“’Twas to speak a bit of my mind to ’ee, not to beg at your blarsted back door that I did come this fine morning! Us that do travel by night and by day hears precious strange things sometimes. What for, my fine lady, did ye go and swear to policeman Frank, down in Nevilton, that ’twas I took your God-darned pigeons? Your dad may be a swinking magistrate, what can send poor folks to gaol for snaring rabbities, or putting a partridge in the pot to make the cabbage tasty, but what right does that give a hussy like thee to send policeman Frank swearing he’ll lock up old Bessie? It don’t suit wi’ I, this kind of flummery; so I do tell ’ee plain and straight. It don’t suit wi’ I!”
“Come, clear out of this, my good woman!” cried the indignant clergyman, seizing the trembling old creature by the arm.
“Don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt her!” exclaimed Gladys. “She’ll put the evil eye on me. She did it to Nance Purvis and she’s been mad ever since.”
“It’s a lie!” whimpered the old woman, struggling feebly as Clavering pulled her towards the door.
“It’s your own dad and Nance’s dad with their ugly ways what have driven that poor lass moon-crazy. Mark Purvis do whip her with withy sticks — all the country knows it. Darn ’ee, for a black devil’s spawn, and no blessed minister, pulling and harrying an old woman!”
This last ejaculation was addressed to the furious Mr. Clavering, who was now thrusting her by bodily force through the open door. With one final effort Witch-Bessie broke loose from him and turned on the threshold. “Ye shall have the evil eye, since ye’ve called for it,” she shrieked, making a wild gesture in the air, in the direction of the shrinking Ariadne. “And what if I let these two gentlemen know with whom it was ye were out walking the other night? I did see ’ee, and I do know what I did see! I’m a pigeon-stealer am I, ye flaunting flandering Gypoo? Let me tell these dear gentlemen how as—” Her voice died suddenly away in an incoherent splutter, as the vicar of Nevilton, with his hand upon her mouth, swung her out of the door.
Gladys sank down upon a chair pale and trembling.
As soon, however, as the old woman’s departure seemed final, she began to recover her equanimity. She gave vent to a rather forced and uneasy laugh. “Silly old thing!” she exclaimed. “This comes of mother’s getting rid of the dogs. She never used to come here when we had the dogs. They scented her out in a minute. I wish we had them now to let loose at her! They’d make her skip.”
“I do hope, my dear child,” said Dangelis anxiously, “that she has not really frightened you? What a terrible old creature! I’ve always longed to see a typical English witch, but bless my heart if I want to see another!”
“She’s gone now,” announced Mr. Clavering, returning hot and breathless. “I saw her half-way down the drive. She’ll be out of sight directly. I expect you don’t want to see any more of her, else, if you come out here a step or two, you can see her slinking away.”
Gladys thanked him warmly for his energetic defence of her, but denied having the least wish to witness her enemy’s retreat.
“It must be getting near lunch time,” she said. “If you don’t mind waiting a moment, I’ll change my dress.” And she tripped off behind the screens.
CHAPTER XII AUBER LAKE
THE presence of Ralph Dangelis in Nevilton House had altered, in more than one respect, the relations between Gladys and her cousin.
The girls saw much less of each other, and Lacrima was left comparatively at liberty to follow her own devices.
On several occasions, however, when they were all three together, it chanced that the American had made himself extremely agreeable to the younger girl, even going so far as to take her part, quite energetically, in certain lively discussions. These occasions were not forgotten by Gladys, and she hated the Italian with a hatred more deep-rooted than ever.
As soon as her first interest in the American’s society began to pall a little, she cast about in her mind for some further way of causing discomfort and agitation to the object of her hatred.
Only those who have taken the trouble to watch carefully what might be called the “magnetic antagonism,” between feminine animals condemned to live in close relations with one another, will understand the full intensity of what this young person felt. It was not necessarily a sign of any abnormal morbidity in our fair-haired friend.
For a man in whom one is interested, even though such interest be mild and casual, to show a definite tendency to take sides against one, on behalf of one’s friend, is a sufficient justification, — at least so nature seems to indicate — for the awakening in one’s heart of an intense desire for revenge. Such desire is often aroused in the most well-constituted temperaments among us, and in this case it might be said that the sound physical nerves of the daughter of the Romers craved the satisfaction of such an impulse with the same stolid persistence as her flesh and blood craved for air and sun. But how to achieve it? What new and elaborate humiliation to devise for this irritating partner of her days?
The bathing episode was beginning to lose its piquancy. Custom, with its kindly obliviousness, had already considerably modified Lacrima’s fears, and there had ceased to be for Gladys any further pleasure in displaying her aquarian agility before a companion so occupied with the beauty of lawn and garden at that magical hour.
Fate, however, partial, as it often is, to such patient tenacity of emotion, let fall at last, at her very feet, the opportunity she craved.
She had just begun to experience that miserable sensation, so sickeningly oppressive to a happy disposition, of hating where she could not hurt, when, one evening, news was brought to the house by Mark Purvis the game-keeper that a wandering flock of wild-geese had taken up its temporary abode amid the reeds of Auber Lake. Mr. Romer himself soon brought confirmation of this fact.
The birds appeared to leave the place during the day and fly far westward, possibly as far as the marshes of Sedgemoor, but they always returned at night-fall to this new tarrying ground.
The very evening of this exciting discovery, Gladys’ active mind formulated a thrilling and absorbing project, which she positively trembled with longing to communicate to Lacrima. She found the long dinner that night, and the subsequent chatter with Dangelis on the terrace, almost too tedious to be endured; and it was at an unusually early hour that she surprised her cousin by joining her in her room.
The Pariah was seated at her mirror, wearily reducing to order her entangled curls, when Gladys entered. She looked very fragile in her white bodice and the little uplifted arms, that the mirror reflected, showed unnaturally long and thin. When one hates a person with the sort of massive hatred such as, at that time, beat sullenly under Gladys’ rounded bosom, every little physical characteristic in the object of our emotion is an added incentive to our revengeful purpose.
This Saturnian planetary law is unfortunately not confined to antipathies between persons of the same sex. Sometimes the most unhappy results have been known to spring from the manner in which one or another, even of two lovers, has lifted chin or head, or moved characteristically across a room.
Thus it were almost impossible to exaggerate the loathing with which this high-spirited girl contemplated the pale oval face and slender swaying arms of her friend, as full of her new project she flung herself into her favourite arm chair and met Lacrima’s frightened eyes in the gilded Georgian mirror. She began her attack with elaborate feline obliquity.
“They say Mark Purvis’ crazy daughter has been giving trouble again. He was up this morning, talking to father about it.”