He had not intended to say “yellow roses.” The sentence had rounded itself off so, apart from his conscious will.
The girl gravely indicated that she heard him; and then smiled dreamily, acquiescingly—the sort of smile that yields to a spiritual idea, as if it were a physical caress.
The scent of burning weeds continued to float in through the window. “Oh, it has gone!” she cried suddenly, as, released from her fingers, the branchswung back to its place against the sandstone wall.
“I must have it again,” she added, bending her supple body backwards. She made one or two ineffectual efforts and then gave up, panting. “I can’t reach it,” she said. “But go on, Mr. Clavering. I can listen to you like this. It is so nice out here.”
Strange unfathomable thoughts surged up in the depths of Clavering’s soul. He found himself wishing that he had authority over her, that he might tame her wilful spirit, and lay her under the yoke of some austere penance. Why was she free to provoke him thus, with her merciless fragility? The madness she was arousing grew steadily upon him. He stumbled awkwardly round the edge of the table and approached her. The scent of burning weeds became yet more emphatic. To make his nearness to her less obvious, and out of a queer mechanical instinct to allay his own conscience, he continued his spiritual admonitions, even when he was quite close—even when he could have touched her with his hand. And it would be so easy to touch her! The playful perilousness of her position in the window made such a movement natural, justifiable, almost conventional.
“The true doctrine of the Incarnation,” his lips repeated, “is not that something contrary to nature has happened; it is that the innermost secret of Nature has been revealed. And this secret,”—here his fingers closed feverishly on the casement-latch—“is identical with the force that swings the furthest star, and drives the sap through the veins of all living things.”
It would have been of considerable interest toa student of religious psychology—like Mr. Taxater for example—to observe how the phrases that mechanically passed Clavering’s lips at this juncture were all phrases drawn from the works of rationalistic modernists. He had recently been reading the charming and subtle essays of Father Mervyn; and the soft and melodious harmonies of that clever theologian’s thought had accumulated in some hidden corner of his brain. The authentic religious emotion in him being superseded by a more powerful impulse, his mind mechanically reverted to the large, dim regions of mystical speculation. A certain instinct in him—the instinct of his clamorous senses—made him careful to blur, confuse, and keep far back, that lovely and terrible “Power from Outside,” the hem of Whose garments he had clung to, the night before. “Christ,” he went on, “is, as it were, the centre and pivot of the whole universe, and every revelation granted to us of His nature is a revelation from the system of things itself. I want you to understand that our true attitude towards this great mystery, ought to be the attitude of scientific explorers, who in searching for hidden causes have come upon the one, the unique Cause.”
The girl’s only indication that she embraced the significance of these solemn words was to make a sudden gliding serpentine movement which brought her into a position more easy to be retained, and yet one that made it still more unnatural that he should refuse her some kind of playful and affectionate support.
The poor priest’s heart beat tumultuously. He began to lose all consciousness of everything excepthis propinquity to his provoker. He was aware with appalling distinctness of the precise texture of the light frock that she wore. It was of a soft fawn colour, crossed by wavy lines of a darker tint. He watched the way these wavy lines followed the curves of her figure. They began at her side, and ended where her skirt hung loose over her little swinging ankles. He wished these lines had sloped upwards, instead of downwards; then it would have been so much easier for him to follow the argument of the “Development of Christian Doctrine.”
Still that scent of burning weeds! Why must his neighbours set fire to their rubbish, on this particular afternoon?
With a fierce mental effort he tried to suppress the thought that those voluptuous lips only waited for him to overcome his ridiculous scruples. Why must she wait like this so pitilessly passive, laying all the burden of the struggle upon him? If she would only make a little—a very little—movement, his conscience would be able to recover its equilibrium, whatever happened. He tried to unmagnetize her attraction, by visualizing the fact that under this desirable form—so near his touch—lurked nothing but that bleak, bare, last outline of mortality, to which all flesh must come. He tried to see her forehead, her closed eyes, her parted lips, as they would look if resting in a coffin. Like his monkish predecessors in the world-old struggle against Satan, he sought to save himself by clutching fast to the grinning skull.
All this while his lips went on repeating theirliturgical formula. “We must learn to look upon the Redemption, as a natural, not a supernatural fact. We must learn to see in it the motive-force of the whole stream of evolution. We must remember that thingsarewhat they have it in them tobecome. It is the purpose, the end, which is the true truth—not the process or the method. Christ is the end of all things. He is therefore the beginning of all things. All things find their meaning, their place, their explanation, only in relation to Him. He is the reality of the illusion which we call Nature, and of the illusion which we call Life. In Him the universe becomes real and living—which else were a mere engine of destruction.” How much longer he would have continued in this strain—conquered yet still resisting—it were impossible to say. All these noble words, into the rhythm of which so much passionate modern thought had been poured, fell from his lips like sand out of a sieve.
The girl herself interrupted him. With a quick movement she suddenly jerked herself from her recumbent position; jumped, without his help, lightly down upon the floor, and resumed her former place at the table. The explanation of this virtuous retreat soon made itself known in the person of a visitor advancing up the garden. Clavering, who had stumbled foolishly aside as she changed her place, now opened the door and went to meet the new-comer.
It was Romer’s manager, Mr. Thomas Lickwit, discreet, obsequious, fawning, as ever,—but with a covert malignity in his hurried words. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. I see it is Miss Gladys’ lesson. Ihope the young lady is getting on nicely, sir. I won’t detain you for more than a moment. I have just a little matter that couldn’t wait. Business is business, you know.”
Clavering felt as though he had heard this last observation repeated “ad nauseam” by all the disgusting sycophants in all the sensational novels he had ever read. It occurred to him how closely Mr. Lickwit really did resemble all these monotonously unpleasant people.
“Yes,” went on the amiable man, “business is business—even with reverend gentlemen like yourself who have better things to attend to.” Clavering forced himself to smile in genial appreciation of this airy wit, and beckoned the manager into his study. He then returned to the front room. “I am afraid our lesson must end for tonight, Miss Romer,” he said. “You know enough of this lieutenant of your father’s to guess that he will not be easy to get rid of. The worst of a parson’s life are these interruptions.”
There was no smile upon his face as he said this, but the girl laughed merrily. She adjusted her hat with a deliciously coquettish glance at him through the permissible medium of the gilt-framed mirror. Then she turned and held out her hand. “Till next week, then, Mr. Clavering. And I will read all those books you sent up for me—even the great big black one!”
He gravely opened the door for her, and with a sigh from a heart “sorely charged,” returned to face Mr. Lickwit.
He found that gentleman comfortably ensconcedin the only arm-chair. “It is like this, sir,” said the man, when Clavering had taken a seat opposite him. “Mr. Romer thinks it would be a good thing if this Social Meeting were put a stop to. There has been talk, sir. I will not conceal it from you. There has been talk. The people say that you have allied yourself with that troublesome agitator. You know the man I refer to, sir, that wretched Wone.
