Wood and Stone

by John Cowper Powys

  The two friends walked up and down the sunny field in front of the house, Luke pouring into the solitary’s attentive ears every one of his recent impressions and sensations.

  Mr. Quincunx was evidently profoundly moved by James’ death. He refused Luke’s offer to let him visit the room upstairs, but his refusal was expressed in such a natural and characteristic manner that the stone-carver accepted it in perfect good part.

  After a while they sat down together under the shady hedge at the top of the meadow. Here they discoursed and philosophized at large, listening to the sound of the church-bells and watching the slow-moving cattle. It was one of those unruffled Sunday mornings, when, in such places as this, the drowsiness of the sun-warmed leaves and grasses seems endowed with a kind of consecrated calm, the movements of the horses and oxen grow solemn and ritualistic, the languor of the heavy-winged butterflies appears holy, and the stiff sabbatical dresses of the men and women who shuffle so demurely to and fro, seem part of a patient liturgical observance.

  Luke loved Mr. Quincunx that morning. The recluse was indeed precisely in his element. Living habitually himself in thoughts of death, pleased—in that incomparable sunshine—to find himself still alive, cynical and yet considerate, mystical and yet humorous, he exactly supplied what the wounded heart of the pagan mourner required for its comfort.

  “Idiots! asses! fools!” the stone-carver ejaculated, apostrophizing in his inmost spirit the various persons, clever or otherwise, to whom this nervous and eccentric creature was a mere type of failure and superannuation. None of these others,—not one of them,—not Homer nor Dangelis nor Clavering nor Taxater—could for a moment have entered into the peculiar feelings which oppressed him. As for Gladys or Phyllis or Annie or Polly,—he would have as soon thought of relating his emotions to a row of swallows upon a telegraph-wire as to any of those dainty epitomes of life’s evasiveness!

  A man’s brain, a man’s imagination, a man’s scepticism, was what he wanted; but he wanted it touched with just that flavour of fanciful sentiment of which the Nevilton hermit was a master. A hundred quaint little episodes, the import of which none but Mr. Quincunx could have appreciated, were evoked by the stone-carver. Nothing was too blasphemous, nothing too outrageous, nothing too bizarre, for the solitary’s taste. On the other hand, he entered with tender and perfect clairvoyance into the sick misery of loss which remained the background of all Luke’s sensations.

  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 Homer 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 persons 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.”

  The stone-carver stretched out his legs and lit a cigarette. “Sit down again, you old fool,” he said, “and let’s talk this business over sensibly.”

  The recluse sighed deeply, and, subsiding into his former position, fixed a look of hopeless melancholy upon the sunlit landscape.

  “The point is this, Maurice,” began the young man. “The first thing in these complicated situations is to be absolutely certain what one wants oneself. It seems to me that a good deal of your agitation comes from the fact that you haven’t made up your mind what you want. You asked my advice, you know, so you won’t be angry if I’m quite plain with you?”

  “Go on,” said Mr. Quincunx, a remote flicker of his goblin-smile twitching his nostrils, “I see I’m in for a few little hits.”

  Luke waved his hand. “No hits, my friend, no hits. All I want to do, is to find out from you what you really feel. One philosophizes, naturally, about girls marrying, and so on; but the point is,—do you want this particular young lady for yourself, or don’t you?”

  Mr. Quincunx stroked his beard. “Well,”—he said meditatively, “if it comes to that, I suppose I do want her. We’re all fools in some way or other, I fancy. Yes, I do want her, Luke, and that’s the honest truth. But I don’t want to have to work twice as hard as I’m doing now, and under still more unpleasant conditions, to keep her!”

  Luke emitted a puff of smoke and knocked the ashes from his cigarette upon the purple head of a tall knapweed.

  “Ah!” he ejaculated. “Now we’ve got something to go upon.”

  Mr. Quincunx surveyed the faun-like profile of his friend with some apprehension. He mentally resolved that nothing,—nothing in heaven nor earth,—should put him to the agitation of making any drastic change in his life.

  “We get back then,” continued Luke, “to the point we reached on our walk to Seven A
shes.”

  As he said the words “Seven Ashes” the ice-cold finger of memory pierced him with that sudden stab which is like a physical blow. What did it matter, after all, he thought, what happened to any of these people, now Daddy James was dead?

  “You remember,” he went on, while the sorrowful grey eyes of his companion regarded him with wistful anxiety, “you told me, in that walk, that if some imaginary person were to leave you money enough to live comfortably, you would marry Lacrima without any hesitation?”

