Wood and Stone (30 page)

Mr. Quincunx looked intently at her, leaning upon his hoe. He had only once before—on an
exceptionally
cold winter’s day—allowed the girl to enter the cottage.

He had a vague feeling that if he did so he would in some way commit himself, and be betrayed into a false position. He almost felt as though, if she were once comfortably established there, he would never be able to get her out again! He was nervous, too, about her seeing all his little household
peculiarities
. If she saw, for instance, how cheaply, how
very cheaply, he managed to live, eating no meat and economizing in sugar and butter, she might be encouraged still further in her attempts to persuade him to run away.

He was also strangely reluctant that she should get upon the track of his queer little lonely epicurean pleasures, such as his carefully guarded bottle of Scotch whiskey; his favourite shelf of mystical and Rabelaisean books; his jar of tobacco, with a piece of bread under its lid, to keep the contents moist and cool; his elaborate arrangements for holding draughts out; his polished pewter; his dainty
writing-desk
with its piled-up, vellum-bound journals, all labelled and laid in order; his queer-coloured oriental slippers; his array of scrupulously scrubbed pots and pans. Mr. Quincunx was extremely unwilling that his lady-love should poke her pretty fingers into all these mysteries.

What he liked, was to live in two distinct worlds: his world of sentiment with Lacrima as its solitary centre, and his world of sacramental epicurism with his kitchen-fire as its solitary centre. He was
extremely
unwilling that the several circumferences of these centres should intersect one another. Both were equally necessary to him. When days passed without a visit from his friend he became miserably depressed. But he saw no reason for any inartistic attempt to unite these two spheres of interest. A psychologist who defined Mr. Quincunx’s temper as the temper of a hermit would have been far astray. He was profoundly dependent on human sympathy. But he liked human sympathy that kept its place. He did not like human
society
. Perhaps of all
well-know
n
psychological types, the type of the
philosopher
Rousseau was the one to which he most nearly approximated. And yet, had he possessed children, Mr. Quincunx would certainly never have been persuaded to leave them at the foundling hospital. He would have lived apart from them, but he would never have parted with them. He was really a domestic sentimentalist, who loved the
exquisite
sensation of being alone with his own thoughts.

With all this in mind, one need feel no particular surprise that the response he gave to Lacrima’s sudden request was a somewhat reluctant one.
However
, he did respond; and opening the cottage-doors for her, ushered her into the kitchen and put the kettle on the fire.

It puzzled him a little that she should feel no
embarrassment
at being alone with him in this secluded place! In the depths of his heart—like many philosophers—Mr. Quincunx, in spite of his
anarchistic
theories, possessed no slight vein of
conventional
timidity. He did not realize this in the least. Women, according to his cynical code, were the sole props of conventionality. Without women, there would be no such thing in the world. But now, brought face to face with the reckless detachment of a woman fighting for her living soul, he felt confused, uncomfortable, and disconcerted.

Lacrima waited in patient passivity, too exhausted to make any further mental or moral effort, while her friend made the tea and cut the bread-and-butter.

As soon as she had partaken of these things, her exhaustion gave place to a delicious sense—the first
she had known for many weeks—of peaceful and happy security. She put far away, into the remote background of her mind, all melancholy and tragic thoughts, and gave herself up to the peacefulness of the moment. The hands of Mr. Quincunx’s clock pointed to half-past six. She had therefore a clear thirty minutes left, before she need set out on her return walk, in order to have time to dress for dinner.

“I wonder if your Miss Gladys,” remarked
Lacrima’s
host, lighting a cigarette as he sipped his tea, “will marry the Honourable Mr. Ilminster after all, or whistle him down the wind, and make up to our American friend? I notice that Dangelis is already considerably absorbed in her.”

“Please, dear, don’t let us talk any more about these people,” begged Lacrima softly. “Let me be happy for a little while.”

Mr. Quincunx stroked his beard. “You are a queer little girl,” he said. “But what I should do if the gods took you away from me I have not the least idea. I should not care then whether I worked in an office or in a factory. I should not care what I did.”

The girl jumped up impulsively from her seat and went over to him. Mr. Quincunx took her upon his knees as he might have taken a child and fondled her gravely and gently. The smoke of his cigarette ascended in a thin blue column above their two heads.