“Mr. Romer doesn’t approve of what he hears of these meetings. He doesn’t see as how they serve any good purpose. He thinks they promote discord in the place, and set one class against another. He does not like the way, neither, that Mr. Quincunx has been going on down there; nor to say the truth, sir, doIlike that gentleman’s doings very well. He speaks too free, does Mr. Quincunx, much too free, considering how he is situated as you might say.”
Clavering leapt to his feet, trembling with anger. “I cannot understand this,” he said, “Someone has been misleading Mr. Romer. The Social Meeting is an old institution of this village; and though it is not exactly a church affair, I believe it is almost entirely frequented by church-goers. I have always felt that it served an invaluable purpose in this place. It is indeed the only occasion when priest and people can meet on equal terms and discuss these great questions man to man. No—no, Lickwit, I cannot for a moment consent to the closing of the Social Meeting. It would undo the work of years. It would be utterly unwise. In fact it would be wrong. I cannot think how you can come to me with such a proposal.”
Mr. Lickwit made no movement beyond causing his hat to twirl round on the top of the stick he held between his knees.
“You will think better of it, sir. You will think better of it,” he said. “The election is coming on, and Mr. Romer expects all supporters of Church and State to help him in his campaign. You have heard he is standing, sir, I suppose?”
Mr. Lickwit uttered the word “standing” in a tone which suggested to Clavering’s mind a grotesque image of the British Constitution resting like an enormous cornucopia on the head of the owner of Leo’s Hill. He nodded and resumed his seat. The manager continued. “That old Methodist chapel where those meetings are held, belongs, as you know, to Mr. Romer. He is thinking of having it pulled down—not only because of Wone’s and Quincunx’s goings on there, but because he wants the ground. He’s thinking of building an estate-office on that corner. We are pressed for room, up at the Hill, sir.”
Once more Clavering rose to his feet. “This is too much!” he cried. “I wonder you have the impertinence to come here and tell me such things. I am not to be bullied, Lickwit. Understand that! I am not to be bullied.”
“Then I may tell the master,” said the man sneeringly, rising in his turn and making for the door, “that Mr. Parson won’t have nothing to do with our little plan?”
“You may tell him what you please, Lickwit. I shall go over myself at once to the House and see Mr. Romer.” He glanced at his watch. “It is not seven yet, and I know he does not dine till eight.”
“By all means, sir, by all means! He’ll be extremely glad to see you. You couldn’t do better, sir. You’ll excuse me if I don’t walk up with you. I have to run across and speak to Mr. Goring.”
He bowed himself out and hurried off. Clavering seized his hat and followed him, turning, however, when once in the street, in the direction of the south drive. It took him scarcely a couple of minutes to reach the village square where the drive emerged. In the centre of the square stood a solid erection of Leonian stone adapted to the double purpose of a horse-trough and a drinking fountain. Here the girls came to draw water, and here the lads came to chat and flirt with the girls. Mr. Clavering could not help pausing in his determined march to watch a group of young people engaged in animated and laughing frivolity at this spot. It was a man and two girls. He recognized the man at once by his slight figure and lively gestures. It was Luke Andersen. “That fellow has a bad influence in this place,” he said to himself. “He takes advantage of his superior education to unsettle these children’s minds. I must stop this.” He moved slowly towards the fountain. Luke Andersen looked indeed as reckless and engaging as a young faun out of a heathen story. He was making a cup of his two hands and whimsically holding up the water to the lips of the younger of his companions, while the other one giggled and fluttered round them. Had the priest been in a poetic humour at that moment, he might have been reminded of those queer mediæval legends of the wanderings of the old dispossessed divinities. The young stone-carver, with his classic profile andfair curly hair, might have passed for a disguised Dionysus seducing to his perilous service the women of some rustic Thessalian hamlet. No pleasing image of this kind crossed Hugh Clavering’s vision. All he saw, as he approached the fountain, was another youthful incarnation of the dangerous Power he had been wrestling with all the afternoon. He advanced towards the engaging Luke, much as Christian might have advanced towards Apollyon. “Good evening, Andersen,” he said, with a certain professional severity. “Using the fountain, I see? We must be careful, though, not to waste the water this hot summer.”
The girl who was drinking rose up with a little start, and stood blushing and embarrassed. Luke appeared entirely at his ease. He leant negligently against the edge of the stone trough, and pushed his hat to the back of his head. In this particular pose he resembled to an extraordinary degree the famous Capitolian statue.
“It is hardly wasting the water, Mr. Clavering,” he said with a smile, “offering it to a beautiful mouth. Why don’t you curtsey to Mr. Clavering, Annie? I thought all you girls curtsied when clergymen spoke to you.”
The priest frowned. The audacious aplomb of the young man unnerved and disconcerted him.
“Water in a stone fountain like this,” went on the shameless youth, “has a peculiar charm these hot evenings. It makes you almost fancy you are in Seville. Seville is a place in Spain, Annie. Mr. Clavering will tell you all about it.”
“I think Annie had better run in to her mother now,” said the priest severely.
“Oh, that’s all right,” replied the youth with unruffled urbanity. “Her mother has gone shopping in Yeoborough and I have to see that Annie behaves properly till she comes back.”
Clavering looked reproachfully at the girl. Something about him—his very inability perhaps to cope with this seductive Dionysus—struck her simple intelligence as pathetic. She made a movement as if to join her companion, who remained roguishly giggling a few paces off. But Luke boldly restrained her. Putting his hand on her shoulder he said laughingly to the priest, “She will be a heart-breaker one of these days, Mr. Clavering, will our Annie here! You wouldn’t think she was eighteen, would you, sir?”
Under other circumstances the young clergyman would have unhesitatingly commanded the girl to go home. But his recent experiences had loosened the fibre of his moral courage. Besides, what was there to prevent this incorrigible young man from walking off after her? One could hardly—at least in Protestant England—make one’s flock moral by sheer force.
“Well—good-night to you all,” he said, and moved away, thinking to himself that at any rate there was safety in publicity. “But what a dangerous person that Andersen is! One never knows how to deal with these half-and-half people. If he were a village-boy it would be different. And it would be different if he were a gentleman. But he is neither one thing or the other. Seville! Who would have thought to have heard Seville referred to, in the middle of Nevilton Square?”
He reached the carved entrance of the House with its deeply-cut armorial bearings—the Seldom falcon with the arrow in its beak. “No more willthatbird fly,” he thought, as he waited for the door to open.
He was ushered into the spacious entrance hall, the usual place of reception for Mr. Romer’s less favoured guests. The quarry-owner was alone. He shook hands affably with his visitor and motioned him to a seat.
“I have come about that question of the Social Meeting—” he began.
Mr. Romer cut him short. “It is no longer a question,” he said. “It is a ‘fait accompli.’ I have given orders to have the place pulled down next week. I want the space for building purposes.”
Clavering turned white with anger. “We shall have to find another room then,” he said. “I cannot have those meetings dropping out from our village life. They keep the thoughtful people together as nothing else can.”
Mr. Romer smiled grimly. “You will find it difficult to discover another place,” he remarked.
