so the blow had fallen!
yet a single despairing effort i made to beat off or at least postpone the inevitable.
i sat up in bed and answered my brother back with, i could feel, ashen and quivering lips.
“what do you mean?” i said. “how dare you say such a thing?”
“i dare anything,” he said, “where i have a particular object in view.” he never took his eyes off me, and the cold devil in them froze my blood that had only now run so hotly.
“for yourself,” he went on, “i don’t care much whether you hang or live. you can come to terms with your own conscience i dare say, and a fat brother more or less may be a pure question of fit survival. that’s as it may be—but the girl here is another matter.”
“i didn’t kill him,” i could only say, dully.
still keeping his eyes on me he sought for and drew from his jacket pocket a twist of dry and shrunken water weed. a horrible shudder seized me as i looked upon it.
“you didn’t think to see that again?” he said. “do you recognize it? of course you do. it was the rope you twisted round his foot, and that i found round his foot still, after dad had carried him upstairs, bundled round with those sacks, and i was left alone in the room with him a minute.”
my heart died within me. i dropped my sick, strained eyes and could only listen in agonized silence. and he went on quite pitilessly.
“you shouldn’t have left such evidence, you know—least of all for me to see. i had not forgotten the murder in your eyes when i spoke to you that morning and the evening before.”
he struck the weed lightly with his right hand.
“this stuff,” he said, “i know it, of course—grows up straight enough of itself. it wanted something human—or inhuman—to twist it round a leg in that fashion.”
i broke out with a choking cry.
“i did it,” i said; “but it wasn’t murder—oh, jason, it wasn’t murder, as you mean it.”
he gave a little cold laugh.
“no doubt we have different standards of morality,” he said. “we won’t split hairs. say it was murder as a judge and jury would view it.”
“it wasn’t! will you believe me if i tell you the truth?”
“that depends upon the form it takes.”
“i’ll tell you. it is the truth—before god, it is the truth! i won’t favor myself. i had been mad with him, i own, but had nearly got over it. i was out all day on the hills and thought i should like a bathe on my way home. i went through the ‘run’ and saw he was there. at first i thought i would leave him to himself, but just as i was going he saw me and a grin came over his face and—jason, you know that if i had gone away then, he would have thought me afraid to meet him.”
“you can leave me, renalt, out of the question, if you please.”
“i meant no harm—indeed i didn’t—but when i got there he taunted and mocked at me. i didn’t know what i was doing; and when he jumped for the water i followed him and twisted that round. then in a single moment i saw what i had done—and was mad to unfasten it. it would not come away at first, and when at last i got him free and to the shore he was insensible. if you could only know what i suffered then, you would pity me, jason—you would; you could not help it.”
i stole a despairing look at his face and there was no atom of softness in it.
“he came to on the way home and i was wild with joy, and at night, jason, when you were in bed and asleep, i crept into his room and begged for his forgiveness and he forgave me.”
“without any condition? that wasn’t like modred. what did he ask for in return?”
i was silent.
“come,” he persisted, “what did he want? you may as well tell me all. you don’t fancy that i believe he forgave you without getting something substantial in exchange?”
“i was to give up all claim to zyp,” i said in a low, suffering voice.
jason laughed aloud.
“oh, modred,” he cried, “you were a pretty bantling, upon my word! who would have thought the dear fatty had such cunning in him?”
his callous merriment struck me with a dumb horror as of sacrilege. but he subdued it directly and returned to me and my misery in the same repressed tone as before.
“well,” he said, “i have heard it all, i suppose. it makes little difference. you know, of course, you are morally responsible for his death, just the same as if you had stuck a knife into his heart.”
i could only hide my face in the bedclothes, writhed all through with agony. there was a little spell of silence; then my brother bespoke my attention with a gentle push.
“renny, do you want all this known to the others?”
i raised my head in a sudden gust of passion.
“do what you like!” i cried. “i know you now, and you can’t make it much worse!”
“oh, yes,” he said, coolly; “i can make it a good deal worse. nobody but i knows at present, don’t you see?”
i looked at him with a sudden gleam of hope.
“don’t you intend to tell, jason?”
he laughed again, lightly.
“that depends. i must borrow my cue from modred and make conditions.”
i had no need to ask what they were. in whatever direction i looked now, i saw nothing but a blank and deadly waste.
“i want the girl—you understand? i need not go into particulars. she interests me and that’s enough.”
“yes,” i said, quietly.
