“Why don’t you send her away?” said the Italian, without turning round.
“Send her away? She has to do all the house-work down there! Mark has no one else, you know, and the poor man does not want the expense of hiring a woman.”
“Isn’t it rather a lonely place for a child like that?”
“Lonely? I should think it is lonely! But what would you have? Somebody must keep that cottage clean; and its just as well a wretched mad girl, of no use to anyone, should do it, as that a sound person should lose her wits in such a god-forsaken spot!”
“What does she do at — at these times? Is she violent?”
“Oh, she gets out in the night and roams about the woods. She was once found up to her knees in the water. No, she isn’t exactly violent. But she is a great nuisance.”
“It must be terrible for her father!”
“Well — in a way it does bother him. But he is not the man to stand much nonsense.”
“I hope he is kind to her.”
Gladys laughed. “What a soft-hearted darling you are! I expect he finds sometimes that you can’t manage mad people, any more than you can manage children, without using the stick. But I fancy, on the whole, he doesn’t treat her badly. He’s a fairly good-natured man.”
The Pariah sighed. “I think Mr. Romer ought to send her away at once to some kind of home, and pay someone to take her place.”
“I daresay you do! If you had your way, father wouldn’t have a penny left in the bank.”
The Pariah rose from her seat, crossed over to the window, and looked out into the sultry night. What a world this was! All the gentle and troubled beings in it seemed over-ridden by gigantic merciless wheels!
A little awed, in spite of herself, by the solemnity of her companion, Gladys sought to bring her back out of this translunar mood by capricious playfulness. She stretched herself out at full length in her low chair, and calling the girl to her side, began caressing her, pulling her down at last upon her lap.
“Guess what has happened!” she murmured softly, as the quick beating of the Pariah’s heart communicated itself to her, and made her own still harder.
“Oh, I know its something I shan’t like, something that I shall dread!” cried the younger girl, making a feeble effort to escape.
“Shall I tell you what it is?” Gladys went on, easily overcoming this slight movement. “You know, don’t you, that there’s a flock of wild-geese settled on the island in the middle of Auber Lake? Well! I have got a lovely plan. I’ve never yet seen those birds, because they don’t come back till the evening. What you and I are going to do, darling, is to slip away out of the house, next time Mr. Dangelis goes to see that friend of yours, and make straight to Auber Lake! I’ve never been into those woods by night, and it’ll be extraordinarily thrilling to see what Auber Lake looks like with the moon gleaming on it. And then we may be able to make the wild-geese rise, by throwing sticks or something, into the water. Oh, it’ll be simply lovely! Don’t you think so, darling? Aren’t you quite thrilled by the idea?”
The Pariah liberated herself by a sudden effort and stood erect on the floor.
“I think you are the wickedest girl that God ever made!” she said solemnly. And then, as the full implication of the proposed adventure grew upon her, she clasped her hands convulsively. “You cannot mean it!” she cried. “You cannot mean it! You are teasing me, Gladys. You are only saying it to tease me.”
“Why, you’re not such a coward as all that!” her cousin replied. “Think what it must be for Nance Purvis, who always lives down there! I shouldn’t like to be more cowardly than a poor crazy labouring girl. We really ought to visit the place, once in a way, to see if these stories are true about her escaping out of the house. One can never tell from what Mark says. He may have been drinking and imagining it all.”
Lacrima turned away and began rapidly undressing. Without a word she arranged the books on her table, moving about like a person in a trance, and without a word she slipped into bed and turned her face to the wall.
Gladys smiled, stretched herself luxuriously, and continued speaking.
“Auber Lake by moon-light would well be worth a night walk. You know it’s supposed to be the most romantic spot in Somersetshire? They say it’s incredibly old. Some people think it was used in prehistoric times by the druids as a place of worship. The villagers never dare to go near it after dark. They say that very curious noises are heard there. But of course that may only be the mad—”
She was not allowed to go on. The silent figure in the bed suddenly sat straight up, with wide-staring eyes fixed upon her, and said slowly and solemnly, “If I come with you to this place, will you faithfully promise me that your father will send that girl into a home?”
Gladys was so surprised by this unexpected utterance that she made an inarticulate gasping noise in her throat.
“Yes,” she answered, mesmerized by the Pariah’s fixed glance. “Yes — most certainly. If you come with me to see those wild-geese, I’ll make any promise you like about that girl!”
Lacrima continued for a moment fixing her with wide-dilated pupils.
Then, with a shiver that passed from head to foot, she slowly sank back on her pillows and closed her eyes.
Gladys rose a little uneasily from her chair. “But of course,” she said, “you understand she may not want to go away. She is quite crazy, you know. And she may prefer wandering about freely among dark woods to being locked up in a nice white-washed asylum, under the care of fat motherly nurses!”
With this parting shot she went off into her own room feeling in a curious vague manner that somehow or another the edge of her delectation had been taken off. In this unexpected resolution of the Italian, the Mythology of Sacrifice had suddenly struck a staggering blow at the Mythology of Power. Like the point of a bright silver sword, this unforseen vein of heroism in the Pariah cleared the sultry air of that hot night with a magical freshness and coolness. A planetary onlooker might have been conscious at that moment of strange spiritual vibrations passing to and fro over the sleeping roofs of Nevilton. But perhaps such a one would also have been conscious of the abysmal indifference to either stream of opposing influence, of the high, cold galaxy of the Milky Way, stretched contemptuously above them all!
All we are able to be certain of is, that as the fair-haired daughter of the house prepared for bed she muttered sullenly to herself. “I’ll make her go anyway. It will be lovely to feel her shiver, when we pass under those thick laurels! That mad girl won’t leave the place, unless they drag her by force.”
Left alone, Lacrima remained, for nearly two hours, motionless and with closed eyes. She was not asleep, however. Strange and desperate thoughts pursued one another through her brain. She wondered if she, too, like the girl of Auber Lake, were destined to find relief from this merciless world in the unhinging of her reason. She reverted again and again in her mind to her cousin’s final malicious suggestion. That would be indeed, she thought, a bitter example of life’s irony, if after going through all this to save the poor wretch, such sacrifice only meant worse misery for her. But no! God could not be as unkind as that.
She stretched out her arm for a book with which to still the troublesome palpitation of her heart.
The book she seized by chance turned out to be Andersen’s Fairy Stories, and she read herself to sleep with the tale of the little princess who wove coats of nettles for her enchanted brothers, and all night long she dreamed of mad unhappy girls struggling amid entwining branches, of bottomless lakes full of terrible drowned faces, and of flocks of wild-geese that were all of them kings’ sons!