“Then I shall have them in my own house,” said the vicar of Nevilton.
Mr. Romer crossed his hands and threw back his head; looking, with the air of one who watches the development of precisely foreseen events, straight into the sad eyes of the little Royal Servant on the wall.
“Pardon such a question, my friend,” said he, “but may I ask you what your personal income is, at this moment?”
“You know that well enough,” returned the other.“I have nothing beyond the hundred and fifty pounds I receive as vicar of this place.”
“And what,” pursued the Quarry-owner, “may your expenditure amount to?”
“That, also, you know well,” replied Clavering. “I give away about eighty pounds, every year, to the poor of this village.”
“And where does this eighty pounds come from?” went on the Squire. The priest was silent.
“I will tell you where it comes from,” pronounced the other. “It comes from me. It is my contribution, out of the tithes which I receive as lay-rector. And it is the larger part of them.”
The priest was still silent.
“When I first came here,” his interlocutor continued, “I gave up these tithes as an offering to our village necessities; and I have not yet withdrawn them. If this Social Meeting, Mr. Clavering, is not brought to an end, I shall withdraw them. And no one will be able to blame me.”
Hugh jumped up on his feet with a gesture of fury. “I call this,” he shouted, “nothing short of sacrilege! Yes, sacrilege and tyranny! I shall proclaim it abroad. I shall write to the papers. I shall appeal to the bishop—to the country!”
“As you please,” said Mr. Romer quietly, “as you please. I should only like to point out that any action of this kind will tie up my purse-strings forever. You will not be popular with your flock, my friend. I know something of our dear Nevilton people; and I shall have only to make it plain to them that it is their vicar who has reduced this charity; and you will not find yourself greatly loved!”
Clavering fell back into his chair with a groan. He knew too well the truth of the man’s words. He knew also the straits into which this lack of money would plunge half his benevolent activities in the parish. He hung his head gloomily and stared at the floor. What would he not have given, at that moment, to have been able to meet this despot, man to man, unencumbered by his duty to his people!
“Let me assure you, my dear sir,” said Mr. Romer quietly, “that you are not by any means fighting the cause of your church, in supporting this wretched Meeting. If I were bidding you interrupt your services or your sacraments, it would be another matter. This Social Meeting has strong anti-clerical prejudices. You know that, as well as I. It is conducted entirely on nonconformist lines. I happen to be aware,” he added, “since you talk of appealing to the bishop, that the good man has already, on more than one occasion, protested vigorously against the association of his clergy with this kind of organization. I do not know whether you ever glance at that excellent paper the Guardian; but if so you will find, in this last week’s issue, a very interesting case, quite parallel to ours, in which the bishop’s sympathies were by no means on the side you are advocating.”
The young priest rose and bowed. “There is, at any rate, no necessity for me to trouble you any further,” he said. “So I will bid you good-night.”
He left the hall hastily, picked up his hat, and let himself out, before his host had time to reply. All the way down the drive his thoughts reverted to theseductive wiles of this despot’s daughter. “The saints are deserting me,” he thought, “by reason of my sin.”
He was not, even then, destined to escape his temptress. Gladys, who doubtless had been expecting this sudden retreat, emerged from the shadow of the trees and intercepted him. “I will walk to the gate with you,” she said. The power of feminine attraction is never more insidious than at the moment of bitter remorse. The mind reverts so easily, so willingly, then, back to the dangerous way. The mere fact of its having lost its pride of resistance, its vanity of virtue, makes it yield to a new assault with terrible facility. She drew him into the dusky twilight of the scented exotic cedars which bordered the way, on the excuse of inhaling their fragrance more closely.
She made him pull down a great perfumed cypress-bough, of some unusual species, so that they might press their faces against it. They stood so closely together that she could feel through her thin evening-gown the furious trembling that seized him. She knew that he had completely lost his self-control, and was quite at her mercy. But Gladys had not the least intention of yielding herself to the emotion she had excited. What she intended was that he should desire her to desperation, not that, by the least touch, his desire should be gratified. In another half-second, as she well knew, the poor priest would have seized her in his arms. In place of permitting this, what she did was to imprint a fleeting kiss with her warm lips upon the back of his hand, and then to leap out of danger with a ringing laugh. “Good-bye!”she called back at him, as she ran off. “I’ll come in good time next week.”
It may be imagined in what a turbulence of miserable feelings Hugh Clavering repassed the village square. He glanced quickly at the fountain. Yes! Luke Andersen was still loitering in the same place, and the little bursts of suppressed screams and laughter, and the little fluttering struggles, of the group around him, indicated that he was still, in his manner, corrupting the maidens of Nevilton. The priest longed to put his hands to his ears and run down the street, even as Christian ran from the city of Destruction. What was this power—this invincible, all-pervasive power—against which he had committed himself to contend? He felt as though he were trying, with his poor human strength, to hold back the sea-tide, so that it should not cover the sands.
Could it be that, after all, the whole theory of the church was wrong, and that the great Life-Force was against her, and punishing her, for seeking, with her vain superstitions, to alter the stars in their courses?
Could it be that this fierce pleasure-lust, which he felt so fatally in Gladys, and saw in Luke, and was seduced by in his own veins, was after all the true secret of Nature, and, to contend against it, madness and impossible folly? Was he, and not they, the really morbid and infatuated one—morbid with the arbitrary pride of a desperate tradition of perverted heroic souls? He moved along the pavement under the church wall and looked up at its grand immovable tower. “Are you, too,” he thought, “butthe symbol of an insane caprice in the mad human race, seeking, in fond recklessness, to alter the basic laws of the great World?”
The casuistical philosophy of Mr. Taxater returned to his mind. What would the papal apologist say to him now, thus torn and tugged at by all the forces of hell? He felt a curious doubt in his heart as to the side on which, in this mad struggle, the astute theologian really stood. Perhaps, for all his learning, the man was no more Christian in his true soul, than had been many of those historic popes whose office he defended. In his desperate mood Clavering longed to get as near as possible to the altar of this God of his, who thus bade him confront the whole power of nature and all the wisdom of the world. He looked up and down the street. Two men were talking outside The Goat and Boy, but their backs were turned. With a quick sudden movement he put his hands on the top of the wall and scrambled hastily over, scraping his shins as he did so on a sharp stone at the top. He moved rapidly to the place where rose the strange tombstone designed by the atheist carver. It was here that Vennie and he had entered into their heroic covenant only twenty-four hours before. He looked at the enormous skull so powerfully carved and at the encircled cross beneath it. He laid his hand upon the skull, precisely as he had done the night before; only this time there were no little cold fingers to instil pure devotion into him. Instead of the touch of such fingers he felt the burning contact of Gladys’ soft lips.
No! it was an impossible task that his God had laid upon him. Why not give up the struggle? Why notthrow over this mad idol of purity he had raised for his worship, and yield himself to the great stream? The blood rushed to his head with the alluring images that this thought evoked. Perhaps, after all, Gladys would marry him, and then—why, then, he could revert to the humourous wisdom of Mr. Taxater, and cultivate the sweet mystical speculations of modernism; reconciling, pleasantly and easily, the natural pleasures of the senses, with the natural exigencies of the soul!
