Wood and Stone (21 page)

She instinctively felt sure that the same generous and comprehensive sympathy that led him to
condone
the vulgar lapses of these “new people,” would lead him to embrace with more than toleration the eccentricities and aberration of the forlorn relative of the Lords of Glastonbury.

With these thoughts passing rapidly through her brain, Lacrima found herself, after a little further hesitation, agreeing demurely to the American’s
proposal
to visit the tenant of Dead Man’s Lane before the end of the day. She left it uncertain at what precise hour they should go—probably between tea and dinner—because she was anxious, for her own sake, dreading her cousin’s anger, to make the
adventure
synchronize, if possible, with the latter’s assignation with Luke, trusting that the good turn she thus did her, by removing her artistic admirer at a critical
juncture
, would propitiate the fair-haired tyrant’s wrath.

This matter having been satisfactorily settled, the Italian began to feel, as she observed the artist’s bold and challenging glance embracing her from head to foot, while he continued to this new and more
attentive
listener his interrupted monologue, that species of shy and nervous restraint which invariably
embarrassed
her when left alone in his society.

Inexperienced at detecting the difference between aesthetic interest and emotional interest, and
associating
the latter with nothing but what was brutal and gross, Lacrima experienced a disconcerting sort of shame when under the scrutiny of his eyes.

Her timid comments upon his observations showed, however, so much more subtle insight into his
meaning
than Gladys had ever displayed, that it was with a genuine sense of regret that he accepted at last some trifling excuse she offered and let her wander away. Feeling restless and in need of distraction he returned to the house and sought the society of Mrs. Romer.

He discovered this good lady seated in the
housekeeper’s
room, perusing an illustrated paper and commenting upon its contents to the portly Mrs. Murphy. The latter discreetly withdrew on the appearance of the guest of the house, and Dangelis entered into conversation with his hostess.

“Maurice Quincunx!” she cried, as soon as her visitor mentioned the recluse’s queer name, “you don’t mean to say that Lacrima’s going to take you to see
him
?
Well—of all the nonsensical ideas I ever heard! You’d better not tell Mortimer where you’re going. He’s just now very angry with Maurice. It won’t please him at all, her taking you there. Maurice is related to me, you know, not to Mr. Romer. Mr. Romer has never liked him, and lately—but there! I needn’t go into all that. We used to see quite a lot of him in the old days, when we first came to Nevilton. I like to have
someone
about, you know, and Maurice was somebody to talk to, when Mr. Romer was away; but lately
things have been quite different. It is all very sad and very tiresome, you know, but what can a person do?”

This was the nearest approach to a hint of
divergence
between the master and mistress of
Nevilton
that Dangelis had ever been witness to, and even this may have been misleading, for the shrewd little eyes, out of which the lady peered at him, over her spectacles, were more expressive of mild malignity than of moral indignation.

“But what kind of person is this Mr. Quincunx?” enquired the American. “I confess I can’t, so far, get any clear vision of his personality. Won’t you tell me something more definite about him,
something
that will ‘give me a line on him,’ as we say in the States?”

Mrs. Romer looked a trifle bewildered. It seemed that the personality of Mr. Quincunx was not a topic that excited her conversational powers.

“I never really cared for him,” she finally remarked. “He used to talk so unnaturally. He’d come over here, you know, almost every day—when Gladys was a little girl,—and talk and talk and talk. I used to think sometimes he wasn’t quite right here,”—the good lady tapped her forehead with her
fore-finger
,—“but in some things he was very sensible. I don’t mean that he spoke loud or shouted or was noisy. Sometimes he didn’t say very much; but even when he didn’t speak, his listening was like talking. Gladys used to be quite fond of him when she was a little girl. He used to play hide-and-seek with her in the garden. I think he helped me to keep her out of mischief more than any of her
governesses
did. Once, you know, he beat Tom Raggles
—the miller’s son—because he followed her across the park—beat him over the head, they say, with an iron pick. The lying wretch of a lad swore that she had encouraged him, and we were driven to hush the matter up, but I believe Mr. Quincunx had to see the inspector in Yeoborough.”

