CAESAR’S QUARRY
Mr. Romer’s victory in the election was attended by a complete lull
in the political world of Nevilton. Nothing but an unavoidable and
drastic crisis, among the ruling circles of the country, could
have precipitated this formidable struggle in the middle of the
holiday-time; and as soon as the contest was over, the general
relaxation of the season made itself doubly felt.
This lull in the political arena seemed to extend itself into the
sphere of private and individual emotion, in so far as the persons of
our drama were concerned. The triumphant quarry-owner rested from his
labors under the pleasant warmth of the drowsy August skies; and as,
in the old Homeric Olympus, a relapse into lethargy of the wielder of
thunder-bolts was attended by a cessation of earthly strife, so in the
Nevilton world, the elements of discord and opposition fell, during
this siesta of the master of Leo’s Hill, into a state of quiescent
inertia.
But though the gods might sleep, and the people might relax and play,
the watchful unwearied fates spun on, steadily and in silence, their
ineluctable threads.
The long process of “carrying the corn” was over at last, and night by
night the magic-burdened moon grew larger and redder above the misty
stubble-fields.
The time drew near for the reception of the successful candidate’s
daughter into the historic church of the country over which he was now
one of the accredited rulers. A few more drowsy sunshine-drugged days
remained to pass, and the baptism of Gladys--followed, a week later, by
the formal imposition of episcopal hands--would be the signal for the
departure of August and the beginning of the fall of the leaves.
The end of the second week in September had been selected for the
double marriage, partly because it synchronized with the annual parish
feast-day, and partly because it supplied Ralph Dangelis with an excuse
for carrying off his bride incontinently to New York by one of his
favourite boats.
Under the quiet surface of this steadily flowing flood of destiny,
which seemed, just then, to be casting a drowning narcotic spell upon
all concerned, certain deep and terrible misgivings troubled not a few
hearts.
It may be frequently noticed by those whose interest it is to watch the
strange occult harmonies between the smallest human dramas and their
elemental accomplices, that at these peculiar seasons when Nature seems
to pause and draw in her breath, men and women find it hard to use or
assert their normal powers of resistance. The planetary influences
seem nearer earth than usual;--nearer, with the apparent nearness of
the full tide-drawing moon and the heavy scorching sun;--and for those
more sensitive souls, whose nerves are easily played upon, there is
produced a certain curious sense of lying back upon fate, with arms
helplessly outspread, and wills benumbed and passive.
But though some such condition as this had narcotized all overt
resistance to the destiny in store for her in the heart of Lacrima,
it cannot be said that the Italian’s mind was free from an appalling
shadow. Whether by reason of a remote spark of humanity in him, or
out of subtle fear lest by any false move he should lose his prey,
or because of some diplomatic and sagacious advice received from
his brother-in-law, Mr. John Goring had, so far, conducted himself
extremely wisely towards his prospective wife, leaving her entirely
untroubled by any molestations, and never even seeing her except in the
presence of other people. How far this unwonted restraint was agreeable
to the nature of the farmer, was a secret concealed from all, except
perhaps from his idiot protégé, the only human being in Nevilton to
whom the unattractive man ever confided his thoughts.
Lacrima had one small and incidental consolation in feeling that she
had been instrumental in sending to a home for the feeble-minded, the
unfortunate child of the game-keeper of Auber Lake. In this single
particular, Gladys had behaved exceptionally well, and the news that
came of the girl’s steady progress in the direction of sanity and
happiness afforded some fitful gleam of light in the obscurity that
surrounded the Pariah’s soul.
The nature of this intermittent gleam, its deep mysterious strength
drawn from spiritual sources, helped to throw a certain sad and
pallid twilight over her ordained sacrifice. This also she felt was
undertaken, like her visit to Auber Lake, for the sake of an imprisoned
and fettered spirit. If by means of such self-immolation her friend
of Dead Man’s Lane would be liberated from his servitude and set
permanently upon his feet, her submission would not be in vain.
She had come once more to feel as though the impending event were, as
far as she was concerned, a sort of final death-sentence. The passing
fantasy, that in a momentary distortion of her mind had swept over her
of the new life it might mean to have children of her own, even though
born of this unnatural union, had not approached again the troubled
margin of her spirit.
Even the idea of escaping the Romers was only vaguely present. She
would escape more than the Romers; she would escape the whole miserable
coil of this wretched existence, if the death she anticipated fell upon
her; for death, and nothing less than death, seemed the inevitable
circumference of the iron circle that was narrowing in upon her.
Had those two strange phantoms that we have seen hovering over Nevilton
churchyard, representing in their opposite ways the spiritual powers
of the place, been able to survey--as who could deny they might be
able?--the fatal stream which was now bearing the Pariah forward to the
precipice, they would have been, in their divers tempers, struck with
delight and consternation at the spectacle presented to them. There
was more in this spectacle, it must be admitted, to bring joy into the
heart of a goblin than into that of an angel. Coincidence, casualty,
destiny--all seemed working together to effect the unfortunate girl’s
destruction.
The fact that, by the recovery of his brother, the astute Luke
Andersen, the only one of all the Nevilton circle capable of striking
an effective blow in her defence, had been deprived of all but a
very shadowy interest in what befell, seemed an especially sinister
accident. Equally unfortunate was the luckless chance that at this
critical moment had led the diplomatic Mr. Taxater to see fit to
prolong his stay in London. Mr. Quincunx was characteristically
helpless. James Andersen seemed, since the recovery of his normal mind,
to have subsided like a person under some restraining vow. Lacrima was
a little surprised that he made no attempt to see her or to communicate
with her. She could only suppose she had indelibly hurt him, by her
rejection of his quixotic offers, on their way back from Hullaway.
Thus to any ordinary glance, cast upon the field of events as they were
now arranging themselves, it would have looked as though the Italian’s
escape from the fate hanging over her were as improbable as it would be
for a miracle to intervene to save her.
