She knelt at his side and tenderly pushed back the hair from his brow. “Oh I love you so!” she murmured, “I love you so! It would kill me if anything dreadful happened to you.” She pressed his head passionately against her breast, hardly conscious in her emotion of the burning heat of his forehead as it touched her skin.
“You will think of me a little!” she pleaded, “you will take care of yourself for my sake, Jim?”
She held him thus, pressed tightly against her, for several seconds, while her bosom rose and fell in quick spasms of convulsive pity. She had torn off her hat in her agitation, and flung it heedlessly down at her feet, and a heavy tress of her thick auburn hair — colourless now as the night itself — fell loosely upon her bowed neck. The fading light from the sky above them seemed to concentrate itself upon the ivory pallor of her clasped fingers and the dead-white glimmer of her impassioned face. She might have risen out of one of the graves that surrounded them, so ghostly in the gloom did her figure look.
The stone-carver freed himself at length, and took her hands in his own. The shock of the girl’s emotion had quieted his own fever. From the touch of her flesh he seemed to have derived a new and rational calm.
“Little Ninsy!” he whispered. “Little Ninsy! It is not I, but you, who are ill. Have you been up, and about, many days? I didn’t know it! I’ve had troubles of my own.” He passed his hand across his forehead. “I’ve had dreams, dreams and fancies! I’m afraid I’ve made a fool of myself, and frightened all sorts of people. I think I must have been saying a lot of silly things today. My head feels still queer. It’s hurt me so much lately, my head! And I’ve heard voices, voices that wouldn’t stop.”
“Oh James, my darling, my darling!” cried the girl, in a great passion of relief. “I knew what they said wasn’t true. I knew you would speak gently to me, and be your old self. Love me, James! Love me as you used to in the old days.”
She rose to her feet and pulled him up upon his. Then with a passionate abandonment she flung her arms round him and pressed him to her, clinging to him with all her force and trembling as she clung.
James yielded to her emotion more spontaneously than he had ever done in his life. Their lips met in a long indrawing kiss which seemed to merge their separate identities, and blend them indissolubly together. She clung to him as a bind-weed, with its frail white flowers, might cling to a stalk of swaying corn, and not unlike such an entwined stalk, he swayed to and fro under the clinging of her limbs. The passion which possessed her communicated itself to him, and in a strange ecstasy of oblivion he embraced her as desperately as her wild love could wish.
From sheer exhaustion their lips parted at last, and they sank down, side by side, upon the dew-drenched grass, making the grave-mount their pillow. Obscurely, through the clouded chamber of his brain, passed the image of her poppy-scarlet mouth burning against the whiteness of her skin. All that he could now actually see of her face, in the darkness, was its glimmering pallor, but the feeling of her kiss remained and merged itself in this impression. He lay on his back with closed eyes, and she bent over him as he lay, and began kissing him again, as if her soul would never be satisfied. In the intervals of her kisses, she pressed her fingers against his forehead, and uttered incoherent and tender whispers. It seemed to her as though, by the very magnetism of her devotion, she must be able to restore his shattered wits.
Nor did her efforts seem in vain. After a while the stone-carver lifted himself up and looked round him. He smiled affectionately at Ninsy and patted her, almost playfully, upon the knee.
“You have done me good, child,” he said. “You have done me more good than you know. I don’t think I shall say any more silly things tonight.”
He stood up on his feet, heaved a deep, natural sigh, and stretched himself, as one roused from a long sleep.
“What have you managed to do to me, Ninsy?” he asked. “I feel completely different. Those voices in my head have stopped.”. He turned tenderly towards her. “I believe you’ve driven the evil spirit out of me, child,” he said.
She flung her arms round him with a gasping cry. “You do like me a little, Jim? Oh my darling, I love you so much! I love you! I love you!” She clung to him with frenzied passion, her breast convulsed with sobs, and the salt tears mingling with her kisses.
Suddenly, as he held her body in his arms, he felt a shuddering tremor run through her, from head to foot. Her head fell back, helpless and heavy, and her whole frame hung limp and passive upon his arm. It almost seemed as though, in exorcising, by the magnetic power of her love, the demon that possessed him, she had broken her own heart.
Andersen was overwhelmed with alarm and remorse. He laid her gently upon the ground, and chafed the palms of her hands whispering her name and uttering savage appeals to Providence. His appeals, however, remained unanswered, and she lay deadly still, her coils of dusky hair spread loose over the wet grass.
He rose in mute dismay, and stared angrily round the cemetery, as if demanding assistance from its silent population. Then with a glance at her motionless form, he ran quickly to the open gate and shouted loudly for help. His voice echoed hollowly through the walled enclosure, and a startled flutter of wings rose from the distant fir-trees. Somewhere down in the valley, a dog began to bark, but no other answer to his repeated cry reached his ears. He returned to the girl’s side.
Frantically he rent open her dress at the throat and tore with trembling fingers at the laces of her bodice. He pressed his hand against her heart. A faint, scarcely discernible tremor under her soft breast reassured him. She was not dead, then! He had not killed her with his madness.
He bent down and made an effort to lift her in his arms, but his limbs trembled beneath him and his muscles collapsed helplessly. The reaction from the tempest in his brain had left him weak as an infant. In this wretched inability to do anything to restore her he burst into a fit of piteous tears, and struck his forehead with his clenched hand.
Once more he tried desperately to lift her, and once more, fragile as she was, the effort proved hopelessly beyond his strength. Suddenly, out of the darkness beyond the cemetery gate, he heard the sound of voices.
He shouted as loudly as he could and then listened intently, with beating heart. An answering shout responded, in Luke’s well-known voice. A moment or two later, and Luke himself, followed by Mr. Quincunx, hurried into the cemetery.
Immediately after Ninsy’s departure the recluse had been seized with uncontrollable remorse. Mixed with his remorse was the disturbing consciousness that since Ninsy knew he had advised Andersen to make his way to Seven Ashes, the knowledge was ultimately sure to reach the younger brother’s ears. Luke was one of the few intimates Mr. Quincunx possessed in Nevilton. The recluse held him in curious respect as a formidable and effective man of the world. He had an exaggerated notion of his power. He had grown accustomed to his evening visits. He was fond of him and a little afraid of him.
It was therefore an extremely disagreeable thought to his mind, to conceive of Luke as turning upon him with contempt and indignation. Thus impelled, the perturbed solitary had summoned up all his courage and gone boldly down into the village to find the younger Andersen. He had met him at the gate of Mr. Taxater’s house.
Left behind in the station field by James and his pursuers, Luke had reverted for a while with the conscious purpose of distracting his mind, to his old preoccupation, and had spent the afternoon in a manner eminently congenial, making love to two damsels at the same time, and parrying with evasive urbanity their combined recriminations.