He left Gideon’s grave and walked back to the church-porch. It was now nearly dark and without fear of being observed by any one through the iron bars of the outer gate, he entered the porch and stood before the closed door. He wished he had brought the key with him. How he longed, at that moment, to fling himself down before the altar and cry aloud to his God!
By his side stood the wheeled parish bier, ornamented by a gilt inscription, informing the casual intruder that it had been presented to the place in honour of the accession of King George the Fifth. There was not light enough to read these touching words, but the gilt plate containing them gave forth a faint scintillating glimmer.
Worn out by the day-long struggle in his heart, Clavering sat down upon this grim “memento mori”; and then, after a minute or two, finding that position uncomfortable, deliberately stretched himself out at full length upon the thing’s bare surface. Lying here, with the bats flitting in and out above his head, the struggle in his mind continued. Supposing he did yield,—not altogether, of course; his whole nature was against that, and his public position stood in theway,—but just a little, just a hair’s breadth, could he not enjoy a light playful flirtation with Gladys, such as she was so obviously prepared for, even if it were impossible to marry her? The worst of it was that his imagination so enlarged upon the pleasures of this “playful flirtation,” that it very quickly became an obsessing desire. He propped himself up upon his strange couch and looked forth into the night. The stars were just beginning to appear, and he could see one or two constellations whose names he knew. How indifferent they were, those far-off lights! What did it matter to them whether he yielded or did not yield? He had the curious sensation that the whole conflict in which he was entangled belonged to a terrestrial sphere infinitely below those heavenly luminaries. Not only the Power against which he contended, but the Power on whose side he fought, seemed out-distanced and derided by those calm watchers.
He sank back again and gazed up at the carved stone roof above him. A dull inert weariness stole over his brain; a sick disgust of the whole mad business of a man’s life upon earth. Why was he born into the world with passions that he must not satisfy and ideals that he could not hold? Better not to have been born at all; or, being born, better to lie quiet and untroubled, with all these placid churchyard people, under the heavy clay! The mental weariness that assailed him gradually changed into sheer physical drowsiness. His head sought instinctively a more easy position and soon found what it sought. His eyes closed; and there, upon the parish bier, worn out with his struggle against Apollyon, the vicar ofNevilton slept. When he returned to consciousness he found himself cramped, cold and miserable. Hurriedly he scrambled to his feet, stretched his stiff limbs and listened. The clock in the Tower above him began to strike. It struck one—two—and then stopped. He had slept for nearly five hours.
Every natural locality has its hour of special self-assertion; its hour, when the peculiar qualities and characteristics which belong to it emphasize themselves, and attain a sort of temporary apogee or culmination. It is then that such localities—be they forests or moors, hill-sides or valleys—seem to gather themselves together and bring themselves into focus, waiting expectantly, it might almost seem, for some answering dramatic crisis in human affairs which should find in them an inevitable background.
One of the chief features of our English climate is that no two successive days, even in a spell of the warmest weather, are exactly alike. What one might call the culminant day of that summer, for the orchards of Nevilton, arrived shortly after Mr. Clavering’s unfortunate defeat. Every hour of this day seemed to add something more and more expressive to their hushed and expectant solitudes.
Though the hay had been cut, or was being cut, in the open fields, in these shadowy recesses the grass was permitted to grow lush and long, at its own unimpeded will.
Between the ancient trunks of the moss-grown apple-trees hung a soft blue vapour; and the flickering sunlight that pierced the denser foliage, threw shadows upon the heavy grass that were as deeplypurple as the waves of the mid-atlantic. There was indeed something so remote from the ordinary movements of the day about this underworld of dim, rich seclusion, that the image of a sleepy wave-lulled land, long sunken out of reach of human invasion, under the ebbing and flowing tide, seemed borne in naturally upon the imagination.
It was towards the close of the afternoon of this particular segment of time that the drowsy languor of these orchards reached its richest and most luxurious moment. Grass, moss, lichen, mistletoe, gnarled trunks, and knotted roots, all seemed to cry aloud, at this privileged hour, for some human recognition of their unique quality; some human event which should give that quality its dramatic value, its planetary proportion. Not since the Hesperidean Dragon guarded its sacred charge, in the classic story, has a more responsive background offered itself to what Catullus calls the “furtive loves” of mortal men.
About six o’clock, on this day of the apogee of the orchards, Mr. Romer, seated on the north terrace of his house, caught sight of his daughter and her companion crossing the near corner of the park. He got up at once, and walked across the garden to intercept them. The sight of the Italian’s slender drooping figure, as she lingered a little behind her cousin, roused into vivid consciousness all manner of subterranean emotions in the quarry-owner’s mind. He felt as an oriental pasha might feel, when under the stress of some political or monetary transaction, he is compelled to hand over his favorite girl-slave to an obsequious dependent. The worst of it was that he could not be absolutely sure of Mr. Goring’scontinued adherence. It was within the bounds of possibility that once in possession of Lacrima, the farmer might breathe against him gross Thersites-like defiance, and carry off his captive to another county. He experienced, at that moment, a sharp pang of inverted remorse at the thought of having to relinquish his prey.
As he strode along by the edge of the herbaceous borders, where the blue spikes of the delphiniums were already in bud, his mind swung rapidly from point to point in the confused arena of his various contests and struggles.
Mixed strangely enough with his direct Napoleonic pursuit of wealth and power, there was latent in Mr. Romer, as we have already hinted, a certain dark and perverse sensuality, which was capable of betraying and distorting, in very curious ways, the massive force of his intelligence.
At this particular moment, as he emerged into the park, he found himself beginning to regret his conversation with his brother-in-law. But, after all, he thought, when Gladys married, it would be difficult to find any reason for keeping Lacrima at his side. His feelings towards the girl were a curious mixture of attraction and hatred. And what could better gratify this mixed emotion than a plan which would keep her within his reach and at the same time humiliate and degrade her? To do the master of Nevilton justice, he was not, at that moment, as he passed under a group of Spanish chestnuts and observed the object of his conspiracy rendered gentler and more fragile than ever by the loveliness of her surroundings, altogether devoid of a certain remotefeeling of compunction. He crushed it down, however, by his usual thought of the brevity and futility of all these things, and the folly of yielding to weak commiseration, when, in so short a time, nothing, one way or the other, would matter in the least! He had long ago trained himself to make use of these materialistic reasonings to suppress any irrelevant prickings of conscience which might interfere with the bias of his will. The whole world, looked at with the bold cynical eye of one who was not afraid to face the truth, was, after all, a mad, wild, unmeaning struggle; and, in the confused arena of this struggle, one could be sure of nothing but the pleasure one derived from the sensation of one’s own power. He tried, as he walked towards the girls, to imagine to himself what his feelings would be, supposing he yielded to these remote scruples, and let Lacrima go, giving her money, for instance, to enable her to live independently in her own country, or to marry whom she pleased. She would no doubt marry that damned fool Quincunx! Lack of money was, assuredly, all that stood in the way. And how could he contemplate an idea of that kind with any pleasure? He wondered, in a grim humourous manner, what sort of compensation these self-sacrificing ones really got? What satisfaction wouldheget, for instance, in the consciousness that he had thrown a girl who attracted him, into the arms of an idiot who excited his hate?
