Wood and Stone (12 page)

He had recently, in the western cities of the States, won a certain fiercely contested notoriety in the art of portrait-painting, an art which he had come more and more to practise according to the very latest of those daring modern theories, which are summed up sometimes under the not very illuminative title of Post-impressionism, and he had, during the last few days, indulged in a natural and irresistible wish to associate this new departure with his personal experiences at Nevilton.

Gossiping nonchalantly with the village-wives, as he ascended the dusty road, by the vicarage wall, his thoughts ran swiftly over the motley-coloured map of his past life, and the deviating track across the world which he had been led to follow. He congratulated himself in his heart, as he indulged in easy persiflage with his fellow-wayfarers, upon his consistent freedom from everything that might choke or restrain the freedom of his will.

How fortunate, how incredibly fortunate, that he should, in weather like this, and in so abounding a mood of creative energy, be completely his own master, except for the need of propitiating two naive and amusing women! He entertained himself by the thought of how little they really knew him,—these friendly Romers—how little they sounded his real purposes, his essential feelings! To them no doubt, he was no more than he was to these excellent
villagers
,—a tall, fair, slouching, bony figure, with a face,—if they went as far as his face,—massively heavy and irregular, with dreamy humorous eyes and a mouth addicted to nervous twitching.

A clump of dandelions, obtruding their golden indifference to human drama, into the dust of the road at his feet, mixed oddly, at that moment, in these obscure workings of his brain, with a sort of savage caress of self-complacent congratulation which he suddenly bestowed on his interior self; as,
beneath
his pleasant chatter with his rural companions, he thought how imperturbable, how ferocious, his secret egoism was, and how well he concealed it under his indolent good-nature! He had passed now the entrance to the vicarage garden, and in the adjoining field he observed with a curious thrill of psychic sympathy the tenacious grip with which a viciously-knotted ash-tree held to the earth with its sturdy roots. Out-walked at last by all the other returned travellers, Dangelis glanced without pausing down the long Italianated avenue, at the end of which shone red, in the afternoon sun, the mullioned windows of the great house. He preferred to prolong his stroll, by taking the circuitous way, round by the
village. He knew the expression of that famous west front too well now, to linger in admiration over its picturesque repose in the afternoon sunshine. As a matter of fact a slight chill of curious antipathy crossed his consciousness as he quickened his steps.

Happily situated though he was, in his pleasant lodging beneath that capacious roof, the famous edifice itself had not altogether won his affection. The thing suggested to his wayward and prairie-nurtured soul, a stately product rather of convention than of life. He felt oddly conscious of it as something
symbolic
of what would be always intrinsically opposed to him, of what would willingly, if it were able,
suppress
him and render him helpless.

Dangelis belonged to quite a different type of trans-Atlantic visitor, from the kind that hover with exuberant delight over everything that is “old” or “English” or “European.” He was essentially rather an artist than an antiquary, rather an energetic workman than an epicurean sentimentalist. Once out of sight of the Elizabethan pile, the curious chill passed from his mind, and as he approached the first cottages of the village he looked round for more reassuring tokens. Such tokens were not lacking. They crowded in upon him, indeed, from every side. Stopping for a moment, ere the houses actually blocked his view, and leaning over a gate which faced westward, Dangelis looked out across the great Somersetshire plain, to which Leo’s Hill and Nevilton Mount serve the office of watchful sentinels. Tall, closely-clipped elm-trees, bordering every field, gave the country on this side of the horizon, a queer
artificial
look, as if it had been one huge
landscape-garden
,
arranged according to the arbitrary pleasure of some fantastic artist, whose perversion it was to reduce every natural extravagance to the meticulous rhythm of his own formal taste.

