“I believe it’s because you love that fellow Andersen!” cried the excited youth, leaping to his feet in his agitation.
In making this movement, the figure of the stone-carver, silhouetted with terrible distinctness against the sky-line, became visible to him. Instinctively he uttered a cry of surprise and anger.
“What do you want here? You’ve been listening! You’ve been spying on us! Get away, can’t you! Get back to your pretty young lady—her that’s going to marry John Goring for the sake of his money! Clear out of this, do you hear? Ninsy’s sick of you and your ways. Clear off! or I’ll make you—eavesdropper!”
By this time Ninsy had also risen, and stood facing the figure above them. Every vestige of colour had left her cheeks, and her hand was pressed against her side. Andersen made a curious incoherent sound and took a step towards them.
“Get away, can’t you!” reiterated the furious youth. “You’ve caused enough trouble here already. Look at her,—can’t you see how ill she is? Get back—damn you!—unless you want to kill her.”
Ninsy certainly looked as though in another moment she were going to fall. She made a piteous little gesture, as if to ward off from Andersen the boy’s savage words, but Philip caught her passionately round the waist.
“Get away!” he cried once more. She belongs to me now. You might have had her, you coward—you turncoat!—but you let her go for your newer prey. Oh, you’re a fine gentleman, James Andersen, a fine faithful gentleman! You don’t hold with strikes. You don’t hold with workmen rising against masters. You hold with keeping in with those that are in power. Clear off—eavesdropper! Get back to Mistress John Goring and your nice brother! He’s as pretty a gentleman as you are, with his dear Miss Gladys!”
Ninsy’s feet staggered beneath her and she began to hang limp upon his arm. She opened her mouth to speak, but could only gasp helplessly. Her wideopen eyes—staring from her pallid face—never left Andersen for a moment. Of Philip she seemed absolutely unconscious. The stone-carver made another step down the hill. His eyes, too, were fixed intently on the girl, and of his rival’s angry speeches he seemed utterly oblivious.
“Get away!” the boy reiterated, beside himself with fury, supporting the drooping form of his companion as if its weight were nothing. “We’ve had enough of your shilly-shallying and trickery! We’ve had enough of your fine manners! A damned cowardly spy—that’s what I call you, you well-behaved gentleman! Get back—can’t you!”
The drooping girl uttered some incoherent words and made a helpless gesture with her hand. Andersen seemed to read her meaning in her eyes, for he paused abruptly in his approach and stretched out his arms.
“Good-bye, Ninsy!” he murmured in a low voice. He said no more, and turning on his heel, scrambled swiftly back over the crest of the ridge and disappeared from view.
Philip flung a parting taunt after him, and then, lifting the girl bodily off her feet, staggered down the slope to the cottage, holding her in his arms.
Meanwhile James Andersen walked swiftly across the stubble-field in the direction of Leo’s Hill. At the pace he moved it only took him some brief minutes to reach the long stone wall that separates, in this quarter, the quarried levels of the promontory from the high arable lands which abut upon it.
He climbed over this barrier and strode blindly and recklessly forward among the slippery grassy paths that crossed one another along the edges of the deeper pits.
The stone-carver was approaching, though quite unconsciously, the scene of a very remarkable drama. Some fifteen minutes before his approach, the two girls from Nevilton House had reached the precipitous edge of what was known in that locality as Cæsar’s Quarry. Cæsar’s Quarry was a large disused pit, deeper and more extensive than most of the old excavations on the Hill, and surrounded, on all but one side, by blank precipitous walls of weatherstained sandstone. These walls of smooth stone remained always dark and damp, whatever the temperature might be of the air above them; and the floor of the Quarry was composed of a soft verdant carpet of cool moist moss, interspersed by stray heaps of discoloured rubble, on which flourished, at this particular season of the year, masses of that sombre-foliaged weed known as wormwood.
On the northern side of Cæsar’s Quarry rose a high narrow ridge of rock, divided, at uneven spaces, by deeply cut fissures or chasms, some broad and some narrow, but all overgrown to the very edge by short slippery grass. This ridge, known locally as Claudy’s Leap, was a favourite venture-place of the more daring among the children of the neighbourhood, who would challenge one another to feats of courage and agility, along its perilous edge.
