IV
THE FINAL SHOCK
Her baby had fallen asleep. I knew this by the faint, low sweetness ofher croon; and, shuddering with the horrors I had witnessed, horrorswhich acquired a double force from the contrast presented by the peaceof this quiet spot and the hallowing influence of the sleepinginfant,--I threw myself down in the darkness at her feet, gasping out:
"Oh, thank God and your uncle's seeming harshness, that you have escapedthe doom which has overtaken those others! You and your babe are stillalive; while they--"
"What of them? What has happened to them? You are breathless, trembling;you have brought no bread--"
"No, no. Food in this house means death. Your relatives gave food andwine to your uncle at a supper; he, though now in his grave, hasreturned the same to them. There was a bottle--"
I stopped, appalled. A shriek, muffled by distance but quivering withthe same note of death I had heard before, had gone up again from theother side of the wall against which we were leaning.
"Oh!" she gasped; "and my father was at that supper! my father, who diedlast night cursing the day he was born! We are an accursed race. I haveknown it all my life; perhaps that was why I mistook passion for love;and my baby-- O God, have mercy! God have mercy!"
The plaintiveness of that cry, the awesomeness of what I had seen--ofwhat was going on at that moment almost within the reach of ourarms--the darkness, the desolation of our two souls, affected me as Ihad never been affected in my whole life before. In the concentratedexperience of the last two hours I seemed to live years under thiswoman's eyes; to know her as I did my own heart; to love her as I did myown soul. No growth of feeling ever brought the ecstasy of thatmoment's inspiration. With no sense of doing anything strange, with nofear of being misunderstood, I reached out my hand and, touching herswhere it lay clasped about her infant, I said:
"We are two poor wayfarers. A rough road loses half its difficultieswhen trodden by two. Shall we, then, fare on together--we and the littlechild?"
She gave a sob; there was sorrow, longing, grief, hope, in its thrillinglow sound. As I recognized the latter emotion I drew her to my breast.The child did not separate us.
"We shall be happy," I murmured, and her sigh seemed to answer adelicious "Yes," when suddenly there came a shock to the partitionagainst which we leaned and, starting from my clasp, she cried:
"Our duty is in there. Shall we think of ourselves or even of each otherwhile these men, all relatives of mine, are dying on the other side ofthis wall?"
Seizing my hand, she dragged me to the trap; but here I took the lead,and helped her down the ladder. When I had her safely on the floor atthe foot, she passed in front of me again; but once up the steps and infront of the kitchen door, I thrust her behind me, for one glance intothe room beyond had convinced me it was no place for her.
But she would not be held back. She crowded forward beside me, andtogether we looked upon the wreck within. It was a never-to-be-forgottenscene. The demon that was in those men had driven them to demolishfurniture, dishes, everything. In one heap lay what, an hour before, hadbeen an inviting board surrounded by rollicking and greedy guests. Butit was not upon this overthrow we stopped to look. It was upon somethingthat mingled with it, dominated it and made of this chaos only a settingto awful death. Janet's face, in all its natural hideousness anddepravity, looked up from the floor beside this heap; and farther on,the twisted figure of him they called Hector, with something more thanthe seams of greedy longing round his wide, staring eyes and icytemples. Two in this room! and on the threshold of the one beyond amoaning third, who sank into eternal silence as we approached; andbefore the fireplace in the great room, a horrible crescent that hadonce been aged Luke, upon whom we had no sooner turned our backs than wecaught glimpses here and there of other prostrate forms which moved onceunder our eyes and then moved no more.
One only still stood upright, and he was the man whose obtrusive figureand sordid expression had so revolted me in the beginning. There was nocolor now in his flabby and heavily fallen cheeks. The eyes, in whosefalse sheen I had seen so much of evil, were glazed now, and his big andburly frame shook the door it pressed against. He was staring at a smallslip of paper he held, and, from his anxious looks, appeared to misssomething which neither of us had power to supply. It was a spectacle tomake devils rejoice, and mortals fly aghast. But Eunice had a spiritlike an angel and drawing near him, she said:
"Is there anything I can do for you, Cousin John?"
He started, looked at her with the same blank gaze he had hitherto castat the wall; then some words formed on his working lips and we heard:
"I can not reckon; I was never good at figures; but if Luke is gone, andWilliam, and Hector, and Barbara's boy, and Janet,--_how much does thatleave for me_?"
He was answered almost the moment he spoke; but it was by other tonguesand in another world than this. As his body fell forward, I tore openthe door before which he had been standing, and, lifting the almostfainting Eunice in my arms, I carried her out into the night. As I didso, I caught a final glimpse of the pictured face I had found it so hardto understand a couple of hours before. I understood it now.
A surprise awaited us as we turned toward the gate. The mist had liftedand a keen but not unpleasant wind was driving from the north. Borne onit, we heard voices. The village had emptied itself, probably at thealarm given by the lawyer, and it was these good men and women whoseapproach we heard. As we had nothing to fear from them, we went forwardto meet them. As we did so, three crouching figures rose from somebushes we passed and ran scurrying before us through the gateway. Theywere the late comers who had shown such despair at being shut out fromthis fatal house, and who probably did not yet know the doom they hadescaped.
* * * * *
There were lanterns in the hands of some of the men who now approached.As we stopped before them, these lanterns were held up, and by the lightthey gave we saw, first, the lawyer's frightened face, then the visagesof two men who seemed to be persons of some authority.
"What news?" faltered the lawyer, seeing by our faces that we knew theworst.
"Bad," I returned; "the poison had lost none of its virulence by beingmixed so long with the wine."
"How many?" asked the man on his right anxiously.
"Eight," was my solemn reply.
"There were but eight," faltered the lawyer; "that means, then, all?"
"All," I repeated.
A murmur of horror rose, swelled, then died out in tumult as the crowdswept on past us.
For a moment we stood watching these people; saw them pause before thedoor we had left open behind us, then rush in, leaving a wail of terroron the shuddering midnight air. When all was quiet again, Eunice laidher hand upon my arm.
"Where shall we go?" she asked despairingly. "I do not know a house thatwill open to me."
The answer to her question came from other lips than mine.
"I do not know one that will _not_," spoke up a voice behind our backs."Your withdrawal from the circle of heirs did not take from you yourrightful claim to an inheritance which, according to your uncle's will,could be forfeited only by a failure to arrive at the place ofdistribution within the hour set by the testator. As I see the matternow, this appeal to the honesty of the persons so collected was a testby which my unhappy client strove to save from the general fate suchmembers of his miserable family as fully recognized their sin and weretruly repentant."
It was Lawyer Smead. He had lingered behind the others to tell her this.She was, then, no outcast, but rich, very rich; how rich I dared notacknowledge to myself, lest a remembrance of the man who was the last toperish in that house of death should return to make this calculationhateful. It was a blow which struck deep, deeper than any either of ushad sustained that night. As we came to realize it, I stepped slowlyback, leaving her standing erect and tall in the middle of the roadway,with her baby in her arms. But not for long; soon she was close at myside murmuring s
oftly:
"Two wayfarers still! Only, the road will be more difficult and the needof companionship greater. Shall we fare on together, you, I--and thelittle one?"