This impression, the impression of something willed and intentional in the very formation of Nature, gave our eccentric onlooker a caressing and delicate
pleasure
, a sense as of a thing peculiarly harmonious to his own spirit. The formality of Nevilton House
depressed
and chilled him, but the formality of
agetrimmed
trees and hedges liberated his imagination, as some perverse work of a Picasso or a Matisse might have done. He wondered vaguely to himself what was the precise cause of the psychic antipathy which rendered him so cold to the grandeur of Elizabethan architecture, while the other features of his present dwelling remained so attractive, and he came to the temporary solution, as he took his arms from the top of the gate, that it was because that particular kind of magnificence expressed the pride of a class, rather than of an individual, whereas he himself was all for individual self-assertion in everything—in everything! The problem was still teasing him, when, a few minutes later, he passed the graceful tower of St. Catharine’s church.

This strangely organic, this curiously anonymous Gothic art—was not this also, the suppression of the individual, in the presence of something larger and deeper, of something that demanded the
sacrifice
of mere transient personality, as the very
condition
of its appearance? At all events it was less humiliating, less of an insult, to the claims of the individual will, when the thing was done in the
interest 
of religion, than when it was done in the interests of a class. The impersonality of the former,
resembled
the impersonality of rocks and flowers; that of the latter, the impersonality of fashions in dress.

“But away with them both!” muttered Dangelis to himself, as he strode viciously down the central street of Nevilton. The American was in very truth, and he felt he was, for all his artistic receptivity, an alien and a foreigner in the midst of these time-worn traditions. In spite of their beauty he knew himself profoundly opposed to them. They excited fibres of opposition and rebellion in him, that went down to the very depths of his nature. If, allowing full scope to our speculative fancy—and who knows upon what occult truths these wandering thoughts
sometimes
stumble?—we image the opposing “streams of tendency,” in Nevilton village, as focussed and summed up, in the form of the Gothic church, guarded by the consecrated Mount, and the form of the Elizabethan house, owned by the owner of Leo’s Hill, it is clear that this wanderer, from the shores of the Great Lakes, was equally antagonistic to both of them. He brought into the place a certain large and elemental indifference. To the child of the winds and storms of the Great Lakes, as, so one might think, to the high fixed stars themselves, this local strife of opposed mythologies must needs appear a matter of but trifling importance.

The American was not permitted, on this occasion, to pursue his meditations uninterrupted to the end of his walk. Half-way down the south drive he was overtaken by Gladys, returning from the village post-office. “Hullo! How have you got on?” she
cried. “I suppose you’ll believe me another time? You know now, I expect, how impossible the
Yeoborough
shops are!”

“On the contrary,” said the artist smiling, “I have found them extremely good. Perhaps I am less exacting,” he added, “than some artists.”

“I am exacting in everything,” said Gladys, “
especially
in people. That is why I get on so well with you. You are a new experience to me.”

Dangelis made no reply to this and they paced in silence under the tall exotic cedars until they reached the house.

“There’s mother!” cried the girl, pushing open the door that led into the kitchen premises, and pulling the American unceremoniously in after her. They found Mrs. Homer before a large oak table, set in the mullioned window of the house-keeper’s little room. She was arranging flowers for the evening’s dinner-table. The plump lady welcomed Dangelis effusively and made him sit down upon a Queen Anne settle of polished mahogany which stood in the corner of the fire-place. Gladys remained standing, a tall softly-moulded figure, appealingly girlish in her light muslin frock. She swayed slightly, backwards and forwards, pouting capriciously at her mother’s naive discourse, and loosening her belt with both her hands.

“Why should you ever go back to America?” Mrs. Romer was saying. “Don’t go, dear Mr. Dangelis. Stay with us here till the end of the summer. The Red room in the south passage was getting quite damp before you came. Please, don’t go! Gladys and I are getting so fond of you, so used to your ways and all that. Aren’t we Gladys? Why should
you go? There are plenty of lovely bits of scenery about here. And you can have a studio built! Yes! Why not? Couldn’t he, Gladys? The lumber-room in the south passage—opposite where Lily sleeps—would make a splendid place for painting in hot weather. I suppose a north light, though, would be impossible. But some kind of glass arrangement might be made. I must talk to Mortimer about it. I suppose you rich Americans think nothing of calling in builders and putting up studios. I suppose you do it everywhere. America must be full of north light. But perhaps something of the kind could be done. I really don’t understand architecture, but Mortimer does. Mortimer understands everything. I daresay it wouldn’t be very expensive. It would only mean buying the glass.”

