So long did he remain silent, pondering this question, that James, observing his absorbed state and concluding that his subtle intelligence was occupied in devising some way out of their imbroglio, gave up all thought of receiving an answer, and moving to a less dew-drenched resting-place, leaned his head against an upright monument and closed his eyes. The feeling that his admired brother was taking Lacrima’s plight so seriously in hand filled him with a reassuring calm, and he had not long remained in his new position before his exhausted senses found relief in sleep.
Left to himself, Luke weighed in his mind every conceivable aspect of the question at stake. Less grave and assured than the metaphysical Mr. Taxater in this matter of striking at evil persons with evil weapons, Luke was not a whit less unscrupulous.
No Quincunx-like visitings of compunction had followed, with him, their rescue of Ninsy. If the scene at Seven Ashes had printed any impression at all upon his volatile mind, it was merely a vague and agreeable sense of how beautiful the girl’s dead-white skin had looked, contrasted with the disturbed masses of her dusky hair. Beyond this, except for a pleasant memory of how lightly and softly she had lain upon his arm, as he helped to carry her across the Wild Pine barton, the occurrence had left him unaffected.
His conscience did not trouble him in the smallest degree with regard to Gladys. According to Luke’s philosophy of life, things in this world resolved themselves into a reckless hand-to-hand struggle between opposing personalities, every one of them seeking, with all the faculties at his disposal, to get the better of the others. It was absurd to stop and consider such illusive impediments as sentiment or honour, when the great, casual, indifferent universe which surrounds us knows nothing of these things!
Out of the depths of this chaotic universe he, Luke Andersen, had been flung. It must be his first concern to sweep aside, as irrelevant and meaningless, any mere human fancies, ill-based and adventitious, upon which his free foot might stumble. To strike craftily and boldly in defence of the person he loved best in the world seemed to him not only natural but commendable. How should he be content to indulge in vague sentimental shilly-shallying, when the whole happiness of his beloved Daddy James was at stake?
The difference between Luke’s attitude to their mutual conspiracy, and that of Mr. Taxater, lay in the fact that to the latter the whole event was merely part of an elaborate, deeply-involved campaign, whose ramifications extended indefinitely on every side; while to the former the affair was only one of those innumerable chaotic struggles that a whimsical world delighted to evoke.
An inquisitive observer might have wondered what purpose Mr. Taxater had in mixing himself up in the affair at all. This question of his fellow-conspirator’s motive crossed, as a matter of fact, Luke’s own mind, as his gaze wandered negligently from the Greater to the Lesser Bear, and from Orion to the Pleiades. He came to the characteristic conclusion that it was no quixotic impulse that had impelled this excellent man, but a completely conscious and definite desire—the desire to add yet one more wanderer to his list of converts to the Faith.
Lacrima was an Italian and a Catholic. United to Mr. Quincunx, might she not easily win over that dreamy infidel to the religion of her fathers? Luke smiled to himself as he thought how little the papal champion could have known the real character of the solitary of Dead Man’s Lane. Sooner might the sea at Weymouth flow inland, and wash with its waves the foot of Leo’s Hill, than this ingrained mystic bow his head under the yoke of dogmatic truth!
After long cogitation with himself, Luke came to the conclusion that it would be wiser, on the whole, to say nothing to his brother of his plan to work out Lacrima’s release by means of her cousin’s betrayal. Having arrived at this conclusion he rose and stretched himself, and glanced at the sleeping James.
The night was warm and windless, but Luke began to feel anxious lest the cold touch of the stone, upon which his brother rested, should strike a chill into his blood. At the same time he was extremely loth to disturb so placid and wholesome a slumber. He laid his hand upon the portentous symbol of mortality which crowned so aggressively his parents’ monument, and looked round him. His vigil had already been interrupted more than once by the voices of late revellers leaving the Goat and Boy. Such voices still recurred, at intermittent moments, followed by stumbling drunken footsteps, but in the intervals the silence only fell the deeper.