HULLAWAY
“I see,” said Luke Andersen to his brother, as they sat at breakfast in
the station-master’s kitchen, about a fortnight after the riot on Leo’s
Hill, “I see that Romer has withdrawn his charge against young Wone.
It seems that the magistrates set him free yesterday, on Romer’s own
responsibility. So the case will not come up at all. What do you make
of that?”
“He is a wiser man than I imagined,” said James.
“And that’s not all!” cried his brother blowing the cigarette ashes
from the open paper in front of him. “It appears the strike is in a
good way of being settled by those damned delegates. We were idiots
to trust them. I knew it. I told the men so. But they are all such
hopeless fools. No doubt Romer has found some way of getting round
them! The talk is now of arbitration, and a commissioner from the
government. You mark my words, Daddy Jim, we shall be back working
again by Monday.”
“But we shall get the chief thing we wanted, after all--if Lickwit is
removed,” said James, rising from the table and going to the window, “I
know I shall be quite satisfied myself, if I don’t see that rascal’s
face any more.”
“The poor wretch has collapsed altogether, so they said down at the
inn last night,” Luke put in. “My belief is that Romer has now staked
everything on getting into Parliament and is ready to do anything to
propitiate the neighbourhood. If that’s his line, he’ll succeed. He’ll
out-manœuvre our friend Wone at every step. When a man of his type
once tries the conciliatory game be becomes irresistible. That is what
these stupid employers so rarely realize. No doubt that’s his policy
in stopping the process against Philip. He’s a shrewd fellow this
Romer--and I shouldn’t wonder if, when the strike is settled, he became
the most popular landlord in the country. Wone did for himself by
sneaking off home that day, when things looked threatening. They were
talking about that in Yeoborough. I shouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t
lose him the election.”
“I hope not,” said James Andersen gazing out of the window at the
gathering clouds. “I should be sorry to see that happen.”
“I should be damned glad!” cried his brother, pushing back his chair
and luxuriously sipping his final cup of tea. “My sympathies are all
with Romer in this business. He has acted magnanimously. He has acted
shrewdly. I would sooner, any day, be under the control of a man like
him, than see a sentimental charlatan like Wone get into Parliament.”
“You are unfair, my friend,” said the elder brother, opening the lower
sash of the window and letting in such a draught of rainy wind that he
was immediately compelled to re-close it, “you are thoroughly unfair.
Wone is not in the least a charlatan. He believes every word he says,
and he says a great many things that are profoundly true. I cannot
see,” he went on, turning round and confronting his equable relative
with a perturbed and troubled face, “why you have got your knife into
Wone in this extreme manner. Of course he is conceited and long-winded,
but the man is genuinely sincere. I call him rather a pathetic figure.”
“He looked pathetic enough when he sneaked off after that riot, leaving
Philip in the hands of the police.”
“It annoys me the way you speak,” returned the elder brother, in
growing irritation. “What right have you to call the one man’s
discretion cowardice, and the other’s wise diplomacy? I don’t see that
it was any more cowardice for Wone to protest against a riot, than for
Romer to back down before public opinion as he seems now to have done.
Besides, who can blame a fellow for wanting to avoid a scene like that?
I know _you_ wouldn’t have cared to encounter those Yeoborough roughs.”
“Old Romer encountered them,” retorted Luke. “They say he smoked a
cigarette in their faces, and just waved them away, as if they were a
cloud of gnats. I love a man who can do that sort of thing!”
“That’s right!” cried the elder brother growing thoroughly angry.
“That’s the true Yellow Press attitude! Here we have one of your
‘still, strong men,’ afraid of no mob on earth! I know them--these
strong men! It’s easy enough to be calm and strong when you have a
banking-account like Romer’s, and all the police in the county on your
side!”
“Brother Lickwit will not forget that afternoon,” remarked Luke, taking
a rose from a vase on the table and putting it into his button-hole.
“Yes, Lickwit is the scape-goat,” rejoined the other. “Lickwit will
have to leave the place, broken in his nerves, and ruined in his
reputation, while his master gets universal praise for magnanimity and
generosity! That is the ancient trick of these crafty oppressors.”
“Why do you use such grand words, Daddy Jim?” said Luke smiling and
stretching out his legs. “It’s all nonsense, this talk about oppressors
and oppressed. The world only contains two sorts of people--the capable
ones and the incapable ones. I am all on the side of the capable ones!”
“I suppose that is why you are treating little Annie Bristow so
abominably!” cried James, losing all command of his temper.
Luke made an indescribable grimace which converted his countenance in a
moment from that of a gentle faun to that of an ugly Satyr.
“Ho! ho!” he exclaimed, “so we are on that tack are we? And please tell
me, most virtuous moralist, why I am any worse in my attitude to Annie,
than you in your attitude to Ninsy? It seems to me we are in the same
box over these little jobs.”
“Damn you!” cried James Andersen, walking fiercely up to his brother
and trembling with rage.
But Luke sipped his tea with perfect equanimity.
“It’s no good damning me,” he said quietly. “That will not alter the
situation. The fact remains, that both of us have found our little
village-girls rather a nuisance. I don’t blame you. I don’t blame
myself. These things are inevitable. They are part of the system of the
universe. Little girls have to learn--as the world moves round--that
they can’t have everything they want. I don’t know whether you intend
to marry Ninsy? I haven’t the slightest intention of marrying Annie.”
“But you’ve been making love to her for the last two months! You told
me so yourself when we met her at Hullaway!”
“And you weren’t so very severe then, were you, Daddy Jim? It’s only
because I have annoyed you this morning that you bring all this up.
As a matter of fact, Annie is far less mad about me than Ninsy is
about you. She’s already flirting with Bob Granger. Anyone can see
she’s perfectly happy. She’s been happy ever since she made a fool
of me over Gladys’ ring. As long as a girl knows she’s put you in a
ridiculous position, she’ll very soon console herself. No doubt she’ll
make Granger marry her before the summer’s over. Ninsy is quite a
different person. Annie and I take our little affair in precisely the
same spirit. I am no more to blame than she is. But Ninsy’s case is
different. Ninsy is seriously and desperately in love with you. And her
invalid state makes the situation a much more embarrassing one. I think
my position is infinitely less complicated than yours, brother Jim!”
James Andersen’s face became convulsed with fury. He stretched out his
arm towards his brother, and extended a threatening fore-finger.
“Young man,” he cried, “I will _never_ forgive you for this!”
Having uttered these words he rushed incontinently out of the room,
and, bare-headed as he was, proceeded to stride across the fields, in a
direction opposite from that which led to Nevilton.
The younger brother shrugged his shoulders, drained his tea-cup, and
meditatively lit another cigarette. The stone-works being closed,
he had all the day before him in which to consider this unfortunate
rupture. At the present moment, however, all he did was to call their
landlady--the station-master’s buxom wife--and affably help her in the
removal and washing up of the breakfast things.
Luke was an adept in all household matters. His supple fingers and
light feminine movements were equal to almost any task, and while
occupied in such things his gay and humorous conversation made any
companion of his labour an enviable person. Mrs. Round, their landlady,
adored him. There was nothing she would not have done at his request;
and Lizzie, Betty, and Polly, her three little daughters, loved him
more than they loved their own father. Having concerned himself for
more than an hour with these agreeable people, Luke took his hat and
stick, and strolling lazily along the railroad-line railings, surveyed
with inquisitive interest the motley group of persons who were waiting,
on the further side, for the approach of a train.
