THE CROOKED MAN.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 16, 2 July 1920, Page 2

THE CROOKED MAN.

(BY A. M. BURRAGE).

I guessed that be was dying when I received his letter, for it came by the post after another letter, and I saw at once a likely irony of Fat-e. Raymond Healby wished to see me urgently — he bad something of importance to eommunicate and could not stir from his bed. Don'r, morose man tha-t he was, he was not of the kind to make important communications nnless he feared that his life would soon he s£aled for ever. He owned no man for friend, but he had shown less aversion for me than for the rest of mankind. If there was little to like in the man, there was at least plehty to inferest. Hea-lby.' s wife was dead, and he had quarrelled with his only son some long while since. Young Healby had gone away, after the way of the old-fashioned prodigal, vowing never to return. And

it was from young Healby that I had news by the previous post. The boy wrote to me from a military convalescent camp. He had been wounded in France, but had now reeovered, and wanted.to see his father again. He proposed to get leave and. visit the old man on the following afternoon, and left it to me to prepare liis father for the shock. So-, when I went to see Raymond Healby my visit served a double purpose. He lived in a small flat hear King's Cross, and the old woman who let me in. —his only servant— only grunted when 1 inquired after him, and moticned to me to enter his bedroom. I did so, fully prepared for what I was to see. He was hut the ghost of his o-wn old haggard self — a poor self at the besf. And as he struggled to a sitting posture and turned on an elbow to gxeet me I was shacked by the haggard misery that was written on his face. "It was good of you to come," he said, in a faint, colourness voice. "I've deserved

nothing of you, but I trusted your good nature, and perhaps your curiosity. I suppose you gathered from my letter that I am going to die?" I was carrving a chair to the head of the bed, and halted at the word. "Come," I said. "I hope it is not as bad as that." "It is just as had as that," he answered, dully. "And I ha-ye carried my sickness all my life. It is sickness of mind that has changed by slow degrees to sickness of hody. The doctors call my eomplaint hy long narnes, hut it is that, and no more. And the end is somewhere near at hand." I said nothing. He was not the sort of man that oue could rally, aiid to argue with him would but cause him irritation. More, I did not know at the moment how best to give him the piece of news I had hrought. "I suppose," he went on, "I have little in common with most human heings, e±cept this — a desire to tell my closest secret before I die. I do not look to die at ease, but I want to tell somebody — you — of the thing that has poisoned my life. You have known me for a man eaten up by some subtle poison of the mind. I have sinned, and if my penitence has been incomplete, God knows I have been punished. I have hardly lived one happy moment since htat dreadful night, and — this is the worst — I shall never see my

boy again." "How do you know that?" I asked, leaning forward. "I feel it! Besides — how long have I to live?" It was on the top of my tongue to tell him straight out that he would see his son that very afternoon. But his eyes were gleaming feverishly and I left the words unspoken for the time being, fearful of giving him too sudden a shock. "Well," said I, "tell me what you wish me to hear. I will listen to every word, and keep a still tongue afterwards.'' "You may tell the whole world when I am gone," he answered. "I shall not then be concerned with human laws or the chatter of human tongues. For your sake I will make a long story as short as I can ; and if my thanks to you seem surly, believe me they are offered in all sincerity. ' ' He moved down. lower into the bed and closed his eyes. "This is the story," he said, "and it goes back to the days when I was quite a little boy. I was hrought up on a small west-country farm, where money was ghort, and the land hard to conquer and

yielding little profit. My playmates were the children of other small farmers, and among them was Mary Roden, the girl whom I afterwards married. Poor soul ! she is at rest now, but she knew — and — and suffered. "Children will always have some bogey, some person living near them whom they laugh at and shun and fear, and of whom they invent amongst themselves the most strange and terrible stories. We had one, and we called him the Crooked Man . "At the time of which I am speaking he could not have been more than twentyfive, but he seemed quite old — as old as our awn fathers and mothers. "We gave him his nickname because his frame was crooked and he walked w-ith a crutch, hut by childish intuition we knew that his nature was crooked too.

