Chapter XVII: Revenge!

"You doan't belong to this neighbourhood, do 'ee?" said Bill, at length.

"I have not been in England for years," was my reply.

"Well, sur, I'll tell 'ee oal about it. Perhaps you knaw that the young lady who was saved was stayin' at the house?"

"Yes, I've heard of it. Miss Morton was her name, wasn't it?"

"Iss, that's it. Well, Maaster Roger and Maaster Wilfred was boath in love wi' her; and Maaster Wilfred he stood the best chance 'cause Mrs. Trewinion dedn't like Roger, and she amoast worshipped Wilfred. Of course, we doan't know all about it, but we've heerd as 'ow there was somethin' in Squire Morton's will which made Miss Ruth marry the Squire of Trewinion. Anyhow the ou'll squire got killed, and jist after that, altho' Maaster Roger wur maaster of everything, he runned away and left Wilfred to be the squire. Of course, everybody wondered at that, and grieved too, for Maaster Roger wur a fav'rit' with us all. Then we heerd from the sarvents that Mrs. Trewinion and Maaster Wilfred had worked it out. She had tould Miss Ruth that young Roger had been boasting that she would 'ave to marry him, although 'ee didn't care anything 'bout 'er, and we heerd as 'ow she tould Maaster Roger that Miss Ruth loved his brother, but couldn't marry him 'cause he was in the way, and that the thought of marryin' him, that is Maaster Roger, was drivin' her mad. We doan't knaw 'bout oal these things, sur, but anyhow, Maaster Roger was missin' dreckly after his father's funerl, and hev never bin seed alive since. Well, after he was gone, Miss Ruth nearly broke her heart. You never see such a pale thing as she went to."

"But I think I heard that she liked Wilfred best; at least, Roger told me so."

"Ded Maaster Roger tell 'ee that, sur? Well, everybody thought so. She would go out a walking with Wilfred, but 'ardly ever with Roger; but wimmin be curus critters, and it 'pears that all the time she wur a dyin' for 'im, only she wur too proud to let 'im know it."

In spite of myself my heart gave a great bound. I saw it now. I had been the tool of my mother and Wilfred. I had spent long years of grief because of them; my life was perhaps wrecked, but I kept calm before Bill, and bade him go on with his story.

"Well, sur," Bill continued, "while everyone was talkin' 'bout Maaster Roger, and was wonderin' what 'ad become ov him, the body of a man wur found at the bottom of the headland oal bruised and battered. Of course, everybody said 'twas Maaster Roger. In fact, Mrs. Trewinion, and the passon, and Maaster Inch swore to him, an' 'cordingly it was took into the house, and in a day or two was buried in the Trewinion vault, under the Communion in the church there," pointing to the grey tower, which we could just see between the trees.

"But were proper steps taken to indentify it?" I asked.

"Well, sur, you see, when a young fella's mawther sweers to 'im there can't be much more zed. Anyhow, everybody believed it but Miss Ruth. She stuck out that 'twadn' Maaster Roger, and wudd'n go to the funeral. Of course, there were a lot of talk, but we people only heerd jist bits of gossip like. For my oan paart, I 'greed with her. I knawed that Maaster Roger knawed too much 'bout the cliffs not to vall over um, while as fur killin' hisself, he wadn't the sort of chap to do that."

"Did you say so?"

"'Course I did, but people laughed at me, and zed I worshipped Maaster Roger, which wur purty nigh true. But what vollied wur strange. People zed as ow a strange figure wur seed in the churchyard, and that it went wailin' up an' down, and then went in through the church door, and then up to the Trewinion vault, where it vanished."

"But how could anyone see it go through the door, and then up to the vault?"

"Dunnaw, sir; but sperrits be curse things. Any-rate, thur wur lots of talk, fur 'twas seed not only in the church, and churchyard, but up at the house."

"Who was it supposed to be?"

"Well, some do say as 'twas this man that was buried that wasn't Maaster Roger. Some do say as 'twas th' oull squire hisself, who come back to tell un that they didn' bury his son; while others do say that the squire com back to tell Miss Ruth to marry Wilfred. Anyhow, things went on like that for a week till the passon was called up to the house, and was tould to lay the ghost."

"How do you know if that is true?"

"Well, sur, that es what people do say. They say that Mrs. Trewinion and the passon went first into the library and then to the church, and there the passon ded read the funeral service over again, and took care to turn the Prayer-book upside down so that the ghost couldn't rise any more."

"And was it seen afterwards?"

"No sur, it weren't; but some don't think 'twas the passon laid the ghost, but 'cause Debrah Teague had summin to do wi' it, and the passon had a row wi' her."

"Well, what happened afterwards?"

