It was approaching the moment consecrated to the close of the day’s labour in the stone-works by Nevilton railway-station. The sky was cloudless; the air windless. It was one of those magical arrests of the gliding feet of time, which afternoons in June sometimes bring with them, holding back, as it were, all living processes of life, in sweet and lingering suspense. The steel tracks of the railway-line glittered in the sun. In the fields, that sloped away beyond them, the browsing cattle wore that unruffled air of abysmal indifference, which seems to make one day in their sight to be as a thousand years. To these placid earth-children, drawing the centuries together in solemn continuity, the tribes of men and their turbulent drama were but as vapours that came and went. The high elms in the hedges had already assumed that dark monotonous foliage which gives to their patient stillness on such a day an atmosphere of monumental expectancy. A flock of newly-sheared sheep, clean and shining in the hot sun, drifted in crowded procession down the narrow road, leaving a cloud of white dust behind them that remained stationary in the air long after they had passed. In the open stone-yard close to the road the brothers Andersen were working together, chipping and hammering with bare arms at an enormous Leonian slab, carving its edges into delicate mouldings. The younger of the two wore no hat, and his closely clipped fair curls and loose shirt open at the throat, lent him, as he moved about his work with easy gestures, a grace and charm well adapted to that auspicious hour.

A more sombre form by his brother’s side, his broad brimmed hat low down over his forehead, the elder Andersen went on with his carving, in imperturbable morose absorption.

Watching them with languid interest, their arms linked together, stood the figures of two girls. The yellow dust from the sandstone rose intermittently into the air, mingling with the white dust from the road and settling, as it sank earthward, upon the leaves of the yet unbudded knapweed and scabious which grew in the thin dusty grass.

Between Gladys and her cousin—for the girls had wandered as far as this in search of distraction after their lazy tea on the great lawn—a curious contrast was now displayed.

Gladys, with slow provocative interest, was intent on every movement of Luke’s graceful figure. Lacrima’s attention wandered wistfully away, to the cattle and the orchards, and then to the sheep, which now were being penned in a low line of spacious railway trucks.

Luke himself was by no means unaware of the condescending interest of his master’s daughter. He paused in his work once or twice. He turned up his shirt-sleeves still higher. He bent down, to blow away the dust from the moulding he had made. Something very like a flash of amorous admiration passed across his blue eyes as he permitted them slyly to wander from Gladys’ head to her waist, and from her waist to her shoes. She certainly was an alluring figure as she stood there in her thin white dress. The hand which pulled her skirt away from the dust showed as soft and warm as if it were pleading for a caress, and the rounded contours of her bosom looked as if they had ripened with the early peaches, under the walls of her stately garden. She presently unlinked her arm from her companion’s, and sliding it softly round Lacrima’s side drew the girl close against her. As she did this she permitted a slow amorous glance of deliberate tantalization to play upon the young carver. How well Luke Andersen knew that especial device of maidens when they are together—that way they have of making their playful, innocent caresses such a teasing incentive! And Luke knew well how to answer all this. Nothing could have surpassed in subtle diplomacy the manner in which he responded, without responding, to the amorous girl’s overtures. He let her realize that he himself understood precisely the limits of the situation; that she was perfectly at liberty to enter a mock-flirtation with him, without the remotest risk of any “faux pas” on his part spoiling the delicacy of their relations.

What was indeed obvious to her, without the necessity of any such unspoken protestation, was the fact that he found her eminently desirable. Nor did her pride as “the girl up at the house” quarrel with her vanity as the simple object of Luke’s admiration. She wanted him to desire her as a girl;—to desire her to madness. And then she wanted to flout him, with her pretensions as a lady. This particular occasion was by no means the first time she had drifted casually down the vicarage hill and lingered beside the stone-cutters. It was, however, an epoch in their curious relations. For the first time since she had been attracted to him, she deliberately moved close up to the stone he worked at, and entered into conversation. While this occurred, Lacrima, released from her rÔle as the accomplice of amorous teasing, wandered away, picking listlessly the first red poppies of the year, which though less flaunting in their bold splendour than those of her childhood’s memories, were at least the same immortal classical flowers.

