His nerves were in a morbid and unbalanced state, due partly to a lapse in his creative energy, and partly to the fact that in the depths of his mind he was engaged in a half-conscious struggle to suppress and keep in its proper place the insidious physical attraction which Gladys had already begun to exert upon him.
But the destiny of poor Dangelis, this inauspicious morning, was, it seemed, to become a bore and a pedant to everyone he encountered; for the lady had hardly listened for two minutes to his discourse when she also left him, with some suitable apology, and went off to perform more practical household duties. “What did this worthy Quincunx talk about, that you used to find so tiresome?” the artist flung after her, as she left the room.
Mrs. Romer turned on the threshold. “He talked of nothing but the bible,” she said. “The bible and our blessed Lord. You can’t blame me, Mr. Dangelis, for objecting to that sort of thing, can you? I call it blasphemy, nothing short of blasphemy!”
Dangelis wondered, as he strolled out again into the air, intending to seek solace for his irritable nerves in a solitary walk, whether, if it were blasphemy in Nevilton House to refer to the Redeemer of men, and a nuisance and a bore to refer to heathen idolatries, what kind of topic it might be that the place’s mental atmosphere demanded.
He came to the conclusion, as he proceeded down the west drive, that the Romer family was more stimulating to watch, than edifying to converse with.
After tea that evening, as Lacrima had hoped, Gladys announced her intention of going down to the mill to sketch. This — to Lacrima’s initiated ears — meant an assignation with Luke, and she glanced quickly at Dangelis, with a shy smile, to indicate that their projected visit was possible. As soon as her cousin had departed they set out. Their expedition seemed likely to prove a complete success. They found Mr. Quincunx in one of his gayest moods. Had he been expecting the appearance of the American he would probably have worked himself up into a miserable state of nervous apprehension; but the introduction thus suddenly thrust upon him, the genial simplicity of the Westerner’s manners and his honest openness of speech disarmed him completely. In a mood of this kind the recluse became a charming companion.
Dangelis was immensely delighted with him. His original remarks, and the quaint chuckling bursts of sardonic laughter which accompanied his irresistible sallies, struck the artist as something completely different from what he had expected. He had looked to see a listless preoccupied mystic, ready to flood him with dreamy and wearisome monologues upon “the simple life,” and in place of this he found an entertaining and gracious gentleman, full of delicious malice, and uttering quip after quip of sly, half-innocent, half-subtle, Rabelaisean humour, in the most natural manner in the world.
Not quite able to bring his affability to the point of inviting them into his kitchen, Mr. Quincunx carried out, into a sheltered corner, three rickety chairs and a small deal table. Here, protected from the gusty wind, he offered them cups of exquisitely prepared cocoa and little oatmeal biscuits. He asked the American question after question about his life in the remote continent, putting into his enquiries such naive and childlike eagerness, that Dangelis congratulated himself upon having at last discovered an Englishman who was not superior to the charming vice of curiosity. Had the artist possessed less of that large and careless aplomb which makes the utmost of every situation and never teases itself with criticism, he might have regarded the recluse’s effusiveness as too deprecatory and propitiatory in its tone. This, however, never occurred to him and he swallowed the solitary’s flattery with joy and gratitude, especially as it followed so quickly upon the conversational deficiencies of Nevilton House.
“I live in the mud here,” said Mr. Quincunx, “and that makes it so excellent of you two people from the upper world to slip down into the mud with me.”
“I think you live very happily and very sensibly, Maurice!” cried Lacrima, looking with tender affection upon her friend. “I wish we could all live as you do.”
The recluse waved his hand. “There must be lions and antelopes in the world,” he said, “as well as frogs and toads. I expect this friend of yours, who has seen the great cities, is at this moment wishing he were in a café in New York or Paris, rather than sitting on a shaky chair drinking my bad cocoa.”
“That’s not very complimentary to me, is it, Mr. Dangelis?” said Lacrima.
“Mr. Quincunx is much to be envied,” remarked the American. “He is living the sort of life that every man of sense would wish to live. It’s outrageous, the way we let ourselves become slave to objects and circumstances and people.”
Lacrima, anxious in the depths of her heart to give the American the benefit of Mr. Quincunx’s insight into character, turned the conversation in the direction of the rumored political contest between Romer and Wone. She was not quite pleased with the result of this manœuvre, however, as it at once diminished the solitary’s high spirits and led to his adoption of the familiar querulous tone of peevish carping.
Mr. Quincunx spoke of his remoteness from the life around him. He referred with bitter sarcasm to the obsequious worship of power from which every inhabitant of the village of Nevilton suffered.
“I laugh,” he said, “when our good socialist Wone gives vent to his eloquent protestations. Really, in his heart, he is liable to just the same cringing to power as all the rest. Let Romer make overtures to him, — only he despises him too much to do that, — and you’d soon see how quickly he’d swing round! Give him a position of power, Dangelis — I expect you know from your experience in your own country how this works out, — and you would soon find him just as tyrannical, just as obdurate.”
“I think you’re quite wrong, Maurice,” cried Lacrima impetuously. “Mr. Wone is not an educated man as you are, but he’s entirely sincere. You’ve only to listen to him to understand his sincerity.”
A grievous shadow of irritation and pique crossed the recluse’s face. Nothing annoyed him more than this kind of direct opposition. He waved the objection aside. Lacrima’s outburst of honest feeling had already undone the subtle purpose with which she had brought the American. Her evasive Balaam was, it appeared, inclined, out of pure wilfulness, to bless rather than curse their grand enemy.
“It’s all injured vanity,” Mr. Quincunx went on, throwing at his luckless girl-friend a look of quite disproportioned anger. “Its all his outraged power-instinct that drives him to take up this pose. I know what I’m talking about, for I often argue with him. Whenever I dispute the smallest point of his theories, he bursts out like a demon and despises me as a downright fool. He’d have got me turned out of the Social Meetings, because I contradicted him there, if our worthy clergyman hadn’t intervened. You’ve no idea how deep this power-instinct goes. You must remember, Mr. Dangelis, you see a village like ours entirely from the outside and you think it beautiful, and the people charming and gentle. I tell you it’s a nest of rattlesnakes! It’s a narrow, poisonous cage, full of deadly vindictiveness and concentrated malice. Of course we know what human nature is, wherever you find it, but if you want to find it at its very worst, come to Nevilton!”
“But you yourself,” protested the artist, “are you not one of these same people? I understand that you—”
Mr. Quincunx rose to his feet, his expressive nostrils quivering with anger. “I don’t allow anyone to say that of me!” he cried, “I may have my faults, but I’m as different from all these rats as a guillemot is different from a cormorant!”