In spite of the wild threat flung out by Mr. Clavering in his sudden
anger as he waited with Luke in the Yeoborough street, the vicar of
Nevilton made no attempt to interfere. Whether he really managed to
persuade his conscience that all was well, or whether he came to the
conclusion that without some initiative from the Italian it would be
useless to meddle, not the most subtle psychologist could say. The
fact remained that the only step he took in the matter was to assure
himself that the girl’s nominal Catholicism had so far lapsed into
indifference, that she was likely to raise no objection to a ceremony
according to Anglican ritual.
The whole pitiful situation, indeed, offered only one more terrible
and branding indictment, against the supine passivity of average human
nature in the presence of unspeakable wrongs. The power and authority
of the domestic system, according to which the real battle-field of
wills takes place out of sight of the public eye, renders it possible
for this inertia of the ordinary human crowd to cloak itself under a
moral dread of scandal, and under the fear of any drastic breach of the
uniformity of social usage.
A visitor from Mars or Saturn might have supposed, that in
circumstances of this kind, every decent-thinking person in the village
would have rushed headlong to the episcopal throne, and called loudly
for spiritual mandates to stop the outrage. Where was the delegated
Power of God--so the forlorn shadows of the long-evicted Cistercians
might be imagined crying--whose absolute authority could be appealed
to in face of every worldly force? What was the tender-souled St.
Catharine doing, in her Paradisiac rest, that she could remain so
passively indifferent to such monstrous and sacrilegious use of her
sacred building? Was it that such transactions as this, should be
carried through, under its very shelter, that the gentle spirits
who guarded the Holy Rood had made of Nevilton Mount their sacred
resting-place? Must the whole fair tradition of the spot remain dull,
dormant, dumb, while the devotees of tyranny worked their arbitrary
will--“and nothing said”?
Such imaginary appeals, so fantastic in the utterance, were indeed, as
that large August-moon rose night by night upon the stubble-fields, far
too remote from Nevilton’s common routine to enter the heads of any of
that simple flock. The morning mists that diffused themselves, like
filmy dream-figures, over the watchful promontory of Leo’s Hill, were
as capable as any of these villagers of crying aloud that wrong was
being done.
The loneliness in the midst of which Lacrima moved on her way--groping,
as her enemy had taunted her with doing, so helplessly with her wistful
hands--was a loneliness so absolute that it sometimes seemed to her
as if she were already literally dead and buried. Now and then, with
a pallid phosphorescent glimmer like the gleam of a corpse-light, the
mortal dissolution of all the ties that bound her to earthly interests,
itself threw a fitful illumination over her consciousness.
But Mr. Romer had over-reached himself in his main purpose. The moral
disintegration which he looked for, and which the cynical apathy of Mr.
Quincunx encouraged, had, by extending itself to every nerve of her
spirit, rounded itself off, as it were, full circle, and left her in a
mental state rather beyond both good and evil, than delivered up to the
latter as opposed to the former. The infernal power might be said to
have triumphed; but it could scarcely be said to have triumphed over a
living soul. It had rather driven her soul far off, far away from all
these contests, into some mysterious translunar region, where all these
distinctions lapsed and merged.
Leo’s Hill itself had never crouched in more taciturn intentness than
it did under that sweltering August sunshine, which seemed to desire,
in the gradual scorching of the green slopes, to reduce even the
outward skin of the monster to an approximate conformity with its tawny
entrails.
Mr. Taxater’s departure from the scene at this juncture was not only,
little as she knew it, a loss of support to Lacrima, it was also a very
serious blow to Vennie Seldom.
The priest in Yeoborough, who at her repeated request had already
begun to give her surreptitious lessons in the Faith, was not in any
sense fitted to be a young neophyte’s spiritual adviser. He was fat.
He was gross. He was lethargic. He was indifferent. He also absolutely
refused to receive her into the Church without her mother’s sanction.
This refusal was especially troublesome to Vennie. She knew enough
of her mother to know that while it was her nature to resist blindly
and obstinately any deviation from her will, when once a revolt was
an established fact she would resign herself to it with a surprising
equanimity. To ask Valentia for permission to be received into the
Church would mean a most violent and distressing scene. To announce to
her that she had been so received, would mean nothing but melancholy
and weary acquiescence.
She felt deeply hurt at Mr. Taxater’s desertion of her at this moment
of all moments. It was incredible that it was really necessary for
him to be so long in town. As a rule he never left the Gables during
the month of August. His conduct puzzled and troubled her. Did he
care nothing whether she became a Catholic or not? Were his lessons
mere casual by-play, to fill up his spare hours in an interesting
and pleasant diversion? Was he really the faithful friend he called
himself? Not only had he absented himself, but he had done so without
sending her a single word.
As a matter of fact it was extremely rare for Mr. Taxater to write
a letter, even to his nearest friends, except under the stress of
theological controversy. But Vennie knew nothing of this. She simply
felt hurt and injured; as though the one human being, upon whom she
had reposed her trust, had deserted and betrayed her. He had spoken
so tenderly, so affectionately to her, too, during their last walk
together, before the unfortunate encounter with James Andersen in the
Athelston porch!
It is true that his attitude over that matter of Andersen’s insanity,
and also in the affair of Lacrima’s marriage, had a little shocked
and disconcerted her. He had bluntly refused to take her into his
confidence, and she felt instinctively that the conversation with Luke,
from which she had been so curtly dismissed, was of a kind that would
have hurt and surprised her.
It seemed unworthy of him to absent himself from Nevilton, just at the
moment when, as she felt certain in her heart, some grievous outrage
was being committed. She had learned quickly enough of Andersen’s
recovery; but nothing she could learn either lessened her terrible
apprehension about Lacrima, or gave her the least hint of a path she
could follow to do anything on the Italian’s behalf.
She made a struggle once to see the girl and to talk to her. But she
came away from the hurried interview as perplexed and troubled in her
mind as ever. Lacrima had maintained an obstinate and impenetrable
reserve. Vennie made up her mind that she would postpone for the
present her own religious revolt, and devote herself to keeping a close
and careful watch upon events in Nevilton.