As she bent down in this assuaging pastime, letting her thoughts wander so far from Nevilton and its tyrants, Lacrima became suddenly conscious that James Andersen had laid down his tools, resumed his coat, and was standing by her side.

“A beautiful evening, Miss”; he said respectfully, holding his hat in his hand and regarding her with grave gentleness.

“Yes, isn’t it?” she answered at once; and then was silent; while a sigh she could not suppress rose from the depths of her heart. For her thoughts reverted to another fair evening, in the days when England was no more than a name; and a sudden overpowering longing for kind voices, and the shadows of olives on warm hill-sides, rushed, like a wave, over her.

“This must be near the Angelus-hour,” she thought; and somehow the dark grave eyes of the man beside her and his swarthy complexion made her think of those familiar forms that used to pass driving their goats before them up the rocky paths of the Apennine range.

“You are unhappy, Miss,” said James in a low voice; and these words, the only ones of genuine personal tenderness, except for poor Maurice’s, that had struck her sense for the last twelve months, brought tears to her eyes. Vennie Seldom had spoken kindly to her; but—God knows—there is a difference between the kindness even of the gentlest saint and this direct spontaneous outflow of one heart to another. She smiled; a little mournful smile.

“Yes; I was thinking of my own country,” she murmured.

“You are an Italian, Miss; I know it”; continued Andersen, instinctively leading her further away from the two golden heads that now were bending so close together over the Leonian stone.

“I often think of Italy,” he went on; “I think I should be at home in Italy. I love everything I hear of it, everything I read of it. It comes from my mother, this feeling. She was a lady, you know Miss, as well born as any and with a passionate love of books. She used to read Dante in that little ‘Temple’ Series, which perhaps you have seen, with the Italian on one side and the English on the other. I never look at that book without thinking of her.”

“You have many books yourself, I expect,—Mr.—Andersen. You see I know your name.” And Lacrima smiled, the first perfectly happy smile she had been betrayed into for many months.

“It is not a very nice name,” said James, a little plaintively. “I wish I had a name like yours Miss—Traffio.”

“Why, I think yours is quite as nice,” she answered gravely. “It makes me think of the man who wrote the fairy stories.”

James Andersen frowned, “I don’t like fairy stories,” he said almost gruffly. “They tease and fret me. I like Thomas Hardy’s books. Do you know Thomas Hardy?” Lacrima made a little involuntary gesture of depreciation. As a matter of fact her reading, until very lately, had been as conventual as that of a young nun. Vennie Seldom or the demure Reynolds girl could not have been more innocent of the darker side of literature. Hardy’s books she had seen in the hands of Gladys, and the association repelled her. Pathetically anxious to brush away this little cloud, she began hurriedly talking to her new friend of Italy; of its cities, its sea-coasts, its monasteries, its churches. James Andersen listened with reverential attention, every now and then asking a question which showed how deeply his mother’s love of the classical country had sunk into his nature.

By this time they had wandered along the road as far as a little stone bridge with low parapets which crosses there a muddy Somersetshire stream. From this point the road rises quite steeply to the beginning of the vicarage garden. Leaning against the parapet of the little bridge, and looking back, they saw to their surprise that Gladys and Luke had not only not followed them but had completely disappeared.

The last of the unskilled workmen from the sheds, trailing up the road together laughing and chatting, turned when they passed, and gazed back, as our two companions were doing, at the work-shops they had left, acknowledging Lacrima’s gentle “good-night” with a rather shifty salutation.—This girl was after all only a dependent like themselves.—They had hardly gone many steps before they burst into a loud rough guffaw of rustic impertinence.

Lacrima struck the ground nervously with her parasol. “What has happened?” she asked; “where has Gladys gone?”

James Andersen shrugged his shoulders, “I expect they have wandered into the shed,” he rejoined, “to look at my brother’s work there.”

She glanced nervously up and down the road; gave a quaint little sigh and made an expressive gesture with her hands as if disclaiming all responsibility for her cousin’s doings. Then, quite suddenly, she smiled at Andersen with a delicious childish smile that transfigured her face.

“Well, I am glad I am not left alone at any rate,” she said.

“I have a presentiment,” the stone-cutter answered, “that this is not the last time you will be thrown upon my poor company.”