Beyond this somewhat obscure incident, Dangelis found it impossible to draw from Mrs. Romer any intelligible answer to his questions. The figure of the evasive tenant of the cottage in Dead Man’s Lane remained as misty as ever.

A little irritated by the ill success of his
psychological
investigations, the artist, conscious that he was wasting the morning, began, out of sheer
capricious
wilfulness, to expound his æsthetic ideas to this third interlocutor.

His nerves were in a morbid and unbalanced state, due partly to a lapse in his creative energy, and partly to the fact that in the depths of his mind he was engaged in a half-conscious struggle to suppress and keep in its proper place the insidious physical
attraction
which Gladys had already begun to exert upon him.

But the destiny of poor Dangelis, this
inauspicious
morning, was, it seemed, to become a bore and a pedant to everyone he encountered; for the lady had hardly listened for two minutes to his discourse when she also left him, with some suitable apology, and went off to perform more practical household duties. “What did this worthy Quincunx talk about, that you used to find so tiresome?” the artist flung after her, as she left the room.

Mrs. Romer turned on the threshold. “He talked
of nothing but the bible,” she said. “The bible and our blessed Lord. You can’t blame me, Mr.
Dangelis
, for objecting to that sort of thing, can you? I call it blasphemy, nothing short of blasphemy!”

Dangelis wondered, as he strolled out again into the air, intending to seek solace for his irritable nerves in a solitary walk, whether, if it were
blasphemy
in Nevilton House to refer to the Redeemer of men, and a nuisance and a bore to refer to heathen idolatries, what kind of topic it might be that the place’s mental atmosphere demanded.

He came to the conclusion, as he proceeded down the west drive, that the Romer family was more stimulating to watch, than edifying to converse with.

After tea that evening, as Lacrima had hoped, Gladys announced her intention of going down to the mill to sketch. This—to Lacrima’s initiated ears—meant an assignation with Luke, and she glanced quickly at Dangelis, with a shy smile, to indicate that their projected visit was possible. As soon as her cousin had departed they set out. Their expedition seemed likely to prove a complete success. They found Mr. Quincunx in one of his gayest moods. Had he been expecting the appearance of the
American
he would probably have worked himself up into a miserable state of nervous apprehension; but the introduction thus suddenly thrust upon him, the genial simplicity of the Westerner’s manners and his honest openness of speech disarmed him completely. In a mood of this kind the recluse became a charming companion.

Dangelis was immensely delighted with him. His original remarks, and the quaint chuckling bursts of
sardonic laughter which accompanied his irresistible sallies, struck the artist as something completely different from what he had expected. He had looked to see a listless preoccupied mystic, ready to flood him with dreamy and wearisome monologues upon “the simple life,” and in place of this he found an entertaining and gracious gentleman, full of
delicious
malice, and uttering quip after quip of sly, half-innocent, half-subtle, Rabelaisean humour, in the most natural manner in the world.

Not quite able to bring his affability to the point of inviting them into his kitchen, Mr. Quincunx
carried
out, into a sheltered corner, three rickety chairs and a small deal table. Here, protected from the gusty wind, he offered them cups of exquisitely
prepared
cocoa and little oatmeal biscuits. He asked the American question after question about his life in the remote continent, putting into his
enquiries
such naive and childlike eagerness, that Dangelis congratulated himself upon having at last discovered an Englishman who was not superior to the charming vice of curiosity. Had the artist
possessed
less of that large and careless aplomb which makes the utmost of every situation and never teases itself with criticism, he might have regarded the recluse’s effusiveness as too deprecatory and
propitiatory
in its tone. This, however, never occurred to him and he swallowed the solitary’s flattery with joy and gratitude, especially as it followed so quickly upon the conversational deficiencies of Nevilton House.

“I live in the mud here,” said Mr. Quincunx, “and that makes it so excellent of you two people from
the upper world to slip down into the mud with me.”

“I think you live very happily and very sensibly, Maurice!” cried Lacrima, looking with tender
affection
upon her friend. “I wish we could all live as you do.”