He looked long at Lacrima, as she stood with Gladys, under a sycamore, waiting his approach. It was curious, he said to himself,—very curious,—the sort of feelings she excited in him. It was not that he wished to possess her. He was scornfully cynicalof that sort of gratification. He wished to do more than possess her. He wished to humiliate her, to degrade her, to put her to shame in her inmost spirit. He wished her to know that he knew that she was suffering this shame, and that he was the cause of it. He wished her to feel herself absolutely in his power, not bodily—that was nothing!—but morally, and spiritually.
The owner of Leo’s Hill had the faculty of detaching himself from his own darkest thoughts, and of observing them with a humourous and cynical eye. It struck him as not a little grotesque, that he, the manipulater of far-flung financial intrigues, the ambitious politician, the formidable captain of industry, should be thus scheming and plotting to satisfy the caprice of a mere whim, upon the destiny of a penniless dependent. Itwasgrotesque—grotesque and ridiculous. Let it be! The whole business of living was grotesque and ridiculous. One snatched fiercely at this thing or the other, as the world moved round; and one was not bound always to present oneself in a dignified mask before one’s own tribunal. It was enough that this or that fantasy of the dominant power-instinct demanded a certain course of action. Let it be as grotesque as it might! He, and none other, was the judge of his pleasure, of what he pleased to do, or to refrain from doing. It was his humour;—and that ended it! He lived to fulfil his humour. There was nothing else to live for, in this fantastic chaotic world! Meditating in this manner he approached the girls.
“It occurred to me,” he said, breathing a little hard, and addressing his daughter, “that you mightbe seeing Mr. Clavering again tonight. If so, perhaps you would give him a message from me, or rather,—how shall I put it?—a suggestion, a gentle hint.”
“What are you driving at, father?” asked Gladys, pouting her lips and swinging her parasol.
“It is a message best delivered by mouth,” Mr. Romer went on, “and by your mouth.”
Then as if to turn this last remark into a delicate compliment, he playfully lifted up the girl’s chin with his finger and made as if to kiss her. Gladys, however, lightly evaded him, and tossing her head mischievously, burst out laughing. “I know you, father, I know you,” she cried. “You want me to do some intriguing for you. You never kiss me like that, unless you do!”
Lacrima glanced apprehensively at the two of them. Standing there, in the midst of that charming English scene, they represented to her mind all that was remorseless, pitiless and implacable in this island of her enforced adoption. Swiftly, from those ruddy pinnacles of the great house behind them, her mind reverted to the little white huts in a certain Apennine valley and the tinkling bells of the goats led back from pasture. Oh how she hated all this heavy foliage and these eternally murmuring doves!
“Well,” said Mr. Romer, as Gladys waited mockingly, “I do want you to do something. I want you to hint to our dear clergyman that this ceremony of your reception into his church is dependent upon his good behaviour. Notyourgood behavior,” he repeated smiling, “buthis. The truth is, dear child, if I may speak quite plainly, I know the persuasivepower of your pretty face over all these young men; and I want you to make it plain to this worthy priest that if you are to continue being nice to him, he must be very nice tome. Do you catch my meaning, my plump little bird?” As he spoke he encircled her waist with his arm. Lacrima, watching them, thought how singularly alike father and daughter were, and was conscious of an instinctive desire to run and warn this new victim of conspiracy.
“Why, what has he been doing, father?” asked the fair girl, shaking herself free, and opening her parasol.
“He has been supporting that fellow Wone. And he has been talking nonsense about Quincunx,—yes, about your friend Quincunx,” he added, nodding ironically towards Lacrima.
“And I am to punish him, am I?” laughed Gladys. “That is lovely! I love punishing people, especially people like Mr. Clavering who think they are so wonderfully good!”
Mr. Romer smiled. “Not exactly punish him, dear, but lead him gently into the right path. Lead him, in fact, to see that the party to belong to in this village is the party of capacity—not the party of chatter.”
Gladys looked at her father seriously. “You don’t mean that you are actually afraid of losing this election?” she said. Mr. Romer stretched out his arm and rested himself against the umbrageous sycamore, pressing his large firm hand upon its trunk.
“Losing it, child? No, I shan’t lose it. But these idiots do really annoy me. They are all such cowards and such sentimental babies. It is people like these who have to be ruled with a firm hand. They cringe and whimper when you talk to them; and then the moment your back is turned they grow voluble and impertinent. My workmen are no better. They owe everything to me. If it wasn’t for me, half those quarries would be shut down tomorrow and they’d be out of a job. But do you think they are grateful? Not a bit of it!” His tone grew more angry. He felt a need of venting the suppressed rage of many months. “Yes, you needn’t put on that unconscious look, Lacrima. I know well enough whereyoursympathies lie. The fact is, in these rotten days, it is the incapable and miserable who give the tone to everyone! No one thinks for himself. No one goes to the bottom of things. It is all talk—talk—talk; talk about equality, about liberty, about kindness to the weak. I hate the weak; and I refuse to let them interfere with me! Look at the faces of these people. Well,—you know, Gladys, what they are like. They are all feeble, bloodless, sneaking, fawning idiots! I hate the faces of these Nevilton fools. They are always making me think of slugs and worms. This Wone is typical. His disgusting complexion and flabby mouth is characteristic of them all. No one of them has the spirit to hit one properly back, face to face. And their odious, sentimental religion!—This Clavering of yours ought to know better. He is not quite devoid of intelligence. He showed some spirit when I talked with him. But he is besotted, too, with this silly nonsense about humouring the people, and considering the people, and treating the people in a Christian spirit! As though you could treat worms and slugs in any other spirit than thespirit of trampling upon them. They are born to be trampled upon—born for it—I tell you! You have only to look at them!” He glared forth over the soft rich fields; and continued, still more bitterly:
“It’s no good your pretending not to hear me, Lacrima! I can read your thoughts like an open book. You are quoting to yourself, no doubt, at this very moment, some of the pretty speeches of your friend Quincunx. A nice fellow, he is, for a girl’s teacher! A fellow with no idea of his own in his head! A fellow afraid to raise his eyes above one’s boot-laces! Why the other day, when I was out shooting and met him in the lane, he turned straight round, and walked back on his tracks—simply from fear of passing me. I hate these sneaking cowards! I hate their cunning, miserable, little ways! I should like to trample them all out of existence! That is the worst of being strong in this world. One is worried to death by a lot of fools who are not worth the effort spent on them.”
