Wood and Stone (26 page)

Long before Dead Man’s Lane was reached the two couples had drifted conveniently apart in their lingering return.

Mr. Quincunx had seldom been more tender towards his little friend than he was that night; and Lacrima, still strangely happy in the after-ebb of her supernatural exultation, nestled closely to his side as they drifted leisurely across the fields.

In what precise manner the deeply-betrayed Gladys regained the confidence of her lover need not be related. The artist from Ohio would have been
adamantine
indeed, could he have resisted the appeal which the amorous telepathy of this magnetic young person gave her the power of expressing.

Meanwhile, in her low-pitched room, with the shadow of the oak-tree coming and going across her face, as the moonlight shone out or faded, Nance Purvis lay placidly asleep, dreaming no more of strange phantoms or of stinging whips, but of gentle spirits from some translunar region, who caressed her forehead with hands softer than moth’s wings and spoke to her in a tongue that was like the moonlight itself made audible.

M
R. JOHN GORING was feeding his rabbits. In the gross texture of his clayish nature there were one or two curious layers of a pleasanter material. One of these, for instance, was now shown in the friendly equanimity with which he permitted a round-headed awkward youth, more than half idiotic, to assist him at this innocent task.

Between Mr. Goring and Bert Leerd there existed one of those inexplicable friendships, which so often, to the bewilderment of moral philosophers, bring a twilight of humanity into the most sinister mental caves. The farmer had saved this youth from a
conspiracy
of Poor-Law officials who were on the point of consigning him to an asylum. He had assumed responsibility for his good-behaviour and had given him a lodging—his parents being both dead—in the Priory itself.

Not a few young servant-girls, selected by Mr. Goring rather for their appearance than their
disposition
, had been dismissed from his service, after violent and wrathful scenes, for being caught teasing this unfortunate; and even the cook, a female of the most taciturn and sombre temper, was compelled to treat him with comparative consideration. The
gossips
of Nevilton swore, as one may believe, that the farmer, in being kind to this boy, was only obeying
the mandate of nature; but no one who had ever beheld Bert’s mother, gave the least credence to such a story.

Another of Mr. Goring’s softer aspects was his mania for tame rabbits. These he kept in
commodious
and spacious hutches at the back of his house, and every year wonderful and interesting additions were added to their number.

On this particular morning both the farmer and his idiot were absorbed and rapt in contemplation
before
the gambols of two large new pets—great silky lop-eared things—who had arrived the night before. Mr. Goring was feeding them with fresh lettuces, carefully handed to him by his assistant, who divested these plants of their rough outer leaves and dried them on the palms of his hands.

“The little ’un do lap ’em up fastest, master,” remarked the boy. “I mind how those others, with them girt ears, did love a fresh lettuce.”

Mr. Goring watched with mute satisfaction the quivering nostrils and nibbling mouth of the dainty voracious creature.

“Mustn’t let them have more than three at a time, Bert,” he remarked. “But they do love them, as you say.”

“What be going to call this little ’un, master?” asked the boy.

Mr. Goring straightened his back and drew a deep breath.

“What do you think, Bert, my boy?” he cried, in a husky excited tone, prodding his assistant jocosely with the handle of his riding-whip; “what do you think? What would you call her?”

“Ah! I knew she were a she, master!” chuckled the idiot. “I knew that, afore she were out of the packer-case! Call ’er?” and the boy leered an
indescribable
leer. “By gum! I can tell ’ee that fast enough. Call ’er Missy Lacrima, pretty little Missy Lacrima, wot lives up at the House, and wot is going to be missus ’ere afore long.”

Mr. Goring surveyed his protégé for a moment with sublime contentment, and then humorously flicked at his ears with his whip.

“Right! my imp of Satan. Right! my spawn of Belial. That is just what I
was
thinking.”

“She be silky and soft to handle,” went on the idiot, “and her, up at the House, be no contrary, or I’m darned mistaken.”

Mr. Goring expressed his satisfaction at his friend’s intelligence by giving him a push that nearly threw him backwards.

“And I’ll tell you this, my boy,” he remarked
confidentially
, surveying the long line of well-filled hutches, “we’ve never yet bought such a rabbit, as this foreign one will turn out, or you and I be damned fools.”

“The young lady’ll get mighty fond of these ’ere long-ears, looks so to me,” observed the youth. “Hope she won’t be a feeding ’em with wet cabbage, same as maids most often do.”

