Lacrima

“ The brains of mortal men are queer crucibles, and the smouldering fires that heat them are driven by capricious and wanton guests. Lacrima’s old defeat of the owner of Leo’s Hill—a defeat into which there is no need to descend now, for its “terrain” was remote from our present stage—had been a defeat upon what might be called a subliminal or interior plane.
It was almost as if he had encountered her and she had encountered him, not only in the past of this particular life, but a remoter past—in a past of some pre-natal incarnation. ”

“ Vennie, too, became irritable. The question of Lacrima’s marriage had more than once given her conscience a sharp stab. “I think it is a shame to us all,” she cried vehemently, “that this should be allowed. It is only lately that I’ve heard rumours of it, and I took them for mere gossip. It’s been on my mind.” She looked almost sternly at the theologian. “I meant to talk to you about it. But other things came between. I haven’t seen Lacrima for several weeks. Surely, if it is as Mr. Andersen says, something ought to be done! It is a horrible, perfectly horrible idea!” ”

“ Every leaf and grass blade seemed to be intently alert and listening.
In her heart Lacrima was conscious of an unusual sense of foreboding and apprehension. Surely there could be nothing worse in store for her than what she already suffered. She wondered what Maurice Quincunx was doing at that moment. Was he thinking of her, and were his thoughts the cause of this strange oppression in the air? Poor Maurice! She longed to be free to devote herself to him, to smooth his path, to distract his mind. Would fate ever make such a thing possible? How unfair Gladys was in her suspicions! ”

“ She found herself fantastically thinking how much sooner she would have married even the egregious John Goring—as Lacrima was going to do—than such a one as this. What a pass Nevilton had brought itself to—when the choice lay between a Mr. Romer and a Mr. Wone!
An overpowering wave of disgust with the whole human race swept over her—what wretched creatures they all were—every one of them! She mentally resolved that nothing—nothing on earth—should stop her entering a convent. The man talked of agreeable odours on the air. ”

“ The whole world, looked at with the bold cynical eye of one who was not afraid to face the truth, was, after all, a mad, wild, unmeaning struggle; and, in the confused arena of this struggle, one could be sure of nothing but the pleasure one derived from the sensation of one’s own power. He tried, as he walked towards the girls, to imagine to himself what his feelings would be, supposing he yielded to these remote scruples, and let Lacrima go, giving her money, for instance, to enable her to live independently in her own country, or to marry whom she pleased. ”

“ In these things Lacrima’s Latin blood gave her a certain maturity of feeling, and emphasized the maternal element in her attachment.
She contemplated dreamily the smooth bare walls of the cavernous arena in which she sat. Their coolness and dampness was not unpleasant after the heat of the upper air, but there was something sepulchral about them, something that gave the girl the queer impression of a colossal tomb—a tomb whose scattered bones might even now be lying, washed by centuries of rain, under the rank weeds of these heaps of rubble. ”

“ Wone is opposed to every kind of violence,” threw in Lacrima.
“Nonsense!” cried Mr. Quincunx abruptly. “He may not like violence because he’s afraid of it reacting on himself. But what he wants to do is to humiliate everyone above him, to disturb them, to prod them, to harass and distress them, and if possible to bring them down to his own level. He’s got his thumb on Lacrima’s friends over there,”—he waved his hand in the direction of Nevilton House,—“because they happen to be at the top of the tree at this moment. ”

“ And then, as he stared at the three girlish figures on the beach, there came over him the strange illusion that both Vennie and Lacrima were only dream-people—unreal and fantastic—and that the true living persons of his drama were himself and his little Neapolitan waif.
Suppose the three girls were to take a boat—one of those boats whose painted keels he saw glittering now so pleasantly on the beach—and row out into the water. And suppose the boat were upset and both Vennie and Lacrima drowned? Would he be so sad to have to live the rest of his life alone with the little Dolores? ”

“ Apart from this love, which is not like human love at all, everything in us is selfish. Even a mother’s care for its child is selfish.”
“I shall never have a child,” said Lacrima in a low voice.
“I wonder what your friend James Andersen would say to all this,” continued Mr. Quincunx. “Why, by the way, don’t you get him to marry you? He would do it, no doubt, like a shot, if you gave him a little encouragement; and then make you work all day in his kitchen, as his father made his mother, so they say.”
Lacrima made a hopeless gesture, and looked at the watch upon her wrist. ”

“ Lacrima was not only terrified of water, but was abnormally reluctant and shy with regard to any risk of being observed in strange or unusual garments.
Gladys had stretched herself out on the Leonian margin of the pond with a thrilling sense of delight at the prospect thus offered. She would be able to gratify, at one and the same time, her profound need to excel in the presence of an inferior, and her insatiable craving to outrage that inferior’s reserve. ”

“ Her general air was an air of playful passivity; but at one moment, imprinting a kiss on the girl’s arm as, in the process of arranging her veil, it brushed across her cheek, she seemed almost anxious to convey to Lacrima the full implication of her real feeling.
Never has a human caress been so electric with the vibrations of antipathy, as was that kiss. She followed up this signal of animosity by a series of feline taunts relative to John Goring, one of which, from its illuminated insight into the complex strata of the girl’s soul, delighted her by its effect. ”