  Mr. Quincunx nodded.

  “Well,”—Luke continued—“in return for your confession about that contract, I’ll confess to you that Mr. Taxater and I formed a plan together, when my brother first got ill, to secure you this money.”

  Mr. Quincunx made a grimace of astonishment.

  “The plan has lapsed now,” went on Luke, “owing to Mr. Taxater’s being away; but I can’t help feeling that something of that kind might be done. I feel in a queer sort of fashion,” he added, “though I can’t quite tell you why, that, after all, things’ all so work themselves out, that you will get both the girl and the money!”

  Mr. Quincunx burst into a fit of hilarious merriment, and rubbed his hands together. But a moment later his face clouded.

  “It’s impossible,” he murmured with a deep sigh; “it’s impossible, Luke. Girls and gold go together like butterflies and sunshine. I’m as far from either, as the sea-weed under the arch of Weymouth Bridge.”

  Luke pondered for a moment in silence.

  “It’s an absurd superstition,” he finally remarked, “but I can’t help a sort of feeling that James’ spirit is actively exerting itself on your side. He was a romantic old truepenny, and his last thoughts were all fixed—of that I’m sure—upon Lacrima’s escaping this marriage with Goring.”

  Mr. Quincunx sighed. He had vaguely imagined the possibility of some grand diplomatic stroke on his behalf, from the astute Luke; and this relapse into mysticism, on the part of that sworn materialist, did not strike him as reassuring.

  The silence that fell between them was broken by the sudden appearance of a figure familiar to them both, crossing the field towards them. It was Witch-Bessie, who, in a bright new shawl, and with a mysterious packet clutched in her hand, was beckoning to attract their attention. The men rose and advanced to meet her.

  “I’ll sit down a bit with ’ee,” cried the old woman, waving to them to return to their former position.

  When they were seated once more beneath the bank,—the old lady, like some strange Peruvian idol, resting cross-legged at their feet,—she began, without further delay, to explain the cause of her visit.

  “I know’d how ’twould be with ’ee,” she said, addressing Luke, but turning a not unfriendly eye upon his companion. “I did know well how ’twould be. I hear’d tell of brother’s being laid out, from Bert Leerd, as I traipsed through Wild Pine this morning.

  “Ninsy Lintot was a-cryin’ enough to break her poor heart. I hear’d ’un as I doddered down yon lane. She were all lonesome-like, under them girt trees, shakin’ and sobbin’ terrible. She took on so, when I arst what ailed ’un, that I dursn’t lay finger on the lass.

  “She did right down scare I, Master Luke, and that’s God’s holy truth!’ Let me bide, Bessie,’ says she, ‘let me bide.’ I telled her ’twas a sin to He she loved best, to carry on so hopeless; and with that she up and says,—‘I be the cause of it all, Bessie,’ says she, ‘I be the cause he throw’d ’isself away.’ And with that she set herself cryin’ again, like as ’twas pitiful to hear. ‘My darlin’, my darlin’,’ she kept callin’ out. ‘I love no soul ‘cept thee—no soul ‘cept thee!’

  “’Twas then I recollected wot my old Mother used to say,’ bout maids who be cryin’ like pantin’ hares. ‘Listen to me, Ninsy Lintot,’ I says, solemn and slow, like as us were in church. ‘One above’s been talking wi’ I, this blessed morn, and He do say as Master James be in Abram’s Bosom, with them shining ones, and it be shame and sin for mortals like we to wish ’un back.’

  “That quieted the lass a bit, and I did tell she then, wot be God’s truth, that ’tweren’t her at all turned brother’s head, but the pleasure of the Almighty.” Tis for folks like us,’ I says to her, ‘to take wot His will do send, and bide quiet and still, same as cows, drove to barton.’

  “’Twere a blessing of providence I’d met crazy Bert afore I seed the lass, else I’d a been struck dazed-like by wot she did tell. But as ’twas, thanks be to recollectin’ mother’s trick wi’ such wendy maids, I dried her poor eyes and got her back home along. And she gave I summat to put in brother’s coffin afore they do nail ’un down.”

  Before either Luke or Mr. Quincunx had time to utter any comment upon this narration, Witch-Bessie unfastened the packet she was carrying, and produced from a cardboard box a large roughly-moulded bracelet, or bangle, of heavy silver, such as may be bought in the bazaars of Tunis or Algiers.