The girl blushed, and smiled confidingly. Her manner was the manner of a child, who has at last found a safe protector. Then all of a sudden she became very grave. “I hope,” she said, “that you are one of the people who are kind to Mr. Quincunx. He is a great friend of mine.”

Never had the melancholy intimation, that one could not hope to hold anything but the second place in a woman’s heart, been more tenderly or more directly conveyed!

James Andersen bowed his head.

“Mr. Quincunx has always been very kind to me,” he said, “and certainly, after what you say, I shall do all in my power to help him. But I can do very little. I believe Mrs. Seldom understands him better than anyone else.”

He had hardly finished speaking when the figures of two men made themselves visible opposite the back entrance of the vicarage. They were leisurely strolling down the road, and every now and then they would pause, as if the interest of their conversation was more than the interest of the way.

“Why! There is Mr. Quincunx,” cried the Italian; and she made an instinctive movement as if to put a little further space between herself and her companion. “Who is that person with him?” she added.

“It looks like George Wone,” answered the stone-cutter. “Yes, it is George; and he is talking as usual at the top of his voice. You’d suppose he wanted to be heard by all Nevilton.”

Lacrima hesitated and looked very embarrassed. She evidently did not know whether to advance in the direction of the new-comers or to remain where she was. Andersen came to her rescue.

“Perhaps,” said he, “it would be better if I went back and told Miss Romer you are waiting for her.” Lacrima gave him a quick glance of responsive gratitude.

“O, that would be really kind of you, Mr. Andersen,” she said.

The moment he had gone, however, she felt annoyed that she had let him go. It looked so odd, she thought, his leaving her so suddenly, directly Maurice came on the scene. Besides, what would Gladys say at this interruption of her pleasure? She would suppose she had done it out of pure spitefulness! The moments seemed very long to her as she waited at the little bridge, tracing indecipherable hieroglyphics in the dust with the end of her parasol. She kept her eyes steadily fixed on the tall retreating figure of the stone-cutter as he slouched with his long shambling stride towards the work-shop. The two men were not, however, really long in approaching. Maurice had seen her from the beginning, and his replies to Mr. Wone’s oratory had grown proportionally brief.

When they reached her, the girl shook hands with Maurice and bowed rather coldly to Mr. Wone. That gentleman was not however in the least quelled or suppressed. It was one of his most marked characteristics to have absolutely no consciousness of season or situation. When less clever people would have wished the earth to swallow them up, Mr. Wone remained imperviously self-satisfied. Having exchanged greetings, Lacrima hastened to explain that she was waiting at this spot till Miss Romer should rejoin her. “Luke Andersen is showing her his work,” she said, “and James has gone to tell her I am waiting.”

Mr. Wone became voluble at this. “It is a shame to keep a young lady like yourself waiting in the middle of the road.” He turned to Mr. Quincunx. “We must not say all we think, must we? But begging this young lady’s pardon, it is just like the family. No consideration! No consideration for anyone! It is the same with his treatment of the poor. I am talking of Mr. Romer, you know, Miss. I would say the same thing to his face. Why is it that hard-working clever fellows, like these Andersens for instance, should do all the labour, and he get all the profits? It isn’t fair. It’s unjust. It’s an insult to God’s beautiful earth, which is free to all.” He paused to take breath, and looked to Maurice for confirmation of his words.

“You are quite right, Wone; you are quite right,” muttered the recluse in his beard, furtively glancing at Lacrima.

Mr. Wone continued his discourse, making large and eloquent allusion to the general relations in England between employer and employed, and implying plainly enough his full knowledge that at least one of his hearers belonged to the latter class. His air, as he spoke, betrayed a certain disordered fanaticism, quite genuine and deeply felt, but queerly mingled with an indescribable element of complacent self-conceit. Lacrima, in spite of considerable sympathy with much that he said, felt that there was, in the man himself, something so slipshod, so limp, so vague, and so patently vulgar, that both her respect for his sincerity and her interest in his opinions were reduced to nothing. Not only was he narrow-minded and ignorant; but there was also about him, in spite of the aggressive violence of his expressions, an odd sort of deprecatory, apologetic air, as though he were perpetually endeavouring to cajole his audience, by tacit references to his deferential respect for them. There was indeed more than a little in him of the sleek unction of the nonconformist preacher; and one could well understand how he might combine, precisely as Mr. Lickwit suspected, the divergent functions of the politician and the evangelist.

