NEVILTON
Until within some twenty years of the date with which we are now
concerned, the distinguished family who originally received the
monastic estates from the royal despot had held them intact and
unassailed. By an evil chance however, the property had extended
itself, during the eighteenth century, so as to include the larger
portion of Leo’s Hill; and since that day its possession had been
attended by misfortune. The ancient aboriginal fortress proved as fatal
to its modern invaders as it had proved in remoter times to Roman,
Saxon and Norman.
A fanciful imagination might indeed have amused itself with the
curious dream, that some weird Druidic curse had been laid upon that
grass-grown island of yellow rock, bringing disaster and eclipse to
all who meddled with it. Such an imagination would have been able to
fortify its fancy by recalling the suggestive fact that at the bottom
of the large woodland pond, indicated in this narrative under the name
of Auber Lake, was discovered, not many years before, an immense slab
of Leonian stone, inscribed with symbols baffling interpretation, but
suggesting, to one antiquarian mind at least, a hint of prehistoric
Devil-Worship. However this may be, it is certain that the family
of Seldom found themselves finally faced with the alternative of
selling the place they loved or of seeing it lapse under their hands
into confusion and neglect. Of these evil alternatives they chose the
former; and thus the estates, properties, royalties, and appurtenances,
of the historic Manor of Nevilton fell into the hands of a clever
financier from Lombard Street.
The family of Mr. Mortimer Romer had never at any time bowed its
knee in kings’ houses. Nor were its religious antecedents marked
by orthodox reputation. Mr. Romer was indeed in every sense of the
word a “self-made man.” But though neither Christian nor Jew,--for
his grandfather, the fish-monger of Soho, had been of the Unitarian
persuasion--it cannot be denied that he possessed the art of making
himself thoroughly respected by both the baptized and the circumcised.
He indeed pursued his main purpose, which was the acquiring of power,
with an unscrupulousness worthy of a Roman Emperor. Possibly it was
this Roman tenacity in him, combined with his heathen indifference
to current theology, which propitiated the avenging deities of Leo’s
Hill. So far at any rate he had been eminently successful in his
speculations. He had secured complete possession of every quarry on the
formidable eminence; and the company of which he was both director and
president was pursuing its activities in a hundred new directions. It
had, in the few last years, gone so far as to begin certain engineering
assaults upon those remote portions of the ancient escarpments that had
been left untouched since the legions of Claudius Cæsar encamped under
their protection.
The bulk of Mr. Romer’s stone-works were on the Hill itself; but
others, intended for the more delicate finishing touches, were situated
in a convenient spot close to Nevilton Station. Out of these sheds
and yards, built along the railway-track, arose, from morning to
night, the monotonous, not unpleasing, murmur of wheels and saws and
grindstones. The contrast between these sounds and the sylvan quietness
of the vicarage garden, which sloped down towards them, was one of
the most significant indications of the clash of the Two Mythologies
in this place. The priest meditating among his roses upon the vanity
of all but “heavenly habitations” might have been in danger of being
too obtrusively reminded of the pride of the houses that are very
definitely “made with hands.” Perhaps this was one of the reasons why
the present incumbent of Nevilton had preferred a more undisturbed
retreat.
The general manager of Mortimer Romer’s quarries was a certain Mr.
Lickwit, who served also as his confidential adviser in many other
spheres.
The works at Nevilton Station were left to the superintendence of two
brothers named Andersen, skilled stone-cutters, sons of the famous
Gideon Andersen known to architects all over the kingdom for his
designs in Leonian stone. Both Gideon and his wife Naomi were buried
in Nevilton churchyard, and the brothers were condemned in the village
as persons of an almost scandalous piety because of their innocent
habit of lingering on warm summer evenings over their parents’ grave.
They lived together, these two, as lodgers with the station-master, in
a newly built cottage close to their work. Their social position in
the place was a curious and anomalous one. Their father’s reputation
as a sculptor had brought him into touch with every grade of society;
and the woman who became his wife was by birth what is usually termed
a lady. Gideon himself had been a rough and gross fellow; and after
his wife’s death had hastened to take his sons away from school
and apprentice them to his own trade. They were in many respects
a noteworthy pair, though scarcely favourites, either with their
fellow-workmen or their manager.
James Andersen, the elder by some ten years, was of a morose, reserved
temper, and though a capable workman never seemed happy in the
work-shop. Luke, on the contrary, possessed a peculiarly sunny and
serene spirit.
They were both striking in appearance. The younger approximated to that
conventional type of beauty which is popularly known as being “like a
Greek god.” The elder, tall, swarthy, and sinister, suggested rather
the image of some gloomy idol carved on the wall of an Assyrian temple.
What, however, was much more remarkable than their appearance was their
devoted attachment to one another. They lived, worked, ate, drank,
walked and slept together. It was impossible to separate them. Had Mr.
Lickwit dismissed James, Luke would immediately have thrown down his
tools. Had Luke been the banished one, James would have followed him
into exile.
