did not know. Forgive you, how can I forgive you when but for you my boy might have been----"

"Let me tell you everything, mother," I cried. "G.o.d knows I have suffered much for what I have done, but He has forgiven me, and I wanted your forgiveness before I die."

"Do I not know? Have I not heard?" she went on. "Has it not been the talk of the neighbourhood? Have you not ever been my son's enemy?

When you were children it was you who had your father's affections, it was you who saved the life of the only one my Wilfred loved, it was you who stood between Wilfred and his right position. It was you who kept Ruth from loving him, and although you went away you were ever the black blot on his life. And now you have come back again. Why? To breathe more poison, to carry out more of your murderous designs."

"No, mother, I have come to atone for the wrong I have done rather than to do more wrong."

"That can never be. You can never atone for the wrong you have done.

You were born to curse my son's life, and you have done it. You have stripped my life of happiness, and now you come again, to take away what paltry right, I suppose, you claim."

"But, mother!"

"Call me not 'mother,' you are no son of mine."

"Not your son!" I cried, "how can that be?"

She did not answer me, and my memory flashed back to the time when Deborah Teague had hinted that she was not my mother. Now her mad jealousy of my position was explained. Now I knew why Wilfred was all and I was nothing. This woman was not my mother, and as a consequence true affection had not existed between us.

"Whose son am I, then?" I continued, after a pause, "and who is my mother."

"I shall not say," she said, "it is enough that you are not my son."

"And my sisters, Elizabeth and Katherine, are they not really my sisters? If not, who are they, and who are you?"

"I shall not tell you," she said, and then stopped, as if in doubt.

"Yes, I will though," she continued. "You are not my son, for you are the son of your father's first wife. No one here knew that he was married before he married me, I made him promise none should. He never brought his first wife home here, for he married her privately. He would have brought her home when you were born had she not died. A few months afterwards he married me, and I came home as his wife, and you pa.s.sed as my child, it being given out that we had been married more than a year. When I had a child of my own I hated you, and when I saw your father loved you best I hated you more. Now you know why I have always been your enemy." This information stunned me. I had not expected this kind of meeting. As yet no definite word had been spoken concerning the real object of my coming all the way from Asia. I determined, however, to do my duty and to confess my sin. Only when I had realised strength to do the right had I realised ease of conscience, and because Wilfred was only my half-brother was no reason why I should keep back the words that seemed to burn my lips.

I was about to speak again and tell all when I saw a form in the doorway which made me think my senses must have left me, and I had become a madman.

CHAPTER XXVIII

TREWINION'S CURSE

I rose from the chair on which I had been sitting during the latter part of my conversation with my mother, and made one step forward.

"Wilfred!"

"Roger!"

"You here!" I exclaimed bewildered.

"Ah, my presence surprises you, does it?" he said, and every tone of his voice told of vindictiveness--hatred.

For a moment I could not think; my head whirled and I staggered to my seat as though I were a drunken man. Wilfred was not dead, the guilt of his murder did not rest upon me, I was free--free! I had not hurled him to his death on that awful night; my gloomy forebodings had no real foundation.

How had he managed to escape? I had stood with him alone on that dizzy height, and as far as I remembered the cliff was perpendicular there; he had I felt slipped from me, and I had heard the sound of a falling body.

"What do you here?" he exclaimed, after a minute of silence; "how dared you return to your native sh.o.r.e thinking as you did."

"I thought you dead," I gasped, "dead by my hand, and I could not rest.

I wandered from place to place, but I found no peace, until I determined to confess what I thought I had done."

"And you came home for that?"

"For that."

"Fool, fool that I was not to think of the idiot's conscientiousness,"

he muttered, "then all might have been arranged even yet; but now he knows all, and I am undone."

"But how did you manage to escape?" I asked, still in a dazed kind of way.

"I will tell you," he replied, with a bitter, mocking laugh, "for nothing can be altered now. You thought you knew more than anyone about our coast, but I had found a place of which you knew nothing.

There is a crevice and a broad ledge beneath that place where we wrestled, and finding that you were stronger than I, I determined to do by cunning what I could not do by brute force. So dragging you to this place I slipped from you, fell down upon this ledge, and allowed you to think you had murdered me!"