“I tell you,” he was saying, “the country will not long put up with this sort of thing. There is a movement, a tendency, a volcanic upheaval, a stirring of waters, which these plutocrats do not realize. There is a surging up from the depths of—of—” He paused for a word.

“Of mud,” murmured Mr. Quincunx.

“—Of righteous revolt against these atrocious inequalities! The working people are asleep no longer. They’re roused. The movement’s begun. The thunder’s gathering on the horizon. The armies of the exploited are feeling the impulse of their own strength, of that noble, that splendid anger, which, when it is conceived, will bring forth—will bring forth—”

“Damnation,” murmured Mr. Quincunx.

The three figures as they stood, thus consorted, on the little stone bridge, made up a dramatic group. The sinking sun threw their shadows in long wavering lines upon the white road, distorting them to so grotesque a length that they nearly reached the open gates of the station.

Human shadows! What a queer half-mocking commentary they make upon the vanity of our passionate excitements, roused by anything, quieted by nothing, as the world moves round!

Lacrima, in her shadow, was not beautiful at all. She was an elongated wisp of darkness. The beard of Mr. Quincunx looked as if it belonged to a mammoth goat, and the neck of Mr. Wone seemed to support, not a human cranium at all, but a round, wagging mushroom.

The hushed fields on each side of the way began to assume that magical softness which renders them, at such an hour, insubstantial, unreal, remote, transformed. One felt as though the earth might indeed be worthy of better destinies than those that traced their fantastic trails up and down its peaceful surface. Something deeply withheld, seemed as though it only needed the coming of one god-like spirit to set it free forever, and, with it, all the troubled hearts of men. It was one of those moments which, whether the participants in them recognize them or not, at the actual time, are bound to recur, long afterwards, to their memory.

Lacrima, half-listening to Mr. Wone, kept her head anxiously turned in the direction of the sheds, into one of which she had observed James Andersen enter.

Maurice Quincunx, his mood clogged and clotted by jealousy, watched her with great melancholy grey eyes, while with his nervous fingers he plucked at his beard.

“The time is coming—the time is coming”; cried Mr. Wone, striking with the back of his fist, the parapet against which he leaned, “when this exploitation of the poor by the rich will end once for all!” The warmth of his feeling was so great, that large drops of sweat trickled down his sallow cheeks, and hanging for a moment at the end of his narrow chin, fell into the dust. The man was genuinely moved; though in his watery blue eyes no trace of any fire was visible. He looked, in his emotion, like an hypnotized sick person, talking in the stress of a morbid fever. It was the revolt of one who carried the obsequious slavery of generations in his blood, and could only rebel in galvanized moribund spasms. The fellow was unpleasing, uninspiring: not the savage leader of a race of stern revolutionary devotees fired by the iron logic of their cause, but the inchoate inarticulate voice of clumsy protest, apologizing and propitiating, even while it protested. The vulgarity and meanness of the candidate’s tone made one wonder how such a one as he could ever have been selected by the obscure working of the Spirit of Sacrifice, to undertake this titanic struggle against the Spirit of Power. One turned away instinctively from his febrile rhetoric, to cast involuntary incense at the feet of the masterful enemy he opposed. He had no reticence in his enthusiasm, no reserve, no decency.

“You may perhaps not know,” he blundered on; “that the General Election is much nearer than people think. Mr. Romer will find this out; he will find it out; he will find it out! I have good authority for what I say. I speak of what I know, young lady.” This was said rather severely, for Lacrima’s attention was so obviously wandering.—“Of course you will not breathe a word of this, up there,”—he nodded in the direction of the House. “It would not do. But the truth is, he is making a great mistake. I am prepared for this campaign, and he is not. He is even thinking of reducing the men’s wages still further. The fool—the fool—the fool! For he is a fool, you know, though he thinks he is so clever.”

