VOICES BY THE WAY
The morning which followed James Andersen’s completion of his work
in Athelston church-porch, was one of the loveliest of the season.
The sun rose into a perfectly cloudless sky. Every vestige of mist
had vanished, and the half-cut corn-fields lay golden and unshadowed
in the translucent air. Over the surface of every upland path, the
little waves of palpable ether vibrated and quivered. The white
roads gleamed between their tangled hedges as if they had been paved
with mother-of-pearl. The heat was neither oppressive nor sultry. It
penetrated without burdening, and seemed to flow forth upon the earth,
as much from the general expanse of the blue depths as from the limited
circle of the solar luminary.
James Andersen seemed more restored than his brother had dared to hope.
They went to their work as usual; and from the manner in which the
elder stone-carver spoke to his mates and handled his tools, none would
have guessed at the mad fancies which had so possessed him during the
previous days.
Luke was filled with profound happiness and relief. It is true that,
like a tiny cloud upon the surface of this clear horizon, the thought
of his projected betrayal of his mistress remained present with him.
But in the depths of his heart he knew that he would have betrayed
twenty mistresses, if by that means the brother of his soul could be
restored to sanity.
He had already grown completely weary of Gladys. The clinging and
submissive passion with which the proud girl had pursued him of late
had begun to irritate his nerves. More than once--especially when her
importunities interrupted his newer pleasures--he had found himself
on the point of hating her. He was absolutely cynical--and always
had been--with regard to the ideal of faithfulness in these matters.
Even the startling vision of the indignant Dangelis putting into her
hands--as he supposed the American might naturally do--the actual
written words with which he betrayed her, only ruffled his equanimity
in a remote and even half-humorous manner. He recalled her contemptuous
treatment of him on the occasion of their first amorous encounter
and it was not without a certain malicious thrill of triumph that he
realized how thoroughly he had been revenged.
He had divined without difficulty on the occasion of their return from
Hullaway that Gladys was on the point of revealing to him the fact that
she was likely to have a child; and since that day he had taken care to
give her little opportunity for such revelations. Absorbed in anxiety
for James, he had been anxious to postpone this particular crisis
between them till a later occasion.
The situation, nevertheless, whenever he had thought of it, had
given him, in spite of its complicated issues, an undeniable throb
of satisfaction. It was such a complete, such a triumphant victory,
over Mr. Romer. Luke in his heart had an unblushing admiration for
the quarry-owner, whose masterly attitude towards life was not so
very different from his own. But this latent respect for his employer
rather increased than diminished his complacency in thus striking him
down. The remote idea that, in the whirligig of time, an offspring of
his own should come to rule in Nevilton house--as seemed by no means
impossible, if matters were discreetly managed--was an idea that gave
him a most delicate pleasure.
As they strolled back to breakfast together, across the intervening
field, and admired the early dahlias in the station-master’s garden,
Luke took the risk of testing his brother on the matter of Mr.
Quincunx. He was anxious to be quite certain of his ground here, before
he had his interview with the tenant of the Gables.
“I wish,” he remarked casually, “that Maurice Quincunx would show a
little spirit and carry Lacrima off straight away.”
James looked closely at him. “If he would,” he said, “I’d give him
every penny I possess and I’d work day and night to help them! O
Luke--Luke!” he stretched out his arm towards Leo’s Hill and pronounced
what seemed like a vow before the Eumenides themselves; “if I could
make her happy, if I could only make her happy, I would be buried
tomorrow in the deepest of those pits.”
Luke registered his own little resolution in the presence of this
appeal to the gods. “Gladys? What is Gladys to me compared with James?
All girls are the same. They all get over these things.”
Meanwhile James Andersen was repeating in a low voice to himself the
quaint name of his rival.
“He is an ash-root, a tough ash-root,” he muttered. “And that’s the
reason he has been chosen. There’s nothing in the world but the roots
of trees that can undermine the power of Stone! The trees can do it.
The trees will do it. What did that Catholic say? He said it was Wood
against Stone. That’s the reason I can’t help her. I have worked too
long at Stone. I am too near Stone. That’s the reason Quincunx has been
chosen. She and I are under the power of Stone, and we can’t resist it,
any more than the earth can! But ash-tree roots can undermine anything.
If only she would take my money, if only she would.”
This last aspiration was uttered in a voice loud enough for Luke to
hear; and it may be well believed that it fortified him all the more
strongly in his dishonourable resolution.
During breakfast James continued to show signs of improvement. He
talked of his mother, and though his conversation was sprinkled with
somewhat fantastic imagery, on the whole it was rational enough.
While the meal was still in progress, the younger brother observed
through the window the figure of a woman, moving oddly backwards and
forwards along their garden-hedge, as if anxious at the same time to
attract and avoid attention. He recognized her in a moment as the
notorious waif of the neighborhood, the somewhat sinister Witch-Bessie.
He made an excuse to his brother and slipped out to speak to her.
