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.
At the close of the afternoon, having chatted for an hour with the station-master’s wife, and shared their family tea, he had made his way according to his promise, into Mr. Taxater’s book-lined study, and there, closely closeted with the papal champion, had smoothed out the final threads of the conspiracy that was to betray Gladys and liberate Lacrima.
Luke had been informed by Mr. Quincunx of every detail of James’ movements and of Ninsy’s appearance on the scene. The recluse, as the reader may believe, did not spare himself in any point. He even exaggerated his fear of the agitated stone-carver, and as they hastened together towards Seven Ashes, he narrated, down to the smallest particular, the strange conversation they had had in his potato-garden.
“Why do you suppose,” he enquired of Luke, as they ascended the final slope of the hill, “he talked so much of someone giving me money? Who, on earth, is likely to give me money? People don’t as a rule throw money about, like that, do they? And if they did, I am the last person they would throw it to. I am the sort of person that kind and good people naturally hate. It’s because they know I know the deep little vanities and cunning selfishness in their blessed deeds.