She walked away from him and passed out into the lane. He stood watching her with a queer haggard look on his face, his sorrowful grey eyes staring in front of him, as if in the presence of an apparition. Then, very slowly, he resumed his work, leaving however the fallen cabbage-leaf unnoticed on the ground.
The weeds in the wheel-barrow, the straight banked-up lines of potatoes and lettuces, wore, as he returned to them, that curious air of forlorn desertion which is one of nature’s bitterest commentaries upon the folly of such scenes.
A sickening sense of emptiness took possession of him, and in a moment or two became unendurable. He flung a handful of weeds to the ground and ran impetuously to the gate and out into the lane. It was too late. A group of farm-labourers laughing and shouting, and driving before them a herd of black pigs, blocked up the road. He could not bring himself to pass them, thus hatless and in his shirt-sleeves. Besides, they must have seen the girl, and they would know he was pursuing her.
He returned slowly up the path to his house, and — to avoid being seen by the men — entered his kitchen, and sat gloomily down upon a chair. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked with contemptuous unconcern. The room had that smell of mortuary dust which rooms in small houses often acquire in the summer. He sat down once more on a chair, his hands upon his knees, and stared vacantly in front of him. A thrush outside the window was cracking a snail upon a stone. When the shouts of the men died away, this was the only sound that came to him, except the continual “tick — tick — tick — tick” of the clock, which seemed to be occupied in driving nails into the heavy coffin-lid of every mortal joy that time had ever brought forth.
That same night in Nevilton House was a night of wretched hours for Lacrima, but of hours of a wretchedness more active than that which made the hermit of Dead Man’s Cottage pull the clothes over his head and turn his face to the wall, long ere the twilight had vanished from his garden.
On leaving her friend thus abruptly, her heart full of angry revolt, Lacrima had seen the crowd of men and animals approaching, and to escape them had scrambled into a field on the border of the road. Following a little path which led across it, and crossing two more meadows, she flung herself down under the shadow of some great elms, in a sort of grassy hollow beneath an over-grown hedge, and gave full vent to her grief. The hollow in which she hid herself was a secluded and lonely spot, and no sound reached her but the monotonous summer-murmur of the flies and the rustle of the wind-troubled branches. Lying thus, prone on her face, her broad-brimmed hat with its poppy-trimmings thrown down at her side, and her limbs trembling with the violence of her sobs, Lacrima seemed to insert into that alien landscape an element of passionate feeling quite foreign to its sluggish fertility. Not alien to the spot, however, was another human form, that at the same hour had been led to wander among those lush meadows.
The field behind the high bank and thick-set hedge which overshadowed the unhappy girl, was a large and spacious one, “put up,” as country people say, “for hay,” but as yet untouched by the mowers’ machines. Here, in the heat of the noon, walked the acquisitive Mr. John Goring, calculating the value of this crop of grass, and deciding upon the appropriate date of its cutting.
What curious irony is it, in the blind march of events, which so frequently draws to the place of our exclusive sorrow the one particular spectator that we would most avoid? One talks lightly of coincidence and of chance; but who that has walked through life observingly has not been driven to pause with sad questioning before accidents and occurrences that seem as though some conscious malignity in things had arranged them? Are there, perhaps, actual telepathic vibrations at work about us, drawing the hunter to his prey — the prey to the hunter? Is the innocent object of persecution, hiding from its persecutors, compelled by a fatal psychic law — the law of its own terror — to call subconsciously upon the very power it is fleeing from; to betray, against its will, the path of its own retreat? Lacrima in any case, as she lay thus prostrate, her poppy-trimmed hat beside her, and her brown curls flecked with spots of sun and shadow, brought into that English landscape a strangely remote touch, — a touch of tragic and passionate colour. A sweet bruised exile, she seemed, from another region, flung down, among all this umbrageous rankness, to droop like a transplanted flower. Certainly the sinister magic, whatever it was, that had drawn Mr. Goring in that fatal direction, was a magic compounded of the attraction of contrary elements.
If Mr. Romer represented the occult power of the sandstone hill, his brother-in-law was the very epitome and culmination of the valley’s inert clay. The man breathed clay, looked clay, smelt clay, understood clay, exploited clay, and in a literal sense was clay.
If there is any truth in the scientific formula about the “survival” of those most “adapted” to their “environment,” Mr. Goring was sure of a prolonged and triumphant sojourn on this mortal globe. For his “environment” was certainly one of clay — and to clay he certainly was most prosperously “adapted.”
It was not long before the tragic sobs of the unhappy Lacrima, borne across the field on the east-wind, arrested the farmer’s attention. He stood still, and listened, snuffing the air, like a great jungle-boar. Then with rapid but furtive steps he crossed over to where the sound proceeded, and slipping down cautiously through a gap in the hedge, made his way towards the secluded hollow, breathing heavily like an animal on a trail.
Her fit of crying having subsided, Lacrima turned round on her back, and remained motionless, gazing up at the blue sky. Extended thus on the ruffled grass, her little fingers nervously plucking at its roots and her breast still heaving, the young girl offered a pitiful enough picture to any casual intruder. Slight and fragile though she was, the softness and charm of her figure witnessed to her Latin origin. With her dusky curls and olive complexion, she might, but for her English dress, have been taken for a strayed gipsy, recovering from some passionate quarrel with her Romany lover.
“What’s the matter, Miss Lacrima?” was the farmer’s greeting as his gross form obtruded itself against the sky-line.
The girl started violently, and scrambled rapidly to her feet. Mr. Goring stepped awkwardly down the grassy slope and held out his hand.
“Good morning,” he said without removing his hat. “I should have thought ’twas time for you to be up at the House. ’Tis past a quarter of one.”
“I was just resting,” stammered the girl. “I hope I have not hurt your grass.” She looked apprehensively down at the pathetic imprint on the ground.
“No, no! Missie,” said the man. “That’s nothing. ’Tis hard to cut, in a place like this. Maybe they’ll let it alone. Besides, this field ain’t for hay. The cows will be in here tomorrow.”
Lacrima looked at the watch on her wrist.
“Yes, you are right,” she said. “I am late. I must be running back. Your brother does not like our being out when he comes in to lunch.” She picked up her hat and made as if she would pass him. But he barred her way.
“Not so quick, lassie, not so quick,” he said. “Those that come into farmers’ fields must not be too proud to pass the time of day with the farmer.”
As he spoke he permitted his little voracious pig’s eyes to devour her with an amorous leer. All manner of curious thoughts passed through his head. It was only yesterday that his brother-in-law had been talking to him of this girl. Certainly it would be extremely satisfactory to be the complete master of that supple, shrinking figure, and of that frightened little bosom, that rose and fell now, like the heart of a panting hare.