“ It will only protect you from the rest of the world. I won’t interfere with your life at all, when once I have freed you from this devil’s hole. It will only be a marriage in form, in name; everything else will be just as you please. I will obey your least wish, your least fancy. If you want to go back to your own country and to go alone, I will save up money enough to make that possible. In fact, I have now got money enough to pay your journey and I would send out more to you. Lacrima, let me help you to break away from all this. You must, Lacrima, you must and you shall! ”

“ I have my garden. In this world, when a person has a roof over his head, and someone to talk to every other day, he had better remain still and not attract the attention of the gods.”
Silence followed his words. Instead of speaking, Lacrima took off her hat, and smoothed her hair away from her forehead, keeping her eyes fixed upon the ground. An immense temptation seized her to let the moment pass without revealing her secret. She could easily substitute any imaginary suggestion in place of the terrible reality. Her friend’s morbid nerves would help her deception. ”

“ Lacrima, rather uncomfortably, looked down at the grass.
“We four, being, as we have admitted, all outsiders here,” went on the diplomatist, “ought to have no secrets from one another. I think”—he looked at Vennie—“we may just as well confess to our friends that we quite realize the little—charming—‘friendship,’ shall I say?—that has sprung up between this gentleman’s brother and Miss Romer.”
“I think,” said James Andersen hurriedly, in order to relieve Lacrima’s embarrassment, “I think the real bond between Luke and Miss Gladys is their mutual pleasure in all this luxuriant scenery. ”

“ What are you alive for,” he added, “if you are going to condemn the natural combative instinct of men and women as evil and horrible? They are the instincts by which we live. They are the motives that propel the whole universe.”
“Mr. Wone would say,” interposed Lacrima, “and I’m not sure that I don’t agree with him, that the real secret of the universe is deeper than all these unhappy struggles. I don’t like the unctuous way he puts these things, but he may be right all the same.”
“There’s no secret of the universe, Miss Traffio,” the American threw in. ”

“ Quincunx’s countenance lost its merriment instantaneously.
“I believe you are as annoyed as Mr. Romer,” he said, “that I should get on in the office. But I am past being affected by that. I know what human nature is! We are all really pleased when other people get on badly, and are sorry when they do well.”
Lacrima felt as though the trees in the field opposite had suddenly reversed themselves and were waving their roots in the air. ”

“ She prayed desperately for Lacrima, that at the last moment, contrary to all hope, some intervention might arrive.
Thus it came about, that beneath the roofs of Nevilton—for neither James Andersen nor Mr. Quincunx were “praying men”—only one voice was lifted up, the voice of the last of the old race of the place’s rulers, to protest against the flowing forward to its fatal end, of this evil tide. ”

“ It’s no good your pretending not to hear me, Lacrima! I can read your thoughts like an open book. You are quoting to yourself, no doubt, at this very moment, some of the pretty speeches of your friend Quincunx. A nice fellow, he is, for a girl’s teacher! A fellow with no idea of his own in his head! A fellow afraid to raise his eyes above one’s boot-laces! Why the other day, when I was out shooting and met him in the lane, he turned straight round, and walked back on his tracks—simply from fear of passing me. ”

“ The hatred that Gladys bore to Lacrima’s enjoyment of her midnight readings was a characteristic [101] indication of the relations between the girls. It is always infuriating to a well-constituted nature to observe these little pathetic devices of pleasure in a person who has no firm grip upon life. It excites the same healthy annoyance as when one sees some absurd animal that ought, properly speaking, not to be alive at all, deriving ridiculous satisfaction from some fantastic movement incredible to sound senses. ”

“ The planetary influences seem nearer earth than usual;—nearer, with the apparent nearness of the full tide-drawing moon and the heavy scorching sun;—and for those more sensitive souls, whose nerves are easily played upon, there [538] is produced a certain curious sense of lying back upon fate, with arms helplessly outspread, and wills benumbed and passive.
But though some such condition as this had narcotized all overt resistance to the destiny in store for her in the heart of Lacrima, it cannot be said that the Italian’s mind was free from an appalling shadow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I expect it attracts them awfully! I expect they all long to take those little wrists and hold them tight! And the drooping, dragging way you walk, too; that no doubt they find quite enthralling. It has often irritated me, but I can quite see now why you do it. It must make them long to support you in their strong arms! What a crafty little puss she is! And I have sometimes taken her for no better than a little simpleton! I see I shall not for long be the only person allowed to kiss our charming Lacrima! ”

“ 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 [250] mirror. She began her attack with elaborate feline obliquity. ”

“ But no one principle,—not even the principle of love itself, can be allowed to monopolize the whole field. Life, I always feel, is better interpreted by Art than by anything else, and Art is equally interested in every kind of energy.”
Lacrima’s face clouded, and her hands fell wearily upon her lap.
“Some sorts of energy,” she observed, in a low voice, “are brutal and dreadful. If Art expresses that kind, I’m afraid I don’t care for Art.”
The American gave her a quick, puzzled glance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They often do not last beyond the next day! In order to help you—to make it easier for you—to bring such a mood to an end, I also, in my turn, have a little proposal to make.”
Lacrima’s expression changed with terrible rapidity; she stared at him panic-stricken.
“My proposal is this,” said Mr. Romer, quietly handing her the box of chocolates, and smiling as she waved it away. “As I said just now, the world is a place of bargains and compromises. Nothing ever occurs between human beings which is not the result of some unuttered transaction of occult diplomacy. ”