A little apart from the rest, seated on a bench beside a large empty
basket, he observed the redoubtable Mrs. Fringe. Between this lady and
himself there had existed for the last two years a sort of conspiracy
of gossip. Like many other middle-aged women in Nevilton, Mrs. Fringe
had made a pet and confidant of this attractive young man, who played,
in spite of his mixed birth, a part almost analogous to that of an
affable and ingratiating cadet of some noble family.
He passed through the turn-stile, crossed the track, and advanced
slowly up the platform. His plump Gossip, observing him afar off,
rose and moved to meet him, her basket swinging in her hand and a
radiant smile upon her face. It was like an encounter between some
Pantagruelian courtier and some colossal Gargamelle. They stood
together, in the wind, at the extreme edge of the platform. Luke, who
was dressed so well that it would have been impossible to distinguish
him from any golden youth from Oxford or Cambridge, whispered
shameless scandal into the lady’s ears, from beneath the shadow of his
panama-hat. She on her side was equally confidential.
“There was a pretty scene down our way last night,” she said. “Miss
Seldom came in with some books for my young Reverend and, Lord! they
did have an ado. I heard ’un shouting at one another as though them
were rampin’ mad. My master ’ee were hollerin’ Holy Scripture like as
he were dazed, and the young lady she were answerin’ ’im with God knows
what. From all I could gather of it, that girl had got some devil’s
tale on Miss Gladys. ’Tweren’t as though she did actually name her by
name, as you might say, but she pulled her hair and scratched her like
any crazy cat, sideways-like and cross-wise. It seems she’d got hold
of some story about that foreign young woman and Miss Gladys having
her knife into ’er, but I saw well enough what was at the bottom of it
and I won’t conceal it from ’ee, my dear. She do want ’im for herself.
That’s the long and short. She do want ’im for herself!”
“What were they disputing about?” asked Luke eagerly. “Did you hear
their words?”
“’Tis no good arstin’ me about their words,” replied Mrs. Fringe.
“Those long-windy dilly-dallies do sound to me no more than the
burbering of blowflies. God save us from such words! I’m not a reading
woman and I don’t care who knows it. But I know when a wench is
moon-daft on a fellow. I knows that, my dear, and I knows when she’s
got a tale on another girl!”
“Did she talk about Catholicism to him?” enquired Luke.
“I won’t say as she didn’t bring something of that sort in,” replied
his friend. “But ’twas Miss Gladys wot worried ’er. Any fool could see
that. ’Tis my experience that when a girl and a fellow get hot on any
of these dilly-dally argimints, there’s always some other maid biding
round the corner.”
“I’ve just had a row with James,” remarked the stone-carver. “He’s gone
off in a fury over towards Hullaway.”
Mrs Fringe put down her basket and glanced up and down the platform.
Then she laid her hand on the young man’s arm.
“I wouldn’t say what I do now say, to anyone, but thee own self,
dearie. And I wouldn’t say it to thee if it hadn’t been worriting me
for some merciful long while. And what’s more I wouldn’t say it, if
I didn’t know what you and your Jim are to one another. ‘More than
brothers,’ is what the whole village do say of ye!”
“Go on--go on--Mrs. Fringe!” cried Luke. “That curst signal’s down, and
I can hear the train.”
“There be other trains than wot run on them irons,” pronounced Mrs.
Fringe sententiously, “and if you aren’t careful, one such God
Almighty’s train will run over that brother of yours, sooner or later.”
Luke looked apprehensively up the long converging steel track. The
gloom of the day and the ominous tone of his old gossip affected him
very unpleasantly. He began to wish that there was not a deep muddy
pond under the Hullaway elms.
“What on earth do you mean?” he cried, adding impatiently, “Oh damn
that train!” as a cloud of smoke made itself visible in the distance.
“Only this, dearie,” said the woman picking up her basket, “only this.
If you listen to me you’d sooner dig your own grave than have words
with brother. Brother be not one wot can stand these fimble-fambles
same as you and I. I know wot I do say, cos I was privileged, under
Almighty God, to see the end of your dear mother.”
“I know--I know--” cried the young man, “but what do you mean?”
Mrs. Fringe thrust her arm through the handle of her basket and turned
to meet the incoming train.
“’Twas when I lived with my dear husband down at Willow-Grove,” she
said. “’Twas a stone’s throw there from where you and Jim were born. I
always feared he would go, same as she went, sooner or later. He talks
like her. He looks like her. He treats a person in the way she treated
a person, poor moon-struck darling! ’Twas all along of your father. She
couldn’t bide him along-side of her in the last days. And he knew it as
well as you and I know it. But do ’ee think it made any difference to
him? Not a bit, dearie! Not one little bit!”
The train had now stopped, and with various humorous observations,
addressed to porters and passengers indiscriminately, Mrs. Fringe took
her place in a carriage.
Heedless of being overheard, Luke addressed her through the window of
the compartment. “But what about James? What were you saying about
James?”
“’Tis too long a tale to tell ’ee, dearie,” murmured the woman
breathlessly. “There be need now of all my blessed wits to do business
for the Reverend. There, look at that!” She waved at him a crumpled
piece of paper. “Beyond all thinking I’ve got to fetch him books from
Slitly’s. Books, by the Lord! As if he hadn’t too many of the darned
things for his poor brain already!”
The engine emitted a portentous puff of smoke, and the train began to
move. Luke walked by the side of his friend’s window, his hand on the
sash.
“You think it is inadvisable to thwart my brother, then,” he said,
“in any way at all. You think I must humour him. You are afraid if I
don’t--” His walk was of necessity quickened into a run.
“It’s a long story, dearie, a long story. But I had the privilege under
God Almighty of knowing your blessed mother when she was called, and I
tell you it makes my heart ache to see James going along the same road
as--”
Her voice was extinguished by the noise of wheels and steam. Luke,
exhausted, was compelled to relax his hold. The rest of the carriages
passed him with accumulated speed and he watched the train disappear.
In his excitement he had advanced far beyond the limits of the
platform. He found himself standing in a clump of yellow rag-wort,
just behind his own stone-cutter’s shed.
He gazed up the track, along which the tantalizing lady had been
so inexorably snatched away. The rails had a dull whitish glitter
but their look was bleak and grim. They suggested, in their narrow
merciless perspective, cutting the pastures in twain, the presence
of some remorseless mechanical Will carving its purpose, blindly and
pitilessly, out of the innocent waywardness of thoughtless living
things.
An immense and indefinable foreboding passed, like the insertion of
a cold, dead finger, through the heart of the young man. Fantastic
and terrible images pursued one another through his agitated brain.
He saw his brother lying submerged in Hullaway Pond, while a group
of frightened children stood, in white pinafores, stared at him with
gaping mouths. He saw himself arriving upon this scene. He even went
so far as to repeat to himself the sort of cry that such a sight might
naturally draw from his lips, his insatiable dramatic sense making
use, in this way, of his very panic, to project its irrepressible
puppet-show. His brother’s words, “Young man, I will never forgive
you for this,” rose luridly before him. He saw them written along
the edge of a certain dark cloud which hung threateningly over the
Hullaway horizon. He felt precisely what he would feel when he saw
them--luminously phosphorescent--in the indescribable mud and greenish
weeds that surrounded his brother’s dead face. A sickening sense of
loss and emptiness went shivering through him. He felt as though
nothing in the world was of the least importance except the life of
James Andersen.
