How much of this the child understood it is impossible to say; but the old man’s tone was not threatening, and the idea of being taken away—somewhere—anywhere—roused vague hopes in her soul. She pulled the red shawl over her head and let him lead her by the hand.
Down the steps they clambered, and hurriedly threaded their way across the square.
The old man took the road towards Yeoborough, and turned with the girl up Dead Man’s Lane. He was but dimly acquainted with the neighbourhood; but once before, in his wanderings as a pedler, he had encamped in a certain grassy hollow bordering on the Auber Woods, and the memory of the seclusion of this spot drew him now.
As they passed Mr. Quincunx’s garden they encountered the solitary himself, who, in his sympathy with Luke Andersen on this particular day, had resolved to pay the young man an early morning visit.
The recluse looked with extreme and startled interest at this singular pair. The child’s beauty struck him with a shock that almost took his breath away. There was something about the haunting expression of her gaze as she turned it upon him that roused an overpowering flood of tenderness and pity in untouched abysses of his being.
There must have been some instantaneous reciprocity in the eccentric man’s grey eyes, for the young girl turned back after they had passed, and throwing the shawl away from her head, fixed upon him what seemed a deliberate and beseeching look of appeal.
Mr. Quincunx was so completely carried out of his normal self by this imploring look that he went so far as to answer its inarticulate prayer by a wave of his hand, and by a sign that indicated,—whether she understood it or not,—that he intended to render her assistance.
In his relations with Lacrima Mr. Quincunx was always remotely conscious that the girl’s character was stronger than his own, and—Pariah-like—this had the effect of lessening the emotion he felt towards her.
But now—in the look of the little Dolores—there was an appeal from a weakness and helplessness much more desperate than his own,—an appeal to him from the deepest gulfs of human dependence. The glance she had given him burned in his brain like a coal of white fire. It seemed to cry out to him from all the flotsam and jetsam, all the drift and wreckage of everything that had ever been drowned, submerged, and stranded, by the pitilessness of Life, since the foundation of the world.
The child’s look had indeed the same effect upon Mr. Quincunx that the look of his Master had upon the fear-stricken Apostle, in the hall of Caiaphas the high priest. In one heart-piercing stab it brought to his overpowered consciousness a vision of all the victims of cruelty who had ever cried aloud for help since the generations of men began their tragic journey.
Perhaps to all extremely sensitive natures of Mr. Quincunx’s type, a type of morbidly self-conscious weakness as well as sensitiveness, the electric stir produced by beauty and sex can only reach a culmination when the medium of its appearance approximates to the extreme limit of fragility and helplessness.
Hell itself, so to speak, had to display to him its span-long babes, before he could be aroused to descend and “harrow” it! But once roused in him, this latent spirit of the pitiful Son of Man became formidable, reckless, irresistible. The very absence in him of the usual weight of human solidity and “character” made him the more porous to this divine mood.
Anyone who watched him returning hastily to his cottage from the garden-gate would have been amazed by the change in his countenance. He looked and moved like a man under a blinding illumination. So must the citizen of Tarsus have looked, when he staggered into the streets of Damascus.
He literally ran into his kitchen, snatched up his hat and stick, poured a glass of milk down his throat, put a couple of biscuits into his pocket, and re-issued, ready for his strange pursuit. He hurried up the lane to the first gate that offered itself, and passing: into the field continued the chase on the further side of the hedge.
The old man evidently found the hill something of an effort, for it was not long before Mr. Quincunx overtook them.
He passed them by unremarked, and continued his advance along the hedgerow till he reached the summit of the ridge between Wild Pine and Seven Ashes. Here, concealed behind a clump of larches, he awaited their approach. To his surprise, they entered one of the fields on the opposite side of the road, and began walking across it.
Mr. Quincunx watched them. In a corner of the field they were crossing lay a spacious hollow,—once the bed of a pond,—but now quite dry and overgrown with moss and clover.