"Things went on quiet for a bit, sur; then we heerd as 'ow Maaster Wilfred, who took 'pon him the place ov squire, was plagin' Miss Ruth to marry un, and she wudden, then it laiked out that she said she wudden marry un 'till ten year after Maaster Roger 'ad gone."

"My dream, my dream!" I thought. Surely the hand of God was in this; but I did not know all then!

"Well, are the ten years up yet?" I said, as quietly as I could.

"'Twas up 'bout a month ago, sur; and then, sur we've heerd as 'ow a strange thing happened."

"What?"

"I have to go up to the house a goodish bit, sur. I take fish there, and I'm friendly weth the sarvents, too, and so I heer more'n anybody else."

"Well?"

"They do say as 'ow Mrs. Trewinion and Maaster Wilfred went botherin' 'er again to marry 'im, tellin' her that the ten years was up. They say, too, that Maaster Wilfred got Miss Ruth's old steward Inch into some scrapes, and can make un do moast what he've got a mind to. Anyhow they oal got at her, and got her to promise, when she screeches out 'Roger es ere; I see un!' There were a sarvent in the 'all that eerd her and she tould me!"

"Merciful God," I thought, my dream again.

"What happened afterwards?" I said, excitedly.

"Why, sur, Miss Ruth she fented away, and lyed like one dead for a long time, and when she came to she looked oal dazed."

"And then?"

"The next day she went to her own house."

"What for?"

"To prepare for the weddin'. She believed, so she tould her maid, that Roger must be dead, and so she went home tu fulfil her father's will, and prepare for the weddin'."

"What, did Wil--, that is, the other brother, persist in her marrying him, though he knew she didn't like him?"

"That he did, sur. You see, he've bin livin' wild, and people do zay that the whole estate es mortgaged up to its eyes, and he ded want to get Miss Ruth so as to kep Trewinion."

My heart grew hot with anger, but I only urged the man to go on with his story.

"Well, I do'ant knaw much after that 'ow things went on; but I've heerd that she pined and pined, and still Maaster Wilfred kept her to her promise. The banes (banns) was called in church, and the day fixed; but she got thinner and thinner, till 'bout a week ago she--she----"

"She what? Tell me?"

"She died. Goodness gracious, who be you?"

"Ruth dead! Died of a broken heart! Wilfred, your cup is full! You shall die for this!" I cried wildly. My brain was on fire, my heart was breaking. I had come home for this! The message was a mockery, nothing was before me but despair and--revenge.

"Look you!" cried Bill, "you be--iss, good Lord--you be Maaster Roger!"

"Yes, Roger," I said, "come home for this!"

"Oa, Maaster Roger, I wish I 'ad'n tould 'ee. I'd a bite my tongue out fust; but I ded'n knaw, and yet I thought you was somebody I'd seed before. Oa, Maaster Roger, do'ant 'ee give way so. Oa, to think you should 'ev bin dead, and come back livin', and that Bill Tregargus shud hev bin the fust to tell 'ee the bad news. Ef I'd only knaw'd I'd ev altered it; but I ded'n."

I conquered myself at last. I had been in a hard school during the last ten years, living almost without hope in life, and so I felt it less than if I buoyed myself up with joyful hopes. Still, it was terrible, terrible. If I had come home a month before it might have been different, but I was too late. Ah, I was cursed, cursed with the Trewinion's curse!

"Bill," I said, after many wild questions on my part, and excited exclamations on his, for he could not realise that I was alive, "tell me all about it, all about her death, and everything."

"Well, Maaster Roger," said Bill, "what I knaw is through Jane Treloar, who was Miss Ruth's maid, and she came back yesterday by the coach. She do live here, you do knaw, sur. Well, she tould me and the cook that she only made one request when she got very ill, and that was that Maaster Wilfred shouldn't see her. She got weaker, sur, very fast, and never spoke to anybody, and died without a murmur."

"When was she buried?"

"Two days agone, sur."

"Where?"

"In the church, sur, near her house, in the vault under the Communion, so Jane Treloar said."

For a long time Bill and I remained together, until I saw the evening shadows fall, then I made up my mind I would go to the Hall.

"Bill," I said, "did you know me at all while we were talking?"

"Not until you got wild, sur, then it struck me who you was. Nobody would recognise you at once, sur, you've so altered."

"I don't want you to tell anyone you've seen me until you hear from me again, Bill."

"All right, sur, I won't do nothin' you do'ant want me to do; you be'ant goin' away, be 'ee, sur, y'll stay and be squire!"

"I don't know what I shall do yet," I said, "I'm almost mad; but you'll know by and by."