With hurried steps he recrossed the line, repassed the turn-stile,
and began following the direction taken by his brother just two hours
before. Never had the road to Hullaway seemed so long!
Half-way there, where the road took a devious turn, he left it, and
entering the fields again, followed a vaguely outlined foot-path. This
also betraying him, or seeming to betray him, by its departure from the
straight route, he began crossing the meadows with feverish directness,
climbing over hedges and ditches with the desperate preoccupation of
one pursued by invisible pursuers. The expression upon his face, as he
hurried forward in this manner, was the expression of a man who has
everything he values at stake. A casual acquaintance would never have
supposed that the equable countenance of Luke Andersen had the power
to look so haggard, so drawn, so troubled. He struck the road again
less than half a mile from his destination. Why he was so certain that
Hullaway was the spot he sought, he could hardly have explained. It
was, however, one of his own favourite walks on rainless evenings and
Sunday afternoons, and quite recently he had several times persuaded
his brother to accompany him. He himself was wont to haunt the place
and its surroundings, because of the fact that, about a mile to the
west of it, there stood an isolated glove-factory to which certain
of the Nevilton girls were accustomed to make their way across the
field-paths.
Hullaway village was a very small place, considerably more remote from
the world than Nevilton, and attainable only by narrow lanes. The
centre of it was the great muddy stagnant pond which now so dominated
Luke’s alarmed imagination. Near the pond was a group of elms, of
immense antiquity,--many of them mere stumps of trees,--but all of them
possessed of wide-spreading prominent roots, and deeply indented hollow
trunks worn as smooth as ancient household furniture, by the constant
fumbling and scrambling of generations of Hullaway children.
The only other objects of interest in the place, were a small,
unobtrusive church, built, like everything else in the neighborhood, of
Leonian stone, and an ancient farm-house surrounded by a high manorial
wall. Beneath one of the Hullaway Elms stood an interesting relic of
a ruder age, in the shape of some well-worn stocks, now as pleasant a
seat for rural gossips as they were formerly an unpleasant pillory for
rural malefactors.
As Luke Andersen approached this familiar spot he observed with a
certain vague irritation the well-known figure of one of his most
recent Nevilton enchantresses. The girl was no other, in fact, than
that shy companion of Annie Bristow who had been amusing herself
with them in the Fountain Square on the occasion of Mr. Clavering’s
ill-timed intervention. At this moment she was sauntering negligently
along, on a high-raised path of narrow paved flag-stones, such paths
being a peculiarity of Hullaway, due to the prevalence of heavy autumn
floods.
The girl was evidently bound for the glove-factory, for she swung a
large bundle as she walked, resting it idly every now and then, on any
available wall or rail or close-cut hedge, along which she passed.
She was an attractive figure, tall, willowy, and lithe, and she walked
in that lingering, swaying voluptuous manner which gives to the
movements of maidens of her type a sort of provocative challenge. Luke,
advancing along the road behind her, caught himself admiring, in spite
of his intense preoccupation, the alluring swing of her walk and the
captivating lines of her graceful person.
The moment was approaching that he had so fantastically dreaded, the
moment of his first glance at Hullaway Great Pond. He was already
relieved to see no signs of anything unusual in the air of the
place,--but the imaged vision of his brother’s drowned body still
hovered before him, and that fatal “I’ll never forgive you for this!”
still rang in his ears.
His mind all this while was working with extraordinary rapidity and he
was fully conscious of the grotesque irrelevance of this lapse into the
ingrained habit of wanton admiration. Quickly, in a flash of lightning,
he reviewed all his amorous adventures and his frivolous philanderings.
How empty, how bleak, how impossible, all such pleasures seemed,
without the dark stooping figure of this companion of his soul as their
taciturn background! He looked at Phyllis Santon with a sudden savage
resolution, and made a quaint sort of vow in the depths of his heart.
“I’ll never speak to the wench again or look at her again,” he said to
himself, “if I find Daddy Jim safe and sound, and if he forgives me!”
He hurried past her, almost at a run, and arrived at the centre of
Hullaway. There was the Great Pond, with its low white-washed stone
parapet. There were the ancient elm-trees and the stocks. There also
were the white-pinafored infants playing in the hollow aperture of the
oldest among the trees. But the slimy surface of the water was utterly
undisturbed save by two or three assiduous ducks who at intervals
plunged beneath it.
He drew an immense sigh of relief and glanced casually round. Phyllis
had not failed to perceive him. With a shy little friendly smile she
advanced towards him. His vow was already in some danger. He waved her
a hasty greeting but did not take her hand.
“You’d better put yourself into the stocks,” he said, covering with a
smile the brutality of his neglect, “until I come back! I have to find
James.”
Leaving her standing in mute consternation, he rushed off to the
churchyard on the further side of the little common. There was a
certain spot here, under the shelter of the Manor wall, where Luke and
his brother had spent several delicious afternoons, moralizing upon the
quaint epitaphs around them, and smoking cigarettes. Luke felt as if he
were almost sure to find James stretched out at length before a certain
old tombstone whose queer appeal to the casual intruder had always
especially attracted him. Both brothers had a philosophical mania for
these sepulchral places, and the Hullaway grave-yard was even more
congenial to their spirit than the Nevilton one, perhaps because this
latter was so dominatingly possessed by their own dead.
Luke entered the enclosure through a wide-open wooden gate and glanced
quickly round him. There was the Manor wall, as mellow and sheltering
as ever, even on such a day of clouds. There was their favourite
tombstone, with its long inscription to the defunct seignorial house.
But of James Andersen there was not the remotest sign.
Where the devil had his angry brother gone? Luke’s passionate anxiety
began to give place to a certain indignant reaction. Why were people
so ridiculous? These volcanic outbursts of ungoverned emotion on
trifling occasions were just the things that spoiled the harmony and
serenity of life. Where, on earth, could James have slipped off to? He
remembered that they had more than once gone together to the King’s
Arms--the unpretentious Hullaway tavern. It was just within the bounds
of possibility that the wanderer, finding their other haunts chill and
unappealing, had taken refuge there.
He recrossed the common, waved his hand to Phyllis, who seemed to
have taken his speech quite seriously and was patiently seated on the
stocks, and made his way hurriedly to the little inn.
Yes--there, ensconced in a corner of the high settle, with a
half-finished tankard of ale by his side, was his errant brother.
James rose at once to greet him, showing complete friendliness, and
very small surprise. He seemed to have been drinking more than his
wont, however, for he immediately sank back again into his corner, and
regarded his brother with a queer absent-minded look.
Luke ordered a glass of cider and sat down close to him on the settle.
“I am sorry,” he whispered, laying his hand on his brother’s knee. “I
didn’t mean to annoy you. What you said was quite true. I treated Annie
very badly. And Ninsy is altogether different. You’ll forgive me, won’t
you, Daddy Jim?”
James Andersen pressed his hand. “It’s nothing,” he said in rather a
thick voice. “It’s like everything else, it’s nothing. I was a fool. I
am still a fool. But it’s better to be a fool than to be dead, isn’t
it? Or am I talking nonsense?”
