Chapter XVIII: Hell!

I cried to God, "Oh, I am so weary."

God said, "You have not seen half hell."

I said, "I cannot see more, I am afraid. In my own narrow little path I dare not walk, because I think that one has dug a pit for me; and if I put my hand to take a fruit I draw it back again, because I think it has been kissed. If I look out across the plains the mounds are covered houses; and when I pass among the stones I hear them crying. The time of the dance is beaten in with sobs, and the wind is alive. Oh, I cannot bear hell."--OLIVE SCHREINER.

For some time I was conscious of nothing, but by degrees I realised what I had done. An awful crime rested upon my soul, a crime only the shadow of which had rested upon me before.

The hatred of years had found expression at last. The serpent that had lain in my heart, writhing and turning, and growing for years, had at last lifted its head, the latent devil had asserted itself, and I was a murderer.

A murderer!

The ghastly, terrible truth pressed itself upon me more and more. I was alone on the weather-beaten cliff, around me all was still; beneath me was the ever sobbing sea telling me of what I had done.

A murderer?

Oh! The terror of that thought. Even now, after long years, I trembled at what I then realised. I, Roger Trewinion, trained by a godly father, surrounded during my early life with every good influence, was a murderer. In my madness I had arisen like Cain and taken away my brother's life; in my hatred I had wrought desolation.

Alone! alone; with only the mocking sea to speak to me from without; while within I felt the fires of hell.

I saw, as in a lightning flash, the events of the past twenty years. I saw myself and Wilfred playing, rollicking on the cliffs, I saw us rushing home from school, and nutting among the woods. Again we were together in the waving cornfields, or swimming in the shining seas. We were reared in the same home, and had through our childhood slept in the same room. We both bore the same name, and the same blood ran in our veins.

And I remembered more than that. Thousands of incidents concerning the happy days of childhood flashed through my memory. Then we had few cares and many joys. I saw us sitting in the old family pew in church, and the lines of the old hymns we had sung came back to me, hymns about the love of God and the Cross of Christ.

And I had murdered him! Never, in my wildest moments, did I dream that my hatred of Wilfred would ever take outward form in actual killing. I did not mean to kill him when we stood together, and held him in my arms. But he fell from me--fell from that awful height, down, down, among the cruel jagged rocks, and would be dashed to pieces, while the mocking waves would sweep over him.

Now, where was the purpose of my hate, my revenge? They had not won back the lost years of my life, they had not given Ruth back to me. My evil deed had only made the evil more evil; had poisoned my own soul with a poison more deadly. What right had I to visit vengeance upon my brother's wrong-doing? Was I perfect? Had not hatred mastered my life for years? Had I not allowed my lower nature to conquer my higher? Yet I had dared to avenge my wrong. I had dared to take the work of God into my own hands. "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," said the Lord.

Bitterly now did I feel the truth of this, for God was taking His vengeance on me! I--I had broken His laws, I had yielded to the devil, I had hurled the crown of my manhood from me.

And I still stood alone, with bare head and burning eyes, while in my heart burned a scorching, tormenting, yet non-consuming fire.

Then a more terrible thought came. What I had done could never be undone. Never! Age upon age might pass away, but that fact, ghastly and black, would remain! It might be possible, I did not think He ever would, but it might be possible that in the far-off future God would forgive me. But then, even God could not undo the fact that I had killed my brother.

But I had not intended to throw him over the cliff. His death was due to an accident; I had not altogether yielded to the strivings of the devil. True, true, and yet murder was in my heart, for did I not hate him and had I not hated him for years.

"Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer." So said the disciple of the Son of God, and I had hated him, and now neither God 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 prongs.

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 hell, 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 hell harder to bear, it made my hell a hell 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 prongs 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 hoarse, 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 nobody 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 hell, 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.

Again a mad frenzy possessed me, and I rushed away in the direction of Ruth's home as though the powers of darkness pursued me.