Witch-Bessie had grown, if possible, still more dehumanized since
when two months ago she had cursed Gladys Romer. Her skin was pallid
and livid as parchment. The eyes which stared forth from her wrinkled
expressionless face were of a dull glaucous blue, like the inside of
certain sun-bleached sea-shells. She was dressed in a rough sack-cloth
petticoat, out of which protruded her stockingless feet, only half
concealed by heavy labourer’s boots, unlaced and in large holes. Over
her thin shoulders she wore a ragged woolen shawl which served the
office not only of a garment, but also of a wallet; for, in the folds
of it, were even now observable certain half-eaten pieces of bread,
and bits of ancient cheese, which she had begged in her wanderings. In
one of her withered hands she held a large bunch of magenta-coloured,
nettle-like flowers, of the particular species known to botanists as
marsh-wound-wort. As soon as Luke appeared she thrust these flowers
into his arms.
“Gathered ’un for ’ee,” she whispered, in a thin whistling voice,
like the soughing of wind in a bed of rushes. “They be capital weeds
for them as be moon-smitten. Gathered ’un, up by Seven Ashes, where
them girt main roads do cross. Take ’un, mister; take ’un and thank
an old woman wot loves both of ’ee, as heretofore she did love your
long-sufferin’ mother. I were bidin’ down by Minister’s back gate,
expectin’ me bit of oddments, when they did tell I, all sudden-like, as
how he’d been taken, same as _she_ was.”
“It’s most kind of you, Bessie,” said Luke graciously. “You and I have
always been good friends.”
The old woman nodded. “So we be, mister, and let none say the contrary!
I’ve a dangled ’ee, afore-now, in these very arms. Dost mind how ’ee
drove that ramping girt dog out of Long-Load Barton when the blarsted
thing were for laying hold of I?”
“But what must I do with these?” asked the stone-carver, holding the
bunch of pungent scented flowers to his face.
“That’s wot I was just a-going to tell ’ee,” whispered the old woman
solemnly. “I suppose _he’s_ in there now, eh? Let ’un be, poor man.
Let ’un be. May-be the Lord’s only waitin’ for these ’ere weeds to
mend ’is poor swimey wits. You do as I do tell ’ee, mister, and ’twill
be all smoothed out, as clean as church floor. You take these blessed
weeds,--‘viviny-lobs’ my old mother did call ’em--and hang ’em to dry
till they be dead and brown. Then doddy a sprinkle o’ good salt on ’em,
and dip ’em in clear water. Be you followin’ me, mister Luke?”
The young man nodded.
“Then wot you got to do, is for to strike ’em against door-post, and
as you strikes ’em, you says, same as I says now.” And Witch-Bessie
repeated the following archaic enchantment.
Marshy hollow woundy-wort,
Growing on the holy dirt,
In the Mount of Calvary
There was thou found.
In the name of sweet Jesus
I take thee from the ground.
O Lord, effect the same,
That I do now go about.
Luke listened devoutly to these mysterious words, and repeated them
twice, after the old woman. Their two figures, thus concerted in
magical tutelage, might, for all the youth’s modern attire, have
suggested to a scholarly observer some fantastic heathen scene out of
Apuleius. The spacious August sunshine lay splendid upon the fields
about them, and light-winged swallows skimmed the surface of the
glittering railway-line as though it had been a flowing river.
When she was made assured in her mind that her pupil fully understood
the healing incantation, Witch-Bessie shuffled off without further
words. Her face, as she resumed her march in the direction of Hullaway,
relapsed into such corpse-like rigidity, that, but for her mechanical
movement, one might have expected the shameless flocks of starlings who
hovered about her, to settle without apprehension upon her head.
The two brothers labored harmoniously side by side in their work-shop
all that forenoon. It was Saturday, and their companions were anxious
to throw down their tools and clear out of the place on the very stroke
of the one o’clock bell.
James and Luke were both engaged upon a new stone font, the former
meticulously chipping out its angle-mouldings, and the latter rounding,
with chisel and file, the capacious lip of its deep basin. It was a
cathedral font, intended for use in a large northern city.
Luke could not resist commenting to his brother, in his half-humorous
half-sentimental way, upon the queer fact that they two--their heads
full of their own anxieties and troubles--should be thus working
upon a sacred font which for countless generations, perhaps as long
as Christianity lasted, would be associated with so many strange and
mingled feelings of perturbation and hope.
“It’s a comical idea,” he found himself saying, though the allusion was
sufficiently unwise, “this idea of Gladys’ baptism.”
He regretted his words the moment they were out of his mouth; but James
received them calmly.
