AUBER LAKE
The presence of Ralph Dangelis in Nevilton House had altered, in more
than one respect, the relations between Gladys and her cousin.
The girls saw much less of each other, and Lacrima was left
comparatively at liberty to follow her own devices.
On several occasions, however, when they were all three together,
it chanced that the American had made himself extremely agreeable
to the younger girl, even going so far as to take her part, quite
energetically, in certain lively discussions. These occasions were
not forgotten by Gladys, and she hated the Italian with a hatred more
deep-rooted than ever.
As soon as her first interest in the American’s society began to pall
a little, she cast about in her mind for some further way of causing
discomfort and agitation to the object of her hatred.
Only those who have taken the trouble to watch carefully what might be
called the “magnetic antagonism,” between feminine animals condemned
to live in close relations with one another, will understand the full
intensity of what this young person felt. It was not necessarily a sign
of any abnormal morbidity in our fair-haired friend.
For a man in whom one is interested, even though such interest be
mild and casual, to show a definite tendency to take sides against
one, on behalf of one’s friend, is a sufficient justification,--at
least so nature seems to indicate--for the awakening in one’s heart
of an intense desire for revenge. Such desire is often aroused in
the most well-constituted temperaments among us, and in this case it
might be said that the sound physical nerves of the daughter of the
Romers craved the satisfaction of such an impulse with the same stolid
persistence as her flesh and blood craved for air and sun. But how
to achieve it? What new and elaborate humiliation to devise for this
irritating partner of her days?
The bathing episode was beginning to lose its piquancy. Custom, with
its kindly obliviousness, had already considerably modified Lacrima’s
fears, and there had ceased to be for Gladys any further pleasure in
displaying her aquarian agility before a companion so occupied with the
beauty of lawn and garden at that magical hour.
Fate, however, partial, as it often is, to such patient tenacity of
emotion, let fall at last, at her very feet, the opportunity she craved.
She had just begun to experience that miserable sensation, so
sickeningly oppressive to a happy disposition, of hating where she
could not hurt, when, one evening, news was brought to the house by
Mark Purvis the game-keeper that a wandering flock of wild-geese had
taken up its temporary abode amid the reeds of Auber Lake. Mr. Romer
himself soon brought confirmation of this fact.
The birds appeared to leave the place during the day and fly far
westward, possibly as far as the marshes of Sedgemoor, but they always
returned at night-fall to this new tarrying ground.
The very evening of this exciting discovery, Gladys’ active mind
formulated a thrilling and absorbing project, which she positively
trembled with longing to communicate to Lacrima. She found the long
dinner that night, and the subsequent chatter with Dangelis on the
terrace, almost too tedious to be endured; and it was at an unusually
early hour that she surprised her cousin by joining her in her room.
The Pariah was seated at her mirror, wearily reducing to order her
entangled curls, when Gladys entered. She looked very fragile in her
white bodice and the little uplifted arms, that the mirror reflected,
showed unnaturally long and thin. When one hates a person with the sort
of massive hatred such as, at that time, beat sullenly under Gladys’
rounded bosom, every little physical characteristic in the object of
our emotion is an added incentive to our revengeful purpose.
This Saturnian planetary law is unfortunately not confined to
antipathies between persons of the same sex. Sometimes the most
unhappy results have been known to spring from the manner in which
one or another, even of two lovers, has lifted chin or head, or moved
characteristically across a room.
Thus it were almost impossible to exaggerate the loathing with which
this high-spirited girl contemplated the pale oval face and slender
swaying arms of her friend, as full of her new project she flung
herself into her favourite arm chair and met Lacrima’s frightened eyes
in the gilded Georgian mirror. She began her attack with elaborate
feline obliquity.
“They say Mark Purvis’ crazy daughter has been giving trouble again. He
was up this morning, talking to father about it.”
“Why don’t you send her away?” said the Italian, without turning round.
“Send her away? She has to do all the house-work down there! Mark has
no one else, you know, and the poor man does not want the expense of
hiring a woman.”
“Isn’t it rather a lonely place for a child like that?”
“Lonely? I should think it is lonely! But what would you have? Somebody
must keep that cottage clean; and it’s just as well a wretched mad girl,
of no use to anyone, should do it, as that a sound person should lose
her wits in such a god-forsaken spot!”
“What does she do at--at these times? Is she violent?”
“Oh, she gets out in the night and roams about the woods. She was once
found up to her knees in the water. No, she isn’t exactly violent. But
she is a great nuisance.”
“It must be terrible for her father!”
“Well--in a way it does bother him. But he is not the man to stand much
nonsense.”
“I hope he is kind to her.”