Mr. Clavering’s present attitude rendered her profoundly unhappy. The
pathetic overtures she had made to him recently, with a desperate hope
of renewing their friendship on a basis that would be unaffected even
by her change of creed, had seemed entirely unremarked by the absorbed
clergyman. She could not help brooding sometimes, with a feeling
of wretched humiliation, over the brusqueness and rudeness which
characterized his manner towards her.
She recalled, more often than the priest would have cared to have
known, that pursuit of theirs, of the demented Andersen, and how in his
annoyance and confusion he had behaved to her in a fashion not only
rough but positively unkind.
It was clear that he was growing more and more slavishly infatuated
with Gladys; and Vennie could only pray that the days might pass
quickly and the grotesque blasphemy of the confirmation service be
carried through and done with, so that the evil spell of her presence
should be lifted and broken.
Prayer indeed--poor little forlorn saint!--was all that was left to
her, outside her mother’s exacting affection, and she made a constant
and desperate use of it. Only the little painted wooden image, in her
white-washed room, a pathetic reproduction of the famous Nuremburg
Madonna, could have betrayed how long were the hours in which she gave
herself up to these passionate appeals. She prayed for Clavering in
that shy heart-breaking manner--never whispering his name, even to the
ears of Our Lady, but always calling him “He” and “Him”--in which girls
are inclined to pray for the man to whom they have sacrificed their
peace. She prayed desperately for Lacrima, that at the last moment,
contrary to all hope, some intervention might arrive.
Thus it came about, that beneath the roofs of Nevilton--for neither
James Andersen nor Mr. Quincunx were “praying men”--only one voice was
lifted up, the voice of the last of the old race of the place’s rulers,
to protest against the flowing forward to its fatal end, of this evil
tide.
Nevertheless, things moved steadily and irresistibly on; and it seemed
as though it were as improbable that those shimmering mists which every
evening crept up the sides of Leo’s Hill should endure the heat of the
August noons, as that the prayers of this frail child should change the
course of ordained destiny.
If none but her little painted Madonna knew how passionate were
Vennie’s spiritual struggles; not even that other Vennie, of the
long-buried royal court, whose mournful nun’s eyes looked out upon
the great entrance-hall, knew what turbulent thoughts and anxieties
possessed the soul of Gladys Romer.
Was Mr. Taxater right in the formidable hint he had given the young
stone-carver, as to the result of his amour with his employer’s
daughter? Was Gladys not only the actual mistress of Luke, but the
prospective mother of a child of their strange love?
Whatever were the fair-haired girl’s thoughts and apprehensions, she
kept them rigidly to herself; and not even Lacrima, in her wildest
imagination, ever dreamed that things had gone as far as that. If it
had chanced to be, as Mr. Taxater supposed, and as Luke seemed willing
to admit, Gladys was apparently relying upon some vague accident in
the course of events, or upon some hidden scheme of her own, to escape
the exposure which the truth of such a supposition seemed to render
inevitable.
The fact remained that she let matters drift on, and continued to
prepare--in her own fashion--not only for her reception into the Church
of England, but for her marriage to the wealthy American.
Dangelis was continually engaged now in running backwards and forwards
to town on business connected with his marriage; and with a view to
making these trips more pleasantly and conveniently he had acquired a
smart touring-car of his own, which he soon found himself able to drive
without assistance. The pleasure of these excursions, leading him, in
delicious solitude, through so many unvisited country places and along
such historic roads, had for the moment distracted his attention from
his art.
He rarely took Gladys with him; partly because he regarded himself as
still but a learner in the science of driving, but more because he
felt, at this critical moment of his life, an extraordinary desire to
be alone with his own thoughts. Most of these thoughts, it is true,
were such as it would not have hurt the feelings of his fiancée to have
surprised in their passage through his mind; but not quite all of them.
Ever since the incident of Auber Lake, an incident which threw the
character of his betrothed into no very charming light, Dangelis had
had his moments of uneasiness and misgiving. He could not altogether
conceal from himself that his attraction to Gladys was rather of a
physical than of a spiritual, or even of a psychic nature.
Once or twice, while the noble expanses of Salisbury Plain or the New
Forest thrilled him with a pure dilation of soul, as he swept along
in the clear air, he was on the verge of turning his car straight to
the harbour of Southampton and taking the first boat that offered
itself, bound East, West, North or South--it mattered nothing the
direction!--so that an impassable gulf of free sea-water should
separate him forever from the hot fields and woods of Nevilton.
Once, when reaching a cross-road point, where the name of the famous
harbour stared at him from a sign-post, he had even gone so far as to
deviate to the extent of several miles from his normal road. But that
intolerable craving for the girl’s soft-clinging arms and supple body,
with which she had at last succeeded in poisoning the freedom of his
mind, drew him back with the force of a magnet.
The day at length approached, when, on the festival of his favorite
saint, Mr. Clavering was to perform the ceremony, to which he had
looked forward so long and with such varied feelings. It was Saturday,
and on the following morning, in a service especially arranged to take
place privately, between early celebration and ordinary matins, Gladys
was to be baptized.
Dangelis had suddenly declared his intention of making his escape from
a proceeding which to his American mind seemed entirely uncalled for,
and to his pagan humour seemed not a little grotesque. He had decided
to start, immediately after breakfast, and motor to London, this time
by way of Trowbridge and Westbury.
The confirmation ceremony, for reasons connected with the convenience
of the Lord Bishop, had been finally fixed for the ensuing Wednesday,
so that only two days were destined to elapse between the girl’s
reception into the Church, and her admission to its most sacred
rites. Dangelis was sufficiently a heathen to desire to be absent
from this event also, though he had promised Mr. Clavering to support
his betrothed on the occasion of her first Communion on the following
Sunday, which would be their last Sunday together as unwedded lovers.
On this occasion, Gladys persuaded him to let her ride by his side a
few miles along the Yeoborough road. They had just reached the bridge
across the railway-line, about a mile and a half from the village, when
they caught sight of Mr. John Goring, returning from an early visit to
the local market.
