“One of these days,” he said, looking with a kindly smile into the girl’s frightened eyes, “I’m going to ask you, Miss Traffio, to take me to see your friend Mr. Quincunx.”
Lacrima started violently. This was the last name she expected to hear mentioned on the Nevilton terrace.
“I–I—” she stammered, “I should be very glad to take you. I didn’t know they had told you about him.”
“Oh, they only told me — you can guess the kind of thing! — that he’s a queer fellow who lives by himself in a cottage in Dead Man’s Lane, and does nothing but dig in his garden and talk to old women over the wall. He’s evidently one of these odd out-of-the-way characters, that your English — Oh, I beg your pardon! — your European villages produce. Mr. Clavering told me he is the only man in the place he never goes to see. Apparently he once insulted the good vicar.”
“He didn’t insult him!” cried Lacrima with flashing eyes. “He only asked him not to walk on his potatoes. Mr. Clavering is too touchy.”
“Well — anyway, do take me, sometime, to see this interesting person. Why shouldn’t we go this afternoon? This wind seems to have driven all the ideas out of my head, as well as made your cousin extremely bad-tempered! So do take me to see your friend, Miss Traffio! We might go now — this moment — why not?”
Lacrima shook her head, but she looked grateful and not displeased. As a matter of fact she was particularly anxious to introduce the American to Mr. Quincunx. In that vague subtle way which is a peculiarity, not only of the Pariah-type, but of human nature in general, she was anxious that Dangelis should be given at least a passing glimpse of another view of the Romer family.
It was not that she was definitely plotting against her cousin or trying to undermine her position with her artist-friend, but she felt a natural human desire that this sympathetic and good-tempered man should be put, to some extent at least, upon his guard.
She was, at any rate, not at all unwilling to initiate him into the mysteries of Mr. Quincunx’ mind, hoping, perhaps, in an obscure sort of way, that such an initiation would throw her own position, in this strange household, into a light more evocative of considerate interest.
She had been so often made conscious of late that in his absorption in Gladys he had swept her brusquely aside as a dull and tiresome spoil-sport, that it was not without a certain feminine eagerness that she embraced the thought of his being compelled to listen to what she well knew Mr. Quincunx would have to say upon the matter.
It was also an agreeable thought that in doing justice to the originality and depth of the recluse’s intelligence, the American would be driven to recognize the essentially unintellectual tone of conversation at Nevilton House.
She instinctively felt sure that the same generous and comprehensive sympathy that led him to condone the vulgar lapses of these “new people,” would lead him to embrace with more than toleration the eccentricities and aberration of the forlorn relative of the Lords of Glastonbury.
With these thoughts passing rapidly through her brain, Lacrima found herself, after a little further hesitation, agreeing demurely to the American’s proposal to visit the tenant of Dead Man’s Lane before the end of the day. She left it uncertain at what precise hour they should go — probably between tea and dinner — because she was anxious, for her own sake, dreading her cousin’s anger, to make the adventure synchronize, if possible, with the latter’s assignation with Luke, trusting that the good turn she thus did her, by removing her artistic admirer at a critical juncture, would propitiate the fair-haired tyrant’s wrath.
This matter having been satisfactorily settled, the Italian began to feel, as she observed the artist’s bold and challenging glance embracing her from head to foot, while he continued to this new and more attentive listener his interrupted monologue, that species of shy and nervous restraint which invariably embarrassed her when left alone in his society.
Inexperienced at detecting the difference between aesthetic interest and emotional interest, and associating the latter with nothing but what was brutal and gross, Lacrima experienced a disconcerting sort of shame when under the scrutiny of his eyes.
Her timid comments upon his observations showed, however, so much more subtle insight into his meaning than Gladys had ever displayed, that it was with a genuine sense of regret that he accepted at last some trifling excuse she offered and let her wander away. Feeling restless and in need of distraction he returned to the house and sought the society of Mrs. Romer.
He discovered this good lady seated in the housekeeper’s room, perusing an illustrated paper and commenting upon its contents to the portly Mrs. Murphy. The latter discreetly withdrew on the appearance of the guest of the house, and Dangelis entered into conversation with his hostess.
“Maurice Quincunx!” she cried, as soon as her visitor mentioned the recluse’s queer name, “you don’t mean to say that Lacrima’s going to take you to see him? Well — of all the nonsensical ideas I ever heard! You’d better not tell Mortimer where you’re going. He’s just now very angry with Maurice. It won’t please him at all, her taking you there. Maurice is related to me, you know, not to Mr. Romer. Mr. Romer has never liked him, and lately — but there! I needn’t go into all that. We used to see quite a lot of him in the old days, when we first came to Nevilton. I like to have someone about, you know, and Maurice was somebody to talk to, when Mr. Romer was away; but lately things have been quite different. It is all very sad and very tiresome, you know, but what can a person do?”
This was the nearest approach to a hint of divergence between the master and mistress of Nevilton that Dangelis had ever been witness to, and even this may have been misleading, for the shrewd little eyes, out of which the lady peered at him, over her spectacles, were more expressive of mild malignity than of moral indignation.
“But what kind of person is this Mr. Quincunx?” enquired the American. “I confess I can’t, so far, get any clear vision of his personality. Won’t you tell me something more definite about him, something that will ‘give me a line on him,’ as we say in the States?”
Mrs. Romer looked a trifle bewildered. It seemed that the personality of Mr. Quincunx was not a topic that excited her conversational powers.
“I never really cared for him,” she finally remarked. “He used to talk so unnaturally. He’d come over here, you know, almost every day — when Gladys was a little girl, — and talk and talk and talk. I used to think sometimes he wasn’t quite right here,”—the good lady tapped her forehead with her fore-finger, — “but in some things he was very sensible. I don’t mean that he spoke loud or shouted or was noisy. Sometimes he didn’t say very much; but even when he didn’t speak, his listening was like talking. Gladys used to be quite fond of him when she was a little girl. He used to play hide-and-seek with her in the garden. I think he helped me to keep her out of mischief more than any of her governesses did. Once, you know, he beat Tom Raggles — the miller’s son — because he followed her across the park — beat him over the head, they say, with an iron pick. The lying wretch of a lad swore that she had encouraged him, and we were driven to hush the matter up, but I believe Mr. Quincunx had to see the inspector in Yeoborough.”
Beyond this somewhat obscure incident, Dangelis found it impossible to draw from Mrs. Romer any intelligible answer to his questions. The figure of the evasive tenant of the cottage in Dead Man’s Lane remained as misty as ever.
A little irritated by the ill success of his psychological investigations, the artist, conscious that he was wasting the morning, began, out of sheer capricious wilfulness, to expound his æsthetic ideas to this third interlocutor.