Lacrima uttered no word, but looked sadly away, over the fair landscape. In her heart, in spite of her detestation of the man, she felt a strange fantastic sympathy with a good deal of what he said. Women, especially women of Latin races, have no great respect for democratic sentiments when they do not issue in definite deeds. Her private idea of a revolutionary leader was something very far removed from the voluble local candidate, and she had suffered too much herself from the frail petulance of Maurice Quincunx not to feel a secret longing that somewhere, somehow, this aggressive tyrant should be faced by a strength as firm, as capable, as fearless, as his own.
Mr. Romer, with his swarthy imperial face and powerful figure, seemed to her, as he leant against the tree, so to impress himself upon that yielding landscape, that there appeared reason enough for his complaint that he could find no antagonist worthy of his steel. In the true manner of a Pariah, who turns, with swift contempt, upon her own class, the girl was conscious of a rising tide of revolt in her heart against the incompetent weakness of her friend. What would she not give to be able, even once, to see this man outfaced and outwitted! She was impressed too, poor girl, as she shrank silently aside from his sarcasm, by the horrible indifference of these charming sunlit fields to the brutality of the man’s challenge. They cared nothing—nothing! It was impossible to make them care. Hundreds of years ago they had slumbered, just as dreamily, just as indifferently, as they did now. If even at this moment she were to plunge a knife into the man’s heart, so that he fell a mass of senseless clay at her feet, that impervious wood-pigeon would go on murmuring its monotonous ditty, just as peacefully, just as serenely! There was something really terrifying to her in this callous indifference of Nature. It was like living perpetually in close contact with a person who was deaf and dumb and blind; and who, while the most tragic events were being transacted, went on cheerfully and imperturbably humming some merry tune. It would be almost better, thought the girl, if that tree-trunk against which the quarry-owner pressed his heavy hand were really in league with him. Anything were better than this smiling indifference which seemed to keep on repeating in a voiceas monotonous as the pigeon’s—“Everything is permitted. Nothing is forbidden. Nothing is forbidden. Everything is permitted.” like the silly reiterated whirring of some monstrous placid shuttle. It was strange, the rebellious inconsistent thoughts, which passed through her mind! She wondered why Hugh Clavering was thus to be waylaid and persuaded. Had he dared to rise in genuine opposition? No, she did not believe it. He had probably talked religion, just as Maurice talked anarchy and Wone talked socialism. It was all talk! Romer was quite right. They had no spirit in them, these English people. She thought of the fierce atheistic rebels of her own country.They, at any rate, understood that evil had to be resisted by action, and not by vague protestations of unctuous sentiment!
When Mr. Romer left them and returned to his seat on the terrace, the girls did not at once proceed on their way, but waited, hesitating; and amused themselves by pulling down the lower branches of a lime and trying to anticipate the sweetness of its yet unbudded fragrance.
“Let’s stroll down the drive first,” said Gladys presently, “till we are out of sight, and then we can cross the mill mead and get into the orchard that way.” They followed this design with elaborate caution, and only when quite concealed from the windows of the house, turned quickly northward and left the park for the orchards. Between the wall, of the north garden and the railway, lay some of the oldest and least frequented of these shadowy places, completely out of the ordinary paths of traffic, and only accessible by field-ways. Into the smallest andmost secluded of all these the girls wandered, gliding noiselessly between the thick hedges and heavy grass, like two frail phantoms of the upper world visiting some Elysian solitude.
Gladys laid her hand on her companion’s arm. “We had better wait here,” she said, “where we can see the whole orchard. They ought to know, by now, where to come.”
They seated themselves on the bowed trunk of an ancient apple-tree that by long decline had at last reached a horizontal position. The flowering season was practically over, though here and there a late cider-tree, growing more in shadow than the rest, still carried its delicate burden of clustered blossoms.
“How many times is it that we have met them here?” whispered the fair girl, snatching off her hat and tossing it on the grass. “This is the fifth time, isn’t it? What dear things they are! I think it’s much more exciting, this sort of thing,—don’t you?—than dull tennis parties with silly idiots like young Ilminster.”
The Italian nodded. “It is a good thing that James and I get on so well,” she said. “It would be awkward if we were as afraid of one another as when we first met.”
Gladys put her hand caressingly on her companion’s knee and looked into her face with a slow seductive smile.
“You are forgetting your Mr. Quincunx a little, just a little, these days, aren’t you, darling? Don’t be shy, now—or look cross. You know you are! You can’t deny it. Your boy is almost as nice as mine. He doesn’t like me, though. I can see that! But I likehim. I like him awfully! You’d better take care, child. If ever I get tired of my Luke—”
“James isn’t a boy,” protested Lacrima.
“Silly!” cried Gladys. “Of course he is. Who cares about age? They are all the same. I always call them boys when they attract me. I like the word. I like to say it. It makes me feel as if I were one of those girls in London. You know what I mean!”
Lacrima looked at her gravely. “I always feel as if James Andersen were much older than I,” she said.
“But your Mr. Quincunx,” repeated the fair creature, slipping her soft fingers into her friend’s hand, “your Mr. Quincunx is not quite what he was to you, before we began these adventures?”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that, Gladys!” rejoined the Italian, freeing her hands and clasping them passionately together. “It is wicked of you to say that! You know I only talk to James so that you can do what you like. I shall always be Maurice’s friend. I shall be his friend to the last!”
Gladys laughed merrily. “That is what I wanted,” she retorted. “I wanted to make you burst out. When people burst out, they are always doubtful in their hearts. Ah, little puritan! so we are already in the position of having two sweethearts, are we?—and not knowing which of the two we really like best? That is a very pretty situation to be in. It is where we all are! I hope you enjoy it!”
Lacrima let her hands fall helplessly to her side, against the grey bark of the apple-tree. “Why do you hate Mr. Quincunx so?” she asked, looking gravely into her friend’s face.
“Why do I hate him?” said Gladys. “Oh, I really don’t know! I didn’t know I did. If I do, it’s because he’s such a weak wretched creature. He has no more spirit than a sick dog. He talks such nonsense too! I am glad he has to walk to Yeoborough every day and do a little work. You ought to be glad too! He could never marry if he didn’t make some money.”
“He doesn’t want to marry,” murmured Lacrima. “He only wants to be left alone.”
“A nice friend he seems to be,” cried the other, “for a girl like you! I suppose he kisses you and that sort of thing, doesn’t he? I shouldn’t like to be kissed by a silly old man like that, with a great stupid beard.”
“You mustn’t say these things to me, Gladys, you mustn’t! I won’t hear them. Mr. Quincunx isn’t an old man! He is younger than James Andersen. He is not forty yet.”
“He looks fifty, if he looks a day,” said Gladys, “and the colour of his beard is disgusting! It’s like dirty water. Fancy having a horrid thing like that pressed against your face! And I suppose he cries and slobbers over you, doesn’t he? I have seen him cry. I hate a man who cries. He cried the other night,—father told me so—when he found he had spent all his money.”
Lacrima got up and walked a few paces away. She loathed this placid golden-haired creature, at that moment, so intensely, that it was all she could do to refrain from leaping upon her and burying her teeth in her soft neck. She leant against one of the trees and pressed her head upon its grey lichen. Gladysslipped down into a more luxurious position. She looked complacently around her. No spot could have been better adapted for a romantic encounter.
