Wood and Stone (27 page)

He paused and carefully selecting the special kind of chocolate that appealed to him put it deliberately in his mouth.

Lacrima was so amazed at the mild tone he used and at the drift of his words, that she turned full upon him her large liquid eyes with an expression in them of something almost like gratitude. The
corners
of her mouth twitched. The reaction was too great. She felt she could not keep back her tears.

Mr. Romer quietly continued.

“In all these things, my dear young lady, the world presents itself as a series of bargains and
compromises
. My brother has made you his offer—a flattering and suitable one. In the girlish
excitement
of the first shock you have totally refused to listen to him. But the world moves round. Such natural moods do not last forever. They often do not last beyond the next day! In order to help you—to make it easier for you—to bring such a mood to an end, I also, in my turn, have a little proposal to make.”

Lacrima’s expression changed with terrible rapidity; she stared at him panic-stricken.

“My proposal is this,” said Mr. Romer, quietly handing her the box of chocolates, and smiling as she waved it away. “As I said just now, the world is a place of bargains and compromises. Nothing ever occurs between human beings which is not the result of some unuttered transaction of occult diplomacy. Led by your instincts you reject my brother’s offer. Led by my instincts I offer you the following
persuasion
to overcome your refusal.”

He placed another chocolate in his mouth.

“I know well,” he went on, “your regard and
fondness
—I might use even stronger words—for our friend Maurice Quincunx. Now what I propose is this. I will settle upon Maurice,—you shall see the draft itself and my signature upon it,—an income sufficient to enable him to live comfortably and
happily
, wherever he pleases, without doing a stroke of work, and without the least anxiety. I will arrange it so that he cannot touch the capital of the sum I make over to him, and has nothing to do but to sign receipts for each quarter’s dividend, as the bank makes them over to him.

“The sum I will give him will be so considerable, that the income from it will amount to not less than three hundred pounds a year. With this at his
disposal
he will be able to live wherever he likes, either here or elsewhere. And what is more,”—here Mr. Romer looked intently and significantly at the
trembling
girl—“what is more, he will be in a position to
marry
whenever he may desire to do so. I believe”—he could not refrain from a tone of sardonic irony
as he added this—“that you have found him not particularly well able to look after himself. I shall sign this document, rendering your friend free from financial anxiety for the rest of his life, on the day when you are married to Mr. Goring.”

When he had finished speaking Lacrima continued to stare at him with a wide horror-struck gaze.

Mechanically she noticed the peculiar way in which his eyebrows met one another across a scar on his forehead. This scar and the little grey bristles that crossed it remained in her mind long afterwards, indelibly associated with the thoughts that then passed through her brain. Chief among these thoughts was a deep-lurking, heart-clutching dread of her own conscience, and a terrible shapeless fear that this
subterranean
conscience might debar her from the
right
to make her appeal to Vennie. From Mr. Romer’s
persecution
she could appeal; but how could she appeal against his benevolence to her friend, even though the path of that benevolence lay over her own body?

She rose from her seat, too troubled and confused even to hate the man who thus played the part of an ironic Providence.

“Let me go,” she said, waving aside once more the bright-coloured box of chocolates which he had the diabolical effrontery to offer her again. “Let me go. I want to be alone. I want to think.”

He opened the door for her, and she passed out. Once out of his presence she rushed madly upstairs to her own room, flung herself on the bed, and
remained
, for what seemed to her like centuries of horror, without movement and without tears, staring up at the ceiling.

The luncheon bell sounded, but she did not heed it. From the open window floated in the smell of the white cluster-roses, scented like old wine, which encircled the terrace pillars. Blending with this fragrance came the interminable voice of the
wood-pigeons
, and every now and then a sharp wild cry, from the peacocks on the east lawn. Two—three hours passed thus, and still she did not move. A certain queer-shaped crack above the door occupied her superficial attention, very much in the same way as the scar on Mr. Romer’s forehead. Any very precise formulation of her thoughts during this long period would be difficult to state.