Even Mr. Wone would scarcely have dared to utter these bold asseverations in the ear of Gladys Romer’s cousin, if Maurice’s innate indiscretion had not made it the gossip of the village that the Italian was ill-treated “among those people.” To the pathetic man’s poor vulgar turn of mind there was something soothing in this confidential abuse of the lord of Nevilton Manor to his own relation. It had a squalid piquancy. It was itself a sort of revenge.

Once more he began his spasmodic enunciation of those sad economic platitudes that are the refuge of the oppressed; but Mr. Quincunx had crossed the road, in the pursuit of a decrepit tiger-moth, and was listening no more. Lacrima’s attention was completely withdrawn.

“Well, dear friends,” he concluded, “I must really be getting back to my supper. Mrs. Wone will be unbearable if I am late.” He hesitated a moment as if wondering whether the occasion called for any further domestic jocosity, to let these high matters lightly down to earth; but he contented himself with shaking hands with Mr. Quincunx and removing his hat to Lacrima.

“Good night, dear friends,” he repeated, drifting off, up the road, humming a hymn tune.

“Poor man!” whispered the girl, “he means well.”

“He ought to be shot!” was the unexpected response of the hermit of Dead Man’s Cottage, as he let the tiger-moth flutter down into the edge of the field. “He is no better than the rest. He is an idiot. He ought to learn Latin.”

They moved together towards the station.

“I don’t like the way you agree with people to their face,” said Lacrima, “and abuse them behind their backs.”

“I don’t like the way you hang about the roads with handsome stone-cutters,” was Mr. Quincunx’s surly retort.

Meanwhile, a quite interesting little drama had been unfolding itself in the neighbourhood of the half-carved block of sandstone. Instructed, by a swift flash of perception, into what the situation implied, Luke’s quick magnetic fingers soon drew from his companion’s an electric responsive clasp, as they leant together over the mouldings. The warmth and pliable softness of the girl’s body seemed to challenge the man with intimations of how quickly it would yield. He pointed to the shed-door, wide open behind them.

“I will show you my work, in there, in a moment,” he murmured, “as soon as they have gone.”

Her breast rose and fell under the increased excitement of her breathing. Violent quivers ran up and down her frame and communicated themselves to him. Their hearts beat fiercely in reciprocal agitation. Luke’s voice, as he continued his conventional summary of the quality and destination of the stone, shook a little, and sounded queer and detached.

“It is for Shaftesbury church,” he said, “for the base of the column that supports the arch. This particular moulding is one which my father designed. You must remember that upon it will rest a great deal of the weight of the roof.”

His fellow workmen had now collected their tools and were shuffling nervously past them. It required all Gladys’ sang-froid to give them the casual nod due from the daughter of the House to those who laboured in its service. As soon as they were well upon their way, with a quick glance at the distant figures of Lacrima and James, Gladys turned rapidly to her companion.

“Show me,” she said.

He went before her and stood in the entrance of the work-shop. When she had passed him into its interior, he casually closed behind them one of the rough folding doors. The contrast from the horizontal sun outside, turning the sandstone blocks into ruddy gold, to the shadowy twilight within, was strangely emphatic. He began to speak; saying he hardly knew what—some kind of stammered nonsense about the bases and capitals and carved mouldings that lay around them. But Gladys, true to her feminine prerogative, swept all this aside. With a bold audacity she began at once.

“How nice to be alone and free, for a little while!”

Then, moving still further into the shadow, and standing, as if absorbed in interest, before the rough beginnings of a fluted pillar which reached as high as the roof—

“What kind of top are you going to put on to that thing?”

As she spoke she leant against the pillar with a soft, weary relaxation of her whole form.

“Come near and tell me about it,” she whispered, as if her breath caught in her throat.

Luke recognized the tone—the tone that said, so much more distinctly than words, “I am ready. Why are you so slow?” He came behind her, and as gently and lightly as he could, though his arms trembled, let his fingers slide caressingly round her flexible figure. Her breath came in quick gasps, and one hot small hand met his own and pressed it against her side. Encouraged by this response, he boldly drew her towards him. She struggled a little; a shy girlish struggle, more than half conventional—and then, sliding round in his arms with a quick feline movement, she abandoned herself to her craving, and embraced him shamelessly and passionately. When at last in sheer weariness her arms relaxed and she sank down, with her hands pressed to her burning cheeks, upon an unfinished font, Luke Andersen thought that never to his dying day would he forget the serpentine clinging of that supple form and the pressure of those insatiable lips. He turned, a little foolishly, towards the door and kicked with his foot a fragment of a carved reredos. Then he went back to her and half-playfully, half-amorously, tried to remove her hands from her face.

