“Well, sir,” said Luke, seating himself by Mr. Taxater’s side and glancing apprehensively towards the church-porch; “I have tried what I can do with Miss Romer, but she maintains that nothing she can say will make any difference to Miss Traffio.”
“I fancy there is one thing, however, that would make a difference to Mr. Quincunx,” remarked the theologian significantly. “I am taking for granted,” he added, “that it is this particular marriage which weighs so heavily on your brother. He would not suffer if he saw her wedded to a man she loved?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Luke, “your idea is to appeal to Quincunx. I’ve thought of that, too. But I’m afraid it’s hopeless. He’s such an inconceivably helpless person. Besides, he’s got no money.”
“Suppose we secured him the money?” said Mr. Taxater.
Luke’s countenance momentarily brightened; but the cloud soon settled on it again.
“We couldn’t get enough,” he said with a sigh. “Unless,” he added, with a glimmer of humour, “you or some other noble person has more cash to dispose of than I fancy is at all likely! To persuade Quincunx into any bold activity we should have to guarantee him a comfortable annuity for the rest of his life, and an assurance of his absolute security from Romer’s vengeance. It would have to be enough for Lacrima, too, you understand!”
The theologian shook the dew-drops from a large crimson rose which hung within his reach.
“What precise sum would you suggest,” he asked, “as likely to be a sufficient inducement?”
The stone-carver meditated. “Those two could live quite happily,” he remarked at last, “on two hundred a year.”
“It is a large amount to raise,” said Mr. Taxater. “I fear it is quite beyond my power and the power of the Seldoms, even if we combined our efforts. How right Napoleon was, when he said that in any campaign, the first, second, and third requisite was money!
“It only shows how foolish those critics of the Catholic Church are, who blame her for laying stress upon the temporal side of our great struggle against evil. In this world, as things go, one always strikes sooner or later against the barrier of money. The money-question lies at the bottom of every subterranean abuse and every hidden iniquity that we unmask. It’s a wretched thing that it should be so, but we have to accept it; until one of Vennie’s angels”—he added in an under-tone—“descends to help us! Your poor brother began talking just now about the power of stone. I referred him to the Cross of our Lord — which is made of another material!
“But unfortunately in the stress of this actual struggle, you and I, my dear Andersen, find ourselves, as you see, compelled to call in the help, not of wood, but of gold. Gold, and gold alone, can furnish us with the means of undermining these evil powers!”
The texture of Mr. Taxater’s mind was so nicely inter-threaded with the opposite strands of metaphysical and Machiavellian wisdom, that this discourse, fantastic as it may sound to us, fell from him as naturally as rain from a heavy cloud. Luke Andersen’s face settled into an expression of hopeless gloom.
“The thing is beyond us, then,” he said. “I certainly can’t provide an enormous sum like that. James’ and my savings together only amount to a few hundreds. And if no quixotic person can be discovered to help us, we are bound hand and foot.
“Oh I should like,” he cried, “to make this place ring and ting with our triumph over that damned Romer!”
“Quis est iste Rex gloriœ?” muttered the Theologian. “Dominus fortis et potens; Dominus potens in prœlio.”
“I shall never dare,” went on the stone-carver, “to get my brother away into a home. The least thought of such a thing would drive him absolutely out of his mind. He’ll have to be left to drift about like this, talking madly to everyone he meets, till something terrible happens to him. God! I could howl with rage, to think how it all might be saved if only that ass Quincunx had a little gall!”
Mr. Taxater tapped the young man’s wrist with his white fingers. “I think we can put gall into him between us,” he said. “I think so, Andersen.”
“You’ve got some idea, sir!” cried Luke, looking at the theologian. “For Heaven’s sake, let’s have it! I am completely at the end of my tether.”
“This American who is engaged to Gladys is immensely rich, isn’t he?” enquired Mr. Taxater.
“Rich?” answered Luke. “That’s not the word for it! The fellow could buy the whole of Leo’s Hill and not know the difference.”
Mr. Taxater was silent, fingering the gold cross upon his watch-chain.
“It remains with yourself then,” he remarked at last.
“What!” cried the astonished Luke.
“I happen to be aware,” continued the diplomatist, calmly, “that there is a certain fact which our friend from Ohio would give half his fortune to know. He certainly would very willingly sign the little document for it, that would put Mr. Quincunx and Miss Traffio into a position of complete security. It is only a question of ‘the terrain of negotiation,’ as we say in our ecclesiastical circles.”
Luke Andersen’s eyes opened very widely, and the amazement of his surprise made him look more like an astounded faun than ever — a faun that has come bolt upon some incredible triumph of civilization.
“I will be quite plain with you, young man,” said the theologian. “It has come to my knowledge that you and Gladys Homer are more than friends; have been more than friends, for a good while past.
“Do not wave your hand in that way! I am not speaking without evidence. I happen to know as a positive fact that this girl is neither more nor less than your mistress. I am also inclined to believe — though of this, of course, I cannot be sure — that, as a result of this intrigue, she is likely, before the autumn is over, to find herself in a position of considerable embarrassment. It is no doubt, with a view to covering such embarrassment — you understand what I mean, Mr. Andersen? — that she is making preparations to have her marriage performed earlier than was at first intended.”
“God!” cried the astounded youth, losing all self-possession, “how, under the sun, did you get to know this?”
Mr. Taxater smiled. “We poor controversialists,” he said, “have to learn, in self-defence, certain innocent arts of observation. I don’t think that you and your mistress,” he added, “have been so extraordinarily discreet, that it needed a miracle to discover your secret.”
Luke Andersen recovered his equanimity with a vigorous effort. “Well?” he said, rising from his seat and looking anxiously at his brother, “what then?”
As he uttered these words the young stone-carver’s mind wrestled in grim austerity with the ghastly hint thrown out by his companion. He divined with an icy shock of horror the astounding proposal that this amazing champion of the Faith was about to unfold. He mentally laid hold of this proposal as a man might lay hold upon a red-hot bar of iron. The interior fibres of his being hardened themselves to grasp without shrinking its appalling treachery.
Luke had it in him, below his urbane exterior, to rend and tear away every natural, every human scruple. He had it in him to be able to envisage, with a shamelessness worthy of some lost soul of the Florentine’s Inferno, the fire-scorched walls of such a stark dilemma. The palpable suggestion which now hung, as it were, suspended in the air between them, was a suggestion he was ready to grasp by the throat.
The sight of his brother’s gaunt figure, every line of which he knew and loved so well, turned his conscience to adamant. Sinking into the depths of his soul, as a diver might sink into an ice-cold sea, he felt that there was literally nothing he would not do, if his dear Daddy James could be restored to sanity and happiness.