Echo of a Curse Read online

  But for a while there was none but Terry in her horizon. There he was! Her pal. As that, now, she knew his worth. If sex did not respond to his appeal, other human attributes did.

  She grasped his hands in her own, danced him round, voicing a joy that surprised herself.

  “I told Dad they couldn’t kill you!” she cried.

  All memory of the horrors of war left him. They mattered nothing now, all those months of tense danger, suffering, filth, pain. One moment could compensate man for the endurance of years. The pleasure, gladness, happiness in her eyes were strangely like love.

  Marvellous Mary! Just now she was beauty embodied. Radiant. Dazzling. Incomparable.

  They began to chatter, like, as she said presently, starved monkeys, until a rather savage poke in his kidneys reminded Terry he had brought Vincent Border with him. Being young, he giggled, turned gaily to see his friend’s eyes as alight, as excited as Mary’s; to see him as starrily beautiful as she.

  “Oh, Mary, this is Vin. I wrote you, you know.”

  “Oh, yes! How do . . .”

  She paused abruptly. Something dynamic, cosmic, in Vincent Border’s stare sobered her mood. His loveliness staggered her. This lovely god the ardent soldier Terry affirmed? World of never-ceasing wonders! It did not seem possible that such gracious glamour could be a killer, a licensed killer. Lyres and lyrics alone seemed appropriate to his golden glow. And whisky! Oh lord! Her limbs trembled. For an instant her brain swam. Something seemed to rouse within her to almost vicious life, to dig claws into the most sensitive part of her immaterial self, to enslave her free self. Waves of feeling surged up to her throat, suffused her eyes . . . And then she was finishing her formal greeting . . . She must pull herself together . . .

  But all he said was three words—which sealed Mary’s fate:

  “Oh lovely lady!”

  Archly said, they were full of incomparable homage. All the courting of years was in them. No woman could have escaped him—then.

  But Terry, watching, thought that, despite the intensity of his gaze, despite its directness, Vin did not see Mary; not as he and others would see her, coming upon her thus for the first time; that his mind and his eyes did not focus fully upon the objects they regarded—were too restless, evasive. There was possessiveness, appetite in his eyes, but no concentration, no tranquillity. Vin looked at things, received an impression of desirability and, obeying his primitive instincts, snatched without consideration, without civilized appreciation of consequences, as a child snatches at lovely wayside flowers, looks, smells, and idly drops, when drawn to the next gay attraction.

  From Vin’s gay, yet, somehow, indefinite face Terry glanced at Mary, to catch the startled recognition of something special to herself in this new personality. His own heart jumped. A little stream of molten agony poured through his veins. A sense of calamity pervaded him, together with a more particular sense of irreparable loss.

  This meeting to which he had looked forward with a sort of exultant hope was the grave of hope. Vincent and Mary. He might have known. That almost uncanny charm! Mary, like himself, had encountered nothing similar.

  But Mary . . . and Vincent Border? A dragging sense of disaster whispered that he would have been wiser to take her with him into the trenches, into the direct line of fire, rather than subject her to the poison of Vincent Border’s beauty.

  Yet the visitor’s manner and behaviour were exemplary. Seeking for definite justification of his almost prophetic fears, he could find none. It was as if some psychic quality in himself had been stirred by Vin’s aura.

  And it was not to the newcomer that Mary gave her attention, but to the old pal. Almost she seemed inclined to snub her guest. And this was so unlike Mary that Terry sought wildly for some explanation. Did she perceive something odd lurking behind Vin’s beauty? Something at variance with nature—the norm? Not something merely pagan; something more . . . more . . . He could not find the words to express his instinct.

  And yet was there not another explanation for that almost marked ignoring of the newcomer in favour of the old? Do we not often turn away our gaze from the thing we most desire? It is one of the most common pretenses. And it is one of woman’s most eloquent reactions. Women think, perhaps—Terry told himself—that this action is an effective mask.

  “I’ve arranged dinner early for to-night,” Mary explained as they entered. “I thought you’d like that. Come and meet Aunt Charlotte.” She turned to Vin. “Aunt’s rather lame, which is rotten luck because she’s jolly, you know.”

