“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.
Whether from her first exit from the house, she had intended to follow this path, she could hardly herself have told. It was the instinct of a woman at bay, seeking out, not the strong that could help her, but the weak that she herself could help. It was also perhaps the true Pariah impulse, which drives these victims of the powerful and the well-constituted, to find rehabilitation in the society of one another.
As she ascended the shadowy lane with its crumbling banks of sandy soil and its over-hanging trees, she felt once again how persistently this heavy luxuriant landscape dragged her earthwards and clogged the wings of her spirit. The tall grasses growing thick by the way-side enlaced themselves with the elder-bushes and dog-wood, which in their turn blended indissolubly with the lower branches of the elms. The lane itself was but a deep shadowy path dividing a flowing sea of foliage, which seemed to pour, in a tidal wave of suffocating fertility, over the whole valley.
The Italian struggled in vain against the depressing influence of all these rank and umbrageous growths, spreading out leafy arms to catch her and groping towards her with moist adhesive tendrils. The lane was full of a warm steamy vapour, like that of a hot-house, to the heavy odour of which, every sort of verdurous growing thing offered its contribution.
There was a vague smell of funguses in the air, though none were visible; and the idea of them may only have been due to the presence of decaying wood or the moist drooping stalks of the dead flowers of the earlier season. Now and again the girl caught, wafted upon a sudden stir of wind, the indescribably sweet scent of honey-suckle — a sweetness almost overpowering in its penetrating voluptuous approach. Once, high up above her head, she saw a spray of this fragrant parasite; not golden yellow, as it is where the sun shines full upon it, but pallid and ivory-white. In a curious way it seemed as if this Nevilton scenery offered her no escape from the insidious sensuality she fled.
The indolent luxuriousness of Gladys seemed to breathe from every mossy spore and to over-hang every unclosing frond. And if Gladys was in the leaves and grass, the remoter terror of Mr. Goring was in the earth and clay. Between the two they monopolized this whole corner of the planet, and made everything between zenith and nadir their privileged pasture.
As she drew nearer to where Mr. Quincunx lived, her burdened mind sought relief in focussing itself upon him. She would be sure to find him in his garden. That she knew, because the day was Saturday. Should she tell him what had happened to her?
Ah! that was indeed the crucial question! Was it necessary that she should sacrifice herself for him without his even knowing what she did?
But he would have to know, sooner or later, of this marriage. Everyone would be talking of it. It would be bound to come to his ears.
And what would he think of her if she said nothing? What would he think of her, in any case, having accepted such a degradation?
Not to tell him at all, would throw a completely false light upon the whole transaction. It would make her appear treacherous, fickle, worldly-minded, shameless — wickedly false to her unwritten covenant with himself.
To tell him, without giving him the true motive of her sacrifice, would be, she felt sure, to bring down his bitterest reproaches on her head.
For a passing second she felt a wave of indignation against him surge up in her heart. This, however, she passionately suppressed, with the instinctive desire of a woman who is sacrificing herself to feel the object of such sacrifice worthy of what is offered.
It was not long before she reached the gate of Mr. Quincunx’s garden. Yes, — there he was — with his wheel-barrow and his hoe — bending over his potatoes. She opened the gate and walked quite close up to him before he observed her. He greeted her in his usual manner, with a smile of half-cynical, half-affectionate welcome, and taking her by the hand as he might have taken a child, he led her to the one shady spot in his garden, where, under a weeping ash, he had constructed a rough bench.