“I once heard,” he answered, “I think it was on the sands at Weymouth,
two old men discussing quite reverently and gravely whether an infant,
baptized before it was born, would be brought under the blessing of the
Church. I thought, as I listened to them, how vulgar and gross-minded
our age had become, that I should have to tremble with alarm lest any
flippant passer-by should hear their curious speculation. It seemed
to me a much more important matter to discuss, than the merits of the
black-faced Pierrots who were fooling and howling just beyond. This
sort of seriousness, in regard to the strange borderland of the Faith,
has always seemed to me a sign of pathetic piety, and the very reverse
of anything blasphemous.”
Luke had made an involuntary movement when his brother’s anecdote
commenced. The calmness and reasonableness with which James had
spoken was balm and honey to the anxious youth; but he could not help
speculating in his heart whether his brother was covertly girding at
him. Did he, he wondered, realize how far things had gone between him
and the fair-haired girl?
“It’s the sort of question, at any rate,” he remarked rather feebly,
“that would interest our friend Sir Thomas Browne. Do you remember how
we read together that amazing passage in the Urn Burial?”
“‘But the iniquity of oblivion,’” quoted James in answer, “‘blindly
scattereth her Poppy, and deals with the memory of men without
distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of
the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana; he is
almost lost that built it. Time has spared the epitaph of Hadrian’s
Horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities
by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations;
and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon without the favour
of the everlasting register.… Darkness and light divide the course of
time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living
beings; we slightly remember our felicities and the smartest strokes
of affliction leave but short smart upon us. To weep into Stones are
fables.’”
He pronounced these last words with a slow and emphatic intonation.
“Fables?” he repeated, resting his hand upon the rim of the font, and
lowering his voice, so as not to be heard by the men outside. “He
calls them fables because he has never worked as we do--day in and day
out--among nothing else. The reason he says that to weep into Stones
are fables is that his own life, down at that pleasant Norwich, was
such a happy one. To weep into Stones! He means, of course, that when
you have endured more than you can bear, you become a Stone. But that
is no fable! Or if it was once, it isn’t so today. Mr. Taxater said
the Stone-Age was over. In my opinion, Luke, the Stone-Age is only now
beginning. The reason of that is, that whereas, in former times, Stone
was moulded by men; now, men are moulded by Stone. We have receded,
instead of advancing; and the iniquity of Time which turned animals
into men, is now turning men back into the elements!”
Luke cursed bitterly in his heart the rhythmic incantations of the old
Norwich doctor. He had been thinking of a very different passage from
that which his brother recalled. To change the conversation he asked
how James wished to spend their free afternoon.
Andersen’s tone changed in a moment, and he grew rational and direct.
“I am going for a walk,” he said, “and I think perhaps, if you don’t
mind, I’ll go alone. My brain feels clouded and oppressed. A long walk
ought to clear it. I think it will clear it; don’t you?” This final
question was added rather wistfully.
“I’m sure it will. Oh, it certainly will! I expect the sun has hit
you a bit; or perhaps, as Mr. Taxater would say, your headache is a
relative one, due to my dragging in such things as Urn Burial. But I
don’t quite like your going alone, Daddy James.”
The elder brother smiled affectionately at him, but went on quietly
with his work without replying.
When they had finished their mid-day meal they both loitered out into
the field together, smoking and chatting. The afternoon promised to be
as clear and beautiful as the morning, and Luke’s spirits rose high.
He hoped his brother, at the last moment, would not have the heart to
reject his company.
The fineness of the weather, combined with the Saturday half-holiday,
was attracting abroad all manner of Nevilton folk. Lads and maids, in
merry noisy groups, passed and repassed. The platform of the little
station was crowded with expectant passengers waiting for the train to
Yeoborough.
As the brothers stood together, carelessly turning over with their
sticks the fetid heads of a patch of meadow fungi, they observed two
separate couples issuing, one after another, from the little swing-gate
that opened on the level-crossing. They recognized both couples almost
simultaneously. The first pair consisted of Annie Bristow and Phyllis
Santon; the second of Vennie Seldom and Mr. Clavering.
The two girls proceeded, arm-in-arm, up the sloping path that led in
the direction of Hullaway. Vennie and Mr. Clavering advanced straight
towards the brothers. Luke had time to wonder vaguely whether this
conjunction of Vennie and her Anglican pastor had any connection with
last night’s happenings.
He was too closely associated with that Gargantuan gossip, Mrs. Fringe,
not to be aware that for many weeks past Miss Seldom and the young
clergyman had studiously avoided one another. That they should now
be walking together, indicated, to his astute mind, either a quarrel
between the young lady and Mr. Taxater, or an estrangement between
the vicar and Gladys. Luke was the sort of philosopher who takes for
granted that in all these situations it is love for love, or hate for
hate, which propels irresistibly the human mechanism and decides the
most trifling incidents.
James looked angry and embarrassed at the appearance of the pair; but
they were too close upon them for any escape to be possible.
“How are you today, Andersen?” began Mr. Clavering, with his usual
well-meaning but indiscreet impulsiveness. “Miss Seldom tells me she
was nervous about you last night. She was afraid you were working too
hard.”