He was hideous to look at, a Iocal figure of mystery, for nobody knew who he was or whence he came. - "In social status he came somewhere above us and below the gentry. Nobody knew him, -and he lived alone with his mother, from whom he had inherited much of his ugliness. We used to call him hy his nickname in the street, and he would turn and curse us horribly. I can see him now, shaking his crutch. His infirmity made it impossible for him to pursue us. 'Crooked Man !' I can hear rnyself shouting it how, 'Crooked Man f Crooked Man !' "In the good books which I was given to read at those times people with bodily infinnities were almost supernatnrally good. They sat on sofas and shamed their healthier hrethren by their monumental pati.ence,, But the Crooked Man was not like these. I have never seen the devil look through a man's eyes as it looked through his, nor have I ever heard more appalling curses."

He paused and licked his dry lips, shifted himself a little in the bed, and proceeded : — • "By the time I reached manhood thf Crooked Man had already stepped across the borders of middle age, but^I saw no change in him. He was the same as be had always been, and, strange^ to say, he had almost the same vague ~ terrors for me as he had had when I was a child. By that time his reputation in the eountryside had grown. There were terrible stories told in whispers by old and young. Wherever he went, _ silence preceded him, and mutterings and head-shakings followed. "At that time my eyes were newly opeped to the beauty of Mary Rodon. She was two years younger than I, and lovelya s the lovliest Devon maid. We had heen friends as children, hut adolescence se°med to create a sudden harrier between us, for now we met shyly and almost as strangers. "One Sirnday morning I plucked up courage and waited for her as she came out of church. 'aMry,' I said, 'you and I have heen friends a long time, and now you treat me as if I were a London stranger stopping at the inn.' "She coloured all over her pretty face. " 'I do not mean to,' said she. " 'Then meet me outside the church gate hsre and come for a walk with me this evening,' said I.

"She hesitated a lopg while, and said at last that she would come. I was but a hoy then, for all my twent.y-onp years, and I did not know that the same love that set my heart clamouring in Mary'spresence put a break upon her tongxie and made her distant to me and seemingly cold. But I learned it all that night in the lane where aJ.1 local lovers wa-ndered and troths were plighted." He closed his eyes and began to speak very softly, in a voice I hardly recognised. "Very lovely and very fragile she looked" that night — the white rose ripe for plucking, so sweet that one wondered if it were not better to let her bloom on untouched in her sweetness. It seems s5 short a while ago. She was so shy yet so pitiful for me who was heavily laden with my love and feigning the sadness of despair. But at last she made but a half-hearted attempt to evade the arms that sought to grasp her, and, only weakly protesting, yielded her lips to mine. So we pledged ourselves to each other under the magic of the May sldes, between the scented hedgerows. And, while our first kiss lingered, we heard that sound that had so often frightened us as children — the tap of a crutch — and we sprang apart.

"I drew her into the shadow of the hedge, close by an old gate, as, stumpmg and swinging his misshapen hody, the Crooked Man went by. As he approached he laugh ed in the hard, sneering way he had, and said something to us in a low voice, which we did not catcb. But he did not -stop, nor alter his pace, and swung on until ihe darkness swallowed him. "For a moment I wondered if this eerie, mysterious figure was to overshadow our lives as it had done until then. I conld not but see something ominous in his coming upon us just at that mo&ent. I turned to Mary. " 'Has that fellow spoken to you lately?' "She seemed to hesitate, then nodded. " 'Yes — -once or twice.' " 'What did say?' " 'Oh, nothing — nothing much.' "I did not like her tone ; but waited for her to say more. Presently it came cat in a little burst. " 'Raymond, I'm afraid of that man, just as I was when we were children. I don't know why. He never says anything horrid to me. In fact — he tribs to he nice.' "I laughed at that, thiniing I could well alford to. I was young then, and not ill-looking. Mary cared for me. For a thing like the Crooked man to cast eyes at her seemed a matter for mirth. But — by God, it wasn't!" Raymond Healby paused as if trying to collect his thoughts. "I will. tell you as brieily as I can,",he