The gnarled and time-worn trunks of the old apple-trees, each looking as if it had lingered there, full of remote memories, from an age coeval with the age of those very druids whose sacred mistletoe still clung in patches to their boughs, formed a strange fantastic array of twisted and distorted natural pillars, upon which the foliage, meeting everywhere above their heads, leaned in shadowy security, like the roof of a heathen temple. The buttercups and cuckoo-flowers, which, here and there, sprinkled the heavy grass, were different from those in the open meadows. The golden hue of the one, and the lavender tint of the other, took on, in this diurnal gloom, a chilly and tender pallour, both colours approximating to white. The grey lichen hung down in loose festoons from the higher portions of the knotted trunks, and crept, thick and close, round the moss at their roots. There could hardly be conceived a spot more suggestive of absolute and eternal security than this Hesperidean enclosure.
The very fact of the remote but constant presence of humanity there, as a vague dreamy background of immemorial tending, increased this sense. One felt that the easy invasions of grafting-time and gathering-time, returning perennially in their seasons, only intensified the long delicious solitudes of the intervals between, when, in rich, hushed languor, the blossoms bud and bloom and fall; and the fruit ripens and sweetens; and the leaves flutter down. That exquisite seductive charm, the charm of places full ofquietness, yet bordering on the edge of the days’ labour, hung like a heavy atmosphere of contentment over the shadowy aisles of this temple of peace. The wood-pigeons keep up a perpetual murmur, all the summer long, in these untrodden spots. No eyes see them. It is as though they never saw one another. But their drowsy liturgical repetitions answer and answer again, as if from the unfathomable depths of some dim green underworld, worshipping the gods of silence with sounds that give silence itself a richer, a fuller weight.
“There they are!” cried Gladys suddenly, as the figures of the Andersen brothers made themselves visible on the further side of the orchard.
The girls advanced to meet them through the thick grass, swinging their summer-hats in their hands and bending their heads, now and then, to avoid the overhanging boughs. The meeting between these four persons would have made a pleasant and appropriate subject for one of those richly-coloured old-fashioned prints which one sometimes observes in early Victorian parlours. Gladys grew quite pale with excitement, and her voice assumed a vibrant tenderness when she accosted Luke, which made Lacrima give a little start of surprise, as she shook hands with the elder brother. Had her persecutor then, got, after all, some living tissue in the place where the heart beat?
Luke’s manner had materially altered since he had submitted so urbanely to the fair girl’s insulting airs at the close of their first encounter. His way of treating her now was casual, flippant, abrupt—almost indifferent. Instead of following the patheticpressure of her arm and hand, which at once bade him hasten the separation of the group, he deliberately lingered, chatting amicably with Lacrima and asking her questions about Italy. It seemed that the plausible Luke knew quite as much about Genoa and Florence and Venice as his more taciturn brother, and all he knew he was well able to turn into effective use. He was indeed a most engaging and irresistible conversationalist; and Gladys grew paler and paler, as she watched the animation of his face and listened to his pleasant and modulated voice.
It caused sheer suffering to her fiercely impetuous nature, this long-drawn out delay. Every moment that passed diminished the time they would have together. Her nerves ached for the touch of his arms about her, and a savage desire to press her mouth to his, and satiate herself with kisses, throbbed in her every vein. Why would he not stop this irrelevant stream of talk? What did she care about the narrow streets of Genoa,—or the encrusted façade of San Marco? It had been their custom to separate immediately on meeting, and for Luke to carry her off to a charming hiding-place they had discovered. With the fierce pantherish craving of a love-scorched animal her soul cried out to be clasped close to her friend in this secluded spot, having her will of those maddening youthful lips with their proud Grecian curve! Still he must go on talking!
James and Lacrima, lending themselves, naturally and easily, to the mood of the moment, were already seated at the foot of a twisted and ancestral apple-tree. Soon Luke, still absorbed in his conversation with the Italian, shook off Gladys’ arm and settledhimself beside them, plucking a handful of grass, as he did so, and inhaling its fragrance with sybarite pleasure.
“St. Mark’s is the only church in the world for me,” Luke was saying. “I have pictures of it from every conceivable angle. It is quite a mania with me collecting such things. I have dozens of them; haven’t I, James?”
“Do you mean those post-cards father sent home when he went over there to work?” answered the elder brother, one of whose special peculiarities was a curious pleasure in emphasizing, in the presence of the “upper classes,” the humility of his origin.
Luke laughed. “Well—yes—those—and others,” he said. “Youhaven’t the least idea what I keep in my drawer of secret treasures; you know you haven’t! I’ve got some lovely letters there among other things. Letters that I wouldn’t let anyone see for the world!” He glanced smilingly at Gladys, who was pacing up and down in front of them, like a beautiful tigress.
“Look here, my friends,” she said. “The time is slipping away frightfully. We are not going to sit here all the while, are we, talking nonsense, like people at a garden party?”
“It’s so lovely here,” said Luke with a slow smile. “I really don’t think that your favourite corner is so much nicer. I am in no hurry to move. Are you, Miss Traffio?”
Lacrima saw a look upon her cousin’s face that boded ill for their future relations if she did not make some kind of effort. She rose to her feet.
“Come, Mr. Andersen,” she said, giving James awistful look. “Let us take a little stroll, and then return again to these young people.”
James rose obediently, and they walked off together. They passed from the orchards belonging to Mr. Romer’s tenant, and entered those immediately at the foot of the vicarage garden. Here, through a gap in the hedge they were attracted by the sight of a queer bed of weeds growing at the edge of a potato-patch. They were very curious weeds, rather resembling sea-plants than land-plants; in colour of a dull glaucous green, and in shape grotesquely elongated.
“What are those things?” said Lacrima. “I think I have never seen such evil-looking plants. Why do they let them grow there?”
James surveyed the objects. “They certainly have a queer look,” he said, “but you know, in old days, there was a grave-yard here, of a peculiar kind. It is only in the last fifty years that they have dug it up and included it in this garden.”
Lacrima shuddered. “I would not eat those potatoes for anything! You know I think I come to dislike more and more the look of your English vegetable gardens, with their horrid, heavy leaves, so damp and oozy and disgusting!”
“I agree with you there,” returned the wood-carver. “I have always hated Nevilton, and every aspect of it; but I think I hate these overgrown gardens most of all.”
“They look as if they were fed from churchyards, don’t they?” went on the girl. “Look at those heavy laurel bushes over there, and those dreadful fir-trees! I should cut them all down if this placebelonged to me. Oh, how I long for olives and vine-yards! These orchards are all very well, but they seem to me as if they were made to keep out the sun and the wholesome air.”
James Andersen smiled grimly. “Orchards and potato gardens!” he muttered. “Yes, these are typical of this country of clay. And these Vicarage shrubberies! I think a shrubbery is the last limit of depression and desolation. I am sure all the murders committed in this country are planned in shrubberies, and under the shade of damp laurel-bushes.”