The admirable woman, whose large fair face and double chin had grown quite creased and shiny with excitement, turned at last to her daughter who had been coquettishly and dreamily staring at the smiling artist.

“Why don’t you say something, Gladys? You don’t want Mr. Dangelis to go, any more than I do, do you?”

The girl moved to the table and picking up a large peony stuck it wantonly and capriciously into her dress. “I have my confirmation lesson tonight,” she said. “I must be at Mr. Clavering’s by six. What’s the time now?” She looked at the clock on the mantel-piece. “Why, its nearly half-past four! I wonder where Lacrima is. Never mind! We must have tea without her. I’m sure Mr. Dangelis is dying for tea. Let’s have it out on the terrace.”

“At six?” repeated Mrs. Romer. “I thought the class was always at seven. It was given out to be seven. I heard the notice on Sunday.”

Gladys looked smilingly at the American as she answered her mother. “Don’t be silly, dear. You know Mr. Clavering takes me separately from the others. The others are all village people.”

Mrs. Romer rose from her seat with something between a sigh and a chuckle. “I hadn’t the least idea,” she said, “that he took you separately. You’ve been going to these classes for three weeks and you’ve never mentioned such a thing until this moment. Well—never mind! I expect Mr. Dangelis will not object to strolling down the drive with you. You’d better both get ready for tea now. I’ll go and tell somebody we want it.”

She had no sooner departed than Gladys began
flicking
the American, in playful childish sport, with a spray of early roses. He entered willingly into the game, and a pleasant tussle ensued between them as he sought to snatch the flowers out of her hands. She resisted but he pushed her backwards, and held her imprisoned against the edge of the table, teasing her as if she were a romping child of twelve.

“So you are going to these classes alone, are you?” he said. “I see that your English clergymen are allowed extraordinary privileges. I expect you cause him a good deal of agitation, poor dear man, if you flirt with him as shamelessly as you do with me. Well, go ahead! I’m not responsible for you. In fact I’m all for spurring you on. It’ll amuse me to see what happens. But no doubt all sorts of things have happened already! I suppose you’ve made Mr.
Clavering desperately in love with you. I expect you persecute him unmercifully. I know you. I know your ways. “He playfully pinched her arm. “But go on. It’ll be an amusement to me to watch the result of all this. I like being a sort of
sympathetic
onlooker, in these things. I like the idea of hiding behind the scenes, and watching the tricks of a naughty little flirt like you, set upon troubling the mind of a poor harmless minister.”

The reply made by the daughter of the House to this challenge was a simple but effective one. Like a mischievous infant caught in some unpardonable act, she flagrantly and shamelessly put out her tongue at him. Long afterwards, with curious
feelings
, Dangelis recalled this gesture. He associated it to the end of his life with the indefinable smell of cut flowers, with their stalks in water, and the pungency of peony-petals.

Tea, when it reached our friends upon the stately east terrace, proved a gay and festive meal. The absence of the reserved and nervous Italian, and also of the master of Nevilton, rendered all three persons more completely and freely at their ease, than they had ever been since the American’s first appearance. The grass was being cut at that corner of the park, and the fresh delicious smell, full of the very sap of the earth, poured in upon them across the sunny flower beds. The chattering of young starlings, the cawing of young rooks, blended pleasantly with the swish of the scythes and the laughter of the
hay-makers
; and from the distant village floated softly to their ears all those vague and characteristic sounds which accompany the close of a hot day, and the
release from labour of men and beasts. As they devoured their bread and butter with that naive greediness which is part of the natural atmosphere of this privileged hour in an English home, the three friends indicated by their playful temper and gay discourse that they each had secret reasons for
self-congratulation
.