Old Flick’s instinct led him to this spot, as one well adapted to the purpose he had in mind, both by reason of its absolute seclusion and by reason of its smooth turf-floor.
Mr. Quincunx waited, till their two figures vanished into this declivity, and then he himself crossed the field in their track.
Having reached the mossy level of the vanished pond,—a place which seemed as though Nature herself had designed it with a view to his present intention,—Old Flick assumed a less friendly air towards his captive. A psychologist interested in searching out the obscure workings of derelict and submerged souls, would have come to the speedy conclusion as he watched the old man’s cadaverous face that the spirit which at present animated his corpse-like body was one that had little commiseration or compunction in it.
The young Dolores had not, it seemed, to deal at this moment with an ordinary human scoundrel, but with a faded image of humanity galvanized into life by some conscienceless Larva.
In proportion as this unearthly obsession grew upon Old Flick, his natural countenance grew more and more dilapidated and withered. Innumerable years seemed suddenly added to the burden he already carried. The lines of his face assumed a hideous and Egyptian immobility; only his eyes, as he turned them upon his companion, were no longer colourless.
“Doll,” said he, “now thee must try thee’s steps, or ’twill be the worse for thee!”
The girl only answered by flinging herself down on her knees before him, and pouring forth unintelligible supplications.
“No more o’ this,” cried the old man; “no more o’ this! I’ve got to learn ’ee to dance,—and learn ’ee to dance I will. Ye’ll have to go on them boards come noon, whether ’ee will or no!”
The child only clasped her hands more tightly together, and renewed her pleading.
It would have needed the genius of some supreme painter, and of such a painter in an hour of sheer insanity, to have done justice to the extraordinary expression that crossed the countenance of Old Flick at that moment. The outlines of his face seemed to waver and decompose. None but an artist who had, like the insatiable Leonardo, followed the very dead into their forlorn dissolution, could have indicated the setting of his eyes; and his eyes themselves, madness alone could have depicted.
With a sudden vicious jerk the old man snatched the shawl from the girl’s shoulders, flung it on the ground, and seizing her by the wrists pulled her up upon her feet.
“Dance, ye baggage!” he cried hoarsely;—“dance, I tell ee!”
It was plain that the luckless waif understood clearly enough now what was required of her, and it was also plain that she recognized that the moment for supplication had gone by. She stepped back a pace or two upon the smooth turf, and slipping off her unlaced shoes,—shoes far too large for her small feet,—she passed the back of her hand quickly across her eyes, shook her hair away from her forehead, and began a slow, pathetic little dance.
“Higher!” cried Old Flick in an excited voice, beating the air with his hand and humming a strange snatch of a tune that might have inspired the dances of Polynesian cannibals. “Higher, I tell ’ee.”
The girl felt compelled to obey; and putting one hand on her hip and lifting up her skirt with the other, she proceeded, shyly and in forlorn silence, to dance an old Neapolitan folk-dance, such as might be witnessed, on any summer evening, by the shores of Amalfi or Sorrento.
It was at this moment that Mr. Quincunx made his appearance against the sky-line
above them. He looked for one brief second at the girl’s bare arms, waving curls, and light-swinging body, and then leapt down between them.
All nervousness, all timidity, seemed to have fallen away from him like a snake’s winter-skin under the spring sun. He seized the child’s hand with an air of indescribable gentleness and authority, and made so menacing and threatening a gesture that Old Flick, staggering backwards, nearly fell to the ground.
“Whose child is this?” he demanded sternly, soothing the frightened little dancer with one hand, while with the other he shook his cane in the direction of the gasping and protesting old man.
“Whose child is this? You’ve stolen her, you old rascal! You’re no Italian,—anyone can see that! You’re a damned old tramp, and if you weren’t so old and ugly I’d beat you to death; do you hear?—to death, you villain! Whose child is she? Can’t you speak? Take care; I’m badly tempted to make you taste this,—to make you skip and dance a little!