Gladys laughed. “What a soft-hearted darling you are! I expect he
finds sometimes that you can’t manage mad people, any more than you can
manage children, without using the stick. But I fancy, on the whole, he
doesn’t treat her badly. He’s a fairly good-natured man.”
The Pariah sighed. “I think Mr. Romer ought to send her away at once to
some kind of home, and pay someone to take her place.”
“I daresay you do! If you had your way, father wouldn’t have a penny
left in the bank.”
The Pariah rose from her seat, crossed over to the window, and looked
out into the sultry night. What a world this was! All the gentle and
troubled beings in it seemed over-ridden by gigantic merciless wheels!
A little awed, in spite of herself, by the solemnity of her companion,
Gladys sought to bring her back out of this translunar mood by
capricious playfulness. She stretched herself out at full length in
her low chair, and calling the girl to her side, began caressing her,
pulling her down at last upon her lap.
“Guess what has happened!” she murmured softly, as the quick beating of
the Pariah’s heart communicated itself to her, and made her own still
harder.
“Oh, I know it’s something I shan’t like, something that I shall dread!”
cried the younger girl, making a feeble effort to escape.
“Shall I tell you what it is?” Gladys went on, easily overcoming
this slight movement. “You know, don’t you, that there’s a flock of
wild-geese settled on the island in the middle of Auber Lake? Well!
I have got a lovely plan. I’ve never yet seen those birds, because
they don’t come back till the evening. What you and I are going to do,
darling, is to slip away out of the house, next time Mr. Dangelis goes
to see that friend of yours, and make straight to Auber Lake! I’ve
never been into those woods by night, and it’ll be extraordinarily
thrilling to see what Auber Lake looks like with the moon gleaming on
it. And then we may be able to make the wild-geese rise, by throwing
sticks or something, into the water. Oh, it’ll be simply lovely! Don’t
you think so, darling? Aren’t you quite thrilled by the idea?”
The Pariah liberated herself by a sudden effort and stood erect on the
floor.
“I think you are the wickedest girl that God ever made!” she said
solemnly. And then, as the full implication of the proposed adventure
grew upon her, she clasped her hands convulsively. “You cannot mean
it!” she cried. “You cannot mean it! You are teasing me, Gladys. You
are only saying it to tease me.”
“Why, you’re not such a coward as all that!” her cousin replied.
“Think what it must be for Nance Purvis, who always lives down there!
I shouldn’t like to be more cowardly than a poor crazy labouring girl.
We really _ought_ to visit the place, once in a way, to see if these
stories are true about her escaping out of the house. One can never
tell from what Mark says. He may have been drinking and imagining it
all.”
Lacrima turned away and began rapidly undressing. Without a word she
arranged the books on her table, moving about like a person in a
trance, and without a word she slipped into bed and turned her face to
the wall.
Gladys smiled, stretched herself luxuriously, and continued speaking.
“Auber Lake by moonlight would well be worth a night walk. You know
it’s supposed to be the most romantic spot in Somersetshire? They say
it’s incredibly old. Some people think it was used in prehistoric times
by the druids as a place of worship. The villagers never dare to go
near it after dark. They say that very curious noises are heard there.
But of course that may only be the mad--”
She was not allowed to go on. The silent figure in the bed suddenly sat
straight up, with wide-staring eyes fixed upon her, and said slowly
and solemnly, “If I come with you to this place, will you faithfully
promise me that your father will send that girl into a home?”
Gladys was so surprised by this unexpected utterance that she made an
inarticulate gasping noise in her throat.
“Yes,” she answered, mesmerized by the Pariah’s fixed glance.
“Yes--most certainly. If you come with me to see those wild-geese, I’ll
make any promise you like about that girl!”
Lacrima continued for a moment fixing her with wide-dilated pupils.
Then, with a shiver that passed from head to foot, she slowly sank back
on her pillows and closed her eyes.
Gladys rose a little uneasily from her chair. “But of course,” she
said, “you understand she may not _want_ to go away. She is quite
crazy, you know. And she may prefer wandering about freely among dark
woods to being locked up in a nice white-washed asylum, under the care
of fat motherly nurses!”
With this parting shot she went off into her own room feeling in
a curious vague manner that somehow or another the edge of her
delectation had been taken off. In this unexpected resolution of the
Italian, the Mythology of Sacrifice had suddenly struck a staggering
blow at the Mythology of Power. Like the point of a bright silver
sword, this unforseen vein of heroism in the Pariah cleared the
sultry air of that hot night with a magical freshness and coolness. A
planetary onlooker might have been conscious at that moment of strange
spiritual vibrations passing to and fro over the sleeping roofs of
Nevilton. But perhaps such a one would also have been conscious of the
abysmal indifference to either stream of opposing influence, of the
high, cold galaxy of the Milky Way, stretched contemptuously above them
all!