On the side of Claudy’s Leap, opposite from Cæsar’s Quarry, was a second pit, of even deeper descent than the other, but of much smaller expanse. This second quarry, also disused for several generations, remained so far nameless, destiny having, it might seem, withheld the baptismal honour, until the place had earned a right to it by becoming the scene of some tragic, or otherwise noteworthy, event.
Gladys and Lacrima approached Cæsar’s Quarry from the western side, from whose slope a little winding path—the only entrance or exit attainable—led down into its shadowy depths. The Italian glanced with a certain degree of apprehension into the gulf beneath her, but Gladys seemed to take the thing so much for granted, and appeared so perfectly at her ease, that she was ashamed to confess her tremors. The elder girl, indeed, continued chatting cheerfully to her companion about indifferent matters, and as she clambered down the little path in front of her, she turned once or twice, in her fluent discourse, to make sure that Lacrima was following. The two cousins stood for awhile in silence, side by side, when they reached the bottom.
“How nice and cool it is!” cried Gladys, after a pause. “I was getting scorched up there! Let’s sit down a little, shall we,—before we start back? I love these old quarries.”
They sat down, accordingly, upon a heap of stones, and Gladys serenely continued her chatter, glancing up, however, now and again, to the frowning ridges of the precipices above them.
They had not waited long in this way, when the quarry-owner’s daughter gave a perceptible start, and raised her hand quickly to her lips.
Her observant eye had caught sight of the figure of Mr. John Goring peering down upon them from the opposite ridge. Had Lacrima observed this movement and lifted her eyes too, she would have received a most invaluable warning, but the Powers whoever they may have been, who governed the sequence of events upon Leo’s Hill, impelled her to keep her head lowered, and her interest concentrated upon a tuft of curiously feathered moss. Gladys remained motionless for several moments, while the figure on the opposite side vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. Then she slowly rose.
“Oh, how silly I am,” she cried; “I’ve dropped that bunch of marjoram. Stop a minute, dear. Don’t move! I’ll just run up and get it. It was in the path. I know exactly where!”
“I’ll come with you if you like,” said Lacrima listlessly, “then you won’t have to come back. Or why not leave it for a moment?”
“It’s on the path, I tell you!” cried her cousin, already some way up the slope; “I’m scared of someone taking it. Marjoram isn’t common about here. Oh no! Stay where you are. I’ll be back in a second.”
The Italian relapsed into her former dreamy unconcern. She listlessly began stripping the leaves from a spray of wormwood which grew by her side. The place where she sat was in deep shadow, though upon the summit of the opposite ridge the sun lay hot. Her thoughts hovered about her friend in Dead Man’s Lane. She had vaguely hoped to get a glimpse of him this afternoon, but the absence of Dangelis had interfered with this.
She began building fantastic castles in the air, trying to call up the image of a rejuvenated Mr. Quincunx, freed from all cares and worries, living the placid epicurean life his heart craved. Would he, she wondered, recognize then, what her sacrifice meant? Or would he remain still obsessed by this or the other cynical fantasy, as far from the real truth
of things as a madman’s dream? She smiled gently to herself as she thought of her friend’s peculiarities. Her love for him, as she felt it now, across a quivering gulf of misty space, was a thing as humorously tolerant and tender as it might have been had they been man and wife of many years’ standing. In these things Lacrima’s Latin blood gave her a certain maturity of feeling, and emphasized the maternal element in her attachment.
She contemplated dreamily the smooth bare walls of the cavernous arena in which she sat. Their coolness and dampness was not unpleasant after the heat of the upper air, but there was something sepulchral about them, something that gave the girl the queer impression of a colossal tomb—a tomb whose scattered bones might even now be lying, washed by centuries of rain, under the rank weeds of these heaps of rubble.
She heard the sound of someone descending the path behind her but, taking for granted that it was her cousin, she did not turn her head. It was only when the steps were quite close that she recognized that they were too heavy to be those of a girl.