  It seemed to Terry she was afraid to meet his friend’s eyes, that for once the graceful tom-boy of his home-days was shy—at a loss.

  She turned, leading the way, and Terry stole a glance at Vin. He was watching Mary move with the same intense regard that seemed inseparable from his reaction to women, subjectively or objectively. A faint uneasiness stole into Terry’s mind. A sudden vision of this lovely, golden boy dipping his hand into a flowing red flood intensified the uneasiness. Mary! Clasp-knives and glassy eyes. The dead!

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  They were all very gay at dinner. Despite her lameness, Aunt Charlotte was obviously taken with the strange young man.

  Champagne flowed, rather to Terry’s concern. How, he wondered, was the potent wine going to affect Vin; but his anxiety was not justified, for, though Vin drank it without any noticeable restraint, it seemed only to make him gayer. Never, Terry thought, had Vin shown to greater advantage. His high spirits expressed themselves in humour and he kept the table in roars of laughter, not only by his quips and tales but also by his power of facial expression. He struck a note to which Mary found it easy to respond. She had supposed these two invalids would be glad of early bed, but neither showed the slightest disposition to leave the bright drawing-room with its autumn fire and pleasant air of belonging to a bygone age. Vincent revealed a light, tuneful baritone and sang many gay little, sometimes risqué, songs that none of the others had heard before. Mary sang. Then they sang duets. And Aunt Charlotte electrified them by brilliant renderings of famous composers. Terry alone could do nothing—save laugh and cheer. Mary and Vincent, he thought, stimulated each other. Now he reproached himself for his earlier misgivings. Now, he told himself, he was seeing his friend as he really was—just a happy, singing, laughing lad. Yet he was more than that: he was, above all else, fascinating, exciting. To a woman Vin himself must be like wine in the blood, exhilarating. Never had he seen Mary’s eyes sparkle as they were sparkling to-night. Her whole being glowed, like a creature uplifted . . . Which she was. No one knew better than she that something vital had happened to her, that life had changed.

  Vincent Border had startled her. He was an invader, had assaulted and stormed strongholds of her nature hitherto absolutely inviolate. Something in his personality roused an imp in her. Since first his glance had met hers, a recklessness beyond anything in her experience demanded expression. She felt almost indecently attracted—without actually liking or approving of Border. Not as she approved of Terry beyond question or hesitation. On the other hand, no other human being had ever made her feel so brilliantly happy as Vincent Border proceeded to do during the next few hours. She had looked forward keenly to Terry’s advent: long walks, long talks; recollecting, revealing new thoughts. She had expected to be cosy and jolly; but this! Terry had brought Pan with him, out of the dirt and slaughter of lice-ridden trenches into a provincial drawing-room; and the supreme outlaw had changed her into a nymph.

  Mary had poise, self-reliance and a cool judgment; but all these were now disturbed. She felt in a whirl. She felt the approach of new and ardent influences and for the first time tremulous. Terry had kissed her. Other men had kissed her; but she had experience no thrill, no sudden fire in her being. But when Vincent Border kissed her—the solid earth melted, she swam in a sea of ecstasy.

  He had kissed her terribly, so that she burned more because of the memory of that kiss than she had burned from the kiss itself. Delicious
shame lingered. And he had kissed her without preparation or preliminary. He had not waited until they became better acquainted or until she gave him encouragement, but had kissed her on that very first evening, after all of them except herself had said good night and gone to bed. But he had come down again—just as she was about to switch off the drawing-room light and go to bed herself.

  “My watch has stopped,” he explained.

  And then they had just stood and stared at each other; she at him with an utterly helpless feeling.

  He smiled. There was an extraordinary and uninterpretable expression on his face. His eyes challenged her.

  Then he took a swift step forward and kissed her, while she stood unresisting and received it. Not a mere salute. Nothing tentative about it. A kiss that had sex as its impulse. And it was like that she received it. With his own puckered lips he parted hers and kissed her with deliberate, almost voracious, enjoyment.

  “Lovely lady!” he whispered.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  When he had gone, she wondered why he had gone; knowing full well that it was not because he respected her possible virginity, or because he was a chivalrous young man. In time she answered this question; but then she could not.