All we are able to be certain of is, that as the fair-haired daughter
of the house prepared for bed she muttered sullenly to herself. “I’ll
make her go anyway. It will be lovely to feel her shiver, when we pass
under those thick laurels! That mad girl won’t leave the place, unless
they drag her by force.”
Left alone, Lacrima remained, for nearly two hours, motionless and
with closed eyes. She was not asleep, however. Strange and desperate
thoughts pursued one another through her brain. She wondered if she,
too, like the girl of Auber Lake, were destined to find relief from
this merciless world in the unhinging of her reason. She reverted again
and again in her mind to her cousin’s final malicious suggestion. That
would be indeed, she thought, a bitter example of life’s irony, if
after going through all this to save the poor wretch, such sacrifice
only meant worse misery for her. But no! God could not be as unkind as
that.
She stretched out her arm for a book with which to still the
troublesome palpitation of her heart.
The book she seized by chance turned out to be Andersen’s Fairy
Stories, and she read herself to sleep with the tale of the little
princess who wove coats of nettles for her enchanted brothers, and all
night long she dreamed of mad unhappy girls struggling amid entwining
branches, of bottomless lakes full of terrible drowned faces, and of
flocks of wild-geese that were all of them kings’ sons!
The Saturday following this eventful colloquy between the cousins was
a day of concentrated gloom. There was thunder in the vicinity and,
although no rain had actually fallen in Nevilton, there was a brooding
presence of it in the heavy atmosphere.
The night seemed to descend that evening more quickly than usual. By
eight o’clock a strange unnatural twilight spread itself over the
landscape. The trees in the park submitted forlornly to a burden of
sultry indistinction and seemed, in their pregnant stillness, to be
trying in vain to make mysterious signals to one another.
Dinner in the gracious Elizabethan dining-room was an oppressive and
discomfortable meal to all concerned. Mrs. Romer was full of tremors
and apprehensions over the idea of a possible thunder-storm.
The quarry-owner was silent and preoccupied, his mind reviewing all the
complicated issues of a new financial scheme. Dangelis kept looking at
his watch. He had promised to be at Dead Man’s Lane by nine o’clock,
and the meal seemed to drag itself out longer than he had anticipated.
He was a little apprehensive, too, as to what reception he would
receive when he did arrive at Mr. Quincunx’s threshold.
Their last encounter had been so extremely controversial, that he
feared lest the sensitive recluse might be harbouring one of his
obstinate psychic reactions at his expense.
He was very unwilling to risk the loss of Mr. Quincunx’s society. There
was no one in Nevilton to whom he could discourse quite as freely
and philosophically as he could to the conscripted office-clerk, and
his American interest in a “representative type” found inexhaustible
satisfaction in listening to the cynical murmurings of this eccentric
being.
Lacrima was calm and self-contained, but she ate hardly anything; and
the hand with which she raised her glass to her lips trembled in spite
of all her efforts.
Gladys herself was exuberant with suppressed excitement. Every now and
then she glanced furtively at the window, and at other times, when
there was no reason for such an outburst, she gave vent to a low feline
laugh. She was of the type of animal that the approach of thunder, and
the presence of electricity in the air, fills with magnetic nervous
exaltation.
The meal was over at last, and the various persons of the group
hastened to separate, each of them weighed upon, as if by an
atmospheric hand, with the burden of their own purposes and
apprehensions.
The two girls retired to their rooms. Mrs. Romer retreated to her
favourite corner in the entrance hall, and then, uneasy even here, took
refuge in the assuaging society of her friend the housekeeper.
Romer himself marched away gloomily to his study; and Dangelis,
snatching up his coat and hat, made off across the south garden.
It did not take the American long to reach the low hedge which
separated Mr. Quincunx’s garden from the lane. The recluse was awaiting
him, and joined him at once at the gate, giving him no invitation to
enter, and taking for granted that their conversation was to be a
pedestrian one.
Mr. Quincunx experienced a curious reluctance to allow any of his
friends to cross his threshold. The only one completely privileged
in this matter was young Luke Andersen, whose gay urbanity was so
insidious that it would have overcome the resistance of a Trappist monk.
“Well, where are you proposing to take me tonight?” enquired Dangelis,
when they had advanced in silence some distance up the hill.
“To a place that will interest you, if your damned artistic tastes
haven’t quite spoiled your pleasure in little things!”
“Not to the Seven Ashes again?” protested the American. “I know this
lane leads up there.”
“You wait a little. We shall turn off presently,” muttered his
companion. “The truth is I am taking you on a sort of scouting
expedition tonight.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Well--if you must know, you shall know! I saw Miss Traffio yesterday
and she asked me to keep an eye on Auber Lake tonight.”
