The younger man’s impetuous confidences ebbed and dwindled at last; and with the silence of the church-bells and the receding to the opposite corner of the field of the browsing cattle, a deep and melancholy hush settled upon them both.
Then it was that Mr. Quincunx began speaking of himself and his own anxieties. In the tension of the moment he even went so far as to disclose to Luke, under a promise of absolute secrecy, the sinister story of that contract into which Lacrima had entered with their employer.
Luke was all attention at once. This was indeed a piece of astounding news! He couldn’t have said whether he wondered more at the quixotic devotion of Lacrima for this quaint person, or at the solitary’s unprecedented candour in putting him “en rapport” with such an amazing situation.
“Of course we know,” murmured Mr. Quincunx, in his deep subterranean voice, “that she wouldn’t have promised such a thing, unless in her heart she had been keen, at all costs, to escape from those people. It isn’t human nature to give up everything for nothing. Probably, as a matter of fact, she rather likes the idea of having a house of her own. I expect she thinks she could twist that fool Goring round her finger; and I daresay she could! But the thing is, what do you advise me to do? Of course I’m glad enough to agree to anything that saves me from this damnable office. But what worries me about it is that devil Romer put it into her head. I don’t trust him, Luke; I don’t trust him!”
“I should think you don’t!” exclaimed his companion, looking with astonishment and wonder into the solemn grey eyes fixed sorrowfully and intently upon his own. What a strange thing, he thought to himself, that this subtle-minded intelligence should be so hopelessly devoid of the least push of practical impetus.
“Of course,” Mr. Quincunx continued, “neither you nor I would fuss ourselves much over the idea of a girl being married to a fool like this, if there weren’t something different from the rest about her. This nonsense about their having to ‘love,’ as the little simpletons call it, the man they agree to live with, is of course all tommy-rot. No one ‘loves’ the person they live with. She wouldn’t love me,—she’d probably hate me like poison,—after the first week or so! The romantic idiots who make so much of ‘love,’ and are so horrified when these little creatures are married without it, don’t understand what this planet is made of. They don’t understand the feelings of the girls either.
“I tell you a girl likes being made a victim of in this particular kind of way. They’re much less fastidious, when it comes to the point, than we are. As a matter of fact what does trouble them is being married to a man they really have a passion for. Then, jealousy bites through their soft flesh like Cleopatra’s serpent, and all sorts of wild ideas get into their heads. It’s not natural, Luke, it’s not natural, for girls to marry a person they love! That’s why we country dogs treat the whole thing as a lewd jest.
“Do you think these honest couples who stand giggling and smirking before our dear clergyman every quarter, don’t hate one another in their hearts? Of course they do; it wouldn’t be nature if they didn’t! But that doesn’t say they don’t get their pleasure out of it. And Lacrima’ll get her pleasure, in some mad roundabout fashion, from marrying Goring,—you may take my word for that!”
“It seems to me,” remarked Luke slowly, “that you’re trying all this time to quiet your conscience. I believe you’ve really got far more conscience, Maurice, than I have. It’s your conscience that makes you speak so loud, at this very moment!”
Mr. Quincunx got up on his feet and stroked his beard. “I’m afraid I’ve annoyed you somehow,” he remarked. “No person ever speaks of another person’s conscience unless he’s in a rage with him.”