Gladys made the artist stop the car, and she got out to speak to her
uncle. After a minute or two’s conversation, she informed Dangelis that
she would return with Mr. Goring by the field-path, which left the road
at that point and followed the track of the railway. The American,
obedient to her wish, set his car in motion, and waving her a gay
good-bye, disappeared swiftly round an adjacent corner.
Gladys and her uncle proceeded to walk slowly homeward, across the
meadows; neither of them, however, paying much attention to the charm
of the way. In vain from the marshy hollows between their path and the
metal track, certain brilliant clumps of ragged robin and red rattle
signalled to them to pause and admire. Gladys and Mr. Goring strolled
forward, past these allurements, with a superb absorption in their own
interests.
“I can’t think, uncle,” Gladys was saying, “how it is that you can go
on in the way you’re doing; you, a properly engaged person, and not
seeing anything of your young lady?”
The farmer laughed. “Ah! my dear, but what matter? I shall see her soon
enough; all I want to, may-be.”
“But most engaged people like to see a little of one another before
they’re married, don’t they, uncle? I know Ralph would be quite mad if
he couldn’t see _me_.”
“But, my pretty, this is quite a different case. When Bert and I”--he
spoke of the idiot as if they had been comrades, instead of master and
servant--“have bought a new load of lop-ears, we never tease ’em or
fret ’em before we get ’em home.”
“But Lacrima isn’t a rabbit!” cried Gladys impatiently; “she’s a girl
like me, and wants what all girls want, to be petted and spoilt a
little before she’s plunged into marriage.”
“She didn’t strike me as wanting anything of that kind, when I made up
to her in our parlour,” replied Mr. Goring.
“Oh you dear old stupid!” cried his niece, “can’t you understand
that’s what we’re all like? We all put on airs, and have fancies, and
look cross; but we want to be petted all the same. We want it all the
more!”
“I reckon I’d better leave well alone all the same, just at present,”
observed the farmer. “If I was to go stroking her and making up to her,
while she’s on the road, may-be when we got her into the hutch she’d
bite like a weasel.”
“She’d never really bite!” retorted his companion. “You don’t know her
as well as I do. I tell you, uncle, she’s got no more spirit than a
tame pigeon.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said the farmer.
Gladys flicked the grass impatiently with the end of her parasol.
“You may take my word for it, uncle,” she continued. “The whole thing’s
put on. It’s all affectation and nonsense. Do you think she’d have
agreed to marry you if she wasn’t ready for a little fun? Of course
she’s ready! She’s only waiting for you to begin. It makes it more
exciting for her, when she cries out and looks injured. That’s the only
reason why she does it. Lots of girls are like that, you know!”
“Are they, my pretty, are they? ’Tis difficult to tell that kind,
may-be, from the other kind. But I’m not a man for too much of these
fancy ways.”
“You’re not drawing back, uncle, are you?” cried Gladys, in
considerable alarm.
“God darn me, no!” replied the farmer. “I’m going to carry this
business through. Don’t you fuss yourself. Only I like doing these
things in my own way--dost understand me, my dear?--in my own way; and
then, if so be they go wrong, I can’t put the blame on no one else.”
“I wonder you aren’t more keen, uncle,” began Gladys insinuatingly,
following another track, “to see more of a pretty girl you’re just
going to marry. I don’t believe you half know how pretty she is! I wish
you could see her doing her hair in the morning.”
“I shall see her, soon enough, my lass; don’t worry,” replied the
farmer.
“I should so love to see you give her one kiss,” murmured Gladys. “Of
course, she’d struggle and make a fuss, but she’d really be enjoying it
all the time.”
“May-be she would, my pretty, and may-be she wouldn’t. I’m not one that
likes hearing either rabbits or maidens start the squealing game. It
fair gives me the shivers. Bert, he can stand it, but I never could.
It’s nature, I suppose. A man can’t change his nature no more than a
cow nor a horse.”
“I can’t understand you, uncle,” observed Gladys. “If I were in your
place, I’m sure I shouldn’t be satisfied without at least kissing
the girl I was going to marry. I’d find some way of getting round
her, however sulky she was. Oh, I’m sure you don’t half know how nice
Lacrima is to kiss!”
“I suppose she isn’t so mighty different, come to that,” replied the
farmer, “than any other maid. I don’t mind if I give _you_ a kiss, my
beauty!” he added, encircling his niece with an affectionate embrace
and kissing her flushed cheek. “There--there! Best let well alone,
sweetheart, and leave your old uncle to manage his own little affairs
according to his own fashion!”
But Gladys was not so easily put off. She had recourse to her fertile
imagination.
“You should have heard what she said to me the other night, uncle. You
know the way girls talk? or you ought to, anyhow! She said she hoped
you’d go on being the same simple fool, after you were married. She
said she’d find it mighty easy to twist you round her finger. ‘Why,’
she said, ‘I can do what I like with him now. He treats me as if I
were a high-born lady and he were a mere common man. I believe he’s
downright afraid of me!’ That’s the sort of things she says about
you, uncle. She thinks in her heart that you’re just a fool, a simple
frightened fool!”
“Darn her! she does, does she?” cried Mr. Goring, touched at last by
the serpent’s tongue. “She thinks I’m a fool, does she? Well! Let her
have her laugh. Them laughs best as laughs last, in my thinking!”
“Yes, she thinks you’re a great big silly fool, uncle. Of course it’s
all pretence, her talk about wanting you to be like that; but that’s
what she thinks you are. What she’d really like--only she doesn’t say
so, even to me--would be for you to catch her suddenly round the waist
and kiss her on the mouth, and laugh at her pretendings. I expect she’s
waiting to give you a chance to do something of that sort; only you
don’t come near her. Oh, she must think you’re a monstrous fool! She
must chuckle to herself to think what a fool you are.”
“I’ll teach her what kind of a fool I am,” muttered Mr. Goring, “when
I’ve got her to myself, up at the farm. This business of dangling after
a maid’s apron strings, this kissing and cuddling, don’t suit somehow
with my nature. I’m not one of your fancy-courting ones and never was!”
“Listen, uncle!” said Gladys eagerly, laying her hand on his arm.