The farmer grew even more confidential, drawing close to his assistant and addressing him in the tone customary with him on market-days, when feeling the ribs of fatted cattle.

“That same young lady is coming up here this morning, Bert,” he remarked significantly. “The squire’s giving her a note to bring along.”

“And you be going to bring matters to a head, master,” rejoined the boy. “That’s wise and
thoughtful
of ’ee, choosing time, like, and season, as the Book says. Maids be wonderful sly when the sun’s down, while of mornings they be meek as guinea-fowls.”

The appearance of the Priory servant—no very demure figure—put a sudden stop to these touching confidences.

“Miss Lacrima, with a note, in the front parlour!” the damsel shouted.

“You needn’t call so loud, girl,” grumbled the farmer. “And how often must I tell you to say ‘Miss Traffio,’ not ‘Miss Lacrima’?”

The girl tossed her head and pouted her lips.

“A person isn’t used to waiting on foreigners,” she muttered.

Mr. Goring’s only reply to this remark was to pinch her arm unmercifully. He then pushed her aside, and entering the kitchen, walked rapidly through to the front of the house. The front parlour in the Priory was nothing more nor less than the old entrance-gate of the Cistercian Monastery, preserved through four centuries, with hardly a change.

The roof was high and vaulted. In the centre of the vault a great many-petalled rose, carved in Leonian stone, seemed to gather all the curves and lines of the masonry together, and hold them in religious concentration.

The fire-place—a thing of more recent, but still sufficiently ancient date—displayed the delicate and gracious fantasy of some local Jacobean artist, who had lavished upon its ornate mouldings a more
personal
feeling than one is usually aware of in these
things. In place of a fire the wide grate was, at this moment, full of new-grown bracken fronds, evidently recently picked, for they were still fresh and green.

In front of the fire-place stood Lacrima with the letter in her hand. Had Mr. Goring been a little less persuaded of the “meekness” of this young person, he would have recognized something not altogether friendly to himself and his plans in the strained white face she raised to him and the stiff gloved hand she extended.

He begged her to be seated. She waved aside the chair he offered, and handed him the letter. He tore this open and glanced carelessly at its contents.

The letter was indeed brief enough, containing nothing but the following gnomic words: “Refusal or no refusal,” signed with an imperial flourish.

He flung it down on the table, and came to business at once.

“You mustn’t let that little mistake of Auber Great Meadow mean anything, missie,” he said. “You were too hasty with a fellow that time—too hasty and coy-like. Those be queer maids’ tricks, that crying and running! But, bless my heart! I don’t bear you any grudge for it. You needn’t think it.”

He advanced a step—while she retreated, very pale and very calm, her little fingers clasped nervously together. She managed to keep the table between them, so that, barring a grotesque and obvious
pursuit
of her, she was well out of his reach.

“I have a plain and simple offer to make to you, my dear,” he continued, “and it is one that can do you no hurt or shame. I am not one of those who
waste words in courting a girl, least of all a young lady of education like yourself. The fact is, I am a lonely man—without wife or child—and as far as I know no relations on earth, except brother Mortimer. And I have a pretty tidy sum laid up in Yeoborough Bank, and the farm is a good farm. I do not say that the house is all that could be wished; but ’tis a pretty house, too, and one that could stand improvement. In plain words, dearie, what I want you to say now is ‘yes,’ and no nonsense,—for what I am doing,” his voice became quite husky at this point, as if her propinquity really did cause him some emotion,” is asking you, point-blank, and no beating about the bush, whether you will marry me!”

Lacrima’s face during this long harangue would have formed a strange picture for any old
Cistercian
monk shadowing that ancient room. At first she had kept unmoved her strained and tensely-strung impassivity. But by degrees, as the astounding character of the man’s communication began to dawn upon her, her look changed into one of sheer blind terror. When the final fatal word crossed the farmer’s lips, she put her hand to her throat as though to suppress an actual cry. She had never looked for this;—not in her wildest dreams of what destiny, in this curst place, could inflict upon her. This surpassed the worst of possible imagination! It was a deep below the deep. She found herself at first completely unable to utter a word. She could only make a vague helpless gesture with her hand as though dumbly waving the whole world away.

Then at last with a terrible effort she broke the silence.