“As long as you’re not angry with me any longer,” answered Luke
eagerly, “I don’t care how you talk!”
“I went to the churchyard--to our old place--you know,” went on his
brother. “I stayed nearly an hour there--or was it more? Perhaps it was
more. I stayed so long, anyway, that I nearly went to sleep. I think I
must have gone to sleep!” he added, after a moment’s pause.
“I expect you were tired,” remarked Luke rather weakly, feeling for
some reason or other, a strange sense of disquietude.
“Tired?” exclaimed the recumbent man, “why should I be tired?” He
raised himself up with a jerk, and finishing his glass, set it down
with meticulous care upon the ground beside him.
Luke noticed, with an uncomfortable sense of something not quite usual
in his manner, that every movement he made and every word he spoke
seemed the result of a laborious and conscious effort--like the effort
of one in incomplete control of his sensory nerves.
“What shall we do now?” said Luke with an air of ease and
indifference. “Do you feel like strolling back to Nevilton, or shall
we make a day of it and go on to Roger-Town Ferry and have dinner
there?”
James gave vent to a curiously unpleasant laugh. “You go, my dear,” he
said, “and leave me where I am.”
Luke began to feel thoroughly uncomfortable. He once more laid his hand
caressingly on his brother’s knee. “You have really forgiven me?” he
pleaded. “Really and truly?”
James Andersen had again sunk back into a semi-comatose state in
his corner. “Forgive?” he muttered, as though he found difficulty
in understanding the meaning of the word, “forgive? I tell you it’s
nothing.”
He was silent, and then, in a still more drowsy murmur, he uttered the
word “Nothing” three or four times. Soon after this he closed his eyes
and relapsed into a deep slumber.
“Better leave ’un as ’un be,” remarked the landlord to Luke. “I’ve had
my eye on ’un for this last ’arf hour. ’A do seem mazed-like, looks so.
Let ’un bide where ’un be, master. These be wonderful rumbly days for a
man’s head. ’Taint what ’ee’s ’ad, you understand; to my thinking, ’tis
these thunder-shocks wot ’ave worrited ’im.”
Luke nodded at the man, and standing up surveyed his brother gravely.
It certainly looked as if James was settled in his corner for the rest
of the morning. Luke wondered if it would be best to let him remain
where he was, and sleep off his coma, or to rouse him and try and
persuade him to return home. He decided to take the landlord’s advice.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll just leave him for a while to recover
himself. You’ll keep an eye to him, won’t you, Mr. Titley? I’ll just
wander round a bit, and come back. May-be if he doesn’t want to go home
to dinner, we’ll have a bite of something here with you.”
Mr. Titley promised not to let his guest out of his sight. “I know what
these thunder-shocks be,” he said. “Don’t you worry, mister. You’ll
find ’un wonderful reasonable along of an hour or so. ’Tis the weather
wot ’ave him floored ’im. The liquor ’ee’s put down wouldn’t hurt a
cat.”
Luke threw an affectionate glance at his brother’s reclining figure and
went out. The reaction from his exaggerated anxiety left him listless
and unnerved. He walked slowly across the green, towards the group of
elms.
It was now past noon and the small children who had been loitering
under the trees had been carried off to their mid-day meal. The place
seemed entirely deserted, except for the voracious ducks in the mud of
the Great Pond. He fancied at first that Phyllis Santon had disappeared
with the children, and a queer feeling of disappointment descended
upon him. He would have liked at least to have had the opportunity of
_refusing_ himself the pleasure of talking to her! He approached the
enormous elm under which stood the stocks. Ah! She was still there
then, his little Nevilton acquaintance. He had not seen her sooner,
because she was seated on the lowest roots of the tree, her knees
against the stocks themselves.
“Hullo, child!” he found himself saying, while his inner consciousness
told itself that he would just say one word to her, so that her
feelings should not be hurt, and then stroll off to the churchyard.
“Why, you have fixed yourself in the very place where they used to make
people sit, when they put them in the stocks!”
“Have I?” said the girl looking up at him without moving. “’Tis curious
to think of them days! They do say folks never tasted meat nor butter
in them old times. I guess it’s better to be living as we be.”
Luke’s habitual tone of sentimental moralizing had evidently set the
fashion among the maids of Nevilton. Girls are incredibly quick at
acquiring the mental atmosphere of a philosopher who attracts them. The
simple flattery of her adoption of his colour of thought made it still
more difficult for Luke to keep his vow to the Spinners of Destiny.
“Yes,” he remarked pensively, seating himself on the stocks above
her. “It is extraordinary, isn’t it, to think how many generations of
people, like you and me, have talked to one another here, in fine days
and cloudy days, in winter and summer--and the same old pond and the
same old elms listening to all they say?”
“Don’t say that, Luke dear,” protested the girl, with a little
apprehensive movement of her shoulders, and a tightened clasp of her
hands round her knees. “I don’t like to think of that! ’Tis lonesome
enough in this place, mid-day, without thinking of them ghost-stories.”
“Why do you say ghost-stories?” inquired Luke. “There’s nothing
ghostly about that dirty old pond and there’s nothing ghostly about
these hollow trees--not now, any way.”
“’Tis what you said about their listening, that seems ghostly-like to
me,” replied the girl. “I am always like that, you know. Sometimes,
down home, I gets a grip of the terrors from staring at old Mr.
Pratty’s barn. ’Tis funny, isn’t it? I suppose I was born along of
Christmas. They say children born then are wonderful ones for fancying
things.”
Luke prodded the ground with his cane and looked at her in silence.
Conscious of a certain admiration in his look, for the awkwardness of
her pose only enhanced the magnetic charm of her person, she proceeded
to remove her hat and lean her head with a wistful abandonment against
the rough bark of the tree.
The clouds hung heavily over them, and it seemed that at any moment the
rain might descend in torrents; but so far not a drop had fallen. Queer
and mysterious emotions passed through Luke’s mind.
He felt in some odd way that he was at a turning-point in the tide of
his existence. It almost seemed to him as though, silent and unmoving,
under the roof of the little inn which he could see from where he
sat, his brother was lying in the crisis of some dangerous fever. A
movement, or gesture, or word, from himself might precipitate this
crisis, in one direction or the other.
The girl crouched at his feet became to him, as he gazed at her,
something more than a mere amorous acquaintance. She became a type,
a symbol--an incarnation of the formidable writing of that Moving
Finger, to which all flesh must bow. Her half-coquettish, half-serious
apprehensions, about the ghostliness of the things that are always
_listening_, as the human drama works itself out in their dumb
presence, affected him in spite of himself. The village of Hullaway
seemed at that moment to have disappeared into space, and he and his
companion to be isolated and suspended--remote from all terrestrial
activities, and yet aware of some confused struggle between invisible
antagonists.
From the splashing ducks in the pond who, every now and then, so
ridiculously turned up their squat tails to the cloudy heavens, his
eye wandered to the impenetrable expectancy of the stone path which
bordered the muddy edge of the water. With the quick sense of one whose
daily occupation was concerned with this particular stone, he began
calculating how long that time-worn pavement had remained there, and
how many generations of human feet, hurrying or loitering, had passed
along it since it was first laid down. What actual men, he wondered,
had brought it there, from its resting-place, æons-old in the distant
hill, and laid it where it now lay, slab by slab?