“there must be no more of that sentimental foolery between you and her. i bore it as long as you were ill; but, now you’re strong again, it must stop. if it doesn’t, you know what’ll happen.”
with that he turned abruptly on his heel and began to undress. i listened for the deep breathing that announced him to be asleep with a strained fever of impatience. i felt that i could not think cleanly or collectedly with that monstrous consciousness of his awake in the room.
perhaps, in all my wretchedness, the full discovery of his baseness of soul was as bitter a wound as any i had received. i had so looked up to him as a superior being, so sunned myself in the pride of relationship to him; so lovingly submitted to his boyish patronage and condescension. the grief of my discovery was very real and terrible and would in itself, i think, have gone far to blight my existence had no fearfuller blast descended to wither it.
well, it was all one now. whatever immunity from disaster i was to enjoy henceforth must be on sufferance only.
had i been older and sinfuller i might have grasped in my despair at the coward’s resource of self-destruction; as it was, i thought of flight. by and by, perhaps, when vigor should return to me, and with it resolution, i should be able to face firmly the problem of my future and take my own destinies in hand.
little sleep came to me that night, and that only of a haunted kind. i felt haggard and old as i struggled into my clothes the next morning, and all unfit to cope with the gigantic possibilities of the day. jason had gone early to the fatal pool for a bathe.
at breakfast, in the beginning, zyp’s manner to me was prettily sympathetic and a little shy. it was the first of my great misery that i must repel her on the threshold of our better understanding, and see her fall away from me for lack of the least expression of that passionate devotion and gratitude that filled my heart to bursting. i could see at once that she was startled—hurt, perhaps, and that she shrunk from me immediately. jason talked airily to my father all through the meal, but i knew his senses to be as keenly on the alert as if he had sat in silence, with his eyes fixed upon my face.
i choked over my bread and bacon; i could not swallow more than a mouthful of the coffee in my cup, and zyp sat back in her chair, never addressing me after that first rebuff, but pondering on me angrily with her eyes full of a sort of wonder.
she stopped me peremptorily as, breakfast over, i was hastening out with all the speed i could muster, and asked me if i didn’t want her company that morning.
“no,” i answered; “i am well enough to get about by myself now.”
“very well,” she said. “then you must do without me altogether for the future.”
she turned on her heel and i could only look after her in dumb agony. then i crept down into the yard and confided my grief to the old cart wheels.
presently, raising my head, i saw her standing before me, her hands under her apron, her face grave with an expression, half of concern, half of defiance.
“now, if you please,” she said, “i want to know the meaning of this?”
“of what?” i asked, with wretched evasiveness.
“you know—your manner toward me this morning.”
“i have done nothing,” i muttered.
“you have insulted me, sir. is it because i kissed you last night?”
“oh, zyp!” i cried aloud in great pain. “you know it isn’t—you know it isn’t!”
i couldn’t help this one cry. it was forced from me.
“then what’s the reason?”
“i can’t give it—i have none. i want to be alone, that’s all.”
she stood looking at me a moment in silence, and the line of her mouth hardened.
“very well,” she said, at last. “then, understand, i’ve done with you. i thought at first it was a mistake or that you were ill again. i’ve been kind to you; you can’t say i haven’t given you a chance. and i pitied you because you were alone and unhappy. jason, i will tell you, hinted an evil thing of you to me, but even if it was true, which i didn’t believe, i forgave you, thinking, perhaps, it was done for my sake. well, if it was, i tell you now it was useless, for you will be nothing to me ever again.”
and, with these cruel words, she left me. the proud child of the woods could brook no insult to her condescension, and from my comrade she had become my enemy.
i suppose i should have been relieved that the inevitable rupture had occurred so swiftly and effectually. judge you, you poor outcasts who, sanctifying a love in your tumultuous breasts, have had to step aside and yield to another the fruit you so coveted.
once pledged to antagonism, zyp, it will be no matter for wonder, adopted anything but half-measures. had it only been her vanity that was hurt she would have made me pay dearly for the blow. as it was, her ingenuity in devising plans for my torture and discomfiture verged upon the very bounds of reason.
at first she contented herself with mere verbal pleasantries and disdainful snubbings. as, however, the days went on and my old strength and health obstinately returned to me, despite the irony of the shattered soul within, her animosity grew to be an active agent so persistent in its methods that i verily thought my brain would give way under the load.
i cannot, indeed, recall a tithe of the pucklike devices she resorted to for my moral undoing, and which, after all, i might have endured to the end had it not been for one threading torment that accompanied all her whimsies like a strain of diabolical music. this was an ostentatious show of affection for jason, which, i truly believe, from being more or less put on in exaggerated style for my edification, became at length such a habit with her as may be considered, in certain dispositions, one form of love.
the two now were seldom apart. once, conscious of my presence, she kissed jason on the lips, because he had brought her a little flowering root of some plant she desired. i saw his face fire up darkly and he looked across at me with a triumph that made me almost hate him.
and the worst of it was that i knew that my punishment was not more than commensurate with the offense; that my sin had been grievous and its retribution not out of proportion. how could full atonement and zyp have been mine together?
still, capable of acknowledging the fitness of things in my sadder hours of loneliness, my nature, once restored to strength, could not but strive occasionally to throw off the incubus that it felt it could not bear much longer without breaking down for good and all. i had done wrong on the spur of a single wicked impulse, but i was no fiend to have earned such bitter reprisal. by slow degrees rebellion woke in my heart against the persistent cruelty of my two torturers. had i fled at this juncture, the wild scene that took place might have been averted, and the exile, which became mine nevertheless, have borne, perhaps, less evil fruit than in the result it did.