Vennie gave him a quick reproachful glance, and made a deprecatory
movement with her hands. “Are all men,” she thought, “either without
scruple or without common-sense?”
“I’m glad to see that I was quite mistaken,” she hastened to add. “You
don’t look at all tired today, Mr. Andersen. And no wonder, with such a
perfectly lovely afternoon! And how are you, Mr. Luke? I haven’t been
down to see how that Liverpool font is getting on, for ever so long. I
believe you’ll end by being quite as famous as your father.”
Luke received this compliment in his most courtly manner. He was always
particularly anxious to impress persons who belonged to the “real”
upper classes with his social sang-froid.
He was at this precise moment, however, a little agitated by the
conduct of the two young people who had just passed up the meadow.
Instead of disappearing into the lane beyond, they continued to loiter
at the gate, and finally, after an interlude of audible laughter and
lively discussion, they proceeded to stretch themselves upon the grass.
The sight of two amiable young women, both so extremely well known to
him, and both in evident high spirits, thus enjoying the sunshine,
filled our faun-like friend’s mind with the familiar craving for
frivolity. He caught Mr. Clavering’s glance fixed gravely upon him. He
also, it appeared, was not oblivious of the loitering villagers.
“I think there are other members of your flock, sir,” said James
Andersen to the young vicar, “who are at the present moment more in
need of your help than I am. What I need at this moment is air--air.
I should like to be able to wander over the Quantocks this afternoon.
Or better still, by the edge of the sea! We all need more air than
we get here. It is too shut-in here--too shut-in and oppressive.
There’s too much stone about; and too much clay. Yes, and the trees
grow too close together. Do you know, Miss Seldom, what I should like
to do? I should like to pull down all the houses--I mean all the big
houses--and cut down all the trees, and then perhaps the wind would be
free to blow. It’s wind we want--all of us--wind and air to clear our
brains! Do you realize”--his voice once more took that alarming tone of
confidential secretiveness, which had struck them so disagreeably the
preceding evening;--“do you realize that there are evil spirits abroad
in Nevilton, and that they come from the Hill over there?” He pointed
towards the Leonian escarpments which could be plainly seen from where
they stood, slumbering in the splendid sunshine.
“It looks more like a sphinx than a lion today, doesn’t it, Miss
Seldom? Oh, I should like to tear it up, bodily, from where it lies,
and fling it into the sea! It blocks the horizon. It blocks the path of
the west-wind. I tell you it is the burden that weighs upon us all! But
I shall conquer it yet; I shall be master of it yet!” He was silent a
few seconds, while a look of supreme disappointment clouded the face
of his brother; and the two new-comers gazed at him in alarm.
“I must start at once,” he exclaimed abruptly. “I must get far,
far off. It is air I need, air and the west-wind! No,” he cried
imperiously, when Luke made a movement, as if to take leave of their
companions. “I must go alone. Alone! That is what I must be today:
alone--and on the hills!”
He turned impatiently as he spoke; and without another word strode off
towards the level-crossing.
“Surely you will not let him go like that, Mr. Andersen?” cried Vennie,
in great distress.
“It would do no good,” replied Luke, watching his brother pass through
the gate and cross the track. “I should only make him much worse if I
tried to follow him. Besides, he wouldn’t let me. I don’t think he’ll
come to any harm. I should have a different instinct about it if there
were real danger. Perhaps, as he says, a good long walk may really
clear his brain.”
“I do pray your instinct is to be relied on,” said Vennie, anxiously
watching the tall figure of the stone-carver, as he ascended the
vicarage hill.
“Well, if you’re not going to do your duty, Andersen, I’m going to do
mine!” exclaimed the vicar of Nevilton, setting off, without further
parley, in pursuit of the fugitive.
“Stop! Mr. Clavering, I’ll come with you,” cried Vennie. And she
followed her impulsive friend towards the gate.
As they ascended the hill together, keeping Andersen in sight,
Clavering remarked to his companion, “I believe that dissolute young
reprobate refused to look after his brother simply because he wanted to
talk to those two girls.”
“What two girls?” enquired Vennie.
“Didn’t you see them?” muttered the clergyman crossly. “The Bristow
girl and little Phyllis Santon. They were hanging about, waiting for
him.”
“I’m sure you are quite wrong,” replied Vennie. “Luke may have his
faults, but he is devoted--madly devoted--to his brother.”
“Not at all,” cried Clavering almost rudely. “I know the man better
than you do. He is entirely selfish. He is a selfish, sensual
pleasure-seeker! He may be fond of his brother in his fashion, just
because he _is_ his brother, and they have the same tastes; but his one
great aim is his own pleasure. He has been the worst influence I have
had to contend with, in this whole village, for some time back!”
His voice trembled with rage as he spoke. It was impossible, even for
the guileless Vennie, not to help wondering in her mind whether the
violence of her friend’s reprobation was not impelled by an emotion
more personal than public. Her unlucky knowledge of what the nature
of such an emotion might be did not induce her to yield meekly to his
argument.