From where he sat he could just observe, between a gap in the trees of
the Manor-Farm garden, the extreme edge of that Leonian promontory. It
seemed to him as though the hill were at that moment being swept by a
storm of rain. He shivered a little at the idea of how such a sweeping
storm, borne on a northern wind, would invade those bare trenches and
unprotected escarpments. He felt glad that his brother had selected
Hullaway rather than that particular spot for his angry retreat.
With a sense of relief he turned his eyes once more to the girl
reclining below him in such a charming attitude.
How absurd it was, he thought, to let these vague superstitions
overmaster him! Surely it was really an indication of cowardice, in the
presence of a hypothetical Fate, to make such fantastic vows as that
which he had recently made. It was all part of the atavistic survival
in him of that unhappy “conscience,” which had done so much to darken
the history of the tribes of men. It was like “touching wood” in honour
of infernal deities! What was the use of being a philosopher--of being
so deeply conscious of the illusive and subjective nature of all
these scruples--if, at a crisis, one only fell back into such absurd
morbidity? The vow he had registered in his mind an hour before, seemed
to him now a piece of grotesque irrelevance--a lapse, a concession to
weakness, a reversion to primitive inhibition. If it had been cowardice
to make such a vow, it were a still greater cowardice to keep it.
He rose from his seat on the stocks, and began idly lifting up and
down the heavy wooden bar which surmounted this queer old pillory. He
finally left the thing open and gaping; its semi-circular cavities
ready for any offender. Moved by a sudden impulse, the girl leant back
still further against the tree, and whimsically raising one of her
little feet, inserted it into the aperture. Amused at her companion’s
interest in this levity, and actuated by a profound girlish instinct
to ruffle the situation by some startling caprice, she had no sooner
got one ankle into the cavity thus prepared for it, than with a sudden
effort she placed the other by its side, and coyly straightening her
skirts with her hands, looked up smiling into Luke’s face.
Thus challenged, as it were, by this wilful little would-be malefactor,
Luke was mechanically compelled to complete her imprisonment. With a
sudden vicious snap he let down the enclosing bar.
She was now completely powerless; for the most drastic laws of balance
made it quite impossible that she could release herself. It thus became
inevitable that he should slip down on the ground by her side, and
begin teasing her, indulging himself in sundry innocent caresses which
her helpless position made it difficult to resist.
It was not long, however, before Phyllis, fearful of the appearance
upon the scene of some of Hullaway’s inhabitants, implored him to
release her.
Luke rose and with his hand upon the bar contemplated smilingly his
fair prisoner.
“Please be quick!” the girl cried impatiently. “I’m getting so stiff.”
“Shall I, or shan’t I?” said Luke provokingly.
The corner of the girl’s mouth fell and her under-lip quivered. It only
needed a moment’s further delay to reduce her to tears.
At that moment two interruptions occurred simultaneously. From the door
of the King’s Arms emerged the landlord, and began making vehement
signals to Luke; while from the corner of the road to Nevilton appeared
the figures of two young ladies, walking briskly towards them, absorbed
in earnest conversation. These simultaneous events were observed
in varying ratio by the captive and her captor. Luke was vaguely
conscious of the two ladies and profoundly agitated by the appearance
of the landlord. Phyllis was vaguely conscious of the landlord and
was profoundly agitated by the appearance of the ladies. The young
stone-carver gave a quick thoughtless jerk to the bar; and without
waiting to see the result, rushed off towards the inn. The heavy block
of wood, impelled by the impetus he had given it, swung upwards, until
it almost reached the perpendicular. Then it descended with a crash.
The girl had just time to withdraw one of her ankles. The other was
imprisoned as hopeless as before.
Phyllis was overwhelmed with shame and embarrassment. She had in
a moment recognized Gladys, and she felt as those Apocalyptic
unfortunates in Holy Scripture are reported as feeling when they call
upon the hills to cover them.
It had happened that Ralph Dangelis had been compelled to pay a flying
visit to London on business connected with his proposed marriage. The
two cousins, preoccupied, each of them, with their separate anxieties,
had wandered thus far from home to escape the teasing fussiness of Mrs.
Romer, who with her preparations for the double wedding gave neither of
them any peace.
They approached quite near to the group of elms before either of them
observed the unfortunate Phyllis.
“Why!” cried Gladys suddenly to her companion. “There’s somebody in the
stocks!”
She went forward hastily, followed at a slower pace by the Italian.
Poor Phyllis, her bundle by her side, and her cheeks tear-stained,
presented a woeful enough appearance. Her first inclination was to
hide her face in her hands; but making a brave effort, she turned her
head towards the new-comers with a gasping little laugh.
“I put my foot in here for a joke,” she stammered, “and it got caught.
Please let me out, Miss Romer.”
Gladys came quite near and laid her gloved hand upon the wooden bar.
“It just lifts up, Miss,” pleaded Phyllis, with tears in her voice. “It
isn’t at all heavy.”
Gladys stared at her with a growing sense of interest. The girl’s
embarrassment under her scrutiny awoke her Romer malice.
“I really don’t know that I want to let you out in such a hurry,” she
said. “If it’s a game you are playing, it would be a pity to spoil
it. Who put you in? You must tell me that, before I set you free! You
couldn’t have done it yourself.”
By this time Lacrima had arrived on the scene.
The shame-faced Phyllis turned to her. “Please, Miss Traffio, please,
lift that thing up! It’s quite easy to move.”
The Italian at once laid her hands upon the block of wood and struggled
to raise it; but Gladys had no difficulty in keeping the bar immoveable.
“What are you doing?” cried the younger girl indignantly. “Take your
arm away!”
“She must tell us first who put her where she is,” reiterated Miss
Romer. “I won’t have her let out ’till she tells us that!”
Phyllis looked piteously from one to the other. Then she grew desperate.
“It was Luke Andersen,” she whispered.
“What!” cried Gladys. “Luke? Then he’s been out walking with you? Has
he? Has he? Has he?”
She repeated these words with such concentrated fury that Phyllis
began to cry. But the shock of this information gave Lacrima her
chance. Using all her strength she lifted the heavy bar and released
the prisoner. Phyllis staggered to her feet and picked up her bundle.
Lacrima handed the girl her hat and helped her to brush the dust from
her clothes.
“So _you_ are Luke’s latest fancy are you?” Gladys said scowling
fiercely at the glove-maker.
The pent-up feelings of the young woman broke forth at once. Moving a
step or two away from them and glancing at a group of farm-men who were
crossing the green, she gave full scope to her revenge.
“I’m only Annie Bristow’s friend,” she retorted. “Annie Bristow is
going to marry Luke. They are right down mad on one another.”
“It’s a lie!” cried Gladys, completely forgetting herself and looking
as if she could have struck the mocking villager.
“A lie, eh?” returned the other. “Tisn’t for me to tell the tale to
a young lady, the likes of you. But we be all guessing down in Mr.
North’s factory, who ’twas that gave Luke the pretty lady-like ring wot
he lent to Annie!”
Gladys became livid with anger. “What ring?” she cried. “Why are you
talking about a ring?”
“Annie, she stuck it, for devilry, into that hole in Splash-Lane stone.