“Suppose I was to take her up to Cæsar’s Quarry this afternoon? That
would be a lovely chance! You could come strolling round about four
o’clock. I’d be on the watch; and before she knew you were there, I’d
scramble out, and you could climb down. She couldn’t get away from you,
and you’d have quite a nice little bit of love-making.”
Mr. Goring paused, and prodded the ground with the end of his stick.
“What a little devil you are!” he exclaimed. “Darn me if this here job
isn’t a queer business! Here are you, putting yourself out and fussing
around, only for a fellow to have what’s due to him. You leave us
alone, sweetheart, my young lady and me! I reckon we know what’s best
for ourselves, without you thrusting your hand in.”
“But you might just walk up that way, uncle; it isn’t far over the
hill. I’d give--oh, I don’t know what!--to see you two together. She
wants to be teased a little, you know! She’s getting too proud and
self-satisfied for anything. It would do her ever so much good to be
taught a lesson. It isn’t much to do, is it? Just to give the girl
you’re going to marry one little kiss?”
“But how do I know you two wenches aren’t fooling me, even now?”
protested the cautious farmer. “’Tis just the sort of maids’ trick ye
might set out to play upon a man. How do I know ye haven’t put your two
darned little heads together over this job?”
Gladys looked round. They were approaching the Mill Copse.
“Please, uncle,” she cried, “don’t say such things to me. You know I
wouldn’t join with anyone against you. Least of all with her! Just do
as I tell you, and stroll up to Cæsar’s Quarry about four o’clock. I
promise you faithfully I haven’t said a word to her about it. Please,
uncle, be nice and kind over this.”
She threw her arms round Mr. Goring’s neck. “You haven’t done anything
for me for a long time,” she murmured in her most persuasive tone.
“Do you remember how I used to give you butterfly-kisses when I was a
little girl, and you kept apples for me in the big loft?”
Mr. Goring’s nature may, or may not have been, as he described it; it
is certain that the caresses and cajoleries of his lovely niece had
an instantaneous effect upon him. His slow-witted suspicions melted
completely under the spell of her touch.
“Well, my pretty,” he said, as they moved on, under the shadowy trees
of the park, “may-be, if I’ve nothing else to do and things seem quiet,
I’ll take a bit of a walk this afternoon. But you mustn’t count on it.
If I do catch sight of ’ee, ’round Cæsar’s way, I’ll let ’ee
know. But ’tisn’t a downright promise, mind!”
Gladys clapped her hands. “You’re a perfect love, uncle!” she cried
jubilantly. “I wish I were Lacrima; I’d be ever, ever so nice to you!”
“Ye can be nice to me, as ’tis, sweetheart,” replied the farmer. “You
and me have always been kind of fond of each other, haven’t us? But I
reckon ye’d best be slipping off now, up to your house. I never care
greatly for meeting your father by accident-like. He’s one of these sly
ones that always makes a fellow feel squeamy and leery.”
That afternoon it happened that the adventurous Luke had planned a trip
down to Weymouth, with a new flame of his, a certain Polly Shadow,
whose parents kept a tobacco-shop in Yeoborough.
He had endeavoured to persuade his brother to accompany them on this
little excursion, in the hope that a breath of sea-air might distract
and refresh him; but James had expressed his intention of paying a
visit to his gentle restorer, up at Wild Pine, who was now sufficiently
recovered to enable her to sit out in the shade of the great trees.
The church clock had just struck three, when James Andersen approached
the entrance to Nevil’s Gully.
He had not advanced far into the shadow of the beeches, when he heard
the sound of voices. He paused, and listened. The clear tones of Ninsy
Lintot were unmistakable, and he thought he detected--though of this
he was not sure--the nervous high-pitched voice of Philip Wone. From
the direction of the sounds, he gathered that the two young people were
seated somewhere on the bracken-covered slope above the barton, where,
as he well knew, there were several shady terraces overlooking the
valley.
Unwilling to plunge suddenly into a conversation that appeared, as
far as he could catch its purport, to be of considerable emotional
tension, Andersen cautiously ascended the moss-grown bank on his left,
and continued his climb, until he had reached the crest of the hill. He
then followed, as silently as he could, the little grassy path between
the stubble-field and the thickets, until he came to the open space
immediately above these fern-covered terraces.
Yes, his conjecture had been right. Seated side by side beneath the
tall-waving bracken, the auburn-haired Ninsy and her anarchist friend
were engaged in an absorbing and passionate discussion. Both of them
were bare-headed, and the young man’s hand rested upon the motionless
fingers of his companion, which were clasped demurely upon her lap.
Philip’s voice was raised in intense and pitiful supplication.
“I’d care for you day and night,” Andersen heard him cry. “I’d nurse
you when you were ill, and keep you from every kind of annoyance.”
“But, Philip dear,” the girl’s voice answered, “you know what the
doctor said. He said I mustn’t marry on any account. So even if I had
nothing against it, it wouldn’t be possible for us to do this.”
“Ninsy, Ninsy!” cried the youth pathetically, “don’t you understand
what I mean? I can’t bear having to say these things, but you force me
to, when you talk like that. The doctor meant that it would be wrong
for you to have children, and he took it for granted that you’d never
find anyone ready to live with you as I’d live with you. It would only
be a marriage in name. I mean it would only be a marriage in name in
regard to children. It would be a real marriage to me, it would be
heaven to me, to live side by side with you, and no one able any more
to come between us! I can’t realize such happiness. It makes me feel
dizzy even to think of it!”
Ninsy unclasped her hands, and gently repulsing him, remained buried in
deep thought. Standing erect above them, like a sentry upon a palisade,
James Andersen stared gloomily down upon this little drama. In some
strange way,--perhaps because of some sudden recurrence of his mental
trouble,--he seemed quite unconscious of anything dishonourable or base
in thus withholding from these two people the knowledge that he was
overhearing them.
“I’ll take care of you to the end of my life!” the young man repeated.