“I don’t believe he saw the people you speak of any more than I did,”
she said.
“Saw them?” cried the priest wrathfully, quickening his pace, as
Andersen disappeared round the corner of the road, so that Vennie had
to trot by his side like a submissive child. “I saw the look he fixed
on them. I know that look of his! I tell you he is the kind of man that
does harm wherever he goes. He’s a lazy, sensual, young scoundrel. He
ought to be kicked out of the place.”
Vennie sighed deeply. Life in the world of men was indeed a complicated
and entangled matter. She had turned, in her agitation about the
stone-carver, and in her reaction from Mr. Taxater’s reserve, straight
to the person she loved best of all; and this was her reward,--a mere
crude outburst of masculine jealousy!
They rounded the corner by her own gate, where the road to Athelston
deviates at right angles. James Andersen was no longer in sight.
“Where the devil has the man got to?” cried the astonished clergyman,
raging at himself for his ill-temper, and raging at Vennie for having
been the witness of it.
The girl glanced up the Athelston road; and hastening forward a few
paces, scanned the stately slope of the Nevilton west drive. The
unfortunate man was nowhere to be seen.
From where they now stood, the whole length of the village street
was visible, almost as far as the Goat and Boy. It was full of
holiday-making young people, but there was no sign of Andersen’s tall
and unmistakable figure.
“Oh, this is dreadful!” cried Vennie. “What are we to do? Where can he
have gone?”
Hugh Clavering looked angrily round. He was experiencing that curious
sense, which comes to the best of men sometimes, of being the special
and selected object of providential mockery.
“There are only two ways,” he said. “Either he’s slipped down through
the orchards, along your wall, or he’s made off to Nevilton Mount! If
that’s what he’s done, he must be now behind that hedge, over there. We
should see him otherwise.”
Vennie gazed anxiously in the direction indicated. “He can’t have gone
into our garden?” she said. “No, he’d never do that! He talked about
air and hills. I expect he’s where you say. Shall we go on?”
They hurried down the road until they reached a gate, on the further
side of the hedge which ran to the base of Nevilton Mount. Here they
entered the field. There was no sign of the fugitive; but owing to
certain inequalities in the ground, and the intervention of some large
elm-trees, it was still quite possible that he was only a few hundred
yards in front of them. They followed the line of the hedge with all
the haste they could; trusting, at every turn it made, that they would
discover him. In this manner they very soon arrived at the base of the
hill.
“I feel sure he’s somewhere in front of us!” muttered Clavering. “How
annoying it is! It was outrageous of that young scoundrel to let him go
like this;--wandering about the country in that mad state! If he comes
to any harm, I shall see to it that that young man is held responsible.”
“Quick!” sighed Vennie breathlessly, “we’d better climb straight to the
top. We _must_ find him there!”
They scrambled over the bank and proceeded to make their way as
hurriedly as they could through the entangled undergrowth. Hot and
exhausted they emerged at last upon the level summit. Here, the
grotesque little tower mocked at them with its impassive grey surface.
There was no sign of the man they sought; but seated on the grass with
their backs to the edifice were the figures of the complacent Mr. Wone
and one of his younger children, engaged in the agreeable occupation of
devouring a water-melon. The mouth and chin of the Christian Candidate
were bespattered with the luscious juice of this delectable fruit,
and laid out carefully upon a magazine on his knees, was a pleasing
arrangement of rind-peelings and well-sucked pips.
Mr. Wone waved his hand in polite acknowledgment of Clavering’s salute.
He removed his hat to Vennie, but apologized for not rising. “Taking a
little holiday, you observe!” he remarked with a satisfied smile. “I
see you also are inclined to make the most of this lovely summer day.”
“You haven’t by any chance seen the elder Andersen, have you?” enquired
Clavering.
“Not a bit of it,” replied the recumbent man. “I suppose I cannot offer
you a piece of melon, Miss Seldom?”
The two baffled pursuers looked at one another in hopeless
disappointment.
“We’ve lost him,” muttered the priest. “He must have gone through your
orchard after all.”
Mr. Wone did not miss this remark. “You were looking for our good
James? No. We haven’t seen anything of him. No doubt he is with his
brother somewhere. I believe they usually spend their Saturdays out at
Hullaway.”
“When does the election come off, Mr. Wone?” enquired Vennie, hastily,
extremely unwilling that her tactless companion should disclose the
purpose of their search.
“In a week’s time from next Monday,” replied the Candidate. “This will
be my last free day till then. I have to make thirty speeches during
the next seven days. Our cause goes well. I believe, with God’s great
help, we are practically certain of victory. It will be a great event,
Miss Seldom, a great event.”
Mr. Clavering made a hopeless sign to Vennie, indicative of the
uselessness of any further steps to retake the runaway.