She pushed it in, tight as ’twere a sham diamint. And there it do bide,
the lady’s pretty ring, all glittery and shiny, at bottom of that there
hole! We maids do go to see ’un glinsying and gleaming. It be the talk
of the place, that ring be! Scarce one of the childer but ’as ’ad its
try to hook ’un out. But ’tis no good. I guess Annie must have rammed
it down with her mother’s girt skewer. ’Tis fast in that stone anyway,
for all the world to see. Folks, may-be, ’ll be coming from Yeoborough,
long as a few days be over, to see the lady’s ring, wot Annie threw’d
away, ’afore she said ‘yes’ to her young man!”
These final words were positively shouted by the enraged Phyllis, as
she tripped away, swinging her bundle triumphantly.
It seemed for a moment as though Gladys meditated a desperate pursuit,
and the infliction of physical violence upon her enemy. But Lacrima
held her fast by the hand. “For heaven’s sake, cousin,” she whispered,
“let her go. Look at those men watching us!”
Gladys turned; but it was not at the farm-men she looked.
Across the green towards them came the two Andersens, Luke looking
nervous and worried, and his brother gesticulating strangely. The
girls remained motionless, neither advancing to meet them nor making
any attempt to evade them. Gladys seemed to lose her defiant air, and
waited their approach, rather with the look of one expecting to be
chidden than of one prepared to chide. On all recent occasions this had
been her manner, when in the presence of the young stone-carver.
The sight of Lacrima seemed to exercise a magical effect upon James
Andersen. He ceased at once his excited talk, and advancing towards
her, greeted her in his normal tone--a tone of almost paternal
gentleness.
“It is nearly a quarter to one,” said Gladys, addressing both the men.
“Lacrima and I’ll have all we can do to get back in time for lunch.
Let’s walk back together!”
Luke looked at his brother who gave him a friendly smile. He also
looked sharply at the Hullaway labourers, who were shuffling off
towards the barton of the Manor-Farm.
“I don’t mind,” he said; “though it is a dangerous time of day! But we
can go by the fields, and you can leave us at Roandyke Barn.”
They moved off along the edge of the pond together.
“It was Lacrima, not I, Luke,” said Gladys presently, “who let that
girl out.”
Luke flicked a clump of dock-weeds with his cane. “It was her own
fault,” he said carelessly. “I thought I’d opened the thing. I was
called away suddenly.”
Gladys bowed her head submissively. In the company of the young
stone-carver her whole nature seemed to change. A shrewd observer might
even have marked a subtle difference in her physical appearance. She
appeared to wilt and droop, like a tropical flower transplanted into a
northern zone.
They remained all together until they reached the fields. Then Gladys
and Luke dropped behind.
“I have something I want to tell you,” said the fair girl, as soon as
the others were out of hearing. “Something very important.”
“I have something to tell you too,” answered Luke, “and I think I will
tell it first. It is hardly likely that your piece of news can be as
serious as mine.”
They paused at a stile; and the girl made him take her in his arms and
kiss her, before she consented to hear what he had to say.
It would have been noticeable to any observer that in the caresses they
exchanged, Luke played the perfunctory, and she the passionate part.
She kissed him thirstily, insatiably, with clinging lips that seemed
avid of his very soul. When at last they moved on through grass that
was still wet with the rain of the night before, Luke drew his hand
away from hers, as if to emphasize the seriousness of his words.
“I am terribly anxious, dearest, about James,” he said. “We had an
absurd quarrel this morning, and he rushed off to Hullaway in a rage. I
found him in the inn. He had been drinking, but it was not that which
upset him. He had not taken enough to affect him in that way. I am
very, very anxious about him. I forget whether I’ve ever told you about
my mother? Her mind--poor darling--was horribly upset before she died.
She suffered from more than one distressing mania. And my fear is that
James may go the same way.”
Gladys hung her head. In a strange and subtle way she felt as though
the responsibility of this new catastrophe rested upon her. Her
desperate passion for Luke had so unnerved her, that she had become
liable to be victimized by any sort of superstitious apprehension.
“How dreadful!” she whispered, “but he seemed to me perfectly natural
just now.”
“That was Lacrima’s doing,” said Luke. “Lacrima is at the bottom of it
all. I wish, oh, I wish, she was going to marry James, instead of that
uncle of yours.”
“Father would never allow that,” said Gladys, raising her head. “He is
set upon making her take uncle John. It has become a kind of passion
with him. Father is funny in these things.”
“Still--it might be managed,” muttered Luke thoughtfully, “if we
carried it through with a high hand. We might arrange it; the world is
malleable, after all. If you and I, my dear, put our heads together,
Mr. John Goring might whistle for his bride.”
“I _hate_ Lacrima!” cried Gladys, with a sudden access of her normal
spirit.
“I don’t care two pence about Lacrima,” returned Luke. “It is of James
I am thinking.”
“But she would be happy with James, and I don’t want her to be happy.”
“What a little devil you are!” exclaimed the stone-carver, slipping his
arm round her waist.
“Yes, I know I am,” she answered shamelessly. “I suppose I inherit it
from father. He hates people just like that. But I am not a devil with
you, Luke, am I? I wish I were!” she added, after a little pause.
“We must think over this business from every point of view,” said
Luke solemnly. “I cannot help thinking that if you and I resolve to
do it, we can twist the fates round, somehow or another. I am sure
Lacrima could save James if she liked. If you could only have seen the
difference between what he was when I was called back to him just now,
and what he became as soon as he set eyes upon her, you would know what
I mean. He is mad about her, and if he doesn’t get her, he’ll go really
mad. He _was_ a madman just now. He nearly frightened that fool Titley
into a fit.”
“I don’t _want_ Lacrima to marry James,” burst out Gladys. Luke in a
moment drew his arm away, and quickened his pace.
“As you please,” he said. “But I can promise you this, my friend, that
if anything does happen to my brother, it’ll be the end of everything
between _us_.”
“Why--what--how can you say such dreadful things?” stammered the girl.
Luke airily swung his stick. “It all rests with you, child. Though
_we_ can’t marry, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go on seeing each
other, as we do now, forever and ever,--as long as you help me in
this affair. But if you’re going to sulk and talk this nonsense about
‘hating’--it is probable that it will be a case of good-bye!”
The fair girl’s face was distorted by a spasmodic convulsion of
conflicting emotions. She bit her lip and hung her head. Presently she
looked up again and flung her arms round his neck. “I’ll do anything
you ask me, Luke, anything, as long as you don’t turn against me.”
They walked along for some time in silence, hand in hand, taking care
not to lose sight of their two companions who seemed as engrossed
as themselves in one another’s society. James Andersen was showing
sufficient discretion in avoiding the more frequented foot-paths.
“Luke,” began the girl at last, “did you really give my ring to Annie
Santon?”
Luke’s brow clouded in a moment. “Damn your ring!” he cried harshly.
“I’ve got other things to think about now than your confounded rings.
When people give me presents of that kind,” he added “I take for
granted I can do what I like with them.”
Gladys trembled and looked pitifully into his face.
“But that girl said,” she murmured--“that factory girl, I mean--that it
had been lost in some way; hidden, she said, in some hole in a stone. I
can’t believe that you would let me be made a laughing-stock of, Luke
dear?”