“I’m doing quite well now with my work. You’ll be able to have all you
want. You’ll be better off than you are here, and you know perfectly
well that as soon as your father’s free he’ll marry that friend of his
in Yeoborough. I saw him with her last Sunday. I’m sure it’s only for
your sake that he stays single. She’s got three children, and that’s
what holds him back--that, and the thought that you two mightn’t get on
together. You’d be doing your father a kindness if you said yes to me,
Ninsy. Please, please, my darling, say it, and make me grateful to you
forever!”
“I can’t say it,--Philip, dear, I can’t, I can’t”; murmured the girl,
in a voice so low that the sentinel above them could only just catch
her words. “I do care for you, and I do value your goodness to me, but
I can’t say the words, Philip. Something seems to stop me, something in
my throat.”
It was not to her throat however, that the agitated Ninsy raised her
thin hands. As she pressed them against her breast a look of tragic
sorrow came into her face. Philip regarded her wistfully.
“You’re thinking you don’t love me, dear,--and never can love me. I
know that, well enough! I know you don’t love me as I love you. But
what does that matter? I’ve known that, all the time. The thing is, you
won’t find anyone who loves you as I do,--ready to live with you as
I’ve said I will, ready to nurse you and look after you. Other people’s
love will be always asking and demanding from you. Mine--oh, it’s true,
my darling, it’s true!--mine only wants to give up everything to make
you happy.”
Ninsy was evidently more than a little moved by the boy’s appeal. There
was a ring of passionate sincerity in his tone which went straight to
her heart. She bent down and covered her face with her hands. When at
length she lifted up her head and answered him, there were tears on her
cheeks, and the watchful listener above them did not miss the quiver in
her tone.
“I’m sorry, Philip boy, more sorry than I can say, that I can’t be
nicer to you, that I can’t show my gratitude to you, in the way
you wish. But though I do care for you, and--and value your dear
love--something stops me, something makes it impossible that this
should happen.”
“I believe it’s because you love that fellow Andersen!” cried the
excited youth, leaping to his feet in his agitation.
In making this movement, the figure of the stone-carver, silhouetted
with terrible distinctness against the sky-line, became visible to him.
Instinctively he uttered a cry of surprise and anger.
“What do you want here? You’ve been listening! You’ve been spying on
us! Get away, can’t you! Get back to your pretty young lady--her that’s
going to marry John Goring for the sake of his money! Clear out of
this, do you hear? Ninsy’s sick of you and your ways. Clear off! or
I’ll make you--eavesdropper!”
By this time Ninsy had also risen, and stood facing the figure above
them. Every vestige of colour had left her cheeks, and her hand was
pressed against her side. Andersen made a curious incoherent sound and
took a step towards them.
“Get away, can’t you!” reiterated the furious youth. “You’ve caused
enough trouble here already. Look at her,--can’t you see how ill she
is? Get back--damn you!--unless you want to kill her.”
Ninsy certainly looked as though in another moment she were going
to fall. She made a piteous little gesture, as if to ward off from
Andersen the boy’s savage words, but Philip caught her passionately
round the waist.
“Get away!” he cried once more. “She belongs to me now. You might have
had her, you coward--you turn-coat!--but you let her go for your newer
prey. Oh, you’re a fine gentleman, James Andersen, a fine faithful
gentleman! _You_ don’t hold with strikes. _You_ don’t hold with workmen
rising against masters. _You_ hold with keeping in with those that are
in power. Clear off--eavesdropper! Get back to Mistress John Goring and
your nice brother! He’s as pretty a gentleman as you are, with his dear
Miss Gladys!”
Ninsy’s feet staggered beneath her and she began to hang limp upon his
arm. She opened her mouth to speak, but could only gasp helplessly. Her
wide-open eyes--staring from her pallid face--never left Andersen for a
moment. Of Philip she seemed absolutely unconscious. The stone-carver
made another step down the hill. His eyes, too, were fixed intently on
the girl, and of his rival’s angry speeches he seemed utterly oblivious.
“Get away!” the boy reiterated, beside himself with fury, supporting
the drooping form of his companion as if its weight were nothing.
“We’ve had enough of your shilly-shallying and trickery! We’ve had
enough of your fine manners! A damned cowardly spy--that’s what I call
you, you well-behaved gentleman! Get back--can’t you!”
The drooping girl uttered some incoherent words and made a helpless
gesture with her hand. Andersen seemed to read her meaning in her eyes,
for he paused abruptly in his approach and stretched out his arms.
“Good-bye, Ninsy!” he murmured in a low voice. He said no more, and
turning on his heel, scrambled swiftly back over the crest of the ridge
and disappeared from view.
Philip flung a parting taunt after him, and then, lifting the girl
bodily off her feet, staggered down the slope to the cottage, holding
her in his arms.
Meanwhile James Andersen walked swiftly across the stubble-field in the
direction of Leo’s Hill. At the pace he moved it only took him some
brief minutes to reach the long stone wall that separates, in this
quarter, the quarried levels of the promontory from the high arable
lands which abut upon it.
He climbed over this barrier and strode blindly and recklessly forward
among the slippery grassy paths that crossed one another along the
edges of the deeper pits.
The stone-carver was approaching, though quite unconsciously, the scene
of a very remarkable drama. Some fifteen minutes before his approach,
the two girls from Nevilton House had reached the precipitous edge of
what was known in that locality as Cæsar’s Quarry. Cæsar’s Quarry was
a large disused pit, deeper and more extensive than most of the old
excavations on the Hill, and surrounded, on all but one side, by blank
precipitous walls of weather-stained sandstone. These walls of smooth
stone remained always dark and damp, whatever the temperature might be
of the air above them; and the floor of the Quarry was composed of a
soft verdant carpet of cool moist moss, interspersed by stray heaps of
discoloured rubble, on which flourished, at this particular season of
the year, masses of that sombre-foliaged weed known as wormwood.
On the northern side of Cæsar’s Quarry rose a high narrow ridge of
rock, divided, at uneven spaces, by deeply cut fissures or chasms,
some broad and some narrow, but all overgrown to the very edge by
short slippery grass. This ridge, known locally as Claudy’s Leap, was
a favourite venture-place of the more daring among the children of the
neighbourhood, who would challenge one another to feats of courage and
agility, along its perilous edge.