It had fallen to Mr. Romer, some seven years before our narrative
begins, to appoint a new vicar to Nevilton; and he had appointed one of
such fierce ascetic zeal and such pronounced socialistic sympathies,
that he had done nothing since but vehemently and bitterly repent his
choice.
The Promoter of Companies had been betrayed into this blunder by the
impulse of revengeful caprice, the only impulse in his otherwise
well-balanced nature that might be termed dangerous to himself.
He had quarrelled with the bishop over some matter connected with his
stone-works; and in order to cause this distinguished prelate grief and
annoyance he had looked about for someone to honour who was under the
episcopal ban. The bishop, however, was of so discreet a temper and so
popular in his diocese that the only rebel to his authority that could
be discovered was one of the curates of a church at Yeoborough who had
insisted upon preaching the Roman doctrine of Transubstantiation.
The matter would probably have lapsed into quiescence, save for
the crafty interference in the local newspaper of a group of
aggressive Nonconformists, who took this opportunity of sowing
desirable dissension between the higher and lower orders of the hated
Establishment.
Mr. Romer, who, like Gallio, cared for none of these things, and was
at heart a good deal worse than a Nonconformist, seized upon the
chance offered by the death of Nevilton’s vicar; and installed as his
successor this rebel to ecclesiastical authority.
Once installed, however, the Rev. Hugh Clavering speedily came to an
understanding with his bishop; compromised on the matter of preaching
Transubstantiation; and apparently was allowed to go on believing in
it.
And it was then that the Promoter of Companies learned for the first
time how much easier it is to make a priest than to unmake him. For
situation after situation arose in which the master of the Leonian
quarries found himself confronted by an alien Power--a Power that
refused to worship Sandstone. Before this rupture, however, the
young Priest had persuaded Mr. Romer to let him live in the Old
Vicarage, a small but cheerful house just opposite the church door.
The orthodox vicarage, a rambling Early Victorian structure standing
in its own grounds at the end of the West Drive, was let--once more
at the Priest’s suggestion--to the last living representatives of the
dispossessed Seldoms.
It indicated a good deal of spirit on the part of Valentia Seldom and
her daughter thus to return to the home of their ancestors.
Mrs. Seldom was a cousin of the man who had sold the estate. Her
daughter Vennie, brought up in a school at Florence, had never seen
Nevilton, and it was with the idea of taking advantage for the girl’s
sake of their old prestige in that corner of England that Valentia
accepted Mr. Romer’s offer and became the vicarage tenant.
The quarry-owner himself was influenced in carrying through this
affair, by his anxiety, for the sake of _his_ daughter, to secure a
firmer footing with the aristocracy of the neighborhood. Here again,
however, he was destined to disappointment: for once in possession of
her twenty years’ lease the old lady showed not the least intention of
letting herself be used as a social stepping-stone.
She had, indeed, under her own roof, cause enough for preoccupation and
concern.
Her daughter--a little ghost-moth of a girl, of fragile
delicacy--seemed entirely devoid of that mysterious magnetic attraction
which lures to the side of most virgins the devotion of the opposite
sex. She appeared perfectly content to remain forever in her tender
maidenhood, and refused to exert the slightest effort to be “nice” to
the charming young people her mother threw in her way. She belonged to
that class of young girls who seem to be set apart by nature for other
purposes than those of the propagation of the race.
Her wistful spirit, shrinking into itself like the leaves of a
sensitive plant at the least approach of a rough hand, responded only
to one passionate impulse, the impulse of religion.
She grew indeed so estranged from the normal world, that it was not
only Valentia who concealed the thought that when she left the earth
the ancient race of Seldoms would leave it with her.
Nor was it only in regard to her child’s religious obsession that the
lady suffered. She had flatly refused to let her enter into anything
but the coldest relations with “those dreadful people at the House”;
and it was with a peculiar shock of dismay that she found that the
girl was not literally obeying her. It was not, however, to the Romers
themselves that Vennie made her shy overtures, but to a luckless little
relative of that family now domiciled with them as companion to Gladys
Romer.
This young dependent, reputed in the village to be of Italian origin,
struck the gentle heart of the last of the Seldoms with indescribable
pity. She could not altogether define the impression the girl produced
upon her, but it was a singularly oppressive one, and it vexed and
troubled her.
The situation was wretchedly complicated. It was extremely difficult
to get a word with the little companion without encountering Gladys;
and any approach to intimacy with “the Romer girl” would have meant
an impossible scene with Mrs. Seldom. Nor was it a light undertaking,
in such hurried interviews as she did manage to secure, to induce
the child to drop her reserve. She would fix her great brown foreign
eyes--her name was Lacrima Traffio--on Vennie’s face, and make curious
little helpless gestures with her hands when questions were asked her;
but speak of herself she would not.
It was clear she was absolutely dependent on her cousins. Vennie
gathered as much as that, as she once talked with her under the church
wall, when Gladys was chatting with the vicar. A reference to her own
people had nearly resulted in an outburst of tears. Vennie had had to
be content with a broken whisper: “We come from Rapallo--they are all
dead.” There was nothing, it appeared, that could be added to this.
