Part 37 (1/2)
”Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer.” So said the disciple of the Son of G.o.d, and I had hated him, and now neither G.o.d nor eternity could undo what I had done.
I thought of my mother. Soon she would learn that Wilfred was dead, and then her sky would be black, and it would be I, Roger, who had blackened it. The deed which would bring her grey hair with sorrow to the grave, had been done by me.
”Ah,” I thought, ”if I could only cease to be, cease to think,” but that, I knew, could never be. Had I hurled myself from that dizzy height, so that my battered body might be beside my brother's, the awful thing I had done would remain, and I should remain. I might kill the body, but I could not kill the soul; and self-murder would make my crime greater, not less.
Oh, how desolate the world was. The summer sky had no beauty; the fields, which I could still dimly see, were shorn of every loveliness.
Then I looked seaward, and the only visible object was the ghastly rock which was ever a nightmare to my soul.
What was it I saw there? It was a light, like the light I had seen on the night of my father's death, a weird, ghostly light, moving between the great grey p.r.o.ngs.
I remembered then of what that light was supposed to be the omen, and my senses seemed to leave me. Everywhere, everywhere, I could hear taunting voices crying ”Murderer! Murderer!” The winds as they swept by said it, the sea playing with the pebbles on the beach said it, and thousands of voices all around me uttered the same dread word. I put my fingers in my ears to keep away the hideous sound; but not so could I silence conscience. The word came not from without, but from within.
It was my guilty soul that repeated it, until I longed to have the power to flee from the self which I loathed.
Not only did my ears hear the word; my eyes saw it. Everywhere it was written. On the broad sky I could see it written from end to end. I turned to the sea, and on its silvery waters the same awful word was traced, in letters that were black as the blackest night. I turned my eyes landward, and it was there, and when I closed them I saw it still.
Yet I was not sorry for what I had done! I suffered the pains of h.e.l.l, but I was not sorry, nor did I hate my brother the less. Could I have shed one bitter tear or realised one true feeling of repentance I should have suffered less; but I could not, and this made my h.e.l.l harder to bear, it made my h.e.l.l a h.e.l.l of the blackest kind. Dives did not feel the burning so keenly as I, for in his pain he could still love his brothers and long for their salvation; but I was in worse straits than he. I hated all, because of my hatred of one.
And all the time I felt this, I stood on the verge of the cliffs hundreds of feet above the ever-sounding sea. My loneliness was terrible! I longed to hear some voice, to feel the grasp of some friendly hand, yet I dreaded the approach of any one.
My eyes and ears were, after a while, delivered from the terrible word, and looking again I saw the mysterious light moving among the p.r.o.ngs of the ”Devil's Tooth,” then I saw a form approaching me, a grey, bent, ungainly form.
Trembling I waited as it approached, until it stood close by my side.
”What do 'ee zee?” said a croaking voice.
I did not reply. I felt that I could not.
”Es it the light you be lookin' at? That's Betsey Fraddam's lantern, that es, and that do'ant tell'ee of any good luck.”
I knew now that it was old Deborah Teague who spoke. The years had not softened her harsh features, nor did she seem older than when I had left Trewinion, save that she stooped more. My blood curdled when I knew it was she. When I stood on this place last she had come to me and had repeated some lines of the Trewinion's curse; she had told me of the darkness that was approaching, and now on the night that I had come back, the night on which I had been engaged in a deed of darkest dark on this same dread spot, she had come to me again.
Yet did I not reply.
”Who be you?” she continued.
I remained silent, looking again towards the ”Devil's Tooth,” where angry flames leaped up.
The old dame laughed when she saw my evident fear, and continued in her hoa.r.s.e, croaking voice:
”That's ou'll Betsey cookin' her broth, that es; and it was made where you do'ant want to go. I shudn't stay there much longer or ou'll Betsey 'll bring'ee some, and n.o.body ever refuses her.”
With that she hobbled away, leaving me again alone. But I did not stay long. A maddening desire came into my heart to get away, and with eager feet I rushed landward.
Where should I go? Somewhere, anywhere away from Trewinion, away from this dark deed of my life. For a mile I rushed blindly on. Then I stopped. I must make up my mind what was to be my destination.
Morton Hall! I had not been thinking of it, but that was the place that impressed itself on my thought and memory. I would go there. For what purpose I did not know, but in my misery that one place seemed to invite me. I could do no good, for Ruth was dead, and laid in the cold tomb. Dead, dead, and she had died loving me! The thought softened my h.e.l.l, and yet it made it harder to bear, for while it put tenderness into my heart, it made me feel more than ever unworthy even to mention her name.
I stopped in my journey again, for I had started in the direction of Ruth's home, and, looking upward, I saw a star that was nearer to me than any other, and it seemed to look lovingly upon me; then my heart was subdued, and I sobbed like a child.