On the side of Claudy’s Leap, opposite from Cæsar’s Quarry, was a
second pit, of even deeper descent than the other, but of much smaller
expanse. This second quarry, also disused for several generations,
remained so far nameless, destiny having, it might seem, withheld the
baptismal honour, until the place had earned a right to it by becoming
the scene of some tragic, or otherwise noteworthy, event.
Gladys and Lacrima approached Cæsar’s Quarry from the western side,
from whose slope a little winding path--the only entrance or exit
attainable--led down into its shadowy depths. The Italian glanced with
a certain degree of apprehension into the gulf beneath her, but Gladys
seemed to take the thing so much for granted, and appeared so perfectly
at her ease, that she was ashamed to confess her tremors. The elder
girl, indeed, continued chatting cheerfully to her companion about
indifferent matters, and as she clambered down the little path in front
of her, she turned once or twice, in her fluent discourse, to make
sure that Lacrima was following. The two cousins stood for awhile in
silence, side by side, when they reached the bottom.
“How nice and cool it is!” cried Gladys, after a pause. “I was getting
scorched up there! Let’s sit down a little, shall we,--before we start
back? I love these old quarries.”
They sat down, accordingly, upon a heap of stones, and Gladys serenely
continued her chatter, glancing up, however, now and again, to the
frowning ridges of the precipices above them.
They had not waited long in this way, when the quarry-owner’s daughter
gave a perceptible start, and raised her hand quickly to her lips.
Her observant eye had caught sight of the figure of Mr. John Goring
peering down upon them from the opposite ridge. Had Lacrima observed
this movement and lifted her eyes too, she would have received a
most invaluable warning, but the Powers whoever they may have been,
who governed the sequence of events upon Leo’s Hill, impelled her
to keep her head lowered, and her interest concentrated upon a tuft
of curiously feathered moss. Gladys remained motionless for several
moments, while the figure on the opposite side vanished as suddenly as
it had appeared. Then she slowly rose.
“Oh, how silly I am,” she cried; “I’ve dropped that bunch of marjoram.
Stop a minute, dear. Don’t move! I’ll just run up and get it. It was in
the path. I know exactly where!”
“I’ll come with you if you like,” said Lacrima listlessly, “then you
won’t have to come back. Or why not leave it for a moment?”
“It’s on the path, I tell you!” cried her cousin, already some way up
the slope; “I’m scared of someone taking it. Marjoram isn’t common
about here. Oh no! Stay where you are. I’ll be back in a second.”
The Italian relapsed into her former dreamy unconcern. She listlessly
began stripping the leaves from a spray of wormwood which grew by her
side. The place where she sat was in deep shadow, though upon the
summit of the opposite ridge the sun lay hot. Her thoughts hovered
about her friend in Dead Man’s Lane. She had vaguely hoped to get
a glimpse of him this afternoon, but the absence of Dangelis had
interfered with this.
She began building fantastic castles in the air, trying to call up the
image of a rejuvenated Mr. Quincunx, freed from all cares and worries,
living the placid epicurean life his heart craved. Would he, she
wondered, recognize then, what her sacrifice meant? Or would he remain
still obsessed by this or the other cynical fantasy, as far from the
real truth of things as a madman’s dream? She smiled gently to herself
as she thought of her friend’s peculiarities. Her love for him, as she
felt it now, across a quivering gulf of misty space, was a thing as
humorously tolerant and tender as it might have been had they been man
and wife of many years’ standing. In these things Lacrima’s Latin blood
gave her a certain maturity of feeling, and emphasized the maternal
element in her attachment.
She contemplated dreamily the smooth bare walls of the cavernous arena
in which she sat. Their coolness and dampness was not unpleasant after
the heat of the upper air, but there was something sepulchral about
them, something that gave the girl the queer impression of a colossal
tomb--a tomb whose scattered bones might even now be lying, washed by
centuries of rain, under the rank weeds of these heaps of rubble.
She heard the sound of someone descending the path behind her but,
taking for granted that it was her cousin, she did not turn her head.
It was only when the steps were quite close that she recognized that
they were too heavy to be those of a girl.
Then she leapt to her feet, and swung round,--to find herself
confronted by the sturdy figure of Mr. John Goring. She gave a wild cry
of panic and fled blindly across the smooth floor of the great quarry.
Mr. Goring followed her at his leisure.
The girl’s terror was so great, that, hardly conscious of what she did,
she ran desperately towards the remotest corner of the excavation,
where some ancient blasting-process had torn a narrow crevice out of
the solid rock. This direction of her flight made the farmer’s pursuit
of her a fatally easy undertaking, for the great smooth walls closed
in, at a sharp angle, at that point, and the crevice, where the two
walls met, only sank a few feet into the rock.
Mr. Goring, observing the complete hopelessness of the girl’s mad
attempt to escape him, proceeded to advance towards her as calmly and
leisurely as if she had been some hare or rabbit he had just shot. The
fact that Lacrima had chosen this particular cul-de-sac, on the eastern
side of the quarry, was a most felicitous accident for Gladys, for it
enabled her to watch the event with as much ease as if she had been a
Drusilla or a Livia, seated in the Roman amphitheatre. The fair-haired
girl crept to the extreme brink of the steep descent and there, lying
prone on the thyme-scented grass, her chin propped upon her hands, she
followed with absorbed interest the farmer’s movements as he approached
his recalcitrant fiancée.
The terrified girl soon found out the treachery of the panic-instinct
which had led her into this trap. Had she remained in the open, it is
quite possible that by a little manœuvring she could have escaped; but
now her only exit was blocked by her advancing pursuer.
Turning to face him, and leaning back against the massive wall of
stone, she stretched out her arms on either side of her, seizing
convulsively in her fingers some tufts of knot-grass which grew on the
surface of the rock. Here, with panting bosom and pallid cheeks, she
awaited his approach. Her tense figure and terror-stricken gaze only
needed the imprisoning fetters to have made of her an exact modern
image of the unfortunate Andromeda. She neither moved nor uttered the
least cry, as Mr. Goring drew near her.
