THE FACE ON THE ROCK
The day came for Dinah's walk with Lawrence Maynard, and though the
sky lowered at dawn, before noon the wind had travelled north of west
and there was no longer any fear of rain.
They set out, climbed the Beacon and advanced by those rolling
stretches of heath and stone that extend to the north of it.
John Bamsey had been to see the Stockmans, and it seemed that his
mother, or sister, had now made it plain to him that Dinah would
never change her mind.
"He's taking it ill," said Lawrence. "He's not standing up against
what he's got to suffer in a very good spirit."
"Us must pray that the right one will come along," answered Dinah.
They talked but little on their way, reached the White Gate, held to
the winding road awhile, then returned to the moors and presently
stood looking down into the deserted quarries of Hey Tor.
"I'll show you the face on the rock when we turn," he said. "I
wanted for you to see this first. A very interesting place and known
to me since I was a boy."
Thus he opened a measure of the confidence he designed for her. All
the truth about himself he did not propose to tell; but there were
things that he could trust to her; and he meant to do so. His
purpose was vague and sprang from no deep emotion. He thought only
to distract her mind, perhaps amuse her, and for a time arrest the
melancholy flow of her thinking. For she was not cheerful and as yet
no outlet for her life and energies had been discovered. Benjamin
Bamsey proved obdurate in the matter of her future, and there was
come a new and painful element into the life at Green Hayes.
They sat and looked into the quarry. The weathered place was hung
with ferns and heath. Deep, green pools lay in the bottom of it and
a ring-ousel sat and sang his elfin song, perched on a rusty fragment
of iron, driven into the granite by men long since in their graves.
"This was my playground and a place of magic to me when I was a
child," said Lawrence, to the surprise of the listener.
"I thought you was a foreigner," she said.
"No. But let everybody else go on thinking so, please. I want it a
secret, though it's of little consequence really. I was born a mile
from here. The cottage where I lived with my family is a ruin
now--I'll show it to you--and me and a little sister used to play on
the heath and make our games. They're all gone except that sister.
She married and went to Australia. The rest are dead."
"You'm a lonely man then?"
"Used to it. It's only my childhood that the face on the rock comes
into, and this deserted quarry. I met a gentleman here once, who
told me all about the place. He knew its history and cared for such
things. And his talk put great thoughts in my head, for I was
thirteen by then and full of ideas already. I got 'em from my
mother. She was better bred and born than father and wishful to see
me higher than a labourer some day."
Dinah threw herself into his narrative.
"To think of that," she said. "How terrible interesting everybody
is, the moment you begin to know the least bit about 'em!"
"I suppose they are. Not that there's anything interesting in me.
Only I often catch myself turning back to when I was a boy. The
gentleman told me that a lot of the stone cut out from this place is
in London now. London Bridge be made of it, and part of the British
Museum too. And I never forgot that. I envied those stones, because
it seemed to me it would be better to be a bit of London Bridge than
what I was."
"What a queer thought," murmured Dinah.
"'Tis a queer thought, but true, that there's plenty of dead stones
doing better work in the world than plenty of live men. I used to
dream like that when I was a nipper, but I soon had to earn my
living, and then there was an end of dreams. Poor folk haven't got
no time to dream."
"And not much to dream about most times."
"Plenty to dream about," he assured her, "but we pay our leaders to
do the dreaming for us; then, when they've fixed up the dream, they
come to us to turn the dreams into reality."
"You'd like to be doing something better than milking cows perhaps?"
"No, I shouldn't--not now. I had ideas, but life knocked 'em out of
me."
"Not at your age, I'm sure. You talk as if you was old."
"The heart knows its own bitterness, and a head like mine knows its
own weakness," said Lawrence. "If things had gone as I expected, I
should never have thought of large questions, and been quite content
with the business of running my own life. But things happened to
change my outlook and make me think. Then I found I'd got a poor set
of brains. I'd just got brains enough to know I was a long way
nearer a fool than lots of other men; and I'd just got eyes to see
the gulf between. And yet to wish you'd got more brains is only a
fool's wish, come to think of it, for the pattern of a man's brain
ain't of his own choosing. I suppose nobody's satisfied with what
he's got."
"You must be a pretty clever sort of chap to think such things at
all," answered Dinah. "And you're a good man, and most times the
good ones ain't the right down clever ones. You can't help seeing
that."