“What do you say? Job Love’s circus? Well,—he’s not an Italian either, is he? So if you haven’t stolen her, he has.”
He turned to the child, stooping over her with infinite tenderness, and folding the shawl of which she had again possessed herself, with hands as gentle as a mother’s, about her shoulders and head.
“Where are your parents, my darling?” he asked, adding with a flash of amazing presence of mind,—“your ‘padre’ and ‘madre’?”
The girl seemed to get the drift of the question, and with a pitiful little smile pointed earth-ward, and made a sweeping gesture with both her hands, as if to indicate the passing of death’s wings.
“Dead?—both dead, eh?” muttered Mr. Quincunx. “And these rascals who’ve got hold of you are villains and rogues? Damned rogues! Damned villains!”
He paused and muttered to himself. “What the devil’s the Italian for a god-forsaken rascal? —‘Cattivo!’ ‘Tutto cattivo!’—the whole lot of them a set of confounded scamps!”
The child nodded her head vigorously.
“You see,” he cried, turning to Old Flick, “she disowns you all. This is clearly a most knavish piece of work! What were you doing to the child? eh? eh? eh?” Mr. Quincunx accompanied these final syllables with renewed flourishes of his stick in the air.
Old Flick retreated still further away, his legs shaking under him. “Here,—you can clear out of this! Do you understand? You can clear out of this; and go back to your damned master, and tell him I’m going to send the police after him!
“As for this girl, I’m going to take her home with me. So off you go,—you old reprobate; and thankful you may be that I haven’t broken every bone in your body! I’ve a great mind to do it now. Upon my soul I’ve a great mind to do it!
“Shall I beat him into a jelly for you,—my darling? Shall I make him skip and dance for you?”
The child seemed to understand his gestures, if not his words; for she clung passionately to his hands, and pressing them to her lips, covered them with kisses; shaking her head at the same time, as much as to say, “Old Flick is nothing. Let Old Flick go to the devil, as long as I can stay with you!” In some such manner as this, at any rate, Mr. Quincunx interpreted her words.
“Sheer off, then, you old scoundrel! Shog off back to your confounded circus! And when you’ve got there, tell your friends,—Job Love and his gang,—that if they want this little one they’d better come and fetch her!
“Dead Man’s Lane,—that’s where I live. It’s easily enough found; and so is the police-station in Yeoborough,—as you and your damned kidnappers shall discover before you’ve done with me!”
Uttering these words in a voice so menacing that the old man shook like an aspen-leaf, Mr. Quincunx took the girl by the hand, and, ascending the grassy slope, walked off with her across the field.
Old Flick seemed reduced to a condition bordering upon imbecility. He staggered up out of that unpropitious hollow, and stood stock-still, like one petrified, until they were out of sight. Then, very slowly and mumbling incoherently to himself, he made his way back towards the village.
He did not even turn his head as he passed Mr. Quincunx’s cottage. Indeed, it is extremely doubtful how far he had recognized him as the person they encountered on their way, and still more doubtful how far he had heard or understood, when the tenant of Dead Man’s Lane indicated the place of his abode.
The sudden transformation of the timid recluse into a formidable man of action did not end with his triumphant retirement to his familiar domain. Some mysterious fibre in his complicated temperament had been struck, and continued to be struck, by the little Dolores, which not only rendered him indifferent to personal danger, but willing and happy to encounter it.
The event only added one more proof to the sage dictum of the Chinese philosopher,—that you can never tell of what a man is capable until he is stone-dead.
CHAPTER XXVI
VARIOUS ENCOUNTERS
DURING the hours when Mr. Quincunx was undergoing this strange experience, several other human brains under the roofs of Nevilton were feeling the pressure of extreme perturbation.
Gladys, after a gloomy breakfast, which was rendered more uncomfortable, not only by her father’s chaffing references to the approaching ceremony, but by a letter from Dangelis, had escaped to her room to be assisted by Lacrima in dressing for the confirmation.
