The curse of the Reckaviles

by Walter S. Masterman

In his college team at most games, and playing for his varsity at rugger, as his father had before, if only it had been known, and with a force of character welcomed and admired everywhere, no wonder if he lost himself in the celsitude of his power. But the high gods will not suffer such happiness, and in the middle of the dream came an awakening. A telegram to tell him that Doctor Halley had passed away in his sleep brought him up to reality.

In bitter sorrow he went to London where the old man had taken up his residence. From the first he had determined not to commit the mistake of living at Oxford or near it. He wanted the boy to enjoy life there unfettered by visits of a relation, and he chose London, so that the boy should be able to come to him in the ‘vacs,’ and have plenty of amusement. He effaced himself for the son, as he had for the mother. He knew his heart was very weak, but kept the knowledge from Roy, lest he should distress him.

And so his peaceful end came, his duty done, and his great chivalrous soul went to join her, whose image was never absent from his mind. Roy’s journey was a terrible ordeal of self-blame. He saw how selfish he had been, how little he had repaid the great debt. He recalled with the acute self-analysis of a sensitive mind all the times when he had studied his own fancies, and left the old man alone, when he should have been with him, looking after him. And now it was too late. More than all remorse filled him when he found that the old man had been meeting all his extravagant expenses, by selling out his own money, and that the sum his mother had saved, not large, but which had grown with the years, was still intact.

He went back to his college a changed man. The old gaiety had gone, and a bitter self-scorn had come which brought out something of the old Reckavile spirit. Women he shunned with horror, as the image of the one perfect woman he had known made the others seem hollow, and talkative beyond measure.

He plunged into wild ‘rags,’ which brought him before the Warden, and drink to which he had never turned, threatened to make shameful his career.

And then the gods relented, and the cloud of War settled on the land. To Roy it was like a call to his own kingdom. Others born of generations of peaceful citizens took arms with sober patriotism, as a duty which must not be shirked, but to him generations of fighters called, with exultant shouting. Death! What did that matter! The only two he had ever loved were on the Other Side, and he wished nothing better than to pass over to them.

For glorious years he lived at grips with death, first as a private in the muddy trenches, and later with a commission, known as a reckless patrol leader, and a born fighter. He might have risen high in that Hell’s academy where such qualities mean promotion, but in ’16 he was smashed by a bomb and his wrecked body only mended in time for the final advance.

When Peace came, he heard around him the officers joyously discussing a return to civil life, and of all that they were going to do. Some were going to wives or sweethearts, one talked of his job at the bank which he hoped was still open to him. To Roy, it was an end of a mighty adventure. There was nothing to look forward to, but a bare struggle to live. He had no friends, no welcoming smile to greet him.

He knew that for the Nation it was a wonderful day of rejoicing, but to him nothing remained.

Another year in the wildest parts of Russia kept his spirit cheerful, and then he returned to demobilisation.