"For a long time, owing to one thing and another, I was a chap
overcome by life," confessed Maynard. "Things fell out that properly
dazed me; and it was not till then I began to see the real meaning of
life at all. It's much the same with John Bamsey at this minute.
While all went smooth, he never saw much beyond the point of his own
nose, and never wanted to; then came trouble, and we'll hope it will
make his mind bigger when the smart dies. For trouble's no use if it
don't do that. Anyway life made me take larger views for a bit. A
storm clears the air. Then with time, I settled down again, same as
I am now."
"Contented?"
"As near content as I'm ever likely to get. I've simplified my life
to the limits. I said to myself, 'Since you can't have what you
wanted, have nothing.' And I have nothing."
"That cuts both ways, I reckon," declared Dinah; "you escape a lot of
bother, but you lose a good few things that make life better, don't
you?"
"To cut a loss is a very wise deed," he answered. "So it seemed to
me anyway. That may be wrong, too, in some cases; but if you've got
no choice, then you must. Now let me show you where I was born, if
you're not tired."
Presently, in the valley far beneath these downs, where the hillside
fell to the north and a stream ran in the bottom of a woody coomb,
Maynard pointed to a little building. It stood where the land began
to ascend again and climb to those rugged piles of granite known as
Hound Tor Rocks.
"D'you see that ruin alongside the green croft beside the edge of the
woods? That was a fair-sized cottage twenty years ago. My father
worked at Hedge Barton, near by, and we lived there till he died.
Then we scattered."
Dinah regarded the spot with interest.
"To think of that," she said.
"My playmate was my sister Milly," continued Lawrence. "We were the
eldest, and after us came two girls, who both died. Then my mother
was with child again, and that brings me to the face on the rock,
what you want to hear about."
Dinah, as her custom was, had flung herself entirely into these
interests of another being. She had an instinct to do this: it was
no art, but a natural impulse in her. At this moment nothing on
earth seemed more important and desirable to know than these passages
from the boyhood of Lawrence Maynard.
"Such things bring you home to my mind," she said. "Now I'll have a
better idea about you; and then you'll be more interesting."
He laughed at that.
"Not very interesting, even to myself, so it's sure I can't be to
anybody else," he answered. "Now we'll take Hey Tor Rock on our way
back. It'll throw a bit of light on one or two things you've asked
me."
They approached the granite bosses of the tor and stood presently
beside it, where high on the cliff above them a face bulked enormous
and stared into the eye of the westering sun.
The chisels of Nature carve slowly on granite, but once a masterpiece
has been wrought, it will outlast many generations of mankind. Such
things chance out of slow mouldings, or by sudden strokes. They may
be the work of centuries, or the inspiration of a moment--plastic,
moulded by patient Time, as the artist models his clay, or
glyphic--struck with a blow of lightning, or earthquake, from the
stone.
The great rock idols come and go, and haunt lonely cliffs, crown
lonely heights, gaze out upon the surges of lonely seas. To Nature
these whimsical figures, near enough to man to challenge him, are but
faces in the fire, peeping to-day from the flux, and cinders again
to-morrow; but, to the short-lived thing they imitate, they endure,
while his own generations lapse.
This giant's head was smaller than the Sphinx and of an antiquity
more profound. The countenance lacked majesty and was indeed
malignant--not with the demoniac intelligence of man-cut fiends, such
as "Le Stryge" on Notre Dame, but rather with the brutish, semi-human
doubt and uncertainty of a higher ape. So the Minotaur might have
scowled to seaward. The expression of the monster trembled on the
verge of consciousness; it suggested one of those vanished beings
created near the end of our hundred thousand years' journey, after
man's ancestors descending from the trees set forth on the mighty
march to conscious intelligence.
The face belonged to the forefathers of the neolithic people: it
burlesqued hugely those beetle-browed, prognathous paleoliths of old
time, and for them, perchance, possessed an awe and sublimity we
cannot grant it to-day.
But it had challenged a boy and girl, who were still many thousands
of years nearer to prehistoric ancestors than their parents. For
children still move through the morning of days, and through minds
ten and eleven years old the skin-clad dreamers and stone men were
again reflected and survived.
Now Dinah heard with what force the discovery of the stone Titan had
struck upon the boy and girl.