It was perhaps a little inconsistent in the old lady to be so resolute
against her daughter’s overtures to Lacrima, as she herself had no
hesitation in making a sort of protégé of another of Mr. Romer’s tribe.
This was an eccentric middle-aged bachelor who had drifted into the
place soon after the new-comer’s arrival and had established himself
in a dilapidated cottage on the outskirts of the Auber woods.
Remotely related to Mrs. Romer, he had in some way become dependent on
her husband, whose financial advantage over him was not, it seemed, as
time went on, exerted in a very considerate manner.
Maurice Quincunx, for such was his unusual name, was an illegitimate
descendant of one of the most historic houses in the neighborhood,
but both his poverty and his opinions caused him to live what was
practically the life of a hermit, and made him shrink away, even more
nervously than little Vennie Seldom, from any intercourse with his
equals.
The present possessors of his queer ancient name were now the Lords
of Glastonbury, and had probably never so much as heard of Maurice’s
existence.
He would come by stealth to pay Valentia visits, preferring the evening
hours when in the summer she used to sit with her work, on a terrace
overlooking a sloping orchard, and watch Vennie water her roses.
The vicarage terrace was a place of extraordinary quiet and peace,
eminently adapted to the low-voiced, nervous ramblings of a recluse of
Maurice Quincunx’s timidity.
The old lady by degrees quite won this eccentric’s heart; and the
queerly assorted friends would pace up and down for hours in the cool
of the evening talking of things in no way connected either with Mr.
Romer or the Church--the two subjects about which Mr. Quincunx held
dangerously strong views.
Apart from this quaint outcast and the youthful parson, Mrs. Seldom’s
only other intimate in the place was a certain John Francis Taxater,
a gentleman of independent means, living by himself with an old
housekeeper in a cottage called The Gables, situated about half-way
between the vicarage and the village.
Mr. Taxater was a Catholic and also a philosopher; these two
peculiarities affording the solution to what otherwise would have been
an insoluble psychic riddle. Even as it was, Mr. Taxater’s mind was of
so subtle and complicated an order, that he was at once the attraction
and the despair of all the religious thinkers of that epoch. For it
must be understood that though quietly resident under the shadow of
Nevilton Mount, the least essay from Mr. Taxater’s pen was eagerly
perused by persons interested in religious controversy in all the
countries of Europe.
He wrote for philosophical journals in London, Paris, Rome and New
York; and there often appeared at The Gables most surprising visitors
from Germany and Italy and Spain.
He had a powerful following among the more subtle-minded of the
Catholics of England; and was highly respected by important personages
in the social, as well as the literary circles, of Catholic society.
The profundity of his mind may be gauged from the fact that he
was able to steer his way successfully through the perilous reefs
of “modernistic” discussion, without either committing himself to
heretical doctrine or being accused of reactionary ultramontanism.
Mr. Taxater’s written works were, however, but a trifling portion of
his personality. His intellectual interests were as rich and varied
as those of some great humanist of the Italian Renaissance, and his
personal habits were as involved and original as his thoughts were
complicated and deep.
He was perpetually engaged in converting the philosopher in him to
Catholicism, and the Catholic in him to philosophy--yet he never
permitted either of these obsessions to interfere with his enjoyment of
life.
Luke Andersen, who was perhaps of all the inhabitants of Nevilton most
conscious of the drama played around him, used to maintain that it was
impossible to tell in the last resort whether Mr. Taxater’s place was
with the adherents of Christ or with the adherents of Anti-Christ. Like
his prototype, the evasive Erasmus, he seemed able to be on both sides
at the same time.
Perhaps it was a secret consciousness of the singular position of
Nevilton, planted, as it were, between two streams of opposing legend,
that originally led Mr. Taxater to take up his abode in so secluded a
spot.
It is impossible to tell. In this as in all other transactions of
his life he combined an unworldly simplicity with a Machiavellian
astuteness. If the Day of Judgment revealed him as being on the side
of the angels, it might also reveal him as having exercised, in the
microcosmic Nevilton drama, as well as in his wider sphere, one of the
most subtle influences against the Powers of Darkness that those Powers
ever encountered in their invisible activity.
At the moment when the present narrative takes up the woven threads
of these various persons’ lives there seemed every prospect that
in external nature at least there was going to be an auspicious and
halcyon season. June had opened with abnormal pleasantness. Exquisite
odours were in the air, wafted from woods and fields and gardens. White
dust, alternating with tender spots of coolness where the shadows of
trees fell, lent the roads in the vicinity that leisured gala-day
expectancy which one notes in the roads of France and Spain, but which
is so rare in England.
It seemed almost as though the damp sub-soil of the place had relaxed
its malign influence; as though the yellow clay in the churchyard had
ceased its calling for victims; and as though the brooding monster in
the sunset, from which every day half the men of the village returned
with their spades and picks, had put aside, as irrelevant to a new and
kindlier epoch, its ancient hostility to the Christian dwellers in that
quiet valley.