Then I went away towards the house. I knew Wilfred was home, and I determined that we should meet, and that he should give an account of his dealings with the woman for whom I had left my home.

Daylight was nearly gone when I reached the headland so I went to a spot near the house, where I could watch. It was a glorious September evening, and nature was on every hand beautiful. The flush of summer had gone; but the decay of winter had not set in, and the cornfields which had been shorn of their crops were by no means destitute of loveliness. The fruit trees were laden with their crimson and golden clusters, and the first tinge of brown that was just beginning to appear only added to the beauty of the foliage I felt this rather than saw it. The spell of the night exists more in my consciousness than in my memory. The music of the waters comes back to me rather as a half-forgotten dream than as anything I distinctly remember. My mind was then too busy with other things. I was thinking of Ruth, Ruth loving me through long years, and then dying of a broken heart. Through the wilful deception of my brother and mother I had been bereft of everything I loved. Through them I had sacrificed love, hope and comforts; through them my darling--who loved me all the time--was murdered. Oh! If I had but known. If I had but known we might have been happy--so happy! But no, they had remorselessly pursued their course, until they had killed my darling.

If I felt hatred on the morning I left home, I felt it ten times more now. Then my hatred was blind hatred without knowing the reason, now I knew that it only foreshadowed what should come after. It was a prophetic power in my soul, which told me vaguely perhaps, but truly, what my brother would do; now I realised it. Then, if I may so speak, it was abstract, now it was concrete. What I had only dimly feared was become a fact. Ruth, who had loved me, loved me without my knowledge, had been killed, murdered, as truly as if an assassin had used a knife or cudgel for his devilish work. Nay, it was worse, it was a slower and more cruel death. She had died because of the fear that her life was to be linked to a man she did not love.

I was very calm I remember, even though the fires of hell burnt in my heart. After all, the anger which is most dangerous is not that which raves and cries aloud, but that which makes no noise. Calm as I was, I felt my muscles grow hard, and I had a kind of savage joy within me as I pictured the death agony on his face and heard the death rattle in his throat. Nevertheless, I would not act foolishly, and I set myself to thinking how I could bring my desires to pass.

How should I enter the house? How should I be able to get Wilfred away alone?

Surely, the powers of darkness were on my side, for while I waited and watched I saw him come out of the tower entrance, and walk in the direction of the gate that led out to the headland where I was.

"Ah!" said I, "God is going to give you into my hands. He is a just God! He will not grant me love, but He will grant me hate, and He will find a means of vengeance."

He came out of the gate and wandered slowly on. I was too far away to see his face clearly in the evening light, but could see he moved with the old, careless swing. Ten years had scarcely altered his appearance. He was still the elegant, handsome Wilfred.

He walked towards the vicarage, and took the coast path. So much the better--it was the most lonely path in the countryside. It suited my purpose exactly. I followed silently. No sound of footsteps could be heard, for the grass was soft and spongy; the grass on which we had often played together as boys.

He wandered along aimlessly as though he had come out to be alone. He did not look back; but every now and then stopped and gazed at the "Devil's Tooth," the five great prongs of which could be clearly seen in the evening light.

Presently I thought we had gone far enough for my purpose, and so I went up to him.

"I desire to speak to you," I said.

He turned round sharply, and looked straight at me.

"Who are you?" he cried.

"Look and see," I said.

The moon had risen, the sky was clear, and my features could be plainly seen.

He looked at me steadily with his sharp brilliant eyes, and spoke again.

"I do not know you."

"I think you do," I said. "You and I have often played on yonder headland, often wrestled there; look again."

Then he gave a great start, and trembled.

"My God, it is Roger!" he cried.

"Ah, you remember at last, do you? Yes, it is Roger."

He seemed to detect something fearful in my voice, for he asked harshly:

"Where do you come from, and why are you here?"

"I am come from silence, and from mystery, as far as you are concerned," I replied, "and I am here in the name of righteousness and justice."

Something in my answer seemed to startle him.

"Alive?" he said, with a gasp.

"Yes, alive," I said. "When I left I told you to be careful, or Roger might come to life again. I told you to be kind to the one for whom I sacrificed my all, or the dead would arise. Let your own memory answer the question whether there is cause for me to come back."

He caught my meaning, and began to stammer.

"But, Roger, I--I have done nothing, and----"

"Stop," I cried, "I know all. You know that I was deceived into believing that Ruth loved you, and that I was the hindrance to her happiness. And I know now that it was a lie concocted by my mother and you. I know how you have imposed upon and deceived her. I know that you have tried to frighten her into marrying you, and I know, too, that by keeping her to a promise that her soul abhorred, you have murdered her! I know all this, and now I have come back for revenge."

"What will you do?"

