“Oh, I’m sure I needn’t tell you that, sir,” responded Luke; “I’m sure you know well enough how much I admire our Nevilton beauty.”
Gladys’ unhappy lover choked with rage. He had never in his life loathed anything so much as he loathed the way Luke’s yellow curls grew on his forehead. His fingers clutched convulsively the palms of his hands. He would like to have seized that crop of hair and beaten the man’s head against the pavement.
“I think it’s abominable,” he cried, “this forcing of Miss Traffio to marry Goring. For a very little, I’d write to the bishop about it and refuse to marry them.”
The causes that led to this unexpected and irrelevant outburst were of profound subtlety. Clavering forgot, in his desire to make his rival responsible for every tragedy in the place, that he had himself resolved to discount, as mere village gossip, all the dark rumours he had heard. The blind anger which plunged him into this particular outcry, sprang, in reality, from the bitterness of his own conscience-stricken misgivings.
“I don’t think you will,” remarked Luke, lowering his voice to a whisper, though the uproar about them rendered such a precaution quite unnecessary. “It is not as a rule a good thing to interfere in these matters. Miss Gladys has told me herself that the whole thing is an invention of Romer’s enemies, probably of this fellow Wone.”
“She’s told me the same story,” burst out the priest, “but how am I to believe her?”
A person unacquainted with the labyrinthine convolutions of the human mind would have been staggered at hearing the infatuated slave thus betray his suspicion of his enchantress, and to his own rival; but the man’s long-troubled conscience, driven by blind anger, rendered him almost beside himself.
“To tell you the truth,” said Luke, “I think neither you nor I have anything to do with this affair. You might as well agitate yourself about Miss Romer’s marriage with Dangelis! Girls must manage these little problems for themselves. After all, it doesn’t really matter much, one way or the other. What they want, is to be married. The person they choose is quite a secondary thing. We have to learn to regard all these little incidents as of but small importance, my good sir, as our world sweeps round the sun!”
“The sun—the sun!” cried Clavering, with difficulty restraining himself. “What has the sun to do with it? You are too fond of bringing in your suns and your planets, Andersen. This trick of yours of shelving the difficulties of life, by pretending you’re somehow superior to them all, is a habit I advise you to give up! It’s cheap. It’s vulgar. It grows tiresome after a time.”
Luke’s only reply to this was a sweet smile; and the two were wedged so closely together that the priest was compelled to notice the abnormal whiteness and regularity of the young man’s teeth.