In his letter the artist declared his intention of spending that night at the Gloucester Hotel in Weymouth, and begged his betrothed to forgive this delay in his return to her side.
This communication caused Gladys many tremors of disquietude. Could it be possible that the American had found out something and that he had gone to Weymouth to meditate at leisure upon his course of action?
In any case this intimation of a delay in his return irritated the girl. It struck her in her tenderest spot. It was a direct flouting of her magnetic power. It was an insult to her sex-vanity.
She had seen nothing of Luke since their Sunday’s excursion; and as Lacrima, with cold submissive fingers, helped her to arrange her white dress and virginal veil, she could hear the sound of the bell tolling for James Andersen’s funeral.
Mingled curiously enough with this melancholy vibration falling at protracted intervals upon the air, like the stroke of some reiterated hammer of doom, came another sound, a sound of a completely opposite character,—the preluding strains, namely, of the steam roundabouts of Porter’s Universal Show.
It was as though on one side of the village the angel of death were striking an iron-threatening gong, while, on the other side, the demons of life were howling a brazen defiance.
The association of the two sounds as they reached her at this critical hour brought the figure of Luke vividly and obsessingly into her mind. How well she knew the sort of comment he would make upon the bizarre combination! Beneath the muslin frills of her virginal dress,—a dress that made her look fairer and younger than usual,—her heart ached with sick longing for her evasive lover.
The wheel had indeed come full circle for the fair-haired girl. She could not help the thought recurring again and again, as Lacrima’s light fingers adjusted her veil, that the next time she dressed in this manner it would be for her wedding-day. Her one profound consolation lay in the knowledge that her cousin, eyen more deeply than herself, dreaded the approach of that fatal Thursday.
Her hatred for the pale-cheeked Italian re-accumulated every drop of its former venom, as with an air of affectionate gratitude she accepted her assistance.
It is a psychological peculiarity of certain human beings that the more they hate, the more they crave, with a curious perverted instinct, some sort of physical contact with the object of their hatred.
Every touch of Lacrima’s hand increased the intensity of Gladys’ loathing; and yet, so powerful is the instinct to which I refer, she lost no opportunity of accentuating the contact between them, letting their fingers meet again and again, and even their breath, and throwing back her rounded chin to ma
ke it easier for those hated wrists to busy themselves about her throat. Her general air was an air of playful passivity; but at one moment, imprinting a kiss on the girl’s arm as, in the process of arranging her veil, it brushed across her cheek, she seemed almost anxious to convey to Lacrima the full implication of her real feeling.
Never has a human caress been so electric with the vibrations of antipathy, as was that kiss. She followed up this signal of animosity by a series of feline taunts relative to John Goring, one of which, from its illuminated insight into the complex strata of the girl’s soul, delighted her by its effect.
Lacrima winced under it, as if under the sting of a lash, and a burning flood of scarlet suffused her cheeks. She dropped her hands and stepped back, uttering a fierce vow that nothing—nothing on earth—would induce her to accompany a girl who could say such things, to such a ceremony!
“No, I wouldn’t,—I wouldn’t!” cried Gladys mockingly. “I wouldn’t dream of coming with me! Tomorrow week, anyway, we’re bound to go to church side by side. Father wanted to drive with me then, you know, and to let mother go with you,—but I wouldn’t hear of it! I said they must go in one carriage, and you and I in another, so that our last drive together we should be quite by ourselves. You’ll like that, won’t you, darling?”
Lacrima’s only answer to this was to turn her back to her cousin, and begin putting on her hat and gloves.
“I know where you’re going,” said Gladys. “You’re going to see your dear Maurice. Give him my love! I should be ashamed to let such a wretched coward come near me.
“James—poor boy!—was a fellow of a different metal. He’d some spirit in him. Listen! When that bell stops tolling they’ll be carrying him into the church. I expect you’re thinking now, darling, that it would have been better” if you’d treated him differently. Of course you know it’s you that killed him? Oh, nobody else! Just little Lacrima and her coy, demure ways!
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