“But that is not all. Another change came. She came into my life. I needn’t tell you, Miss Seldom, who I mean. You know well enough. These things cannot be hidden. Nothing can be hidden that happens here! She came and was kind to me. She is kind to me still. But they have got hold of her. She can’t resist them. Why she can’t, I cannot say; but it seems impossible. She talks to me like a person in a dream. They’re going to marry her to that brute Goring. You’ve heard that I suppose? But of course it’s nothing to you! Why should it be?”
He paused, and Vennie interrupted him sharply. “It is a great deal to us, Mr. Andersen! Every cruel thing that is done in a place affects everyone who lives in the place. If Mr. Taxater and—and Mr. Clavering—thought that Miss Traffio was being driven into this marriage, I’m sure they would not allow it! They would do something—everything—to stop such an outrage. Wouldn’t you, Mr. Taxater?”
“But surely, Vennie,” said the theologian, “you have heard something of this? You can’t be quite so oblivious, as all that, to the village scandal?”
He spoke with a certain annoyance as people are apt to do, when some disagreeable abuse, which they have sought to forget, is brought vividly before them.
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!” She covered her face with her hands as if to shut out some unbearable vision.
James Andersen watched them both intently, leaning against the wood-work of the church-door.
“I thought you all knew of this,” he said presently. “Perhaps you did; but the devil prompted you to say nothing. There are a great many things in this world which are done while people—good people—look on—and nothing said. Do you wonder now that the end of this business will be a curious one; I mean for me? For you know, of course, what is going to happen? You know why I have been chosen to work at this particular piece of carving? And why, ever since I quarrelled with Luke and drank in Hullaway Inn, I have heard voices in my head? The reason of that is, that Leo’s Hill is angry because I have deserted it. Every stone I touch is angry, and keeps talking to me and upbraiding me. The voices I hear are the voices of all the stones I have ever worked with in my life. But they needn’t fret themselves. The end will surprise even them. They do not know,”—here his voice took a lower tone, and he assumed that ghastly air of imparting a piece of surprising, but quite natural, information, which is one of the most sinister tokens of monomania,—“that I shall very soon be, even as they are! Isn’t it funny they don’t know that, Miss Seldom? Isn’t it a curious thing, Mr. Taxater? I thought of that, just now, as I chipped the dirt from King Stephen. Even he didn’t know, the foolish centaur! And yet he has been up there, seeing this sort of thing done, for seven hundred years! I expect he has seen so many girls dragged under this arch, with sick terror in their hearts, that he has grown callous to it. A callous king! A knavish-smiling king! It makes me laugh to think how little he cares!”
The unfortunate man did indeed proceed to laugh; but the sound of it was so ghastly, even to himself, that he quickly became grave.
“Luke will be here soon,” he said. “Luke has always come for me, these last few days, when his work is over. It’ll be over soon now, I think. He may be here any moment; so I’d better finish the job. Don’t you worry about Lacrima, ladies and gentlemen! She’ll fly away with the rooks. This centaur-king will never reach her with his arrows. It’ll be me, not her, he’ll turn into stone!”