"A new baby was coming," said Lawrence, "and sister and me were each
given a bit of food and told to run out on the moor and play till
nightfall. That pleased us very well and we made our games and
wandered and picked hurts.* And then I suddenly found yonder face
and shouted to Milly and made her see it too. It excited me a lot,
and Milly always got excited when I did. She said 'twas like father,
but I said, 'No, 'tis a lot grander and finer than father.' Then she
was frighted and wanted to run away; but I wouldn't have that. 'He'd
blow out of his mouth and scat us to shivers if we ran,' I told her.
I took pleasure in giving great powers to the monster, and wondered
if he was good, or wicked. And little sister thought he must be
wicked, but I didn't see why he should be. 'Perhaps he's a good
'un,' I said; and then I decided that he might be good. Milly was
for sloking off again, but my child's wits worked, and I very soon
lifted up the stone into a great, powerful creature. 'Us'll say our
prayers to him,' I told Milly, but she feared that also. 'I never
heard of nobody saying no prayers except to Gentle Jesus,' answered
Milly to me. 'The Bible's full of 'em,' I told her. 'How would it
be if we offered to be his friends?'"
* _Hurts_--whortleberries.
"Tempted your little sister to turn heathen!" exclaimed Dinah.
"Yes, and she soon fell. I minded her how we had once prayed with
all our might to Gentle Jesus to kill father, because he wouldn't
take us to a circus as had come to Bovey. 'Gentle Jesus have got His
Hands full without us,' I said to Milly. 'He haven't got no time to
think about two little squirts like us. But this here great creature
might be a good friend to us; and nobody the wiser!'"
"You was a crafty little boy."
"No craft, only a queer twist of the brain. I smile sometimes,
looking back, to see what thoughts I'd gotten. But child's thoughts
die like flowers. We can never think 'em again when we grow up.
Milly held out a bit, yet she never withstood me very long. She was
only afraid that Gentle Jesus would hear tell about it and punish us;
but I said, 'Not Him. If harm comes, I'll take the blame. And we
won't put anything very hard upon this monstrous old rock till we
know how strong he be.' We thought then what we should pray for, and
Milly had a bright idea. 'Ax him to make the new baby a boy,' she
advised, and I agreed, for we was very wishful to have a boy home,
and so was our mother. Then Milly had another thought. 'What be us
to call him?' she asked me. 'Something terrible fearful,' I
said--'the fearfullest thing we can think upon.' We strove after the
most dreadful words we knew, and they were our father's swear-words.
'Let's call him "Bloody,"' I said; and Milly thought we ought to say
'Mr. Bloody.' But I told her 'Mister' was a name for a gentleman,
with nothing fierce or grand to it. 'We'll call him "Bloody" and
chance it,' I said; and so we did. I prayed to the stone then. I
said, 'Dear Bloody, please let mother's new babby be a boy. Amen';
and Milly done the same; and when we got home in the dimpsy light,
all was over and father eating for the first time that day. There
had come a little boy and mother was happy. Milly whispered to me,
'That's one for him!'"
Dinah laughed with delight. Her own troubles were for the time
forgotten.
"I'll mind that story so long as I live," she said, gazing up at the
iron-black, impassive features above her.
"That's not all, though. We got terrible friendly with our great
idol, and then, a week later, the baby fell ill and seemed like to
die. For the nurse that waited on mother had come from
whooping-cough and the poor child catched it afore it was five days
old. We were in a terrible upstore about that, and I minded this
rock; and when a day came and the little one was at his last gasp, me
and Milly went up and stood here, where we sit now. I said we must
bring offerings, but us hadn't nothing but my knife and Milly's pet
bunny rabbit. But such was the fearful need, we determined to
sacrifice both of 'em; and we did. Lord knows how we could, but I
killed her little rabbit for 'Bloody,' and I dropped it and my knife
in that cleft below the rocks at his feet. We used to call 'em his
paws. The rabbit and my knife went down there, and we asked for our
new-born brother, and prayed the creature to save him alive. And we
wept a good bit, and I remember Milly felt glad to see me cry as well
as her. We went home a lot comforted--to find the baby was dead."
He broke off and the listener expressed sorrow.
"You poor little things--to think of you trotting back together--to
that! I could cry for 'e now."