“Oh, don’t worry me about that,” replied the stone-carver. “May-be it
is so, may-be it isn’t so; anyway it doesn’t matter a hang.”
“She said too,” pleaded Gladys in a hesitating voice, “that you and
Annie were going to be married.”
“Ho! ho!” laughed Luke, fumbling with some tightly tied hurdles that
barred their way; “so she said that, did she? She _must_ have had her
knife into you, our little Phyllis. Well, and what’s to stop me if I
did decide to marry Annie?”
Gladys gasped and looked at him with a drawn and haggard face. Her
beauty was of the kind that required the flush of buoyant spirits
to illuminate it. The more her heart ached, the less attractive she
became. She was anything but beautiful now; and, as he looked at
her, Luke noticed for the first time, how low her hair grew upon her
forehead.
“You wouldn’t think of doing that?” she whispered, in a tone of
supplication. He laughed lightly and lifting up her chin made as though
he were going to kiss her, but drew back without doing so.
“Are you going to be good,” he said, “and help me to get Lacrima for
James?”
She threw her arms round him. “I’ll do anything you like--anything,”
she repeated, “if you’ll only let me love you!”
While this conversation was proceeding between these two, a not less
interesting clash of divergent emotions was occurring between their
friends. The Italian may easily be pardoned if she never for one second
dreamed of the agitation in her companion’s mind that had so frightened
Luke. James’ manner was in no way different from usual, and though
he expressed his feelings in a more unreserved fashion than he had
ever done before, Lacrima had been for many weeks expecting some such
outbreak.
“Don’t be angry with me,” he was saying, as he strode by her side. “I
had meant never to have told you of this. I had meant to let it die
with me, without your ever knowing, but somehow--today--I could not
help it.”
He had confessed to her point blank, and in simple, unbroken words, the
secret of his heart, and Lacrima had for some moments walked along with
head averted making no response.
It would not be true to say that this revelation surprised her. It
would be completely untrue to say it offended her. It did not even
enter her mind that it might have been kinder to have been less
friendly, less responsive, than she had been, to this queer taciturn
admirer. But circumstances had really given her very little choice
in the matter. She had been, as it were, flung perforce upon his
society, and she had accepted, as a providential qualification of her
loneliness, the fact that he was attracted towards her rather than
repelled by her.
It is quite possible that had he remained untouched by the evasive
appeal of her timid grace; had he, for instance, remained a provocative
and impenetrable mystery at her side, she might have been led to share
his feelings. But, unluckily for poor Andersen, the very fact that his
feelings had been disclosed only too clearly, militated hopelessly
against such an event. He was no remote, shadowy, romantic possibility
to her--a closed casket of wonders, difficult and dangerous to open. He
was simply a passionate and assiduous lover. The fact that he _could_
love her, lowered him a little in Lacrima’s esteem. True to her Pariah
instincts she felt that such passion was a sign of weakness in him;
and if she did not actually despise him for it, it materially lessened
the interest she took in the workings of his mind. Maurice Quincunx
drew her to him for the very reason that he was so sexless, so cold,
so wayward, so full of whimsical caprices. Maurice, a Pariah himself,
excited at the same time her maternal tenderness and her imaginative
affection. If she did not feel the passion for him that she might have
felt for Andersen, had Andersen remained inaccessible; that was only
because there was something in Maurice’s peculiar egoism which chilled
such feelings at their root.
Another almost equally effective cause of her lack of response to the
stone-carver’s emotion was the cynical and world-deep weariness that
had fallen upon her, since this dreadful marriage with Goring had
become a settled event. Face to face with this, she felt as though
nothing mattered very much, and as though any feeling she herself might
excite in another person must needs be like the passing of a shadow
across a mirror--something vague, unreal, insubstantial--something
removed to a remote distance, like the voice of a person at the end
of a long tunnel, or as the dream of someone who is himself a figure
in a dream. If anyone, she felt, broke into the enchanted circle that
surrounded her, it was as if they sought to make overtures to a person
dead and buried.
It was almost with the coldness and detachment of the dead that she now
answered him, and her voice went sighing across the wet fields with a
desolation that would have struck a more normal mind than Andersen’s as
the incarnation of tragedy. He was himself, however, strung up to such
a tragic note, that the despair in her tone affected him less than it
would have affected another.
“I have come to feel,” said she, “that I have no heart, and I feel as
though this country of yours had no heart. It ought to be always cloudy
and dark in this place. Sunshine here is a kind of bitter mockery.”
“You do not know--you do not know what you say,” cried the poor
stone-carver, quickening his pace in his excitement so that it became
difficult for her to keep up with him. “I have loved you, since I
first saw you--that day--down at our works--when the hawthorn was out.
_My_ heart at any rate is deep enough, deep enough to be hurt more
than you would believe, Lacrima. Oh, if things were only different! If
you could only bring yourself to care for me a little--just a little!
Lacrima, listen to me.”
He stopped abruptly in the middle of a field and made her turn and face
him. He laid his hand solemnly and imploringly upon her wrist. “Why
need you put yourself under this frightful yoke? I know something of
what you have had to go through. I know something, though it may be
only a little, of what this horrible marriage means to you. Lacrima,
for your own sake--as well as mine--for the sake of everyone who has
ever cared for you--don’t let them drag you into this atrocious trap.
“Trust me, give yourself boldly into my care. Let’s go away together
and try our fortune in some new place! All places are not like
Nevilton. I am a strong man, I know my trade, I could earn money easily
to keep us both. Lacrima, don’t turn away, don’t look so helpless!
After all, things might be worse, you might be already married to that
man, and be buried alive forever! It is not yet too late. You are still
free. I beg and implore you, by everything you hold sacred, to stop and
escape before it is too late. It doesn’t matter that you don’t love me
now. As long as you don’t utterly hate me all can be put right. I don’t
ask you to return what I feel for you. I won’t ask it if you agree to
marry me. I’ll make any contract with you you please, and swear any
vow. I won’t come near you when we are together. We can live under one
roof as brother and sister. The wedding-ring will be nothing between
us. It will only protect you from the rest of the world. I won’t
interfere with your life at all, when once I have freed you from this
devil’s hole. It will only be a marriage in form, in name; everything
else will be just as you please. I will obey your least wish, your
least fancy. If you want to go back to your own country and to go
alone, I will save up money enough to make that possible. In fact, I
have now got money enough to pay your journey and I would send out more
to you. Lacrima, let me help you to break away from all this. You must,
Lacrima, you must and you shall! If you prefer it, we needn’t ever be
married. I don’t want to take advantage of you. I’ll give you every
penny I have and help you out of the country and then send you more as
I earn it. It is madness, this devilish marriage they are driving you
into. It is madness and folly to submit to it. It is monstrous. It is
ridiculous. You are free to go, they have no hold upon you. Lacrima,
Lacrima! why are you so cruel to yourself, to me, to everyone who cares
for you?”
He drew breath at last, but continued to clutch her wrist with a
trembling hand, glancing anxiously, as he waited, at the lessening
distance that separated them from the others.
Lacrima looked at him with a pale troubled face, but her large eyes
were full of tears and when she spoke her voice quivered.
“I was wrong, my friend, to say that none of you here had any heart.
