turned.
“Perhaps after all,” she said, “it won’t be as bad as you fancy. I know the head-clerk in Mr. Romer’s Yeoborough office and he is quite a nice man— altogether different from that Lickwit.”
Mr. Quincunx stroked his beard with a trembling hand. “Of course I knew you’d say that, Lacrima. You are just like the rest. You women all think, at the bottom of your hearts, that men are no good if they can’t make money. I believe you have an idea that I ought to do what people call ‘get on a bit in the world.’ If you think that, it only shows how little you understand me. I have no intention of ‘getting on.’ I won’t ‘get on’! I would sooner walk into Auber Lake and end the whole business!”
The suddenness and injustice of this attack really did rouse the Italian to anger. “Good-bye,” she said with a dark flash in her eyes. “I see its no use talking to you when you are in this mood. You have never, never spoken to me in that tone before. Good-bye! I can open the gate for myself, thank you.”
She walked away from him and passed out into the lane. He stood watching her with a queer haggard look on his face, his sorrowful grey eyes staring in front of him, as if in the presence of an apparition. Then, very slowly, he resumed his work, leaving however the fallen cabbage-leaf unnoticed on the ground.
The weeds in the wheel-barrow, the straight banked-up lines of potatoes and lettuces, wore, as he returned to them, that curious air of forlorn desertion which is one of nature’s bitterest commentaries upon the folly of such scenes.
A sickening sense of emptiness took possession of him, and in a moment or two became unendurable. He flung a handful of weeds to the ground and ran impetuously to the gate and out into the lane. It was too late. A group of farm-labourers laughing and shouting, and driving before them a herd of black pigs, blocked up the road. He could not bring himself to pass them, thus hatless and in his shirt-sleeves. Besides, they must have seen the girl, and they would know he was pursuing her.
He returned slowly up the path to his house, and—to avoid being seen by the men—entered his kitchen, and sat gloomily down upon a chair. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked with contemptuous unconcern. The room had that smell of mortuary dust which rooms in small houses often acquire in the summer. He sat down once more on a chair, his hands upon his knees, and stared vacantly in front of him. A thrush outside the window was cracking a snail upon a stone. When the shouts of the men died away, this was the only sound that cameto him, except the continual “tick—tick—tick—tick” of the clock, which seemed to be occupied in driving nails into the heavy coffin-lid of every mortal joy that time had ever brought forth.
That same night in Nevilton House was a night of wretched hours for Lacrima, but of hours of a wretchedness more active than that which made the hermit of Dead Man’s Cottage pull the clothes over his head and turn his face to the wall, long ere the twilight had vanished from his garden.
On leaving her friend thus abruptly, her heart full of angry revolt, Lacrima had seen the crowd of men and animals approaching, and to escape them had scrambled into a field on the border of the road. Following a little path which led across it, and crossing two more meadows, she flung herself down under the shadow of some great elms, in a sort of grassy hollow beneath an over-grown hedge, and gave full vent to her grief. The hollow in which she hid herself was a secluded and lonely spot, and no sound reached her but the monotonous summer-murmur of the flies and the rustle of the wind-troubled branches. Lying thus, prone on her face, her broad-brimmed hat with its poppy-trimmings thrown down at her side, and her limbs trembling with the violence of her sobs, Lacrima seemed to insert into that alien landscape an element of passionate feeling quite foreign to its sluggish
“Perhaps after all,” she said, “it won’t be as bad as you fancy. I know the head-clerk in Mr. Romer’s Yeoborough office and he is quite a nice man— altogether different from that Lickwit.”
Mr. Quincunx stroked his beard with a trembling hand. “Of course I knew you’d say that, Lacrima. You are just like the rest. You women all think, at the bottom of your hearts, that men are no good if they can’t make money. I believe you have an idea that I ought to do what people call ‘get on a bit in the world.’ If you think that, it only shows how little you understand me. I have no intention of ‘getting on.’ I won’t ‘get on’! I would sooner walk into Auber Lake and end the whole business!”
The suddenness and injustice of this attack really did rouse the Italian to anger. “Good-bye,” she said with a dark flash in her eyes. “I see its no use talking to you when you are in this mood. You have never, never spoken to me in that tone before. Good-bye! I can open the gate for myself, thank you.”
She walked away from him and passed out into the lane. He stood watching her with a queer haggard look on his face, his sorrowful grey eyes staring in front of him, as if in the presence of an apparition. Then, very slowly, he resumed his work, leaving however the fallen cabbage-leaf unnoticed on the ground.
The weeds in the wheel-barrow, the straight banked-up lines of potatoes and lettuces, wore, as he returned to them, that curious air of forlorn desertion which is one of nature’s bitterest commentaries upon the folly of such scenes.
A sickening sense of emptiness took possession of him, and in a moment or two became unendurable. He flung a handful of weeds to the ground and ran impetuously to the gate and out into the lane. It was too late. A group of farm-labourers laughing and shouting, and driving before them a herd of black pigs, blocked up the road. He could not bring himself to pass them, thus hatless and in his shirt-sleeves. Besides, they must have seen the girl, and they would know he was pursuing her.
He returned slowly up the path to his house, and—to avoid being seen by the men—entered his kitchen, and sat gloomily down upon a chair. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked with contemptuous unconcern. The room had that smell of mortuary dust which rooms in small houses often acquire in the summer. He sat down once more on a chair, his hands upon his knees, and stared vacantly in front of him. A thrush outside the window was cracking a snail upon a stone. When the shouts of the men died away, this was the only sound that cameto him, except the continual “tick—tick—tick—tick” of the clock, which seemed to be occupied in driving nails into the heavy coffin-lid of every mortal joy that time had ever brought forth.
That same night in Nevilton House was a night of wretched hours for Lacrima, but of hours of a wretchedness more active than that which made the hermit of Dead Man’s Cottage pull the clothes over his head and turn his face to the wall, long ere the twilight had vanished from his garden.
On leaving her friend thus abruptly, her heart full of angry revolt, Lacrima had seen the crowd of men and animals approaching, and to escape them had scrambled into a field on the border of the road. Following a little path which led across it, and crossing two more meadows, she flung herself down under the shadow of some great elms, in a sort of grassy hollow beneath an over-grown hedge, and gave full vent to her grief. The hollow in which she hid herself was a secluded and lonely spot, and no sound reached her but the monotonous summer-murmur of the flies and the rustle of the wind-troubled branches. Lying thus, prone on her face, her broad-brimmed hat with its poppy-trimmings thrown down at her side, and her limbs trembling with the violence of her sobs, Lacrima seemed to insert into that alien landscape an element of passionate feeling quite foreign to its sluggish
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