“What? That place they were talking of? Where the wild-geese are?”
Mr. Quincunx nodded. “It may, for all I know, be a wild-goose
chase. But I find your friend Gladys is up to her little tricks
again--frightening people and upsetting their minds. And I promised
Lacrima that you and I would stroll round that way--just to see that
the girls don’t come to any harm. Only we mustn’t let them know we’re
there. Lacrima would never forgive me if Gladys saw us.”
“Do you mean to say that those two children are going to wander about
these confounded damp woods of yours alone?” cried the American.
“Look here, Mr. Dangelis, please understand this quite clearly. If you
ever say a word to your precious Miss Gladys about this little scouting
expedition, that’s an end of our talks, forever and a day!”
The citizen of Ohio bowed with a mock heroic gesture, removing his hat
as he did so.
“I submit to your conditions, Don Quixote. I am entirely at your
service. Is it the idea that we should track our friends on hands and
knees? I am quite ready even for that, but I know what these woods of
yours are like.”
Mr. Quincunx vouchsafed no reply to this ill-timed jocosity. He was
anxiously surveying the tall hedge upon their right hand. “Here’s the
way,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Here’s the path. We can hit a short-cut
here that brings us straight through Camel’s Cover, up to Wild Pine.
Then we can slip down into Badger’s Bottom and so into the Auber
Woods.”
“But I thought the Auber Woods were much nearer than that. You told me
the other day that you could get into the heart of them, in a quarter
of an hour from your own garden!”
“And so I can, my friend,” replied Mr. Quincunx, scrambling up the bank
into the field, and turning to offer his hand to his companion. “But it
happens that this is the way those girls are coming. At any rate that
is what she said. They were going to avoid my lane but they were going
to enter the woods from the Seven Ashes side, just because it is so
much nearer.”
“I submit, I submit,” muttered the artist blandly. “I only hope
this scouting business needn’t commence till we have got well
through Camel’s Cover and Badger’s Bottom! I must confess I am not
altogether in love with the sound of those places, though no doubt
they are harmless enough. But you people do certainly select the most
extraordinary names for your localities. Our own little lapses in these
things are classical compared with your Badgers and Camels and Ashes
and Dead Men!”
Mr. Quincunx did not condescend to reply to this. He continued to
plough his way across the field, every now and then glancing nervously
at the sky, which grew more and more threatening. Walking behind him
and a little on one side, the American was singularly impressed by
the appearance he presented, especially when the faint light of the
pallid and cloud-flecked moon fell on his uplifted profile. With his
corrugated brow and his pointed beard, Mr. Quincunx was a noticeable
figure at any time, but under the present atmospheric conditions his
lean form and striking head made a picture of forlorn desolation worthy
of the sombre genius of a Bewick.
Dangelis conceived the idea of a picture, which he himself might
be capable of evoking, with this melancholy, solitary figure as its
protagonist.
He wondered vaguely what background he would select as worthy of the
resolute hopelessness in Mr. Quincunx’s forlorn mien.
It was only after they had traversed the sloping recesses of Camel’s
Cover, and had arrived at the crest of the Wild Pine ridge, that he was
able to answer this question. Then he knew at once. The true pictorial
background for his eccentric companion could be nothing less than that
line of wind-shaken, rain-washed Scotch firs, which, visible from all
portions of Nevilton, had gathered to themselves the very essence of
its historic tragedy.
These trees, like Mr. Quincunx, seemed to derive a grim satisfaction
from their submission to destiny. Like him, they submitted with a
definite volition of resolution. They took, as he took, the line of
least resistance with a sort of stark voluptuousness. They did not
simply bow to the winds and rains that oppressed them. They positively
welcomed them. And yet all the while, just as he did, they emitted a
low melancholy murmur of protest, a murmur as completely different from
the howling eloquence of the ashes and elms, as it was different from
the low querulous sob of the larches and elders. The rusty-red stain,
too, in the rough bark of their trunks, was also singularly congruous
with a certain reddish tinge, which often darkened the countenance of
the recluse, especially when his fits of goblin-humour shook him into
convulsive merriment.
As they paused for a moment on this melancholy ridge, looking back
at the flickering lights of the village, and down into the darkness
in front of them, the painter made a mental vow that before he left
Nevilton he would sublimate his vision of Mr. Quincunx into a genuine
masterpiece. Plunging once more into the shadows, they followed a dark
lane which finally emerged into a wide-sloping valley. In the depths
of this was the secluded hollow, full of long grass and tufted reeds,
which was the place known as Badger’s Bottom.