  “There,” cried the old woman, holding the thing up, and flashing it in the sun, “that’s wot she gave I, to bury long wi’ brother! Be pretty enough, baint ’un? Though, may-be, not fittin’ for a quiet home-keeping lass like she. She had ’un off some Gipoo, she said; and to my thinkin’ it be a kind of heathen ornimint, same as folks do buy at Rogertown Fair. But such as ’tis, that be wot ’tis bestowed for, to put i’ the earth long wi’ brother. Seems somethin ‘of a pity, maybe, but maid’s whimsies be maids’ whimsies, and God Almighty’ll plague the hard-hearted folk as won’t perform wot they do cry out for.”

  Luke took the bangle from the old woman’s hand.

  “Of course I’ll do what she wants, Bessie,” he said. “Poor little Ninsy, I never knew how much she cared.”

  He permitted Mr. Quincunx to handle the silver object, and then carefully placed it in his pocket.

  “Hullo!” he cried, “what else have you got, Bessie?” This exclamation was caused by the fact that Witch-Bessie, after fumbling in her shawl had produced a second mysterious packet, smaller than the first and tightly tied round with the stalks of some sort of hedge-weed.

  “Cards, by Heaven!” exclaimed Luke. “Oh Bessie, Bessie,” he added, “why didn’t you bring these round here twenty-four hours ago? You might have made me take him with me to Weymouth!”

  Untying the packet, which contained as the stone-carver had anticipated, a pack of incredibly dirty cards, the old woman without a word to either of them, shuffled and sifted them, according to some secret rule, and laid aside all but nine. These, almost, but not entirely, consisting of court cards, she spread out in a carefully concerted manner on the grass at her feet.

  Muttering over them some extraordinary gibberish, out of which the two men could only catch the following words,

  “Higgory, diggory, digg’d

  My sow has pigg’d.

  There’s a good card for thee.

  There’s a still better than he!

  There is the best of all three,

  And there is Niddy-noddee!”—

  Witch-Bessie picked up these nine cards, and shuffled them long and fast.

  She then handed them to Luke, face-downward, and bade him draw seven out of the nine. These she once more arranged, according to some occult plan, upon the grass, and pondered over them with wrinkled brow.

  “’Tis as ’twould be! “she muttered at last.” Cards be wonderful crafty, though toads and efties, to my thinkin’, be better, and a viper’s ’innards be God’s very truth.”

  Making, to Luke’s great disappointment, no further allusion to the result of her investigations, the old woman picked up the cards and went through the whole process again, in honour of Mr. Quincunx.

  This time, after bending for several minutes over the solitary’s choice, she became more voluble.

  “Thy heart’s wish be thine, dearie,” she said. “But there be thwartings and blastings. Three tears—three kisses—and a terrible journey. Us shan’t have ’ee long wi’ we, in these ’ere parts. Thee be marke
d and signed, master, by fallin’ stars and flyin’ birds. There’s good sound wood gone to ship’s keel wot’ll carry thee fast and far. Blastings and thwartings! But thy heart’s wish be thine, dearie.”

  The humourous nostrils of Mr. Quincunx and the expressive curves of his bearded chin had twitched and quivered as this sorcery began, but the old woman’s reference to a “terrible journey” clouded his countenance with blank dismay.

  Luke pressed the sybil to be equally communicative with regard to his own fate, but the old woman gathered up her cards, twisted the same faded stalks round the packet, and returned it to the folds of her shawl. Then she struggled up upon her feet.

  “Don’t leave us yet, Bessie,” said Luke. “I’ll bring you out something to eat presently.”

  Witch-Bessie’s only reply to this hospitable invitation was confounding in its irrelevance. She picked up her draggled skirt with her two hands, displaying her unlaced boots and rumpled stockings, and then, throwing back her wizened head, with its rusty weather-bleached bonnet, and emitting a pallid laugh from her toothless gums, she proceeded to tread a sort of jerky measure, moving her old feet to the tune of a shrill ditty.

  “Now we dance looby, looby, looby,

  Now we dance looby, looby, light;

  Shake your right hand a little,

  Shake your left hand a little,

  And turn you round about.”

  “Ye’ll both see I again, present,” she panted, when this performance was over, “but bide where ’ee be, bide where ’ee be now. Old Bessie’s said her say, and she be due long of Hullaway Cross, come noon.”

  As she hobbled off to the neighbouring stile, Luke saw her kiss the tips of her fingers in the direction of the station-master’s house.

  “She’s bidding Daddy James good-bye,” he thought. “What a world! ‘Looby, looby, looby!’ A proper Dance of Death for a son of my mother!”