At that moment there was a mocking laugh at the window. Lacrima slid out of his arms and they both rose to their feet and turned indignantly.

The laughing face of Gladys Romer peered in
upon them, her eyes shining with delighted
malevolence
. “I saw you,” she cried. “But you needn’t look so cross! I like to see these things. I have been watching you for quite a long time! It has been such fun! I only hoped I could keep quiet for longer still, till one of you began to cry, or something. But you looked so funny that I couldn’t help laughing. And that spoilt it all. Mr. Dangelis is at the gate. Shall I call him up? He came with me across the park. He tried to stop me from pouncing on you, but I wouldn’t listen to him. He said it was a ‘
low-down
stunt.’ You know the way he talks, Lacrima!”

The two friends stood staring at the intruder in petrified horror. Then without a word they quickly issued from the cottage and crossed the garden, Neither of them spoke to Gladys; and Mr. Quincunx immdiately returned to his house as soon as he saw the American advance to greet Lacrima with his usual friendly nonchalance.

The three went off down the lane together; and the poor philosopher, staring disconsolately at the empty tea-cups of his profaned sanctuary, cursed himself, his friend, his fate, and the Powers that had
appointed
that fate from the beginning of the world.

J
UNE was drawing to an end, and the days, though still free from rain, grew less and less bright. A thin veil of greyish vapour, which never became thick enough or sank low enough to resolve itself into definite clouds, offered a perpetual hindrance to the shining of the sun. The sun was present. Its influence was felt in the warmth of the air; but when it became visible, it was only in the form of a large misty disc, at which the weakest eyes might gaze without distress or discomfort.

On a certain evening when this vaporous obscurity made it impossible to ascertain the exact moment of the sun’s descent and when it might be said that afternoon became twilight before men or cattle
realized
that the day was over, Mr. Wone was assisting his son Philip in planting geraniums in his back garden.

The Wone house was neither a cottage nor a villa. It was one of those nondescript and modest residences, which, erected in the mid-epoch of Victoria’s reign, when money was circulating freely among the
middle-classes
, win a kind of gentle secondary mellowness in the twentieth century by reason of something solid and liberal in their original construction. It stood at the corner of the upper end of Nevilton, where, beyond the fountain-square, the road from
Yeoborough takes a certain angular turn to the north. The garden at the back of it, as with many of the cottages of the place, was larger than might have been expected, and over the low hedge which
separated
it from the meadows behind, the long ridge of wooded upland, with its emphatic lines of tall Scotch firs that made the southern boundary of the valley, was pleasantly and reassuringly visible.

Philip Wone worked in Yeoborough. He was a kind of junior partner in a small local firm of
tombstone
makers—the very firm, in fact, which under the direction of the famous Gideon, had constructed the most remarkable monument in Nevilton
churchyard
. It was doubtful whether he would ever attain the position of full partner in this concern, for his manner of life was eccentric, and neither his ways nor his appearance were those of a youth who succeeds in business. He was a tall pallid creature. His dark coarse hair fell in a heavy wave over his white
forehead
, and his hands were thin and delicate as the hands of an invalid.

He was an omnivorous reader and made incessant use of every subscription library that Yeoborough offered. His reading was of two kinds. He read romantic novels of every sort—good, bad, and
indifferent
—and he read the history of revolutions. There can hardly have been, in any portion of the earth’s surface, a revolution with whose characters and incidents Philip was unacquainted. His chief passion was for the great French Revolution, the personalities of which were more real to him than the majority of his own friends.

Philip was by temperament and conviction an
ardent anarchist; not an anarchist of Mr. Quincunx’s mild and speculative type, but of a much more formidable brand. He had also long ago consigned the idea of any Providential interference with the sequence of events upon earth, into the limbo of outworn superstitions.

It was Philip’s notion, this, of planting geraniums in the back-garden. Dressed nearly always in black, and wearing a crimson tie, it was his one luxurious sensuality to place in his button-hole, as long as they were possibly available, some specimen or other of the geranium tribe, with a preference for the most flaming varieties.

The Christian Candidate regarded his son with a mixture of contempt and apprehension. He despised his lack of business ability, and he viewed his
intellectual
opinions as the wilful caprices of a sulky and disagreeable temper.