The entrance to Auber Wood was now at hand; and as they reached its
sinister outskirts, they both instinctively paused to take stock of
their surroundings. The night was more sultry than ever. The leaves and
grasses swayed with an almost imperceptible movement, as if stirred,
not by the wind, but by the actual heavy breathing of the Earth
herself, troubled and agitated in her planetary sleep.
Sombre banks of clouds moved intermittently over the face of a blurred
moon, and, out of the soil at their feet, rose up damp exotic odours,
giving the whole valley the atmosphere of an enormous hot-house.
It was one of those hushed, steamy nights, pregnant and listening,
which the peculiar conditions of our English climate do not often
produce, and which are for that very reason often quite startling in
their emotional appeal. The path which the two men took, after once
they had entered the wood, was one that led them through a gloomy
tunnel of gigantic, overhanging laurel-bushes.
All the chief entrances to Auber Wood were edged with these exotics.
Some capricious eighteenth-century Seldom,--perhaps the one who raised
the Tower of Pleasure on the site of the resting-place of the Holy
Rood--had planted them there, and for more than a hundred years they
had grown and multiplied.
Auber Lake itself was the centre of a circumference of thick
jungle-like brushwood which itself was overshadowed by high sloping
hills. These hills, also heavily wooded, formed a sort of gigantic cup
or basin, and the level expanse of undergrowth they enclosed was itself
the margin of a yet deeper concavity, in the middle of which was the
lake-bed.
Mingling curiously with the more indigenous trees in this place were
several unusual and alien importations. Some of these, like the huge
laurels they were now passing under, belonged more properly to gardens
than to woods. Others were of a still stranger and more foreign nature,
and produced a very bizarre effect where they grew, as though one had
suddenly come upon the circle of some heathen grove, in the midst
of an English forest. Auber Lake was certainly a spot of an unusual
character. Once it had been drained, and a large monolith, of the same
stone as that produced by Leo’s Hill, had been discovered embedded in
the mud. Traces were said to have been discerned upon this of ancient
human carving, but local antiquarianism had contradicted this rumour.
At least it may be said that nowhere else on the Romer estate, except
perhaps in Nevilton churchyard, was the tawny-colored clay which bore
so close a symbolic, if not a geological, relation to the famous
yellow sandstone, more heavily and malignantly clinging, in its oozy
consistence.
Dangelis and Mr. Quincunx advanced slowly, and in profound silence,
along their overshadowed path.
An occasional wood-pigeon, disturbed in its roosting, flapped awkwardly
through the branches; and far away, in another part of the wood,
sounded at intervals the melancholy cry of a screech-owl.
Great leather-winged bats flitted over their heads with queer unearthly
little cries; and every now and then some agitated moth, from the
under-bushes, fluttered heavily across their faces. Sometimes in the
darkness their feet stumbled upon a dead branch, but more often they
slipped uneasily in the deep ruts left in the mud by the woodmen’s
carts.
All the various intermittent noises they heard only threw the palpable
stillness of the place into heavier relief.
The artist from the wind-swept plains of Ohio felt as though he had
never plunged so deeply into the indrawn recesses of the earth-powers
as he was doing now. It seemed to him as though they were approaching
the guarded precincts of some dark and crouching idol. It was as if, by
some ill-omened mistake, they had stumbled unawares upon a spot that
through interminable ages had been forbidden to human tread.
And yet the place seemed to expect them, to await them; to have in
reserve for them some laboured pregnancy of woeful significance.
Once more, as he walked behind Mr. Quincunx, Dangelis was startled by
the extraordinary congruity of that forlorn figure with the occasion
and the scene. The form of the recluse seemed to exhale a reciprocity
of fearful brooding. Auber Wood seemed aware of him, and ready to
welcome him, in consentaneous sympathy. He might have been the
long-expected priest of some immemorial rites transacted there, the
priest of some old heathen worship, perhaps the worship of generations
of dead people, buried under those damp leaves.
It seemed a long while to Ralph Dangelis, in spite of the breathless
quickening of his imagination, before the laurel-tunnel thinned away,
and the two men were able to walk side by side between the trunks of
the larger trees. Here again they encountered Scotch firs.
What strange dream, of what fantastic possessor of this solitude, had
shaped itself into the planting of these moorland giants, among the
native-born oaks and beeches of this weird place?
The open spaces at the foot of the tree-trunks were filled with an
obscure mass of oozy stalks and heavily drooping leaves. The obscurity
of the spot made it difficult to discern the differences between these
rank growths; but the ghostly flowers of enormous hemlocks stood forth
from among the rest. Fungoid excrescences, of some sort or another,
were certainly prolific here. Their charnel-house odour set Dangelis
thinking of a morgue he had once visited.
At last--and with quite startling suddenness--the path they followed
emerged into a wide open expanse; and there,--under the diffused light
of the cloud-darkened moon--they saw stretched at their feet the dim
surface of Auber Lake.