The recluse waved his hand. “There must be lions and antelopes in the world,” he said, “as well as frogs and toads. I expect this friend of yours, who has seen the great cities, is at this moment wishing he were in a café in New York or Paris, rather than sitting on a shaky chair drinking my bad cocoa.”

“That’s not very complimentary to me, is it, Mr. Dangelis?” said Lacrima.

“Mr. Quincunx is much to be envied,” remarked the American. “He is living the sort of life that every man of sense would wish to live. It’s
outrageous
, the way we let ourselves become slave to objects and circumstances and people.”

Lacrima, anxious in the depths of her heart to give the American the benefit of Mr. Quincunx’s insight into character, turned the conversation in the direction of the rumored political contest
between
Romer and Wone. She was not quite pleased with the result of this manœuvre, however, as it at once diminished the solitary’s high spirits and led to his adoption of the familiar querulous tone of peevish carping.

Mr. Quincunx spoke of his remoteness from the life around him. He referred with bitter sarcasm to the obsequious worship of power from which every inhabitant of the village of Nevilton suffered.

“I laugh,” he said, “when our good socialist Wone gives vent to his eloquent protestations. Really, in his heart, he is liable to just the same cringing to power as all the rest. Let Romer make overtures to him,—only he despises him too much to do that,—and you’d soon see how quickly he’d swing round! Give him a position of power, Dangelis—I expect you know from your experience in your own country how this works out,—and you would soon find him just as tyrannical, just as obdurate.”

“I think you’re quite wrong, Maurice,” cried Lacrima impetuously. “Mr. Wone is not an educated man as you are, but he’s entirely sincere. You’ve only to listen to him to understand his sincerity.”

A grievous shadow of irritation and pique crossed the recluse’s face. Nothing annoyed him more than this kind of direct opposition. He waved the
objection
aside. Lacrima’s outburst of honest feeling had already undone the subtle purpose with which she had brought the American. Her evasive Balaam was, it appeared, inclined, out of pure wilfulness, to bless rather than curse their grand enemy.

“It’s all injured vanity,” Mr. Quincunx went on, throwing at his luckless girl-friend a look of quite disproportioned anger. “Its all his outraged
power-instinct
that drives him to take up this pose. I know what I’m talking about, for I often argue with him. Whenever I dispute the smallest point of his theories, he bursts out like a demon and despises me as a downright fool. He’d have got me turned out of the Social Meetings, because I contradicted him there, if our worthy clergyman hadn’t intervened. You’ve no idea how deep this power-instinct goes. You must
remember, Mr. Dangelis, you see a village like ours entirely from the outside and you think it beautiful, and the people charming and gentle. I tell you it’s a nest of rattlesnakes! It’s a narrow, poisonous cage, full of deadly vindictiveness and concentrated malice. Of course we know what human nature is, wherever you find it, but if you want to find it at its very worst, come to Nevilton!”

“But you yourself,” protested the artist, “are you not one of these same people? I understand that you—”

Mr. Quincunx rose to his feet, his expressive nostrils quivering with anger. “I don’t allow anyone to say that of me!” he cried, “I may have my faults, but I’m as different from all these rats as a guillemot is different from a cormorant!”

He sat down again and his voice took almost a pleading tone. “You know I’m different. You must know I’m different! How could I see all these things as clearly as I do if it wasn’t so? I’ve undergone what that German calls ‘the Great Renunciation.’ I’ve escaped the will to live. I neither care to acquire myself this accursed power—or to revolt, in jealous envy, against those who possess it.”

He relapsed into silence and contemplated his garden and its enclosing hedge, with a look of
profound
melancholy. Dangelis had been considerably distracted during the latter part of this discourse by his artistic interest in the delicate lines of Lacrima’s figure and the wistful sadness of her expression. It was borne in upon him that he had somewhat
neglected
this shy cousin of his exuberant young friend. He promised himself to see more of the Italian, as
occasion served. Perhaps—if only Gladys would agree to it—he might make use of her, also, in his Dionysian impressions.