It was as a sort of pitying concession to the whim of a lunatic that Mr. Wone was now assisting Philip in planting these absurd geraniums. His own idea was that flower-gardens ought to be abolished
altogether
. He associated them with gentility and
toryism
and private property in land. Under the regime he would have liked to have established, all decent householders would have had liberal small holdings, where they would grow nothing but vegetables. Mr. Wone liked vegetables and ate of them very freely in their season. Flowers he regarded as the invention of the upper classes, so that their privately owned world might be decorated with exclusive festoons.

“I shall go round presently,” he said to his son, “and visit all these people. I see no reason why
Taxater and Clavering, as well as the two
Andersens
, should not make themselves of considerable use to me. I am tired of talking to these Leo’s Hill labourers. One day they
will
strike, and the next they
won’t
. All they think of is their own quarrel with Lickwit. They have no thought of the general interest of the country.”

“No thought of your interests, you mean,” put in the son.

“With these others it is different,” went on Mr. Wone, oblivious of the interruption. “It would be a real help to me if the more educated people of the place came out definitely on my side. They ought to do it. They know what this Romer is. They are thinking men. They must see that what the country wants is a real representative of the people.”

“What the country wants is a little more honesty and a little less hypocrisy,” remarked the son.

“It is abominable, this suppression of our Social Meeting. You have heard about that, I suppose?” pursued the candidate.

“Putting an end to your appeals to Providence, eh?” said Philip, pressing the earth down round the roots of a brilliant flower.

“I forbid you to talk like that,” cried his father. “I might at least expect that
you
would do
something
for me. You have done nothing, since my campaign opened, but make these silly remarks.”

“Why don’t you pray about it?” jeered the
irrepressible
young man. “Mr Romer has not suppressed prayer, has he, as well as Political Prayer-Meetings?”

“They were not political!” protested the aggrieved parent. “They were profoundly religious. What
you young people do not seem to realize now-a-days is that the soul of this country is still God-fearing and religious-minded. I should myself have no hope at all for the success of this election, if I were not sure that God was intending to make His hand felt.”

“Why don’t you canvass God, then?” muttered the profane boy.

“I cannot allow you to talk to me in this way, Philip!” cried Mr. Wone, flinging down his trowel. “You know perfectly well that you believe as firmly as I do, in your heart. It is only that you think it impressive and original to make these silly jokes.”

“Thank you, father,” replied Philip. “You
certainly
remove my doubts with an invincible
argument
! But I assure you I am quite serious. Nobody with any brain believes in God in these days. God died about the same time as Mr. Gladstone.”

The Christian Candidate lost his temper. “I must beg you,” he said, “to keep your infidel nonsense to yourself. Your mother and I are sick of it! You had better stay in Yeoborough, and not come home at all, if you can’t behave like an ordinary person and keep a civil tongue.”

Philip made no answer to this ultimatum, but smiled sardonically and went on planting geraniums.

But his father was loath to let the matter drop.

“What would the state of the country be like, I wonder,” he continued, “if people lost their faith in the love of a merciful Father? It is only because we feel, in spite of all appearances, the love of God must triumph in the end, that we can go on with our great movement. The love of God, young man, whatever you foolish infidels may say, is at the bottom of all
attempts to raise the people to better things. Do you think I would labour as I do in this excellent cause if I did not feel that I had the loving power of a great Heavenly Father behind me? Why do I trouble myself with politics? Because His love constrains me. Why have I brought you up so carefully—though to little profit it seems!—and have been so considerate to your mother—who, as you know, isn’t always very cheerful? Because His love
constrains
me. Without the knowledge that His love is at the bottom of everything that happens, do you think I could endure to live at all?”

Philip Wone lifted up his head from the
flower-border
.

“Let me just tell you this, father, it is not the love of God, or of anyone else, that’s at the bottom of our grotesque world. There is nothing at the bottom! The world goes back—without limit or boundary—upwards and downwards, and
everywhere
. It has no bottom, and no top either! It is all quite mad and we are all quite mad. Love? Who knows anything of love, except lovers and madmen? If these Romers and Lickwits are to be crushed, they must be crushed by force. By force, I tell you! This love of an imaginary Heavenly Father has never done anything for the revolution and never will!”

Mr. Wone, catching at a verbal triumph, regained his placable equanimity.

“Because, dear boy,” he remarked, “it is not revolution that we want, but reconstruction. Force may destroy. It is only love that can rebuild.”