Mr. Quincunx stood for a moment motionless and silent, leaning upon his
stick. Then he turned to his companion; and the American noticed how
vague and shadowy his face looked, as if it were a face seen through
some more opaque medium than that of air.
They sat down together upon a fallen log; and out of an instinctive
desire to break the tension of the spell that lay on him Dangelis lit a
cigarette.
He had smoked in silence for some moments, when Mr. Quincunx, who had
been listening attentively, raised his hand. “Hark!” he said, “do you
hear anything?”
Across the stillness of the water came a low blood-curdling wail. It
was hardly a human sound, and yet it was not like the voice of any bird
or beast. It seemed to unsettle the drowsy natives of the spot; for
a harsh twittering of sedge-birds answered it, and a great water-rat
splashed down into the lake.
“God! they were right then,” whispered the American. “They spoke of
some mad girl living down here, but I did not believe them. It seemed
incredible that such a thing should be allowed. Quick, my friend!--we
ought to warn those girls at once and get them away. This is not the
sort of thing for them to hear.”
They both rose and listened intently, but the sound was not repeated;
only a hot gust of wind coming, as it were, out of the lake itself,
went quivering through the reeds.
“I don’t imagine,” said Mr. Quincunx calmly, “that _your_ young lady
will be much alarmed. I fancy she has less fear of this kind of thing
than that water-rat we heard just now. It’ll terrify Lacrima, though.
But I understand that your charming sweetheart gets a good deal of
amusement from causing people to feel terror!”
Dangelis was so accustomed to the plain-spoken utterances of the hermit
of Dead Man’s Lane that he received this indictment of his enchantress
with complete equanimity.
“All the same,” he remarked, “I think we’d better go and meet them,
if you know the direction they’re coming. It’s not a very pleasant
proposition, any way, to face escaped lunatics in a place like this.”
“I tell you,” muttered Mr. Quincunx crossly, “your darling Gladys is
coming here for no other reason than to hear that girl’s cries. The
more they terrify Lacrima, the better she’ll be pleased.”
“I don’t know about Lacrima,” answered Dangelis. “I know that devil of
a noise will scare _me_ if I hear it again.”
Mr. Quincunx did not reply. With his hand on his companion’s arm he was
once more listening intently. At the back of his mind was gradually
forming a grim remote wish that some overt act and palpable revelation
of Gladys Romer’s interesting character might effect a change of heart
in the citizen of Ohio.
Such a wish had been obscurely present in his brain ever since they
started on this expedition; and now that the situation was developing,
it took a more vivid shape.
“I believe,” he remarked at last, “I hear them coming down the path.
Listen! It’s on the other side of the pond,--over there.” He pointed
across the water to the left-hand corner of the lake. It was from the
right-hand corner, where the keeper’s cottage stood, that the poor mad
girl’s voice had proceeded.
“Yes; I am sure!” he whispered after a moment’s pause. “Come! quick!
get in here; then they won’t see us even if they walk round this way.”
He pulled Dangelis beneath the overhanging boughs of a large
weeping willow. The droop of this tree’s delicate foliage made, in
the semi-darkness in which they were, a complete and impenetrable
hiding-place; and yet from between the trailing branches, when they
held them apart with their hands, they had a free and unimpeded view of
the whole surface of the lake.
The sound of distant voices struck clearly now upon their ears; and
a moment after, nudging his companion, Mr. Quincunx pointed to two
cloaked figures advancing across the open space towards the water’s
edge.
“Hush!” whispered the recluse. “They are bound to come this way now.”
The two girls were, however, for the moment, apparently occupied
with another intention. The taller of the two stopped and picked up
something from the ground, and then approaching close to the lake’s
edge raised her arm and flung it far into the water.
The object she threw must have been a stick or a stone of considerable
size, for the splash it produced was startling.
The result was also startling. From a little island in the middle of
the lake, rose suddenly, with a tremendous flapping, several large and
broad-winged birds. They flew in heavy circles, at first, over the
island; and then, descending to the water’s level, went splashing and
flapping across its surface, uttering strange cries.
The noise made by these birds had hardly subsided, as they settled down
in a thick bed of reeds, when, once more, that terrible inhuman wail
rang out upon the night. Both men peered forth anxiously from their
hiding-place, to see the effect of this sound upon their two friends.
They could see that they both stood stone-still for a moment as if
petrified by terror.
Then they noticed that the taller of the two drew her companion still
nearer to the water’s edge.
“If that yell begins again,” whispered the American, “I shall go out
and speak to them.”
