They both rose and listened intently, but the sound was not repeated; only a hot gust of wind coming, as it were, out of the lake itself, went quivering through the reeds.
“I don’t imagine,” said Mr. Quincunx calmly, “that your young lady will be much alarmed. I fancy she has less fear of this kind of thing than that water-rat we heard just now. It’ll terrify Lacrima, though. But I understand that your charming sweetheart gets a good deal of amusement from causing people to feel terror!”
Dangelis was so accustomed to the plain-spoken utterances of the hermit of Dead Man’s Lane that he received this indictment of his enchantress with complete equanimity.
“All the same,” he remarked, “I think we’d better go and meet them, if you know the direction they’re coming. It’s not a very pleasant proposition, any way, to face escaped lunatics in a place like this.”
“I tell you,” mutterd Mr. Quincunx crossly, “your darling Gladys is coming here for no other reason than to hear that girl’s cries. The more they terrify Lacrima, the better she’ll be pleased.”
“I don’t know about Lacrima,” answered Dangelis. “I know that devil of a noise will scare me if I hear it again.”
Mr. Quincunx did not reply. With his hand on his companion’s arm he was once more listening intently. At the back of his mind was gradually forming a grim remote wish that some overt act and palpable revelation of Gladys Romer’s interesting character might effect a change of heart in the citizen of Ohio.
Such a wish had been obscurely present in his brain ever since they started on this expedition; and now that the situation was developing, it took a more vivid shape.
“I believe,” he remarked at last, “I hear them coming down the path. Listen! It’s on the other side of the pond, — over there.” He pointed across the water to the left-hand corner of the lake. It was from the right-hand corner, where the keeper’s cottage stood, that the poor mad girl’s voice had proceeded.
“Yes; I am sure!” he whispered after a moment’s pause. “Come! quick! get in here; then they won’t see us even if they walk round this way.”
He pulled Dangelis beneath the over-hanging boughs of a large weeping willow. The droop of this tree’s delicate foliage made, in the semi-darkness in which they were, a complete and impenetrable hiding-place; and yet from between the trailing branches, when they held them apart with their hands, they had a free and unimpeded view of the whole surface of the lake.
The sound of distant voices struck clearly now upon their ears; and a moment after, nudging his companion, Mr. Quincunx pointed to two cloaked figures advancing across the open space towards the water’s edge.
“Hush!” whispered the recluse. “They are bound to come this way now.”
The two girls were, however, for the moment, apparently occupied with another intention. The taller of the two stopped and picked up something from the ground, and then approaching close to the lake’s edge raised her arm and flung it far into the water.
The object she threw must have been a stick or a stone of considerable size, for the splash it produced was startling.
The result was also startling. From a little island in the middle of the lake, rose suddenly, with a tremendous flapping, several large and broad-winged birds. They flew in heavy circles, at first, over the island; and then, descending to the water’s level, went splashing and flapping across its surface, uttering strange cries.
The noise made by these birds had hardly subsided, as they settled down in a thick bed of reeds, when, once more, that terrible inhuman wail rang out upon the night. Both men peered forth anxiously from their hiding-place, to see the effect of this sound upon their two friends.
They could see that they both stood stone-still for a moment as if petrified by terror.
Then they noticed that the taller of the two drew her companion still nearer to the water’s edge.
“If that yell begins again,” whispered the American, “I shall go out and speak to them.”
Mr. Quincunx made no answer. He prayed in his heart that something would occur to initiate this innocent Westerner a little more closely into the workings of his inamorata’s mind. It seemed indeed quite within the bounds of possibility that the recluse might be gratified in this wish, for the girls began rapidly advancing towards them, skirting the edge of the lake.
The two men watched their approach in silence, the artist savouring with a deep imaginative excitement the mystical glamour of the scene.
He felt it would be indelibly and forever imprinted on his mind, this hot heavily scented night, this pallid-glimmering lake, those uneasy stirrings of the wild-geese in their obscure reed-bed, and the frightful hush of the listening woods, as they seemed to await a repetition of that unearthly cry.
The girls had actually paused at the verge of the lake, just in front of their hiding-place; so near, in fact, that by stretching out his arm, from behind his willowy screen, Dangelis could have touched Gladys on the shoulder, when the fearfully expected voice broke forth again upon the night.
The men could see the visible tremor of panic-fear quiver through Lacrima’s slight frame.
“Oh, let us go! — let us go!” she pleaded, pulling with feverish fingers at her companion’s cloak.
But Gladys folded her arms and flung back her head.
“Little coward!” she murmured in a low unshaken voice. “I am not afraid of a mad girl’s yelling. Look! there’s one of those birds going back to the island!”
Once more the inhuman wail trembled across the water.
“Gladys! Gladys dear!” cried the panic-stricken girl, “I cannot endure it! I shall go mad myself if we do not go! I’ll do anything you ask me! I’ll go anywhere with you! Only — please — let us go away now!”
The sound was repeated again, and this time it proceeded from a quarter much nearer them. All four listeners held their breath. Presently the Italian made a terrified gesture and pointed frantically to the right bank of the lake.
“I see her!” she cried, “I see her! She is coming towards us!”
The frightened girl made a movement as if she would break away from her companion and flee into the darkness of the trees.
Gladys clasped her firmly in her arms.
“No — no!” she said, “no running off! Remember our agreement! There’s nothing really to be afraid of. I’m not afraid.
A slight quiver in her voice a little belied the calmness of this statement. She was indeed torn at that moment between a very natural desire to escape herself and an insatiable craving to prolong her companion’s agitation.
In her convulsive terror the Italian, unable to free herself from the elder girl’s enfolding arms, buried her head in the other’s cloak.
Thus linked, the two might have posed for a picture of heroic sisterly solicitude, in the presence of extreme danger.
Once more that ghastly cry resounded through the silence; and several nocturnal birds, from distant portions of the wood, replied to it with their melancholy hootings.
The white-garbed figure of the mad girl, her arms tossed tragically above her head, came swaying towards them. She moved unevenly, and staggered in her advance, as if her volition had not complete power over her movements. Gladys was evidently considerably alarmed herself now. She clutched at a chance of combining escape with triumph.
“Say you let me off that promise!” she whispered hoarsely, “and we’ll run together! We’re quite close to the way out.”
Who can read the obscure recesses of the human mind, or gauge the supernatural strength that lurks amid the frailest nerves?