Gladys? He would walk over the bodies of a hundred Gladyses, if that way, and that alone, led to his brother’s restoration!
“What then?” he repeated, turning a bleak but resolute face upon Mr. Taxater.
The theologian continued: “Why, it remains for you, or for someone deputed by you, to reveal to our unsuspecting American exactly how his betrothed has betrayed him. I have no doubt that in the disturbance this will cause him we shall have no difficulty in securing his aid in this other matter. It would be a natural, an inevitable revenge for him to take. Himself a victim of these Romers, what more appropriate, what more suitable, than that he should help us in liberating their other victims? If he is as wealthy as you say, it would be a mere bagatelle for him to set our good Quincunx upon his feet forever, and Lacrima with him! It is the kind of thing it would naturally occur to him to do. It would be a revenge; but a noble revenge. He would leave Nevilton then, feeling that he had left his mark; that he had made himself felt. Americans like to make themselves felt.”
Luke’s countenance, in spite of his interior acquiescence, stiffened into a haggard mask of dismay.
“But this is beyond anything one has ever heard of!” he protested, trying in vain to assume an air of levity. “It is beyond everything. Actually to convey, to the very man one’s girl is going to marry, the news of her seduction! Actually to ‘coin her for drachmas,’ as it says somewhere! It’s a monstrous thing, an incredible thing!”
“Not a bit more monstrous than your original sin in seducing the girl,” said Mr. Taxater.
“That is the usual trick,” he went on sternly, “of you English people! You snatch at your little pleasures, without any scruple, and feel yourselves quite honourable. And then, directly it becomes a question of paying for them, by any form of public confession, you become fastidiously scrupulous.”
“But to give one’s girl away, to betray her in this shameless manner oneself! It seems to me the ultimate limit of scurvy meanness!”
“It only seems to you so, because the illusion of chivalry enters into it; in other words, because public opinion would condemn you! This honourable shielding of the woman we have sinned with, at every kind of cost to others, has been the cause of endless misery. Do you think you are preparing a happy marriage for your Gladys in your ‘honourable’ reticence? By saving her from this union with Mr. Dangelis — whom, by the way, she surely cannot love, if she loves you — you will be doing her the best service possible. Even if she refuses to make you her husband in his place — and I suppose her infatuation would stop at that! — there are other ways, besides marriage, of hiding her embarrassed condition. Let her travel for a year till her trouble is well over!”
Luke Andersen reflected in silence, his drooping figure indicating a striking collapse of his normal urbanity.
At last he spoke. “There may be something in what you suggest,” he remarked slowly. “Obviously, I can’t be the one,” he added, after a further pause, “to strike this astounding bargain with the American.”
“I don’t see why not,” said the theologian, with a certain maliciousness in his tone, “I don’t see why not. You have been the one to commit the sin; you ought naturally to be the one to perform the penance.”
The luckless youth distorted his countenance into such a wry grimace, that he caused it to resemble the stone gargoyles which protruded their lewd tongues from the church roof above them.
“It’s a scurvy thing to do, all the same,” he muttered.
“It is only relatively—’ scurvy,’ as you call it,” replied Mr. Taxater. “In an absolute sense, the ‘scurviness’ would be to let your Gladys deceive an honest man and make herself unhappy for life, simply to save you two from any sort of exposure. But as a matter of fact, I am not inclined to place this very delicate piece of negotiation in your hands. It would be so fatally easy for you — under the circumstances — to make some precipitate blunder that would spoil it all.”
“Don’t think,” he went on, observing the face of his interlocutor relapsing into sudden cheerfulness, “that I let you off this penance because of its unchivalrous character. You break the laws of chivalry quite as completely by putting me into the possession of the facts.
“I shall, of course,” he added, “require from you some kind of written statement. The thing must be put upon an unimpeachable ground.”
Luke Andersen’s relief was not materially modified by this demand. He began to fumble in his pocket for his cigarette-case.
“The great point to be certain of,” continued Mr. Taxater, “is that Quincunx and Lacrima will accept the situation, when it is thus presented to them. But I don’t think we need anticipate any difficulty. In case of Dangelis’ saying anything to Mr. Romer, though I do not for a moment imagine he will, it would be well if you and your brother were prepared to move, if need were, to some other scene of action. There is plenty of demand for skilled workmen like yourselves, and you have no ties here.”
The young man made a deprecatory movement with his hands.
“We neither of us should like that, very much, sir. James and I are fonder of Nevilton than you might imagine.”
“Well, well,” responded the theologian, “we can discuss that another time. Such a thing may not be necessary. I am glad to see, my friend,” he added, “that whatever wrong you have done, you are willing to atone for it. So I trust our little plan will work out successfully. Perhaps you will look in, tomorrow night? I shall be at leisure then, and we can make our arrangements. Well, Heaven protect you, ‘a sagitta volante in die, a negotio perambulante in tenebris.’”
He crossed himself devoutly as he spoke, and giving the young man a friendly wave of the hand, and an encouraging smile, let himself out through the gate and proceeded to follow the patient Vennie.
He overtook his little friend somewhere not far from the lodge of that admirable captain, whose neatly-cut laurel hedge had witnessed, according to the loquacious Mrs. Fringe, the strange encounter between Jimmy Pringle and his Maker. Vennie was straying slowly along by the hedge-side, trailing her hand through the tall dead grasses. Hearing Mr. Taxater’s footsteps, she turned eagerly to meet him.
“Well,” she asked, “what does Luke say about his brother? Is it as bad as we feared?”
“He doesn’t think,” responded the theologian, “any more than I do, that the thing has gone further than common hallucination.”
“And Lacrima — poor little Lacrima! — have you decided what we must do to intervene in her case?”
“I think it may be said,” responded the scholar gravely, “that we have hit upon an effective way of stopping that marriage. But perhaps it would be pleasanter and easier for you to remain at present in ignorance of our precise plan. I know,” he added, smiling, “you do not care for hidden conspiracies.”
Vennie frowned. “I don’t see why,” she said, “there should be anything hidden about it! It seems to me, the thing is so abominable, that one would only have to make it public, to put an end to it completely.
“I hope”—she clasped her hands—“I do hope, you are not fighting the evil one with the weapons of the evil one? If you are, I am sure it will end unhappily. I am sure and certain of it!”
She spoke with a fervour that seemed almost prophetic; and as she did so, she unconsciously waved — with a pathetic little gesture of protest — the bunch of dead grasses which she held in her hand.
Mr. Taxater walked gravely by her side; his profile, in its imperturbable immobility, resembling the mask of some great mediæval ecclesiastic. The only reply he made to her appeal was to quote the famous Psalmodic invocation: “Nisi Dominus œdificaverit domum, in vanum laboraverunt qui œdificant eam.”