This reference to her sublime contract was the one thing needed to rouse the abandoned soul of the Pariah. For one brief second more the powers of darkness struggled over her bowed head with the powers of light.
Then with a desperate movement the Italian rose erect, flung aside her cousin’s arms, turned boldly towards the approaching maniac, and ran straight to meet her. Her unexpected appearance produced an immediate effect upon the unhappy girl. Her wildly-tossing arms fell to her side. Her wailing died away in pathetic sobs, and these also quickly ceased.
Lacrima seemed to act like one possessed of some invincible magic. One might have dreamed that now for the first time for uncounted ages this unholy shrine of heathen tradition was invaded by an emissary of the true Faith.
Gladys, who had reeled bewildered against the wood-work of an ancient weir, that formed the outlet to the lake, leaned in complete prostration of astonishment upon this support, and gazed helplessly and dumbly at the two figures. She was too petrified with amazement to notice the appearance of Ralph and Maurice, who, also absorbed in watching this strange encounter, had half-emerged from their concealment.
The three onlookers saw the Italian lay her hands upon the girl’s forehead, smooth back her hair, kiss her gently on the brow, and fling her own cloak over her bare shoulders. They heard her murmuring again and again some soft repetition of soothing words. Dangelis caught the liquid syllables of the Tuscan tongue. Evidently in her excitement the child of Genoa the Superb had reverted to the language of her fathers.
The next thing they saw was the slow retreat of the two together, towards the keeper’s cottage; the arm of the Italian clinging tenderly round the maniac’s waist.
At this point Dangelis stepped forward and made himself known to Gladys.
The expression on the face of Mr. Romer’s daughter, when she recognized the American, was a palimpsest of conflicting emotions. Her surprise was still more intense when Mr. Quincunx stepped out from the shadow of the drooping tree and raised his hat to her. Her eyes for the moment looked positively scared; and her mouth opened, like the mouth of a bewildered infant. The tone with which the citizen of Ohio addressed the confused young lady made the heart of Mr. Quincunx leap for joy.
“I am astonished at you,” he said. “I should not have believed such a thing possible! Your only excuse is that this infernal jest of yours has turned out so well for the people concerned, and so shamefully for yourself. How could you treat that brave foreign child so brutally? Why — I saw her trembling and trembling, and trying to get away; and you were holding — actually holding her — while that poor mad thing came nearer! It’s a good thing for you that the Catholic spirit in her burst out at last. Do you know what spell she used to bring that girl to her senses? A spell that you will never understand, my friend, for all this baptism and confirmation business! Why — she quoted passages out of the Litany of Our Lady! I heard her clearly, and I recognized the words. I am a damned atheist myself, but if ever I felt religion to be justified it was when your cousin stopped that girl’s crying. It was like real magic. You ought to be thoroughly proud of her! I shall tell her when I see her what I feel about her.”
Gladys rose from her seat on the weir and faced them haughtily. Her surprise once over, and the rebuke having fallen, she became mistress of herself again.
“I suppose,” she said, completely ignoring Mr. Quincunx, “we’d better follow those two, and see if Lacrima gets her safely into the house. I fancy she’ll have no difficulty about it. Of course if she had not done this I should have had to do it myself. But not knowing Italian”—she added this with a sneer—“I am not so suitable a mad-house nurse.”
“It was her good heart, Gladys,” responded the American; “not her Italian, nor her Litany, that soothed that girl’s mind. I wish your heart, my friend, were half as good.”
“Well,” returned the fair girl quite cheerfully, “we’ll leave my heart for the present, and see how Lacrima has got on.”
She took the arm which Dangelis had not offered, but which his chivalry forbade him to refuse, and together they proceeded to follow the heroic Genoese.
Mr. Quincunx shuffled unregarded behind them.
They had hardly reached the keeper’s cottage, a desolate and ancient erection, of the usual stone material, darkened with damp and overshadowed by a moss-grown oak, when Lacrima herself came towards them.
She started with surprise at seeing, in the shadowy obscurity, the figures of the two men.
Her surprise changed to pleasure when she recognized their identity.
“Ah!” she said. “You come too late. Gladys and I have had quite an adventure, haven’t we, cousin?”
Mr. Quincunx glanced at the American to see if he embraced the full generosity of the turn she gave to the situation.
Gladys took advantage of it in a moment. “You see I was right after all,” she remarked. “I knew you would lose your alarm directly you saw that girl! When it came to the point you were braver than I. You dear thing!” She kissed the Italian ostentatiously, and then retook possession of her admirer’s arm.
“I got her up to her room without waking her father,” said Lacrima. “She had left the door wide open. Gladys is going to ask Mr. Romer to have her sent away to some sort of home. I believe they’ll be able to cure her. She talked quite sensibly to me. I am sure she only wants to be treated gently. I’m afraid her father’s unkind to her. You are going to arrange for her being sent away, aren’t you, Gladys?”
The elder girl turned. “Of course, my dear, of course. I don’t go back on my word.”
The four friends proceeded to take the nearest path through the wood. One by one the frightened wild-geese returned to their roosting-place on the island. The water-rats resumed uninterrupted their night-prowls along the reedy edge of the lake, and the wood-pigeons settled down in peace upon their high branches.
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.
CHAPTER XIII LACRIMA
MR. 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.