“Don’t touch me! I hate you!” she said.

“Please,” he whispered, “please don’t be unkind now. I shall never, never forget how sweet you’ve been.”

“Tell me more about this work of yours,” she suddenly remarked, in a completely changed voice, rising to her feet. “I have always understood that you were one of our best workmen. I shall tell my father how highly I think of what you’re doing—you and your brother. I am sure he will be glad to know what artists he has among his men.”

She gave her head a proud little toss and raised negligent deliberate hands to her disarranged fair hair, smoothing it down and readjusting her wide-brimmed hat. She had become the grand lady again and Luke had become the ordinary young stone-mason. Superficially, and with a charming grace, he adapted himself to this change, continuing his conventional remarks about fonts, pillars, crosses, and capitals; and calling her “Miss” or “Miss Gladys,” with scrupulous discretion. But in his heart, all the while, he was registering a deep and vindictive vow—a vow that, at whatever risk and at whatever cost, he would make this fair young despot suffer for her caprice. Gladys had indeed, quite unwittingly, entered into a struggle with a nature as remorseless and unscrupulous as her own. She had dreamed, in her imperial way, of using this boy for her amusement, and then throwing him aside. She did not for a moment intend to get entangled in any sentimental relations with him. A passing “amour,” leading to nothing, and in no way committing her, was what she had instinctively counted on. For the rest, in snatching fiercely at any pleasure her fervent senses craved, she was as conscienceless and antinomian, as a young tiger out of the jungle. Nor had she the remotest sense of danger in this exciting sport. Corrupt and insensitive as any amorous courtezan of a pagan age, she trusted to her freedom from innocence to assure her of freedom from disaster. Vaguely enough in her own mind she had assumed, as these masterful “blond beasts” are inclined to assume, that in pouncing on this new prey she was only dealing once more with that malleable and timorous humanity she had found so easy to mould to her purpose in other quarters. She reckoned, with a pathetic simplicity, that Luke would be clay in her hands. As a matter of fact this spoiled child of the wealth produced by the Leonian stone had audaciously flung down her challenge to one who had as much in him as herself of that stone’s tenacity and imperviousness. The daughter of sandstone met the carver of sandstone; and none, who knew the two, would have dared to predict the issue of such an encounter.

The young man was still urbanely and discreetly discoursing to his lady-visitor upon the contents of the work-shop, when the tall figure of James Andersen darkened the door.

“Excuse me, Miss,” he said to Gladys, “but Miss Lacrima asked me to tell you that she was waiting for you on the bridge.”

“Thank you, James,” answered the girl simply, “I will come. I am afraid my interest in all the things your brother has been so kindly showing me has made you both late. I am sorry.” Here she actually went so far as to fumble in her skirt for her purse. After an awkward pause, during which the two men waited at either side of the door, she found what she sought, and tripping lightly by, turned as she passed Luke and placed in his hand, the hand that so recently had been clasped about her person, the insolent recompense of a piece of silver. Bidding them both good-night, she hurried away to rejoin Lacrima, who, having by this time got rid of Mr. Quincunx, moved down the road to meet her.

Luke closed and locked the door of the shed without a word. Then to the astonishment of James Andersen he proceeded to dance a kind of grotesque war-dance, ending it with a suppressed half-mocking howl, as he leant exhausted against the wall of the building.

“I’ve got her, I’ve got her, I’ve got her!” he repeated. “James, my darling Daddy James, I’ve got this girl in the palm of my hand!” He humorously proceeded to toss the coin she had given him high in the air. “Heads or tails?” he cried, as the thing fell among the weeds. “Heads! It’s heads, my boy! That means that Miss Gladys Romer will be sorry she ever stepped inside this work-shop of ours. Come, let’s wash and eat, my brother; for the gods have been good to us today.”