Then she leapt to her feet, and swung round,—to find herself confronted by the sturdy figure of Mr. John Goring. She gave a wild cry of panic and fled blindly across the smooth floor of the great quarry. Mr. Goring followed her at his leisure.
The girl’s terror was so great, that, hardly conscious of what she did, she ran desperately towards the remotest corner of the excavation, where some ancient blasting-process had torn a narrow crevice out of the solid rock. This direction of her flight made the farmer’s pursuit of her a fatally easy undertaking, for the great smooth walls closed in, at a sharp angle, at that point, and the crevice, where the two walls met, only sank a few feet into the rock.
Mr. Goring, observing the complete hopelessness of the girl’s mad attempt to escape him, proceeded to advance towards her as calmly and leisurely as if she had been some hare or rabbit he had just shot. The fact that Lacrima had chosen this particular cul-de-sac, on the eastern side of the quarry, was a most felicitous accident for Gladys, for it enabled her to watch the event with as much ease as if she had been a Drusilla or a Livia, seated in the Roman amphitheatre. The fair-haired girl crept to the extreme brink of the steep descent and there, lying prone on the thyme-scented grass, her chin propped upon her hands, she followed with absorbed interest the farmer’s movements as he approached his recalcitrant fiancée.
The terrified girl soon found out the treachery of the panic-instinct which had led her into this trap. Had she remained in the open, it is quite possible that by a little manœuvring she could have escaped; but now her only exit was blocked by her advancing pursuer.
Turning to face him, and leaning back against the massive wall of stone, she stretched out her arms on either side of her, seizing convulsively in her fingers some tufts of knot-grass which grew on the surface of the rock. Here, with panting bosom and pallid cheeks, she awaited his approach. Her tense figure and terror-stricken gaze only needed the imprisoning fetters to have made of her an exact modern image of the unfortunate Andromeda. She neither moved nor uttered the least cry, as Mr. Goring drew near her.
At that moment a wild and unearthly shout reverberated through the quarry. The sound of it—caught up by repeated echoes—went rolling away across Leo’s Hill, frightening the sheep and startling the cider-drinkers in the lonely inn. Gladys leapt to her feet, ran round to where the path descended, and began hastily scrambling down. Mr. Goring retreated hurriedly into the centre of the arena, and with his hand shading his eyes gazed up at the intruder.
It was no light-footed Perseus, who on behalf of this forlorn child of classic shores, appeared as if from the sky. It was, indeed, only the excited figure of James Andersen that Mr. Goring’s gaze, and Lacrima’s bewildered glance, encountered simultaneously. The stone-carver seemed to be possessed by a legion of devils. His first thundering shout was followed by several others, each more terrifying than the last, and Gladys, rushing past the astonished farmer, seized Lacrima by the arm.
“Come!” she cried. “Uncle was a brute to frighten you. But, for heaven’s sake, let’s get out of this, before that madman collects a crowd! They’ll all be down here from the inn in another moment. Quick, dear, quick! Our only chance is to get away now.”
Lacrima permitted her cousin to hurry her across the quarry and up the path. As they neared the summit of the slope the Italian turned and looked back. Mr. Goring was still standing where they had left him, gazing with petrified interest at the wild gestures of the man above him.
Andersen seemed beside himself. He kept frantically waving his arms, and seemed engaged in some incoherent defiance of the invisible Powers of the air. Lacrima, as she looked at him, became convinced that he was out of his mind. She could not even be quite clear if he recognized her. She was certain that it was not against her assailant that his wild cries and defiances-were hurled. It did not appear that he was even aware of the presence of the farmer. Whether or not he had seen her and known her when he uttered his first cry, she could not tell. It was certainly against no earthly enemies that the man was struggling now.
Vennie Seldom might have hazarded the superstitious suggestion that his fit was not madness at all but a sudden illumination, vouchsafed to his long silence, of the real conditions of the airy warfare that is being constantly waged around us. At that moment, Vennie might have said, James Andersen was the only perfectly sane person among them, for to his eyes alone, the real nature of that heathen place and its dark hosts was laid manifestly bare. The man, according to this strange view, was wrestling to the death, in his supreme hour, against the Forces that had not only darkened his own days and those of Lacrima, but had made the end of his mother’s life so tragic and miserable.
