Cursed be the treasure
The news set me packing. I announced to Dirk that I was off to Sunset
Towers to seek the Captain, for I knew where he must have gone, and I
dreaded what might have happened to him. Dirk offered to take me on the
brig, but I asked him merely to sail to the Rancey and await me there.
Somehow I felt I must make the journey alone. The thought of company
was like the rubbing of rough garments on an open wound for I seemed
to be embarked on a pilgrimage of atonement. I determined to find the
Captain, and mad or sane I would beg his forgiveness, and close for
ever the terrible account of blood that lay between us.
Full of this resolve I travelled slowly northwards. On the way I
repeated the whole story to myself, having all the clues in my hands
now, even the mystery of my father's little fortune, which had
evidently been hush money paid by the Captain to turn him from his
quest. I felt chastened and subdued, unable to fix the blame. My father
had certainly not offended to the penalty of death; and on the other
hand the Captain, whipped to a madness at the memory of the crime he
had been forced into, so much against his kindly nature as I knew,
wasn't to be charged to the full with the blood he had shed to cover
his traces. "Blood breeds blood," he had said. There was a fatality in
the affair. My sympathy went out to him, for my father's stories had
so stimulated my imagination that I could put myself in the Captain's
place. Goaded as he had been I knew I should have acted as he had done.
Nor could I reproach Abou for his mistaken devotion to an evil duty.
Indeed something like admiration for him welled up in my heart when
I thought how he had put aside his calm serenity of mind to dog his
master's enemy year after year with the knife of murder in his hand,
when his whole nature I believed craved for quietness and peace. And
what a pursuit it had been! I had only glimpsed it by fleeting scenes,
when those two superb trackers, the hunter and the hunted, had emerged
for a moment into the daylight from their dark and tortuous burrowings
underground. But the course of that tremendous chase, the shifts and
wiles and dodges of that pair of consummate actors, had been a drama
for the gods above, and none but they could tell its story. And so as
I thought of these things I felt as I had so often felt before that I
was moving in the presence of something more than human. The strange
hatred, the madness, the bewildering unreason of the combat between
those men who had no cause to wrong each other turned my mind back to
the old tale of the curse. I yielded to the superstition, otherwise
there was no accounting for the feud: it was that ancient malediction
that had exacted such a penalty of blood.
When I arrived at Sunset Towers all was deathly still. There was no
trace of the Captain upstairs or downstairs. For a while I thought my
pilgrimage had been in vain. Then I remembered the secret chamber,
and knew at once that, of course, the Captain would have taken
refuge there. With my stiletto I had little difficulty in finding
and penetrating the hole through the worm-eaten panel in the old oak
wardrobe. I pressed back the lever which lifted the bar, and the door
swung easily open. I listened for a moment wondering whether I had been
overheard; if so the Captain might be waiting for me at the top of
the narrow stairs. But all was still, and I ascended into the dark. I
hesitated at the top, then boldly pushed open the door. The Captain lay
on the bed, his face turned to the skylight, his hand gripping a dagger
which was buried up to the hilt in his heart.
There was little to do. He had paid the forfeit, and was at rest. When
I recovered from the shock I searched among his papers. I found a copy
of his will bequeathing his property to Jenny and myself, with the hope
strongly expressed that, some day, we might marry each other, and so
reunite the divided inheritance. I knew his real meaning was that the
feud might be healed in reconciliation.
I put the will into my pocket, but vowed never to touch a penny of that
unhallowed gold. I hoped, too, I might persuade Jenny to forswear her
share. That would be the last service I could do her, for I couldn't
see the Captain's desire being fulfilled.
Then there seemed only one thing left to do. I searched the cellars and
grounds for oil and firewood, and stacking the fuel up the stairs, and
flinging open all the doors and windows, I set a light to the stuff,
using as a brand first the manuscript that had caused all the evil, and
then the paper I had found on the skeleton in Drift-Wood Cavern.
With the building once well ablaze I set off for the sea, turning at
every few steps to look behind me to satisfy myself that the flames
were mastering the great ruinous pile, wiping bare for ever all traces
of the crime which had begun there with the finding of the manuscript
and ended there with the suicide of the Captain.
As I left the place farther and farther behind I couldn't help thinking
of that other fire I had watched as my father carried me away from the
blazing hut in the woods where first I had consciously become aware of
the tangled net in which my life had been so strangely and tragically
involved. And here with fire I was freeing myself from the net for
ever. And so I kept casting back over my shoulder to watch the flames,
till at last even the smoke rising in a thick column to the clouds was
merely a patch of blurred shadow on the skyline.
Then again I thought of Jenny. I began to wonder how I should break the
news to her. How was I to tell her the story? For I mustn't wound her
love for her father, yet I must be just to my own. The picture of the
lonely little girl cast out upon the world with none to protect her
took violent hold upon my pity. I yearned towards her, yet knew deep in
my heart that to speak to her of love would be to stab her afresh in
her still-bleeding wound.
I was utterly weary in body, utterly dejected in spirit, when I
reached the sea. I found Dirk waiting me in a shore-side tavern. I
told him my story. The night was falling as we rowed out to the brig. I
retired to my bunk, where I lay a long while sorrowfully tossing, and
at last fell into a troubled sleep.
With the chill of the morning I was up again, cheered at heart as
always at the sight of the good day. I ran out on deck. And there
before me was Jenny.
I stopped short, thinking my eyes were deceiving me. But she walked
gravely up to me and said, "Dirk brought me, Tommy. He has told me
everything."
"Everything?" I repeated.
"Yes," she said.
"And yesterday ..." I began.
"Yesterday, too," she said.
For a minute or two we faced each other in silence. Then I began again.
"I have your father's will," I told her.
"Dirk showed it me," she replied.
"But, Jenny," I went on, "you mustn't touch the gold. It's evil."
"I don't want the gold," she declared, breaking from her coldness and
speaking with a sudden passion.
I looked at her keenly, for there was something unspoken behind her
emotion.
"Then we must say good-bye, I suppose?" I announced, not supposing any
such thing, yet half turning from her. At that she spoke with something
of her old imperiousness.
"You're very stupid, Tommy," she cried. "My father killed your father,
and your father killed my father."
"No," I contradicted.
"Yes," she insisted, "it was so. And so that's all finished. We must
try and begin again. Daddy wants us to. He says so in the will."
At that I flung my arms about her. And in the flush of that wonderful
moment I seemed to steer suddenly free of the dark shadow of Fear that
had closed my life around ever since I could remember, and sailed out
into the clean sweet air, with the breaking dawn about me.
* * * * *
Of the rest what need I say? For how we sailed away to the sun and the
south; and how for three years I increased in knowledge of seamanship,
and put on bulk and muscle, while Jenny grew in sweetness and beauty
and grace; and how Dirk taught me the ways of traffic and barter, till
at length I sailed back to England with a neat little fortune of my
own; and how Dirk retired and bought an inn, and the _Revenge_ was
bequeathed to me and became the _Jenny_ brig; all this and much more
that followed belongs to another story which I may tell some later day.