Wood and Stone

by John Cowper Powys

  “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 Lacrima’s attention was completely withdrawn.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 stonemason. 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 deali
ng 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.”

  CHAPTER V

  FRANCIS TAXATER

  THE day following the one whose persuasive influence we have just recorded was not less auspicious. The weather seemed to have effected a transference of its accustomed quality, bringing to the banks of the Yeo and the Parret the atmospheric conditions belonging to those of the Loire or the Arno.

  Having finished her tea Valentia Seldom was strolling meditatively up and down the vicarage terrace, alternately stopping to pick off the petals of a dead flower, or to gaze, with a little gloomy frown, upon the grass of the orchard.

  Her slender upright figure, in her black silk dress, made a fine contrast to the rich green foliage about her, set on one side with ruby-coloured roses and on the other with yellow buttercups. But the old lady was in no peaceful frame of mind. Every now and then she tapped the gravel impatiently with her ebony stick; and the hand that toyed with the trinkets at her side mechanically closed and unclosed its fingers under the wrist-band of Mechlin lace. It was with something of an irritable start, that she turned round to greet Francis Taxater, as led by the little servant he presented himself to her attention. He moved to greet her with his usual imperturbable gravity, walking sedately along the edge of the flowery border; with one shoulder a little higher than the other and his eyes on the ground.

  His formidable prelatical chin seemed more than ever firmly set that afternoon, and his grey waistcoat, under his shabby black coat, was tightly drawn across his emphatic stomach. His coal-black eyes, darkened yet further by the shadow of his hat, glanced furtively to right and left of him as he advanced. In the manner peculiar to persons disciplined by Catholic self-control, his head never followed, by the least movement, the shrewd explorations of these diplomatic eyes.

  One would have taken him for a French bishop, of aristocratic race, masquerading, for purposes of discretion, in the dress of a secular scholar.

  Everything about Francis Taxater, from the noble intellectual contours of his forehead, down to his small satyr-like feet, smacked of the courtier and the priest; of the learned student, and the urbane frequenter of sacred conclaves. His small white hand, plump and exquisitely shaped, rested heavily on his cane. He carried with him in every movement and gesture that curious air of dramatic weight and importance which men of diplomatic experience are alone able to use without letting it degenerate into mannerism. It was obvious that he, at any rate, according to Mr. Quincunx’s favourite discrimination, “knew Latin.” He seemed to have slid, as it were, into this commercial modern world, from among the contemporaries of Bossuet. One felt that his authors were not Ibsen or Tolstoy, but Horace and Cicero.

  One felt also, however, that in sheer psychological astuteness not even Mr. Romer himself would be a match for him. Between those two, the man of modern wisdom and the man of ancient wisdom, any struggle that might chance to occur would be a singularly curious one. If Mr. Taxater really was “on the side of the angels,” he was certainly there with the full weight of organized hierarchies. If he did exert his strength upon the side of “meekness,” it would be a strength of no feverish, spasmodic eruption.

  If Satan threw a Borgia in Mr. Taxater’s path, that Borgia, it appeared, would find his Machiavel.

  “Yes, it is a lovely day again,” said the old lady, leading her visitor to a seat and placing herself by his side. “But what is our naughty Monsignor doing, playing truant from his consistory? I thought you would be in London this week—at the Eucharist Conference your people are holding? Is it to the loveliness of the weather that we owe this pleasant surprise?”

  One almost expected—so formal and old-fashioned were the two interlocutors—that Mr. Taxater would have replied, in the tone of Ivanhoe or the Talisman, “A truce to such jesting, Madam!” No doubt if he had, the lady would hardly have discerned any anachronism. As a matter of fact he did not answer her question at all, but substituted one of his own.

  “I met Vennie in the village,” he said. “Do you think she is happier now, in her new English circle?”

  “Ah! my friend,” cried the old lady, in a nervous voice, “it is of Vennie that I have been thinking all this afternoon. No, I cannot say I think she is happier. I wonder if it is one thing; and then I wonder if it is another. I cannot get to the bottom of it and it worries me.”

  “I expect it is her nerves,” said the diplomatist. “Though the sun is so warm, there has been a constant east wind lately; and, as you know, I put down most of our agitations to the presence of east wind.”

  “It will not do, Mr. Taxater; it will not do! It may be the east wind with you and me. It is not the east wind with Vennie. Something is troubling her. I wish I could discern what it is?”

  “She isn’t by any chance being vexed by some theological dispute with the Vicar, is she? I know how seriously she takes all his views. And his views are, if I may say so, decidedly confusing. Don’t misunderstand me, dear lady. I respect Mr. Clavering and admire him. I like the shape of his head; especially when he wears his beretta. But I cannot feel much confidence in his wisdom in dealing with a sensitive child like your daughter. He is too impulsive. He is too dogmatic. He lives too entirely in the world of doctrinal controversy. It is dangerous”; here Mr. Taxater luxuriously stretched out his legs and lit a cigarette; “it is dangerous to live only for theology. We have to learn to live for Religion; and that is a much more elaborate affair. That extends very far, Mrs. Seldom.”

  The old lady let her stick slide to the ground and clasped her hands together. “I want to ask you one thing, Mr. Taxater. And I implore you to be quite direct with me. You do not think, do you, that my girl is tending towards your church—towards Rome? I confess it would be a heavy blow to me, one of the heaviest I have ever had, if anything of that kind happened. I know you are tolerant enough to let me speak like this without scruple. I like you, my dear friend—
” Here a soft flush spread over Valentia’s ivory-coloured cheeks and she made a little movement as if to put her hand on her companion’s arm. “I like you yourself, and have the utmost confidence in you. But Oh, it would be a terrible shock to me if Vennie became a Roman Catholic. She would enter a convent; I know she would enter a convent and that would be more than I could bear.” The accumulated distress of many years was in the old lady’s voice and tears stood in her eyes. “I know it is silly,” she went on as Mr. Taxater steadily regarded the landscape. “But I cannot help it. I do so hope—Oh, I can’t tell you how much—that Vennie will marry and have children. It is the secret burden of my life, the thought that, with this frail little thing, our ancient race should disappear. I feel it my deepest duty—my duty to the Past and my duty to the Future—to arrange a happy marriage for her. If only that could be achieved, I should be able to die content.”

  “You have no evidence, no authority for thinking,” said Mr. Taxater gravely, “that she is meditating any approach to my church, as you call it, have you?”

  “Oh no!” cried the old lady, “quite the contrary. She seems absorbed in the services here. She works with Mr. Clavering, she discusses everything with Mr. Clavering, she helps Mr. Clavering with the poor. I believe”—here Valentia lowered her voice; “I believe she confesses to Mr. Clavering.”

  Francis Taxater smiled—the smile of the heir of Christendom’s classic faith at these pathetic fumblings of heresy—and carefully knocked the ashes from his cigarette against the handle of his cane.