Gladys dragged Lacrima away as soon as they reached the top of the ascent but the Pariah had time to mark the last desperate gesture of her deliverer before he vanished from her sight over the ridge.
Mr. Goring overtook them before they had gone far, and walked on with them, talking to Gladys about Andersen’s evident insanity.
“It’s no good my trying to do anything,” he remarked. “But I’ll send Bert round for Luke as soon as I get home. Luke’ll bring him to his senses. They say he’s been taken like this before, and has come round. He hears voices, you know, and fancies things.”
They walked in silence along the high upland road that leads from the principal quarries of the Hill to the Wild Pine hamlet and Nevil’s Gully. When they reached the latter place, the two girls went on, down Root-Thatch Lane, and Mr, Goring took the fieldpath to the Priory.
Before they separated, the farmer turned to his future bride, who had been careful to keep Gladys between herself and him, and addressed her in the most gentle voice he knew how to assume.
“Don’t be angry with me, lass,” he said. “I was only teasing, just now. ’Twas a poor jest maybe, and ye’ve cause to look glowering. But when we two be man and wife ye’ll find I’m a sight better to live with than many a fair-spoken one. These be queer times, and like enough I seem a queer fellow, but things’ll settle themselves. You take my word for it!”
Lacrima could only murmur a faint assent in reply to these words, but as she entered with Gladys the shadow of the tunnel-like lane, she could not help thinking that her repulsion to this man, dreadful though it was, was nothing in comparison with the fear and loathing with which she regarded Mr. Romer. Contrasted with his sinister relative, Mr. John Goring was, after all, no more than a rough simpleton.
Meanwhile, on Leo’s Hill, an event of tragic significance had occurred. It will be remembered that the last Lacrima had seen of James Andersen was the wild final gesticulation he made,—a sort of mad appeal to the Heavens against the assault of invisible enemies,—before he vanished from sight on the further side of Claudy’s Leap. This vanishing just, at that point, meant no more to Lacrima than that he had probably taken a lower path, but had Gladys or Mr. Goring witnessed it,—or any other person who knew the topography of the place,—a much more startling conclus
ion would have been inevitable. Nor would such a conclusion have been incorrect.
The unfortunate man, forgetting, in his excitement, the existence of the other quarry, the nameless one; forgetting in fact that Claudy’s Leap was a razor’s edge between two precipices, had stepped heedlessly backwards, after his final appeal to Heaven, and fallen, without a cry, straight into the gulf.
The height of his fall would, in any case, have probably killed him, but as it was “he dashed his head,” in the language of the Bible, “against a stone”; and in less than a second after his last cry, his soul, to use the expression of a more pagan scripture, “was driven, murmuring, into the Shades.”
It fell to the lot, therefore, not of Luke, who did not return from Weymouth till late that evening, but of a motley band of holiday-makers from the hill-top Inn, to discover the madman’s fate. Arriving at the spot almost immediately after the girls’ departure, these honest revellers—strangers to the locality—had quickly found the explanation of the unearthly cries they had heard.
The eve of the baptism of Mr. Romer’s daughter was celebrated, therefore, by the baptism of the nameless quarry. Henceforth, in the neighbourhood of Nevilton, the place was never known by any other appellation than that of “Jimmy’s Drop”; and by that name any future visitors, curious to observe the site of so singular an occurrence, will have to enquire for it, as they drink their pint of cider in the Half-Moon Tavern.
CHAPTER XXII
A ROYAL WATERING-PLACE
LUKE ANDERSEN’S trip to Weymouth proved most charming and eventful. He had scarcely-emerged from the crowded station, with its row of antique omnibuses and its lethargic phalanx of expectant out-porters and bath-chair men,—each one of whom was a crusted epitome of ingrained quaintness,—when he caught sight of Phyllis Santon and Annie Bristow strolling laughingly towards the sea-front. They must have walked to Yeoborough and entered the train there, for he had seen nothing of them at Nevilton Station.
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