went on, "and to be very brief indeed, it was the old story. Mary's people were poor, the Crooked Man was well off. One night Mary returned from a walk with me to find him sitting in the kitchen, talking to her father and mother. "I needn't tell you the agonising times that followed before she gave in. Her mother talker to her about grey hairs. and the workhouse, and how her heart would break when she donned the grey shawl oi the pauper, and how wicked it was to hate a man whose bodily infirmities gave him the right to be loved and pitied. That woman's tongue was like a fretsaw, and home was hell to Mary until she gave in. "I had to relinquish her. What could I do? God knows I reasoned and prayed until I saw Mary — toru hoth ways — was like to become desperate. She was obsessed by the difficulties of her parents, which I think they had grcjitly exaggerated. "Those davs were dreadful to me, for

all the village knew, and I was the object of a pity which I could not hear ; and some, ill-natured derision besides. "Well, one night I was crossing Dead Man's Ridge when I heard that familiar tap, tap upon the road. And suddenly i seemed to see very elearly. A voice whispered : 'If he died he couldn't marry Mary. She'd mjarry you then. And if you pushed him, who would know? Look! There's not a soul in sight.' "I held my breath. I don't know if 1 really meant to do it then, but I waited. And presently up he came, walking near the edge, and laughed at me. His laugh was just the little impetus that was needed to send me mad with a horrible, cold, ea!. culating madness. I went up to him quite slowly, my fingers hooking to grasp him. " 'I'll make your crooked hody a bit more twisted,' 1 said, and with that I pushed him and felt his hody reel away from me. "Over he wen^ without a sound or a word, and that to me was the, most horrible part of all. If he had only cried out! It wasn't natural for him to go quietly like that. I — well, I crept away like Cairn, sick with the horror of whit 1 had dome."

His face convulsed a little, as if he were living those horrible moments over again. "TKere was an inquest," he went on, in a thin, dry voice, "and they hrought in Aecidental Death. What more natnral than for a cripple to miss the path in the dark and fall over the sheer cliff? And after a time I married Mary?" "Did she know?" 1 put in. "Yes. I never told her, but she knew. She could tell hy the change in irtd, and we both suffered. And when our son was horn I knew it would be a ».hi'd o". eorrow. The secret poisoned hoth- our lives, for the vengeance of the Crooked man has always followed us. 1 heard the tap, tap of his crutch the'night Mary died. I swear it was he who eame and fetched her away. He will come for me, too. When my las* moments come I shall hear the 'jup, tap of his crutch. Oh, my God! how shall I hear to face him?" "That's all nonsense!" I said. "He's dead, amd he can't hurt you. You- -my God! how you must have suffered1" "Suffered! Aye. When I cast my son away from me — the son I loved in spite of everything — I knew I should never see him again. That was part of the Crooked Man's revenge." I Ihought my opportunity had come, and I decided to make the best use of it. - "Really," I said, "there at least you are wrong. I want you to brace yourself up to

hear a piece of news ^ t V I Listen ! I heard from him onk f? ^ I He is a soldier, and has come I ed from France. He is comhJd ^ I this afternoon. He WTotTto H I prepare you for his Visit." 1« I There was a gleam of hope in P ,1 I eyes, hut it died out after a momSfl I he shook his head. " ut M | "It is useless ! I shall he dead U{ M comes. I know!" "Nonsense ! You must brace «0 J I up. You are not as il] as all that^ |S Vve days before you yet; You mav " V recover." '■ f;' I "I tell you No! Man, do you think j I Crooked Man will let me see my W I Before he comes there will he anothefl I shall hear a tap,- tap on the stairs jM I I I heard it the night Mary-— m, 0J I What's that?" * ' ^ L I started violently, and ILstened lnvJ I tarily. Then I turned to him agaij, I "I heard nothing. You must not j I gine " But Healby raised himself in theu| I his face distorted, his eyes glarkj y I ribly. "It's he! He's come!" I sprang to my feet. Either I had m l mad or 1 could indeed hear the tap 0j ^ I crutch on the hard floor outside. I body tried the handle of the hall door | I opened, and somebody— something, £i.j I fled in, leaning on a crutch. ^ E beat loudly and rhythmically. ]t ^ I ghastly, unmistakable. Raymond Healby struggled upVvA. ting position and raised his hands^ | his' hea4. "My God! My God!" he screamed^B fell forward limp. I knew at once ij he was dead, but all my mind vasJH tred upon the door of the room, thatn® slowly opening. A moment later young Healby, theiij man's wounded son, came slowly in, j was leaning on a crutch! The End.,