At that moment a wild and unearthly shout reverberated through the
quarry. The sound of it--caught up by repeated echoes--went rolling
away across Leo’s Hill, frightening the sheep and startling the
cider-drinkers in the lonely Inn. Gladys leapt to her feet, ran round
to where the path descended, and began hastily scrambling down. Mr.
Goring retreated hurriedly into the centre of the arena, and with his
hand shading his eyes gazed up at the intruder.
It was no light-footed Perseus, who on behalf of this forlorn child of
classic shores, appeared as if from the sky. It was, indeed, only the
excited figure of James Andersen that Mr. Goring’s gaze, and Lacrima’s
bewildered glance, encountered simultaneously. The stone-carver seemed
to be possessed by a legion of devils. His first thundering shout was
followed by several others, each more terrifying than the last, and
Gladys, rushing past the astonished farmer, seized Lacrima by the arm.
“Come!” she cried. “Uncle was a brute to frighten you. But, for
heaven’s sake, let’s get out of this, before that madman collects a
crowd! They’ll all be down here from the inn in another moment. Quick,
dear, quick! Our only chance is to get away now.”
Lacrima permitted her cousin to hurry her across the quarry and up the
path. As they neared the summit of the slope the Italian turned and
looked back. Mr. Goring was still standing where they had left him,
gazing with petrified interest at the wild gestures of the man above
him.
Andersen seemed beside himself. He kept frantically waving his arms,
and seemed engaged in some incoherent defiance of the invisible Powers
of the air. Lacrima, as she looked at him, became convinced that he was
out of his mind. She could not even be quite clear if he recognized
her. She was certain that it was not against her assailant that his
wild cries and defiances were hurled. It did not appear that he was
even aware of the presence of the farmer. Whether or not he had seen
her and known her when he uttered his first cry, she could not tell. It
was certainly against no earthly enemies that the man was struggling
now.
Vennie Seldom might have hazarded the superstitious suggestion that
his fit was not madness at all but a sudden illumination, vouchsafed
to his long silence, of the real conditions of the airy warfare that
is being constantly waged around us. At that moment, Vennie might have
said, James Andersen was the only perfectly sane person among them,
for to his eyes alone, the real nature of that heathen place and its
dark hosts was laid manifestly bare. The man, according to this strange
view, was wrestling to the death, in his supreme hour, against the
Forces that had not only darkened his own days and those of Lacrima,
but had made the end of his mother’s life so tragic and miserable.
Gladys dragged Lacrima away as soon as they reached the top of the
ascent but the Pariah had time to mark the last desperate gesture of
her deliverer before he vanished from her sight over the ridge.
Mr. Goring overtook them before they had gone far, and walked on with
them, talking to Gladys about Andersen’s evident insanity.
“It’s no good my trying to do anything,” he remarked. “But I’ll send
Bert round for Luke as soon as I get home. Luke’ll bring him to his
senses. They say he’s been taken like this before, and has come round.
He hears voices, you know, and fancies things.”
They walked in silence along the high upland road that leads from the
principal quarries of the Hill to the Wild Pine hamlet and Nevil’s
Gully. When they reached the latter place, the two girls went on, down
Root-Thatch Lane, and Mr. Goring took the field-path to the Priory.
Before they separated, the farmer turned to his future bride, who had
been careful to keep Gladys between herself and him, and addressed her
in the most gentle voice he knew how to assume.
“Don’t be angry with me, lass,” he said. “I was only teasing, just now.
’Twas a poor jest may-be, and ye’ve cause to look glowering. But when
we two be man and wife ye’ll find I’m a sight better to live with than
many a fair-spoken one. These be queer times, and like enough I seem a
queer fellow, but things’ll settle themselves. You take my word for it!”
Lacrima could only murmur a faint assent in reply to these words, but
as she entered with Gladys the shadow of the tunnel-like lane, she
could not help thinking that her repulsion to this man, dreadful though
it was, was nothing in comparison with the fear and loathing with which
she regarded Mr. Romer. Contrasted with his sinister relative, Mr.
John Goring was, after all, no more than a rough simpleton.
Meanwhile, on Leo’s Hill, an event of tragic significance had occurred.
It will be remembered that the last Lacrima had seen of James Andersen
was the wild final gesticulation he made,--a sort of mad appeal to the
Heavens against the assault of invisible enemies,--before he vanished
from sight on the further side of Claudy’s Leap. This vanishing, just
at that point, meant no more to Lacrima than that he had probably taken
a lower path, but had Gladys or Mr. Goring witnessed it,--or any other
person who knew the topography of the place,--a much more startling
conclusion would have been inevitable. Nor would such a conclusion have
been incorrect.
The unfortunate man, forgetting, in his excitement, the existence of
the other quarry, the nameless one; forgetting in fact that Claudy’s
Leap was a razor’s edge between two precipices, had stepped heedlessly
backwards, after his final appeal to Heaven, and fallen, without a cry,
straight into the gulf.
The height of his fall would, in any case, have probably killed him,
but as it was “he dashed his head,” in the language of the Bible,
“against a stone”; and in less than a second after his last cry, his
soul, to use the expression of a more pagan scripture, “was driven,
murmuring, into the Shades.”
It fell to the lot, therefore, not of Luke, who did not return from
Weymouth till late that evening, but of a motley band of holiday-makers
from the hill-top Inn, to discover the madman’s fate. Arriving
at the spot almost immediately after the girls’ departure, these
honest revellers--strangers to the locality--had quickly found the
explanation of the unearthly cries they had heard.
The eve of the baptism of Mr. Romer’s daughter was celebrated,
therefore, by the baptism of the nameless quarry. Henceforth, in the
neighbourhood of Nevilton, the place was never known by any other
appellation than that of “Jimmy’s Drop”; and by that name any future
visitors, curious to observe the site of so singular an occurrence,
will have to enquire for it, as they drink their pint of cider in the
Half-Moon Tavern.