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 conclusion would have been inevitable. Nor would such a conclusion have been incorrect.