“I think your side will win in the country generally,” he remarked. “As
to this district, I cannot tell. Mr. Romer has strengthened himself
considerably by his action after the strike.”
The candidate placed a carefully selected piece of fruit in his mouth,
and called to his little boy, who was scratching his initials with a
knife upon the base of the tower.
“He will be beaten all the same,” he said. “He is bound to be beaten.
The stars in their courses must fight against a man like that. I feel
it in the air; in the earth; in these beautiful trees. I feel it
everywhere. He has challenged stronger powers than you or me. He has
challenged the majesty of God Himself. I’ll give you the right”--he
went on in a voice that mechanically assumed a preacher’s tone--“to
call me a liar and a false prophet, if by this time, in ten days, the
oppressor of the poor does not find himself crushed and beaten!”
“I am afraid right and wrong are more strangely mixed in this world
than all that, Mr. Wone,” Vennie found herself saying, with a little
weary glance over the wide sun-bathed valleys extended at their feet.
“Pardon me, pardon me, young lady,” cried the Candidate. “In this
great cause there can be no doubt, no question, no ambiguity. The
evolution of the human race has reached a point when the will of God
must reveal itself in the triumph of love and liberty. Nothing else
matters. All turns upon this. That is why I feel that my campaign is
more than a political struggle. It is a religious struggle, and on our
side are the great moral forces that uphold the world!”
Vennie’s exhausted nerves completely broke down upon this.
“Shall we go?” she said, touching her companion on the sleeve.
Clavering nodded, and bade the melon-eater “good afternoon,” with a
brusque gesture.
As they went off, he turned on his heel. “The will of God, Mr. Wone, is
only to be found in the obedient reception of His sacraments.”
The Christian candidate opened his mouth with amazement. “Those young
people,” he thought to himself, “are up to no good. They’ll end by
becoming papists, if they go on like this. It’s extraordinary that the
human mind should actually _prefer_ slavery to freedom!”
Meanwhile the man whose mysterious evasion of his pursuers had resulted
in this disconcerting encounter was already well-advanced on his way
towards the Wild Pine ridge. He had, as a matter of fact, crossed the
field between the West drive and the Vicarage-garden, and skirting the
orchards below Nevilton House, had plunged into the park.
A vague hope of meeting Lacrima--an instinctive rather than a conscious
feeling--had led him in this direction. Once in the park, the high
opposing ridge, crowned with its sentinel-line of tall Scotch-firs,
arrested his attention and drew him towards it. He crossed the
Yeoborough road and ascended the incline of Dead Man’s Lane.
As he passed the cottage of his rival, he observed Mr. Quincunx
energetically at work in his garden. On this occasion the recluse was
digging up, not weeds, but young potatoes. He was in his shirt-sleeves
and looked hot and tired.
Andersen leaned upon the little gate and observed him with curious
interest. “Why isn’t she here?” he muttered to himself. Then, after a
pause: “He is an ash-root. Let him drag that house down! Why doesn’t he
drag it down, with all its heavy stones? And the Priory too? And the
Church;--yes; and the Church too! He burrows like a root. He looks like
a root. I must tell him all these things. I must tell him why he has
been chosen, and I have been rejected!” He opened the gate forthwith
and advanced towards the potato-digger.
Mr. Quincunx might have struck the imagination of a much less troubled
spirit than that of the poor stone-carver as having a resemblance to
a root. His form was at once knotted and lean, fibrous and delicate.
His face, by reason of his stooping position, was suffused with a rich
reddish tint, and his beard was dusty and unkempt. He rose hastily, on
observing his visitor.
“People like you and me, James, are best by ourselves at these
holiday-times,” was his inhospitable greeting. “You can help me with
my potatoes if you like. Or you can tell me your news as I work. Or do
you want to ask me any question?”
He uttered these final words in such a tone as the Delphic oracle might
have used, when addressing some harassed refugee.
“Has _she_ been up here today?” said the stone-carver.
“I like the way you talk,” replied the other. “Why should we mention
their names? When I say people, I mean girls. When I say persons, I
mean girls. When I say young ladies, I mean girls. And when you say
‘she’ you mean our girl.”
“Yours!” cried the demented man; “she is yours--not ours. She is
weighed down by this evil Stone,--weighed down into the deep clay. What
has she to do with me, who have worked at the thing so long?”
Mr. Quincunx leant upon his hoe and surveyed the speaker. It occurred
to him at once that something was amiss. “Good Lord!” he thought to
himself, “the fellow has been drinking. I must get him out of this
garden as quickly as possible.”
“She loves you,” Andersen went on, “because you are like a root. You go
deep into the earth and no stone can resist you. You twine and twine
and twine, and pull them all down. They are all haunted places, these
houses and churches; all haunted and evil! They make a man’s head ache
to live in them. They put voices into a man’s ears. They are as full of
voices as the sea is full of waves.”