Her mind had fallen into that confused and feverish bewilderment that comes to us in hours between sleeping and waking. The clearest image that shaped itself to her consciousness during these hours was the image of herself as dead, and, by means of her death, of Maurice Quincunx being freed from his hated office-work, and enabled to live according to his pleasure. She saw him walking to and fro among rows of evening primroses—his favourite flowers—and in place of a cabbage-leaf—so fantastic were her dreams—she saw his heavy head ornamented with a broad, new Panama-hat, purchased with the price of her death.

Her mind gave no definite shape or form to this image of herself dying. The thought of it followed so naturally from the idea of a union with the Priory-tenant, that there seemed no need to separate the two things. To marry Mr. John Goring was just a simple sentence of death. The only thing to make sure of, was that before she actually died, this
precious document, liberating her friend forever, should be signed and sealed. Oddly enough she never for a moment doubted Mr. Romer’s intention of
carrying
out his part of the contract if she carried out hers. As he had said, the world was designed and arranged for bargains between men and women; and if her great bargain meant the putting of life itself into the scale—well! she was ready.

Strangely enough, the final issue of her feverish self-communings was a sense of deep and indescribable peace. It was more of a relief to her than anyone not acquainted with the peculiar texture of a Pariah’s mind could realize, to be spared that desperate appeal to Vennie Seldom. In a dumb inarticulate way she felt that, without making such an appeal, the spirit of the Nevilton nun was supporting and
strengthening
her. Did Vennie know of her dilemma, she would be compelled to resort to some drastic step to stop the sacrifice, just as one would be compelled to hold out a hand of rescue to some determined suicide. But she felt in the depths of her heart that if Vennie were in her position she would make the same choice.

The long afternoon was still only half over, when—comforted and at peace with herself, as a devoted patriot might be at peace, when the throw of the dice has appointed him as his country’s liberator—she rose from her recumbent position, and sitting on the edge of her bed turned over the pages of her tiny edition of St. Thomas a Kempis.

It had been long since she had opened this volume. Indeed, isolated from contact with any Catholic influence except that of the. philosophical Mr. Taxater,
Lacrima had been recently drifting rather far away from the church of her fathers. This complete
upheaval
of her whole life threw her back upon her old faith.

Like so many other women of suppressed romantic emotions, when the moment came for some heroic sacrifice for the sake of her friend, she at once threw into the troubled waters the consecrated oil that had anointed the half-forgotten piety of her childhood.

One curious and interesting psychological fact in connection with this new trend of feeling in her, was the fact that the actual realistic horror of being, in a literal and material sense, at the mercy of Mr. John Goring never presented itself to her mind at all. Its very dreadfulness, being a thing that amounted to sheer death, blurred and softened its tangible and palpable image.

Yet it must not be supposed that she meditated definitely upon any special line of action. She
formulated
no plan of self-destruction. For some strange reason, it was much less the bodily terror of the idea that rose up awful and threatening before her, than its spiritual and moral counterpart.

Had Lacrima been compelled, like poor Sonia in the Russian novel, to become a harlot for the sake of those she loved, it would have been the mental rather than the physical outrage that would have weighed upon her.

She was of that curious human type which
separates
the body from the soul, in all these things. She had always approached life rather through her mind than through her senses, and it was in the
imagination
that she found both her catastrophes and
recoveries. In this particular case, the obsessing image of death had for the moment quite obliterated the more purely realistic aspect of what she was
contemplating
. Her feeling may perhaps be best described by saying that whenever she imaged the farmer’s possession of her, it was always as if what he
possessed
was no more than a dead inert corpse, about whose fate none, least of all herself, could have any further care.

She had just counted the strokes of the church clock striking four, when she heard Gladys steps in the adjoining room. She hurriedly concealed the little purple-covered volume, and lay back once more upon her pillows. She fervently prayed in her heart that Gladys might be ignorant of what had occurred, but her knowledge of the relations between father and daughter made this a very forlorn hope.