“What you say is utterly—utterly impossible! It is—it is too—”

She could not go on. But she had said enough to carry, even to a brain composed of pure clay, the conviction that the acquiescence he demanded was not a thing to be easily won. He thought of his brother-in-law’s enigmatic note. Possibly the owner of Leo’s Hill had ways of persuading recalcitrant foreign girls that were quite hidden from him. The psychological irony of the thing lay in the fact that in proportion as her terror increased, his desire for her increased proportionally. Had she been willing,—had she been even passive and indifferent,—the
curious
temperament of Mr. Goring would have been scarcely stirred. He might have gone on pursuing her, out of spite or out of obstinacy; but the pursuit would have been no more than an interlude, a
distraction
, among his other affairs.

But that look of absolute terror on her face—the look of a hunted animal under the hot breath of the hounds—appealed to something profoundly deep in his nature. Oddly enough—such are the
eccentricities
of the human mind—the very craving to possess her which her terror excited, was accompanied by a rush of extraordinary pity for himself as the object of her distaste.

He let her pass—making no movement to
interrupt
her escape. He let her hurry out of the garden and into the road—without a word; but as soon as she was gone, he sat down on the wooden seat under the front of the house and resting his head upon his chin began blubbering like a great baby. Big salt tears fell from his small pig’s eyes, rolled down his
tanned cheeks, and falling upon the dust caked it into little curious globules.

Two wandering ants of a yellowish species, dragging prisoner after them one of a black kind, encountered these minute globes of sand and sorrow, and explored them with interrogatory feelers.

Mingled with this feeling of pity for himself under the girl’s disdain was a remarkable wave of immense tenderness and consideration for her. Short of letting her escape him, how delicately he would cherish, how tenderly he would pet and fondle her, how assiduously he would care for her! The consciousness of this emotion of soft tenderness towards the girl increased his pity for himself under the weight of the girl’s contempt. How ungrateful she was! And yet that very look of terror, that stifled cry of the hunted hare, which made him so resolved to win her,
produced
in him an exquisite feeling of melting regard for her youth, her softness, her fragility. When she did belong to him, oh how tenderly he would treat her! How he would humour her and give her
everything
she could want!

The shadowy Cistercian monks would no doubt, from their clairvoyant catholic knowledge of the subtleties of the human soul, have quite understood the cause of those absurd tears caking the dust under that wooden seat. But the yellowish ants continued to be very perplexed and confused by their presence. Thunder-drops tasting of salt were no doubt as strange to them as hail-stones tasting of wine would have been to Mr. Goring. But the ants were not the only creatures amazed at this new development in the psychology of the man of clay. From one corner
of the house peeped the servant-girl, full of tremulous curiosity, and from another the idiot Bert shuffled and spied, full of most anxious and perturbed concern.

Meanwhile the innocent cause of this little drama was making her way with drooping head and
dragging
steps down the south drive. When she reached the house she was immediately informed by one of the servants that Mr. Romer wished to see her in the study.

She was so dazed and broken, so forlorn and
indifferent
, that she made her way straight to this room without pause or question.

She found Mr. Romer in a most lively and affable mood. He made her sit down opposite him, and handed her chocolates out of a decorative Parisian box which lay on the table.

“Well, young lady,” he said, “I know, without your telling me, that an important event has
occurred
! Indeed, to confess the truth, I have, for a long time, foreseen its occurrence. And what did you answer to my worthy brother’s flattering proposal? It isn’t every girl, in your peculiar position, who is as lucky as this. Come—don’t be shy! There is no need for shyness with me. What did you say to him?”

Lacrima looked straight in front of her out of the window. She saw the waving branches of a great dark yew-tree and above it the white clouds. She felt like one whose guardian-angel has deserted her, leaving her the prey of blind elemental forces. She thought vaguely in her mind that she would make a desperate appeal to Vennie Seldom.
Something
in Vennie gave her a consciousness of strength.
To this strength, at the worst, she would cling for help. She was thus in a measure fortified in advance against any outburst in which her employer might indulge. But Mr. Romer indulged in no outburst.

“I suppose,” he said calmly, “that I may take for granted that you have refused my good brother’s offer?”

Lacrima nodded, without speaking.

“That is quite what I expected. You would not be yourself if you had not done so. And since you have done so it is of course quite impossible for me to put any pressure upon you.”