Your heart is large and noble. I shall never--never forget what you
have now said to me. But James--but James, dear,” and her voice shook
still more, “I cannot, I cannot do it. There are more reasons than I
can explain to you, why this thing must happen. It _has_ to happen, and
we must bow our heads and submit. After all, life is not very long,
or very happy, at the best. Probably,”--and she smiled a sad little
smile,--“I should disappoint you frightfully if we did go together. I
am not such a nice person as you suppose. I have queer moods--oh, such
strange, strange moods!--and I know for certain that I should not make
you happy.
“Shall I tell you a horrible secret, James?” Here her voice sank into a
curious whisper and she laughed a low distressing laugh. “I have really
got the soul, the _soul_ I say, not the nerves or sense, of a girl who
has lost everything,--I wish I could make you understand--who has lost
self-respect and everything,--I have thought myself into this state. I
don’t care now--I really don’t--_what_ happens to me. James, dear--you
wouldn’t want to marry a person like that, a person who feels herself
already dead and buried? Yes, and worse than dead! A person who has
lost all pity, all feeling, even for herself. A person who is past even
caring for the difference between right and wrong! You wouldn’t want to
be kind to a person like that, James, would you?”
She stopped and gazed into his face, smiling a woeful little smile.
Andersen mechanically noticed that their companions had observed their
long pause, and had delayed to advance, resting beneath the shelter
of a wind-tossed ash-tree. The stone-carver began to realize the
extraordinary and terrible loneliness of every human soul. Here he was,
face to face with the one being of all beings whose least look or word
thrilled him with intolerable excitement, and yet he could not as much
as touch the outer margin of her real consciousness.
He had not the least idea, even at that fatal moment, what her inner
spirit was feeling; what thoughts, what sensations, were passing
through her soul. Nor could he ever have. They might stand together
thus, isolated from all the world, through an eternity of physical
contact, and he would never attain such knowledge. She would always
remain aloof, mysterious, evasive. He resolved that at all events as
far as he himself was concerned, there should be no barrier between
them. He would lay open to her the deepest recesses of his heart.
He began a hurried incoherent history of his passion, of its growth,
its subtleties, its intensity. He tried to make her realize what she
had become for him, how she filled every hour of every day with her
image. He explained to her how clearly and fully he understood the
difficulty, the impossibility, of his ever bringing her to care for him
as he cared for her.
He even went so far as to allude to Mr. Quincunx, and implored her
to believe that he would be well content if she would let him earn
money enough to support both her and Maurice, either in Nevilton or
elsewhere, if it would cut the tragic knot of her fate to join her
destiny to that of the forlorn recluse.
It almost seemed as though this final stroke of self-abnegation excited
more eloquence in him than all the rest. He begged and conjured her to
cut boldly loose from the Romer bonds, and marry her queer friend,
if he, rather than any other, were the choice she made. His language
became so vehement, his tone so impassioned and exalted, that the girl
began to look apprehensively at him. Even this apprehension, however,
was a thing strangely removed from reality. His reckless words rose and
fell upon the air and mixed with the rising wind as if they were words
remembered from some previous existence. The man’s whole figure, his
gaunt frame, his stooping shoulders, his long arms and lean fingers,
seemed to her like something only half-tangible, something felt and
seen through a dim medium of obscuring mist.
Lacrima felt vaguely as though all this were happening to someone
else, to someone she had read about in a book, or had known in remote
childhood. The overhanging clouds, the damp grass, the distant ash-tree
with the forms of their friends beneath it, all these things seemed to
group themselves in her mind, as if answering to some strange dramatic
story, which was not the story of her life at all, but of some other
harassed and troubled spirit.
In the depths of her mind she shrank away half-frightened and
half-indifferent from this man’s impassioned pleading and heroic
proposals. The humorously cynical image of the hermit of Dead Man’s
Lane crossed her mental vision as a sort of wavering Pharos light in
the dreamy twilight of her consciousness. How well she knew with what
goblin-like quiver of his nostrils, with what sardonic gleam of his
eyes, he would have listened to his rival’s exalted rhetoric.
In some strange way she felt almost angry with this bolder, less
cautious lover, for being what her poor nervous Maurice never could be.
She caught herself shuddering at the thought of the drastic effort, the
stern focussing of will-power which the acceptance of any one of his
daring suggestions would imply. Perhaps, who can say, there had come to
be a sort of voluptuous pleasure in thus lying back upon her destiny
and letting herself be carried forward, at the caprice of other wills
than her own.
Mingled with these other complex reactions, there was borne in upon
her, as she listened to him, a queer sense of the absolute unimportance
of the whole matter. The long strain upon her nerves, of her sojourn
in Nevilton House, had left her physically so weary that she lacked
the life-energy to supply the life-illusion. The ardour and passion
of Andersen’s suggestions seemed, for all their dramatic pathos, to
belong to a world she had left--a world from which she had risen or
sunk so completely, that all return was impossible. Her nature was so
hopelessly the true Pariah-nature, that the idea of the effort implied
in any struggle to escape her doom, seemed worse than the doom itself.
This inhibition of any movement of effective resistance in the
Pariah-type is the thing that normal temperaments find most difficult
of all to understand. It would seem almost incredible to a healthy
minded person that Lacrima should deliberately let herself be driven
into such a fate without some last desperate struggle. Those who find
it so, however, under-estimate that curious passion of submission from
which these victims of circumstance suffer, a passion of submission
which is itself, in a profoundly subtle way, a sort of narcotic or
drug to the wretchedness they pass through.
“I cannot do it,” she repeated in a low tired voice, “though I think
it’s generous, beyond description, what you want to do for me. But I
cannot do it. It’s difficult somehow to tell you why, James dear; there
are certain things that are hard to say, even to people that we love as
much as I love you. For I do love you, in spite of everything. I hope
you realize that. And I know that you have a deep noble heart.”
She looked at him with wistful and appealing tenderness, and let her
little fingers slip into his feverish hand.
When she said the words, “I do love you,” a shivering ecstasy shot
through the stone-carver’s veins, followed by a ghastly chilliness,
like the hand of death, as he grasped their complete meaning. The most
devastating tone, perhaps, of all, for an impassioned lover to hear,
is that particular tone of calm tender affection. It has the power of
closing up vistas of hope more effectively than the expression of the
most vigorous repulsion. There was a ring of weary finality in her
voice that echoed through his mind, like the tread of coffin-bearers
through a darkened passage. Things had reached their hopeless point,
and the two were standing mute and silent, in the attitude of persons
taking a final farewell of one another, when a noisy group of village
maids, on their dilatory road to the glove-factory, made their voices
audible from the further side of the nearest hedge.
They both turned instantaneously to see how this danger of discovery
affected their friends, and neither of them was surprised to note that
the younger Andersen had left his companion and was strolling casually
in the direction of the voices. As soon as he saw that they had
observed this manœuvre he began beckoning to James.
“We’d better separate, my friend,” whispered Lacrima hastily. “I’ll go
back to Gladys. She and I must take the lane way and you and Luke the
path by the barn. We’ll meet again before--before anything happens.”
They separated accordingly and as the two girls passed through the gate
that led into the Nevilton road, they could distinctly hear, across the
fields, the ringing laughter of the high-spirited glove-makers as they
chaffed and rallied the two stone-carvers through the thick bramble
hedge which intervened between them.