No words can describe the self-satisfied unction
with which the Christian Candidate pronounced this oracular saying.

“Well, boy,” he added, “I must be off. I want to see Taxater and Clavering and both the Andersens tonight. I might see Quincunx too. Not that I think
he
can do very much.”

“There’s only one way you’ll get James Andersen to help you,” remarked Philip, “and I doubt whether you’ll bring yourself to use that.”

“I suppose you mean,” returned his father, “that Traffio girl, up at the House. I have heard that they have been seen together. But I thought she was going to marry John Goring.”

“No, I don’t mean her,” said the son. “She’s all right. She’s a fine girl, and I am sorry for her, whether she marries Goring or not. The person I mean is little Ninsy Lintot, up at Wild Pine. She’s the only one in this place who can get a civil word out of Jim Andersen.”

“Ninsy?” echoed his father, “but I thought Ninsy was dead and buried. There was some one died up at Wild Pine last spring, and I made sure ’twas her.”

“That was her sister Glory,” affirmed Philip. “But Ninsy is delicate, too. A bad heart, they say—too bad for any thoughts of marrying. But she and Jim Andersen have been what you” might call sweethearts ever since she was in short frocks.”

“I have never heard of this,” said Mr. Wone.

“Nor have many other people here, returned Philip, “but ’tis true, none the less. And anyone who wants to get at friend James must go to him through Ninsy Lintot.”

“I am extremely surprised at what you tell me,”
said Mr. Wone. “Do you really mean that if I got this sick child to promise me Andersen’s help, he really would give it?”

“Certainly I do,” replied Philip. “And what is more, he would bring his brother with him.”

“But his brother is thick with Miss Romer. All the village is talking about them.”

“Never mind the village—father! You think too much of the village and its talk. I tell you—Miss Romer or no Miss Romer—if you get James to help you, you get Luke. I know something of the ways of those two.”

A look of foxy cunning crossed the countenance of the Christian Candidate.

“Do
you
happen to have any influence with this poor Ninsy?” he asked abruptly, peering into his son’s face.

Philip’s pale cheeks betrayed no embarrassment.

“I know her,” he said. “I like her. I lend her books. She will die before Christmas.”

“I wish you would go up and see her for me then,” said Mr. Wone eagerly. “It would be an excellent thing if we
could
secure the Andersens. They must have a lot of influence with the men they work with.”

Philip glanced across the rich sloping meadows which led up to the base of the wooded ridge. From where they stood he could see the gloomy clump of firs and beeches which surrounded the little group of cottages known as Wild Pine.

“Very well,” he said. “I don’t mind. But no more of this nonsense about my not coming home! I prefer for the present”—and he gave vent to rather an ominous laugh—“to live with my dear parents.
But, mind—I can’t promise anything. These
Andersens
are queer fellows. One never knows how things will strike them. However, we shall see. If anyone could persuade our friend James, it would be Ninsy.”

The affair being thus settled, the geraniums were abandoned; and while the father proceeded down the village towards the Gables, the son mounted the slope of the hill in the direction of Wild Pine.

The path Philip followed soon became a narrow lane running between two high sandy banks,
overtopped
by enormous beeches. At all hours, and on every kind of day, this miniature gorge between the wooded fields was a dark and forlorn spot. On an evening of a day like the present one, it was nothing less than sinister. The sky being doubly dark above, dark with the coming on of night, and dark with the persistent cloud-veil, the accumulated shadows of this sombre road intensified the gloom to a pitch of darkness capable of exciting, in agitated nerves, an emotion bordering upon terror. Though the sun had barely sunk over Leo’s Hill, between these
ivy-hung
banks it was as obscure as if night had already fallen.

But the obscurity of Root-Thatch Lane was nothing to the sombreness that awaited him when, arrived at the hill-top, he entered Nevil’s Gully. This was a hollow basin of close-growing beech-trees, surrounded on both sides by impenetrable thickets of bramble and elder, and crossed by the path that led to Wild Pine cottages. Every geographical district has its typical and representative centre,—some
characteristic
spot which sums up, as it were, and focuses, in
limited bounds, qualities and attributes that are
diffused
in diverse proportions through the larger area. Such a centre of the Nevilton district was the place through which Philip Wone now hurried.