"I do not know as yet. First of all confess to me this; did not you and my mother deceive both Ruth and me to get me away, so that you might have what was mine?"

"You said you knew, why do you ask?"

"I wish to hear what you say; answer me!"

"Mother put in into my mind, and I thought that--that--you didn't care, so I--I----" he stopped in confusion.

"Coward! to put the fault on your mother. Now another question. Did you villify me to Ruth, did you wear away her life by trying to get her to marry you, even when you knew she loved me?"

"Roger, I wanted her so, and you were gone, and we thought you dead, and our affairs got entangled so----"

"You killed her," I said savagely. "But for your accursed cunning and greed she would be alive now."

"I didn't know, Roger. I knew she didn't like me after--after--you went away, but I didn't think I should----"

"Did you hold her to her promise to the last?"

"Yes--that is, I thought she might get better again and so----"

"You drove her to her death, and now my turn has come."

"But you will not hurt me, Roger; you will not hurt your brother! What will you do?"

This touched me to the quick, and for a time I felt I could not hurt him.

Is there unspoken communication of thought? Is there a subtle interchange of mind which is instinctively felt? I think so, for no sooner did I feel that I could not harm Wilfred than his evident fear left him. He acted on the aggressive immediately, and spoke boldly.

"Yes, what will you do?" he said. "I refuse to know you. I refuse to recognise you. My brother Roger is dead, and was buried long years since. You are some impostor come here to claim what is not your own, under the paltry pretence of revenge."

My brother's villainy was now manifest, and my old hatred came surging back.

"Roger is not dead, and that you will soon find out," I said. "All your authority and power are gone, the son and heir has come; but Ruth's avenger is come too! 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' You shall suffer as she has suffered, you shall die as she died. I have a long score to pay. I have ten years of misery in the past to account for. I have a blackened future from which you are not free."

We were standing near the cliff as I said this, but I had my eye upon him, and it is well it was so, for he jumped at me savagely, and, had I not been prepared I should have fallen from the dizzy height to the ragged rocks below.

"Curse you," he cried; "but you have not a child to deal with, or the puny boy whose weakness you used to take advantage of. I am not going to let Trewinion go. I have not enjoyed it for ten years to lose it now. If Roger did not die ten years ago he shall die now."

With that he sought to drag me nearer the cliff, while I gripped him firmly. He did not fight defensively now. For him, everything depended on the struggle. To rob me of my love, and to rob me of my money, he had schemed to get me away, and now that I had come back he determined to hold by all he had stolen. Nor did I fight defensively. I felt I had lost Ruth, ay, I had lost my life itself through him, and I gripped him with a grip of iron. I thought of misery, and revenge; he of disgrace and the loss of what he held dear.

I soon found out that, as he had said, I had not a child or a puny boy to deal with. His muscles seemed of iron, and he coiled around me like a serpent. If I hated, he hated still more, and with the malignity of a demon he sought to master me. I was, however, the bigger and the stronger man, while the past ten years of my life had developed my physical strength greatly. Toil and exposure had given me power of endurance unknown to him, and soon I felt his grasp weaken. Little by little I mastered him, until with the grip of a giant I crushed him in my arms.

He looked up at me despairingly.

"You will not kill me, Roger?" he gasped.

"Would you not have killed me if you could?" I said, for there was murder in my heart. "You have killed my Ruth, and now----"

I did not finish the sentence, for, in spite of myself, I felt him dragging me nearer the edge of the cliff, nor was I able to stop him until we were within a foot or so from the awful precipice. Then I lifted him from the ground and held him. His strength seemed gone, while mine was unabated.

What should I do with him? He was the destroyer of my life's happiness, he had killed my love, he had filled me with despair; but he was my brother. Should I destroy the venomous life that wrought only evil? or----

"Hurl him over!" said the devil within me, "he is your blight, your curse! Show him no mercy, let him be dashed to pieces, and thus you will avenge your misery, and avenge Ruth's death!"

"No, no, he's your brother, forgive him!" said another voice.

All this passed through my mind in the moment, that I felt him struggle again, then, with an awful shriek, he fell from me.

I stood alone on that dizzy height--alone! I was the conqueror. I was avenged. Ruth's murderer was dead.

I looked around me, and I remembered where I stood.

Long years before I had gone to the vicarage, and on this spot I had seen a shadowy, shapeless figure in white!

On the night my father had died I was standing on this place when I saw between the prongs of the "Devil's Tooth" the omen of darkness.

Now, standing there alone, I realised what had been done on this place of evil memory.

I stood on the edge of the cliff and looked down I could see nothing, but below me I heard the waves break upon the rocks, and they seemed to laugh with fiendish glee, and mock me in my black despair.