  She went to bed herself to lie awake and think. For the first time in her life she had surrendered. Yes, and to a young man of whom she knew practically nothing beyond the little that Terry had told her in his letters. Father dead, mother—with whom he was not on good terms—about to re-marry, independent means, University man, weakness for whisky, inclined—Terry thought—to neurasthenia, but a daring soldier in spite of it.

  Was she in love? She supposed so. No, she’d better be honest: was she in love? Yes. Which showed that love could come suddenly, without any preparation. But did being in love mean the same as loving? Hardly. She loved Terry, but was not in love with him. She loved Terry for his qualities, not for his physical being. And every feminine instinct loudly declared that of these two young men Terry was the worthy one, the one to be blindly trusted.

  Marriage? Huh! He might not ask her . . . But some prescient voice declared he would. Well? Would she? She fell asleep debating the question.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Terry, of course, was best man; a rather worried one. He tried to be more than just best man. But it is difficult for a man deeply in love to warn his lady against one he had brought to her as his friend; and the rôle of mentor was never much in Terry’s line. But, for that matter, it is doubtful if he could have helped Mary even if he had put into definite words his indefinite doubts; for she had them, too, and yet had not the strength to resist Vin. Terry did rather clumsily express his own sentiments regarding a man’s right to tie a woman to possible, very possible, tragedy and the rest of it; but she swept his arguments a little contemptuously to one side.

  “The kind of love that Vin and I feel, Terry, may never come again in life. Why, in the name of sense, should one deny oneself its consummation because it may be snatched away as abruptly as it has been offered? All acute joy is short and sharp. Physical love is generally brief; and at its best is irresistible. I’m going to marry a sinner, not a saint . . . I’d ever so much rather marry you than Vin, if I could feel for you what I feel for him. That would be the most perfect form of marriage, because you’d be a dear as well as a lover.”

  Terry’s wound had hurt far less than these unheeding words. But then, he told himself, she did not realize he cared in exactly the same way as Vin; and, though she knew he loved her, she supposed it was the same kind of non-physical fondness she accorded him.

  So they were married and went to Torquay for their brief honeymoon, which, for Mary, passed like a blissful dream and with never a jarring note.

  Terry returned to France before Vin, who applied for and received additional leave. When, however, the groom returned from the warmth of his nuptial bed to the wet chill of front-line trenches, his friend could detect no change of any kind in his demeanour. He was the same rather faunlike, psychically elusive being, full of fun and charming ways and as vicious in attacks.

  They talked of Mary and the future, but only because Terry introduced both subjects. To the latter it seemed strange that Vin should avoid any reference to his future plans and not indicate in some way the degree of his financial independence.

  “Well, you see, Terry,” Border explained in reply to a somewhat leading question, “it’s difficult for me to make plans. I shan’t go back to Cambridge, of course. I’m making no claims to any special ability. I have none. What I’d like is some prosaic job . . . Incidentally, what are you doing when things go flat?”

  “I shall go into Dad’s office.”

  “A lawyer. Gosh, it’s useful to have a pal in the legal profession . . . I gathered during leave that your job’s a nice fat cinch.”

  It seemed to Terry that genuine envy lurked beneath this supposedly humorous remark.

  “No job’s such a cinch as having an assured income,” Terry replied with a laugh.

  “Quite.”

  His voice sounded a little dry.

  “Anyhow, my inclination is to settle down in the old home-town.”

  “Whose old home-town? Yours?”

  “God forbid! No, yours. Nice ready-made connections there . . . And, though you may doubt it, I’d like to be near you. I’ve quite come to look upon you as my guardian angel.”

  Terry’s heart gave a jump of joy. He had dreaded being parted absolutely and perhaps for ever from Mary. He was fond of his home, of his native town, of provincial life and of the two mellow houses that had seen both his and Mary’s birth.

  “Have you two made any plans? Where you’re going to live and that?” Terry asked.

  “Yes. Mary wrote to her old man and suggested that we should all carry on together.”

  “The doctor will like that.”

  “She says the practice has suffered a lot through the war.”