“In our country we grow corn between the fruit-trees,” said Lacrima.
“Yes, corn—” returned Andersen, “corn and wine and oil! Those are the natural, the beautiful, products of the earth. Things that are fed upon sun and air—not upon the bones of the dead! All these Nevilton places, however luxuriant, seem to me to smell of death.”
“But was this corner really a churchyard?” asked the Italian. “I hope Mrs. Seldom won’t stroll down this way and see us!”
“Mrs. Seldom is well suited to the place she lives in,” returned the other. “She lives upon the Past, just as her garden does—just as her potatoes do! These English vicarages are dreadful places. They have all the melancholy of age without its historic glamour. And how morbid they are! Any of your cheerful Latin curés would die in them, simply of damp and despair.”
“But do tell me about this spot,” repeated Lacrima, with a little shiver. “Why did you say it was a peculiar churchyard?”
“It was the place where they buried unbaptized children,” answered Andersen, and added, in a lower tone, “how cold it is getting! It must be the shadow we are in.”
“But you haven’t yet,” murmured Lacrima, “you haven’t yet told me, what those weeds are.”
“Well—we call them ‘mares’-tails’ about here,” answered the stone-carver, “I don’t know their proper name.”
“But why don’t they dig them up? Look! They are growing all among the potatoes.”
“They can’t dig them up,” returned the man. “They can’t get at their roots. They are the worst and most obstinate weed there is. They grow in all the Nevilton gardens. They are the typical Nevilton flora. They must have grown here in the days of the druids.”
“But how absurd!” cried Lacrima. “I feel as if I could pull them up with my hands. The earth looks so soft.”
“The earth is soft enough,” replied Andersen, “but the roots of these weeds adhere fast to the rock underneath. The rock, you know, the sandstone rock, lies only a short distance beneath our feet.”
“The same stone as Nevilton house is built of?”
“Certainly the same. Our stone, Mr. Romer’s stone, the stone upon which we all live here—except those who till the fields.”
“I hate the thing!” cried Lacrima, in curious agitation.
“You do? Well—to tell you the honest truth, so do I. I associate it with my father.”
“I associate it with Gladys,” whispered Lacrima.
“I can believe it. We both associate it with houses of tyranny, of wretched persecution. Perhaps I have never told you that my father was directly the cause of my mother’s death?”
“You have hinted it,” murmured the girl. “I suspected it. But Luke loves the stone, doesn’t he? He always speaks as if the mere handling of it, in his work-shop, gave him exquisite pleasure.”
“A great many things give Luke exquisite pleasure,” returned the other grimly. “Luke lives for exquisite pleasure.”
A quick step on the grass behind them made them swing suddenly round. It was Vennie Seldom, who, unobserved, had been watching them from the vicarage terrace. A few paces behind her came Mr. Taxater, walking cautiously and deliberately, with the air of a Lord Chesterfield returning from an audience at St. James’. Mr. Taxater had already met the Italian on one or two occasions. He had sat next to her once, when dining at Nevilton House, and he was considerably interested in her.
“What a lovely evening, Miss Traffio,” said Vennie shyly, but without embarrassment. Vennie was always shy, but nothing ever interfered with her self-possession.
“I am glad you are showing Mr. Andersen these orchards of ours. I always think they are the most secluded place in the whole village.”
“Ha!” said Mr. Taxater, when he had greeted them with elaborate and friendly courtesy, “I thought you two were bound to make friends sooner or later! I call you my two companions in exile, among our dear Anglo-Saxons. Miss Traffio I know is Latin,and you, sir, must have some kind of foreign blood. I am right, am I not, Mr. Andersen?”
James looked at him humorously, though a little grimly. He was always pleased to be addressed by Mr. Taxater, as indeed was everybody who knew him. The great scholar’s detached intellectualism gave him an air of complete aloofness from all social distinctions.
“Perhaps I may have,” he answered. “My mother used to hint at something of the kind. She was always very fond of foreign books. I rather fancy that I once heard her say something about a strain of Spanish blood.”
“I thought so! I thought so!” cried Mr. Taxater, pulling his hat over his eyes and protruding his chin and under-lip, in the manner peculiar to him when especially pleased.
“I thought there was something Spanish in you. How extraordinarily interesting! Spain,—there is no country like it in the world! You must go to Spain, Mr. Andersen. You would go there in a different spirit from these wretched sight-seers who carry their own vulgarity with them. You would go with that feeling of reverence for the great things of civilization, which is inseparable from the least drop of Latin blood.”
“Wouldyoulike to see Spain, Miss Traffio?” enquired Vennie. “Mr. Taxater, I notice, always leaves out us women, when he makes his attractive proposals. I think he thinks that we have no capacity for understanding this civilization he talks of.”
“I think you understand everything, better than any man could,” murmured Lacrima, conscious of an extraordinary depth of sympathy emanating from this frail figure.
“Miss Seldom has been trying to make me appreciate the beauty of these orchards,” went on Mr. Taxater, addressing James. “But I am afraid I am not very easily converted. I have a prejudice against orchards. For some reason or other, I associate them with dragons and serpents.”
“Miss Seldom has every reason to love the beautiful aspects of our Nevilton scenery,” said the stone-carver. “Her ancestors possessed all these fields and orchards so long, that it would be strange if their descendant did not have an instinctive passion for them.” He uttered these words with that curious undertone of bitterness which marked all his references to aristocratic pretension.
Little Vennie brushed the sarcasm gently aside, as if it had been a fluttering moth.
“Yes, I do love them in a sense,” she said, “but you must remember that I, too, was educated in a Latin country. So, you see, we four are all outsiders and heretics! I fancy your brother, Mr. Andersen, is an ingrained Neviltonian.”
James smiled in a kindly, almost paternal manner, at the little descendant of the Tudor courtiers. Her sweetness and artless goodness made him feel ashamed of his furtive truculence.
“I wish you would come in and see my mother and me, one of these evenings,” said Vennie, looking rather wistfully at Lacrima and putting a more tender solicitation into her tone than the mere words implied.
Lacrima hesitated. “I am afraid I cannot promise,” she said nervously. “My cousin generally wants me in the evening.”
“Perhaps,” put in Mr. Taxater, with his mostTalleyrand-like air, “a similar occasion to the present one may arise again, when with Mr. Andersen’s permission, we may all adjourn to the vicarage garden.”
Lacrima, rather uncomfortably, looked down at the grass.
“We four, being, as we have admitted, all outsiders here,” went on the diplomatist, “ought to have no secrets from one another. I think”—he looked at Vennie—“we may just as well confess to our friends that we quite realize the little—charming—‘friendship,’ shall I say?—that has sprung up between this gentleman’s brother and Miss Romer.”
“I think,” said James Andersen hurriedly, in order to relieve Lacrima’s embarrassment, “I think the real bond between Luke and Miss Gladys is their mutual pleasure in all this luxuriant scenery. Somehow I feel as if you, Sir, and Miss Seldom, were quite separate from it and outside it.”