“Why!” cried Gladys suddenly to her companion. “There’s somebody in the stocks!”
She went forward hastily, followed at a slower pace by the Italian. Poor Phyllis, her bundle by her side, and her cheeks tear-stained, presented a woeful enough appearance. Her first inclination was to hide her face in her hands; but making a brave effort, she turned her head towards the new-comers with a gasping little laugh.
“I put my foot in here for a joke,” she stammered, “and it got caught. Please let me out, Miss Romer.”
Gladys came quite near and laid her gloved hand upon the wooden bar.
“It just lifts up, Miss,” pleaded Phyllis, with tears in her voice. “It isn’t at all heavy.”
Gladys stared at her with a growing sense of interest. The girl’s embarrassment under her scrutiny awoke her Romer malice.
“I really don’t know that I want to let you out in such a hurry,” she said. “If it’s a game you are playing, it would be a pity to spoil it. Who put you in? You must tell me that, before I set you free! You couldn’t have done it yourself.”
By this time Lacrima had arrived on the scene.
The shame-faced Phyllis turned to her. “Please, Miss Traffio, please, lift that thing up! It’s quite easy to move.”
The Italian at once laid her hands upon the block of wood and struggled to raise it; but Gladys had no difficulty in keeping the bar immoveable.
“What are you doing?” cried the younger girl indignantly. “Take your arm away!”
“She must tell us first who put her where she is,” reiterated Miss Romer. “I won’t have her let out ’till she tells us that!”
Phyllis looked piteously from one to the other. Then she grew desperate.
“It was Luke Andersen,” she whispered.
“What!” cried Gladys. “Luke? Then he’s been out walking with you? Has he? Has he? Has he?”
She repeated these words with such concentrated fury that Phyllis began to cry. But the shock of this information gave Lacrima her chance. Using all her strength she lifted the heavy bar and released the prisoner. Phyllis staggered to her feet and picked up her bundle. Lacrima handed the girl her hat and helped her to brush the dust from her clothes.
“So you are Luke’s latest fancy, are you?” Gladys said, scowling fiercely at the glove-maker.
The pent-up feelings of the young woman broke forth at once. Moving a step or two away from them and glancing at a group of farm-men who were crossing the green, she gave full scope to her revenge.
“I’m only Annie Bristow’s friend,” she retorted. “Annie Bristow is going to marry Luke. They are right down mad on one another.”
“It’s a lie!” cried Gladys, completely forgetting herself and looking as if she could have struck the mocking villager.
“A lie, eh?” returned the other. “Tisn’t for me to tell the tale to a young lady, the likes of you. But we be all guessing down in Mr. North’s factory, who ’twas that gave Luke the pretty lady-like ring wot he lent to Annie!”
Gladys became livid with anger. “What ring?” she cried. “Why are you talking about a ring?”
“Annie, she stuck it, for devilry, into that hole in Splash-Lane stone. She pushed it in, tight as ’twere a sham diamint. And there it do bide, the lady’s pretty, ring, all glittery and shiny, at bottom of that there hole! We maids do go to see ’un glinsying and gleaming. It be the talk of the place, that ring be! Scarce one of the childer but ’as ’ad its try to hook ’un out. But ’tis no good. I guess Annie must have rammed it down with her mother’s girt skewer. ’Tis fast in that stone anyway, for all the world to see. Folks, maybe, ’ll be coming from Yeoborough, long as a few days be over, to see the lady’s ring, wot Annie threw’d away, ’afore she said ‘yes’ to her young man!”
These final words were positively shouted by the enraged Phyllis, as she tripped away, swinging her bundle triumphantly.
It seemed for a moment as though Gladys meditated a desperate pursuit, and the infliction of physical violence upon her enemy. But Lacrima held her fast by the hand. “For heaven’s sake, cousin,” she whispered, “let her go. Look at those men watching us!”
Gladys turned; but it was not at the farm-men she looked.
Across the green towards them came the two Andersens, Luke looking nervous and worried, and his brother gesticulating strangely. The girls remained motionless, neither advancing to meet them nor making any attempt to evade them. Gladys seemed to lose her defiant air, and waited their approach, rather with the look of one expecting to be chidden than of one prepared to chide. On all recent occasions this had been her manner, when in the presence of the young stone-carver.
The sight of Lacrima seemed to exercise a magical effect upon James Andersen. He ceased at once his excited talk, and advancing towards her, greeted her in his normal tone — a tone of almost paternal gentleness.
“It is nearly a quarter to one,” said Gladys, addressing both the men. “Lacrima and I’ll have all we can do to get back in time for lunch. Let’s walk back together!”
Luke looked at his brother who gave him a friendly smile. He also looked sharply at the Hullaway labourers, who were shuffling off towards the barton of the Manor-Farm.
“I don’t mind,” he said; “though it is a dangerous time of day! But we can go by the fields, and you can leave us at Roandyke Barn.”
They moved off along the edge of the pond together.
“It was Lacrima, not I, Luke,” said Gladys presently, “who let that girl out.”
Luke flicked a clump of dock-weeds with his cane. “It was her own fault,” he said carelessly. “I thought I’d opened the thing. I was called away suddenly.”
Gladys bowed her head submissively. In the company of the young stone-carver her whole nature seemed to change. A shrewd observer might even have marked a subtle difference in her physical appearance. She appeared to wilt and droop, like a tropical flower transplanted into a northern zone.
They remained all together until they reached the fields. Then Gladys and Luke dropped behind.
“I have something I want to tell you,” said the fair girl, as soon as the others were out of hearing. “Something very important.”
“I have something to tell you too,” answered Luke, “and I think I will tell it first. It is hardly likely that your piece of news can be as serious as mine.”
They paused at a stile; and the girl made him take her in his arms and kiss her, before she consented to hear what he had to say.
It would have been noticeable to any observer that in the caresses they exchanged, Luke played the perfunctory, and she the passionate part. She kissed him thirstily, insatiably, with clinging lips that seemed avid of his very soul. When at last they moved on through grass that was still wet with the rain of the night before, Luke drew his hand away from hers, as if to emphasize the seriousness of his words.
“I am terribly anxious, dearest, about James,” he said. “We had an absurd quarrel this morning, and he rushed off to Hullaway in a rage. I found him in the inn. He had been drinking, but it was not that which upset him. He had not taken enough to affect him in that way. I am very, very anxious about him. I forget whether I’ve ever told you about my mother? Her mind — poor darling — was horribly upset before she died. She suffered from more than one distressing mania. And my fear is that James may go the same way.’
Gladys hung her head. In a strange and subtle way she felt as though the responsibility of this new catastrophe rested upon her. Her desperate passion for Luke had so unnerved her, that she had become liable to be victimized by any sort of superstitious apprehension.