"We cried for ourselves I warrant you. We was terrible upset about
it, and I properly gnashed my teeth I remember. Savage I was, and
loved to hear father damn to hell the nurse that had done the
mischief. 'Douglas Champernowne' the poor child was called. My
mother doted on high-sounding names. And the day he was buried, my
sister and me roamed on the moor again in our black after the
funeral, bewailing our loss; and it was Milly that called my mind to
our stone god, for I'd forgot all about him just then. 'There he
is--aglaring and agrinning!' she said, and I looked up and saw we'd
come to him without thinking. It had been raining all day, and his
face was wet and agleam in evening sunlight. We liked him that way,
but now I turned my hate on him and cursed him for a hard-hearted,
cruel devil. 'Beast--hookem-snivey beast!' I yelled up at the tor;
'and I wish to God I was strong enough to pull you down and smash
your face in!' Milly trembled with fear and put her arms around me,
to save me, or die with me if need be. But I told her the idol
couldn't hurt us. 'He can only kill babbies,' I yelled at him. Then
I worked myself up into a proper passion and flung stones and mud at
the rock, and Milly, finding our god helpless, egged me on. We made
faces and spat on the earth and did everything our wits could hit on
to insult him. Then, tired out, we turned our backs on him, and the
last he heard was my little sister giving him the nastiest cut of
all. 'We be going back to Gentle Jesus now,' screamed Milly."
Maynard ceased and lighted his pipe.
"It's a sad, lovely story. I don't wonder you come and have a look
at the face sometimes. So shall I now. May I tell it again?" asked
Dinah.
"No, miss, don't do that--I'd rather none heard it for the present.
I've my reasons for not wishing to be linked up with these parts."
"Call me 'Dinah,' and let me call you 'Lawrence,'" she said. From
her this was not a startling suggestion. Indeed she had already
called him "Lawrence" sometimes.
"If you like," he answered. "It's easier. We see a good many things
the same."
"I suppose we do. And did you and Milly go back to 'Gentle Jesus'?"
"Certainly we did; and I'll make bold to say she never left Him no
more."
"But you--you ain't exactly a Christian man, are you? When did you
change?"
He looked into the past and did not answer for a moment.
"I don't know," he said at last. "It's hard to tell sometimes when
we change. Them that come to the penitent bench, or what not, know
to an hour when they was 'saved,' as they call it; but them that have
gone the other way, and heaved up anchor, and let their reason steer
the ship and their faith go astern--such men can't always answer
exactly when the change came. Sometimes it's just the mind getting
bigger and the inner instinct dropping the earlier teaching; and
sometimes things happen to shake a man for ever out of his hope and
trust."
"A very sad thought," she said.
"It's always sad to see a thing fall down--whether it's a god or a
tree. The sound of the woodman's axe be sad to some minds."
"It is to me," said Dinah.
He looked up at the features above them, carved on the mass of the
tor. Beyond swung out Rippon's granite crown against the sky, and
nearer stretched miles of wild and ragged heath. Then, in long,
stone-broken curves the moor rose and fell across the western light
to Honeybag and Chinkwell and huge Hameldown bathed in faint gold.
The sun kneaded earth with its waning lustres until matter seemed
imponderable and the wild land rolled in planes of immaterial
radiance folding upon each other. The great passages of the hills
and dales melted together under this ambient illumination and the
stony foreground shone clear, where, through the hazes, a pool
glinted among the lengthening shadows and reflected the sky. Quartz
crystals glittered where the falling rays touched the rocks, and as
the sun descended, great tracts of misty purple spread in the hollows
and flung smooth carpets for the feet of night.
For a moment "Bloody" seemed to relax his brutal features in the
glow. Sunset lit a smile upon the crag, and nature's monstrous
sculpture appeared to close its eyes and bask in the fading warmth.
"It would be a pity if ever Hey Tor were thrown down, as I wanted to
throw it, when I was that little angry boy," said Lawrence.
She put out her hand to him.
"Don't you fling over God," she said very earnestly.
"I hope never," he answered.
After they had talked awhile longer he looked at his watch.
"Half after seven," he exclaimed.
They set off for home and she asked for another tale.
"Tell me what happened to you when you went out into the world," she
begged; but this he would not do. He made no mystery, but definitely
declined.
"You've heard enough about me, I reckon. Speak of yourself a bit."
She obeyed and described her life in childhood, while he listened to
the simple story, interested enough.
He reminded her of his desire as their walk ended and they reached
the door of Falcon Farm.
"Don't say nothing of my past in this, or tell the tale of the rock
again, Dinah. I'm not wishful for the people to know anything about
me."
She promised.
"I can keep secrets," she assured him.