Such as it was, it was entirely dispelled as soon as the fair-haired creature glided in and sat down at the foot of her bed.

Gladys looked at her cousin with intent and
luxurious
interest; her expression being very much what one might suppose the countenance of a young pagan priestess to have worn, as she gazed, dreamily and sweetly, in a pause of the sacrificial procession, at some doomed heifer “lowing at the skies, and all her silken flanks with garlands dressed.”

“So I hear that you are going to be married,” she began at once, speaking in a slow, liquid voice, and toying indolently with her friend’s shoe-strings.

“Please—please don’t talk about it,” murmured the Italian. “Nothing is settled yet. I would so much rather not think of it now.”

“But, how silly!” cried the other, with a melodious little laugh. “Of course we must talk about it. It is so extremely exciting! I shall be seeing uncle John today and I must congratulate him. I am sure he doesn’t half know how lucky he is.”

Lacrima jumped up from where she lay and
stepping
to the window looked out over the sunlit park.

Gladys rose too, and standing behind her cousin, put her arms round her waist.

“No, I am sure he doesn’t realize how sweet you are,” she whispered. “You darling little thing,—you little, shy, frightened thing—you must tell me all about it! I’ll try not to tease you—I really will! What a clever, naughty little girl, it has been, peeping and glancing at a poor elderly farmer and inflaming his simple heart! But all your friends are rather well advanced in age, aren’t they, dear? I expect uncle John is really no older than Mr. Quincunx or James Andersen. What tricks do you use, darling, to attract all these people?

“I’ll tell you what it is! It’s the way you clasp your fingers, and keep groping with your hands in the air in front of you, as if you were blind. I’ve noticed that trick of yours for a long time. I expect it attracts them awfully! I expect they all long to take those little wrists and hold them tight! And the drooping, dragging way you walk, too; that no doubt they find quite enthralling. It has often
irritated
me
, but I can quite see now why you do it. It must make them long to support you in their strong arms! What a crafty little puss she is! And I have sometimes taken her for no better than a little simpleton! I see I shall not for long be the
only person allowed to kiss our charming
Lacrima
! So I must make the best of my opportunities, mustn’t I?”

Suiting her action to her words she turned the girl towards her with a vigorous movement, and
overcoming
her reluctance, embraced her softly,
whispering
, as she kissed her averted mouth,—

“Uncle John won’t do this half so prettily as I do, will he? But oh, how you must have played your tricks upon him—cunning, cunning little thing!”

Lacrima had by this time reached the end of her endurance. With a sudden flash of genuine Italian anger she flung her cousin back, with such unexpected violence, that the elder girl would actually have fallen to the floor, if she had not encountered in her collapse the arm of the wicker chair which stood behind her.

She rose silent and malignant.

“So that’s what we gentle, wily ones do, is it, when we lose our little tempers! All right, my friend, all right! I shall remember.”

She walked haughtily to the door that divided their rooms.

“The sooner I am married,” she cried, as a final hit, “the sooner
you
will be—and I shall be married soon—soon—soon; perhaps before this summer is out!”

Lacrima stood for some moments rigid and
unmoving
. Then there came over her an irresistible longing to escape from this house, and flee far off, anywhere, anyhow, so long as she could be alone with her misery, alone with her tragic resolution.

The invasion of Gladys had made this resolution
a very different thing from what it had seemed an hour ago. But she must recover herself! She must see things again in the clearer, larger light of sublime sacrifice. She must purge the baseness of her cousin’s sensual magnetism out of her brain and her heart!

She hurriedly fastened on her hat, took her faded parasol, slipped the tiny St. Thomas into her dress, and ran down the great oak staircase. She hurried past the entrance without turning aside to greet the impassive Mrs. Romer, seated as usual in her
accustomed
place, and skirting the east lawns emerged from the little postern-gate into the park. Crossing a half-cut hayfield and responding gravely and gently to the friendly greetings of the hay-makers, she entered the Yeoborough road just below the steep ascent, between high over-shadowing hedges, of Dead Man’s Lane.