Mr. Quincunx made no answer. He prayed in his heart that something
would occur to initiate this innocent Westerner a little more closely
into the workings of his inamorata’s mind. It seemed indeed quite
within the bounds of possibility that the recluse might be gratified in
this wish, for the girls began rapidly advancing towards them, skirting
the edge of the lake.
The two men watched their approach in silence, the artist savouring
with a deep imaginative excitement the mystical glamour of the scene.
He felt it would be indelibly and forever imprinted on his mind,
this hot heavily scented night, this pallid-glimmering lake, those
uneasy stirrings of the wild-geese in their obscure reed-bed, and
the frightful hush of the listening woods, as they seemed to await a
repetition of that unearthly cry.
The girls had actually paused at the verge of the lake, just in front
of their hiding-place; so near, in fact, that by stretching out his
arm, from behind his willowy screen, Dangelis could have touched Gladys
on the shoulder, when the fearfully expected voice broke forth again
upon the night.
The men could see the visible tremor of panic-fear quiver through
Lacrima’s slight frame.
“Oh, let us go!--let us go!” she pleaded, pulling with feverish fingers
at her companion’s cloak.
But Gladys folded her arms and flung back her head.
“Little coward!” she murmured in a low unshaken voice. “I am not afraid
of a mad girl’s yelling. Look! there’s one of those birds going back to
the island!”
Once more the inhuman wail trembled across the water.
“Gladys! Gladys dear!” cried the panic-stricken girl, “I cannot endure
it! I shall go mad myself if we do not go! I’ll do anything you ask me!
I’ll go anywhere with you! Only--please--let us go away now!”
The sound was repeated again, and this time it proceeded from a quarter
much nearer them. All four listeners held their breath. Presently the
Italian made a terrified gesture and pointed frantically to the right
bank of the lake.
“I see her!” she cried, “I see her! She is coming towards us!”
The frightened girl made a movement as if she would break away from her
companion and flee into the darkness of the trees.
Gladys clasped her firmly in her arms.
“No--no!” she said, “no running off! Remember our agreement! There’s
nothing really to be afraid of. I’m not afraid.”
A slight quiver in her voice a little belied the calmness of this
statement. She was indeed torn at that moment between a very natural
desire to escape herself and an insatiable craving to prolong her
companion’s agitation.
In her convulsive terror the Italian, unable to free herself from the
elder girl’s enfolding arms, buried her head in the other’s cloak.
Thus linked, the two might have posed for a picture of heroic sisterly
solicitude, in the presence of extreme danger.
Once more that ghastly cry resounded through the silence; and several
nocturnal birds, from distant portions of the wood, replied to it with
their melancholy hootings.
The white-garbed figure of the mad girl, her arms tossed tragically
above her head, came swaying towards them. She moved unevenly, and
staggered in her advance, as if her volition had not complete power
over her movements. Gladys was evidently considerably alarmed herself
now. She clutched at a chance of combining escape with triumph.
“Say you let me off that promise!” she whispered hoarsely, “and we’ll
run together! We’re quite close to the way out.”
Who can read the obscure recesses of the human mind, or gauge the
supernatural strength that lurks amid the frailest nerves?
This reference to her sublime contract was the one thing needed to
rouse the abandoned soul of the Pariah. For one brief second more the
powers of darkness struggled over her bowed head with the powers of
light.
Then with a desperate movement the Italian rose erect, flung aside her
cousin’s arms, turned boldly towards the approaching maniac, and ran
straight to meet her. Her unexpected appearance produced an immediate
effect upon the unhappy girl. Her wildly-tossing arms fell to her side.
Her wailing died away in pathetic sobs, and these also quickly ceased.
Lacrima seemed to act like one possessed of some invincible magic. One
might have dreamed that now for the first time for uncounted ages this
unholy shrine of heathen tradition was invaded by an emissary of the
true Faith.
Gladys, who had reeled bewildered against the wood-work of an
ancient weir, that formed the outlet to the lake, leaned in complete
prostration of astonishment upon this support, and gazed helplessly
and dumbly at the two figures. She was too petrified with amazement
to notice the appearance of Ralph and Maurice, who, also absorbed
in watching this strange encounter, had half-emerged from their
concealment.
The three onlookers saw the Italian lay her hands upon the girl’s
forehead, smooth back her hair, kiss her gently on the brow, and fling
her own cloak over her bare shoulders. They heard her murmuring again
and again some soft repetition of soothing words. Dangelis caught the
liquid syllables of the Tuscan tongue. Evidently in her excitement the
child of Genoa the Superb had reverted to the language of her fathers.
The next thing they saw was the slow retreat of the two together,
towards the keeper’s cottage; the arm of the Italian clinging tenderly
round the maniac’s waist.
At this point Dangelis stepped forward and made himself known to Gladys.