  “She told me that; and I heard it generally.”

  “It’s rotten luck!”

  To Terry he sounded as if the depreciation of Dr. Rodney’s practice were a personal grievance of first class importance.

  “Did Mary say why the practice has suffered so?”

  “Locum’s loco. Dripping with senility. Everyone who wants to live has loped off to Dr. Pugh.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  It was some days after this that Terry, returning from an inspection, discovered Vin, rigid and livid, striding about the dug-out with an open telegram in his hands.

  “The doctor’s bumped off!” he shouted.

  “Mary’s dad?”

  “Yes!”

  He seemed more angry than distressed and, Terry thought, was about to burst into some invective, when either decency or commonsense prevailed. Nerves, no doubt. Vin replied to Terry’s attempted condolences by walking abruptly out of the other’s presence and vanishing for hours.

  “Temperamental blighter,” Terry reflected. “Maybe he’s superstitious and has the wind-up.”

  A couple of days later, when once more Vin seemed his customary brilliant, diffident, but odd, self, Terry asked him if the disturbing news would alter his plans.

  “No. I’d like to make a start in surroundings sympathetic to Mary. There’s a home ready-made—a home with associations. Why seek trouble?”

  This answer pleased Terry. It indicated that the young husband was concerned for Mary’s happiness.

  “I suppose,” Vin asked presently, “Mary’ll get the doctor’s money?”

  “There’s no doubt of that. Only child.”

  “The house was his property?”

  “Oh yes.”

  For a time there was a lull in the fighting. Inaction often, Terry had found, produced irritability; but this was not true of Vincent Border. He seemed concerned to win Terry’s regard in every way, was very quiet and yet entertaining, doing much to keep his comrades cheerful. Moreover, he refused whisky, promptly and tersely, when Yovers produced an unexpected bottle.

&nbs
p; “Good!” Terry thought. “The chap’s in earnest.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  They had been fighting furiously, holding on to their positions by, Vincent put it, the skin of their bayonets; and now they were resting, worn out—sad. It was an appropriate period for Terry to receive news of his father’s death, instant, happily, and yet dreadful, since he had been blown to fragments.

  They had been friends, this father and son; both quiet, undemonstrative beings, but capable of hidden strong feelings. The news hurt Terry intensely, but few realized how much.

  He wrote to his mother, but her reply was resigned. She had expected just this from the instant of her husband’s departure to fight. Her attitude was stoic. One had to carry on. She should not leave her post while the war continued. When it ended, if ever, she supposed Terry would come home and carry on the business.

  That was that.

  Uneasy rest. Trenches. Slaughter. Something doing. Really doing. Something more than the interminable see-saw to which Terry and millions like him had grown inured. Something giving. Advance. Optimism again; like the sun after weeks of fog. Armistice. Delirium. Home.

  CHAPTER III

  The death of her father had come as a serious and disillusioning shock to Mary, the more so because she had let him die without revealing her marriage. She had been even fonder of the doctor than she herself had known. He had been a good, considerate father, denying her little. They had permitted few secrets between them. And, now that he was dead, it puzzled her greatly to know why she had been so reluctant to announce a major fact like her marriage to Vincent Border. There were dim reasons discernible even in the fog of her puzzlement: first, if not foremost, Dr. Rodney was serving in Salonika, very distant and to her very inaccessible. It was no mere matter of getting leave and hopping home to attend what, after all, was a hasty wedding, which took place without fuss of any kind at the parish church. And then, she felt sure, unhappily sure, though she stoutly denied the truth of her instinct, that Dr. Rodney would neither have liked nor approved of Vin. Her womanhood had sensed something unstable in this risky husband—despite her infatuation. Terry had not truly liked him; and Terry thought in very similar fashion to her father. Sometimes she held her breath in an ecstasy of alarm when she considered the future . . . And yet, she asked herself, why? That honeymoon . . . a week of sheer glory. The bridal night itself, true rapture is somewhat alarming to a virginal experience. Were all men like that . . . so . . . so . . . So gloriously ruthless? Did all grooms make innocent brides gasp and blush, leave them in exhausted shame? Shamed and frightened and yet . . . oh, well!