“You are right there, my friend,” replied Mr. Quincunx. “It’s only
what I’ve always said. Until people give up building great houses and
great churches, no one will ever be happy. We ought to live in bushes
and thickets, or in tents. My cottage is no better than a bush. I creep
into it at night, and out again in the morning. If its thatch fell on
my head I should hardly feel it.”
“You wouldn’t feel it, you wouldn’t!” cried the stone-carver. “And the
reason of that is, that you can burrow like a root. I shouldn’t feel it
either, but for a different reason.”
“I expect you’d better continue your walk,” remarked Mr. Quincunx. “I
never fuss myself about people who come to see me. If they come, they
come. And when they go, they go.”
The stone-carver sighed and looked round him. The sun gleamed
graciously upon the warm earth, danced and sparkled upon the windows of
the cottage, and made the beads of sweat on Mr. Quincunx’s brow shine
like diamonds.
“Do you think,” he said, while the potato-digger turned to his
occupation, “that happiness or unhappiness predominates in this world?”
“Unhappiness!” cried the bearded man, glaring at his acquaintance with
the scowl of a goblin. “Unhappiness! Unhappiness! Unhappiness! That
is why the only wise way to live is to avoid everything. That’s what
I always do. I avoid people, I avoid possessions, I avoid quarrels, I
avoid lust, and I avoid love! My life consists in the art of avoiding
things.”
“She doesn’t want happiness,” pleaded the obsessed stone-carver. “And
_her_ love is enough. She only wants to escape.”
“Why do you keep bringing Lacrima in?” cried the recluse. “She is going
to marry John Goring. She is going to be mistress of the Priory.”
A convulsive shock of fury flashed across the face of Andersen.
He made a movement that caused his interlocutor to step hurriedly
backwards. But the emotion passed as rapidly as it had come.
“You would avoid everything,” he said cunningly. “You would avoid
everything you hate, if someone--myself for instance--or Luke--made it
easy for you to save her from these houses and these churches! Luke
will arrange it. He is not like us. He is wise. He knows the world. And
you will only have to go on just as before, to burrow and twine! But
you’ll have done it. You’ll have saved her from them. And then it will
not matter how deep they bury me in the quarries of Leo’s Hill!”
“Is he drunk? Or is he not drunk?” Mr. Quincunx wondered. The news
of Andersen’s derangement, though it had already run like wild-fire
through the village, had not yet reached his ears. For the last few
days he had walked both to and from his office, and had talked to no
one.
A remarkable peculiarity in this curious potato-digger was, however,
his absolute and unvarying candour. Mr. Quincunx was prepared to
discuss his most private concerns with any mortal or immortal visitor
who stepped into his garden. He would have entered into a calm
philosophical debate upon his love-affairs with a tramp, with a sailor,
with the post-man, with the chimney-sweep, with the devil; or, as in
this case, with his very rival in his sweetheart’s affection! There
was really something touching and sublime about this tendency of his.
It indicated the presence, in Mr. Quincunx, of a certain mystical
reverence for simple humanity, which completely contradicted his
misanthropic cynicism.
“Certainly,” he remarked, on this occasion, forgetting, in his
interest in the subject, the recent strange outburst of his companion.
“Certainly, if Lacrima and I had sufficient money to live upon, I would
be inclined to risk marrying. You would advise me to, then; wouldn’t
you, Andersen? Anyone would advise me to, then. It would be absurd not
to do it. Though, all the same, there are always great risks in two
people living together, particularly nervous people,--such as we are.
But what do you think, Andersen? Suppose some fairy god-mother did give
us this money, would you advise us to risk it? Of course, we know,
girls like a large house and a lot of servants! She wouldn’t get that
with me, because I hate those things, and wouldn’t have them, even if
I could afford it. What would you advise, Andersen, if some mad chance
did make such a thing possible? Would it be worth the risk?”
An additional motive, in the queerly constituted mind of the recluse,
for making this extraordinary request, was the Pariah-like motive of
wishing to propitiate the stone-carver. Parallel with his humorous
love of shocking people, ran, through Mr. Quincunx’s nature, the
naive and innocent wish to win them over to his side; and his method
of realizing this wish was to put himself completely at their mercy,
laying his meanest thoughts bare, and abandoning his will to their
will, so that for very shame they could not find it in them to injure
him, but were softened, thrown off their guard, and disarmed. Mr.
Quincunx knew no restraint in these confessions by the way, in these
appeals to the voices and omens of casual encounter. He grew voluble,
and even shameless. In quiet reaction afterwards, in the loneliness of
his cottage, he was often led to regret with gloomy remorse the manner
in which he had betrayed himself. It was then that he found himself
hating, with the long-brooding hatred of a true solitary, the persons
to whom he had exposed the recesses of his soul. At the moment of
communicativeness, however, he was never able to draw rein or come to
a pause. If he grew conscious that he was making a fool of himself, a
curious demonic impulse in him only pressed him on to humiliate himself
further.