The expression on the face of Mr. Romer’s daughter, when she recognized
the American, was a palimpsest of conflicting emotions. Her surprise
was still more intense when Mr. Quincunx stepped out from the shadow of
the drooping tree and raised his hat to her. Her eyes for the moment
looked positively scared; and her mouth opened, like the mouth of a
bewildered infant. The tone with which the citizen of Ohio addressed
the confused young lady made the heart of Mr. Quincunx leap for joy.
“I am astonished at you,” he said. “I should not have believed such a
thing possible! Your only excuse is that this infernal jest of yours
has turned out so well for the people concerned, and so shamefully for
yourself. How could you treat that brave foreign child so brutally?
Why--I saw her trembling and trembling, and trying to get away; and
you were holding--actually holding her--while that poor mad thing came
nearer! It’s a good thing for you that the Catholic spirit in her burst
out at last. Do you know what spell she used to bring that girl to her
senses? A spell that you will never understand, my friend, for all this
baptism and confirmation business! Why--she quoted passages out of the
Litany of Our Lady! I heard her clearly, and I recognized the words. I
am a damned atheist myself, but if ever I felt religion to be justified
it was when your cousin stopped that girl’s crying. It was like real
magic. You ought to be thoroughly proud of her! I shall tell her when I
see her what I feel about her.”
Gladys rose from her seat on the weir and faced them haughtily. Her
surprise once over, and the rebuke having fallen, she became mistress
of herself again.
“I suppose,” she said, completely ignoring Mr. Quincunx, “we’d better
follow those two, and see if Lacrima gets her safely into the house. I
fancy she’ll have no difficulty about it. Of course if she had not done
this I should have had to do it myself. But not knowing Italian”--she
added this with a sneer--“I am not so suitable a mad-house nurse.”
“It was her good heart, Gladys,” responded the American; “not her
Italian, nor her Litany, that soothed that girl’s mind. I wish your
heart, my friend, were half as good.”
“Well,” returned the fair girl quite cheerfully, “we’ll leave my heart
for the present, and see how Lacrima has got on.”
She took the arm which Dangelis had not offered, but which his chivalry
forbade him to refuse, and together they proceeded to follow the heroic
Genoese.
Mr. Quincunx shuffled unregarded behind them.
They had hardly reached the keeper’s cottage, a desolate and ancient
erection, of the usual stone material, darkened with damp and
overshadowed by a moss-grown oak, when Lacrima herself came towards
them.
She started with surprise at seeing, in the shadowy obscurity, the
figures of the two men.
Her surprise changed to pleasure when she recognized their identity.
“Ah!” she said. “You come too late. Gladys and I have had quite an
adventure, haven’t we, cousin?”
Mr. Quincunx glanced at the American to see if he embraced the full
generosity of the turn she gave to the situation.
Gladys took advantage of it in a moment. “You see I was right after
all,” she remarked. “I knew you would lose your alarm directly you
saw that girl! When it came to the point you were braver than I. You
dear thing!” She kissed the Italian ostentatiously, and then retook
possession of her admirer’s arm.
“I got her up to her room without waking her father,” said Lacrima.
“She had left the door wide open. Gladys is going to ask Mr. Romer to
have her sent away to some sort of home. I believe they’ll be able to
cure her. She talked quite sensibly to me. I am sure she only wants to
be treated gently. I’m afraid her father’s unkind to her. You are going
to arrange for her being sent away, aren’t you, Gladys?”
The elder girl turned. “Of course, my dear, of course. I don’t go back
on my word.”
The four friends proceeded to take the nearest path through the wood.
One by one the frightened wild-geese returned to their roosting-place
on the island. The water-rats resumed uninterrupted their night-prowls
along the reedy edge of the lake, and the wood-pigeons settled down in
peace upon their high branches.
Long before Dead Man’s Lane was reached the two couples had drifted
conveniently apart in their lingering return.
Mr. Quincunx had seldom been more tender towards his little friend than
he was that night; and Lacrima, still strangely happy in the after-ebb
of her supernatural exultation, nestled closely to his side as they
drifted leisurely across the fields.
In what precise manner the deeply-betrayed Gladys regained the
confidence of her lover need not be related. The artist from Ohio would
have been adamantine indeed, could he have resisted the appeal which
the amorous telepathy of this magnetic young person gave her the power
of expressing.
Meanwhile, in her low-pitched room, with the shadow of the oak-tree
coming and going across her face, as the moonlight shone out or faded,
Nance Purvis lay placidly asleep, dreaming no more of strange phantoms
or of stinging whips, but of gentle spirits from some translunar
region, who caressed her forehead with hands softer than moth’s wings
and spoke to her in a tongue that was like the moonlight itself made
audible.