“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.