He derived a queer inverted pleasure from thus offering himself,
stripped and naked, to the smiter. It was only afterwards, in the long
hours of his loneliness, that the poison of his outraged pride festered
and fermented, and a deadly malice possessed him towards the recipients
of his confidences. There was something admirable about the manner in
which this quaint man made, out of his very lack of resistant power, a
sort of sanctity of dependence. But this triumph of weakness in him,
this dissolution of the very citadel of his being, in so beautiful and
mystical an abandonment to the sympathy of our common humanity, was
attended by lamentable issues in its resultant hatred and malice. Had
Mr. Quincunx been able to give himself up to this touching candour
without these melancholy and misanthropic reactions, his temper would
have been very nearly the temper of a saint; but the gall and wormwood
of the hours that followed, the corroding energy of the goblin of
malice that was born of such unnatural humiliations, put a grievous
gulf between him and the heavenly condition.
It must also be remembered, in qualification of the outrageousness, one
might almost say the indecency, of his appeal to Andersen, that he had
not in the remotest degree realized the extent of the stone-carver’s
infatuation with the Italian. Neither physical passion, nor ideal
passion, were things that entered into his view of the relations
between the sexes. Desire with him was of a strange and complicated
subtlety, generally diffused into a mild and brooding sentiment. He was
abnormally faithful, but at the same time abnormally cold; and though,
very often, jealousy bit him like a viper, it was a jealousy of the
mind, not a jealousy of the senses.
What in other people would have been gross and astounding cynicism,
was in Mr. Quincunx a perfectly simple and even childlike recognition
of elemental facts. He could sweep aside every conventional mask
and plunge into the very earth-mould of reality, but he was quite
unconscious of any shame, or any merit, in so doing. He simply
envisaged facts, and stated the facts he envisaged, without the
conventional unction of worldly discretion. This being so, it was in no
ironic extravagance that he appealed to Andersen, but quite innocently,
and without consciousness of anything unusual.
Of the two men, some might have supposed, considering the
circumstances, that it was Mr. Quincunx who was mad, and his
interlocutor who was sane. On the other hand, it might be said that
only a madman would have received the recluse’s appeal in the calm
and serious manner in which Andersen received it. The abysmal cunning
of those who have only one object in life, and are in sight of its
attainment, actuated the unfortunate stone-carver in his attitude to
his rival at this moment.
“If some fairy or some god,” he said, “did lift the stone from her
sepulchre and you from your sepulchre, my advice to you and to her
would be to go away, to escape, to be free. You would be happy--you
would both be happy! And the reason of your happiness would be that
you would know the Devil had been conquered. And you would know that,
because, by gathering all the stones in the world upon my own head, and
being buried beneath them, I should have made a rampart higher than
Leo’s Hill to protect you from the Evil One!”
Andersen’s words were eager and hurried, and when he had finished
speaking, he surveyed Mr. Quincunx with wild and feverish eyes. It was
now borne in for the first time upon that worthy philosopher, that he
was engaged in conversation with one whose wits were turned, and a
great terror took possession of him. If the cunning of madmen is deep
and subtle, it is sometimes surpassed by the cunning of those who are
afraid of madmen.
“The most evil heap of stones I know in Nevilton,” remarked Mr.
Quincunx, moving towards his gate, and making a slight dismissing
gesture with his hand, “is the heap in the Methodist cemetery. You
know the one I mean, Andersen? The one up by Seven Ashes, where the
four roads meet. It is just inside the entrance, on the left hand. They
throw upon it all the larger stones they find when they dig the graves.
I have often picked up bits of bones there, and pieces of skulls.
It is an interesting place, a very curious place, and quite easy to
find. There haven’t been many burials there lately, because most of
the Methodists nowadays prefer the churchyard. But there was one last
spring. That was the burial of Glory Lintot. I was there myself, and
saw her put in. It’s an extraordinary place. Anyone who likes to look
at what people can write on tombstones would be delighted with it.”
By this time, by means of a series of vague ushering movements, such as
he might have used to get rid of an admirable but dangerous dog, Mr.
Quincunx had got his visitor as far as the gate. This he opened, with
as easy and natural an air as he could assume, and stood ostentatiously
aside, to let the unfortunate man pass out.
James Andersen moved slowly into the road. “Remember!” he said. “You
will avoid everything you hate! There’s more in the west-wind than you
imagine, these strange days. That’s why the rooks are calling. Listen
to them!”
He waved his hand and strode rapidly up the lane.
Mr. Quincunx gazed after the retreating figure till it disappeared,
and then returned wearily to his work. He picked up his hoe and leaned
heavily upon it, buried in thought. Thus he remained for the space of
several minutes.
“He is right,” he muttered, raising his head at last. “The rooks are
beginning to gather. That means another summer is over,--and a good
thing, too! I suppose I ought to have taken him back to Nevilton. But
he is right about the rooks.”