Wood and Stone (39 page)

“Hullo, child!” he found himself saying, while his inner consciousness told itself that he would just say
one word to her, so that her feelings should not be hurt, and then stroll off to the churchyard. “Why, you have fixed yourself in the very place where they used to make people sit, when they put them in the stocks!”

“Have I?” said the girl looking up at him without moving. “’Tis curious to think of them days! They do say folks never tasted meat nor butter in them old times. I guess it’s better to be living as we be.”

Luke’s habitual tone of sentimental moralizing had evidently set the fashion among the maids of Nevilton. Girls are incredibly quick at acquiring the mental atmosphere of a philosopher who attracts them. The simple flattery of her adoption of his colour of thought made it still more difficult for Luke to keep his vow to the Spinners of Destiny.

“Yes,” he remarked pensively, seating himself on the stocks above her. “It is extraordinary, isn’t it, to think how many generations of people, like you and me, have talked to one another here, in fine days and cloudy days, in winter and summer—and the same old pond and the same old elms listening to all they say?”

“Don’t say that, Luke dear,” protested the girl, with a little apprehensive movement of her shoulders, and a tightened clasp of her hands round her knees. “I don’t like to think of that! ’Tis lonesome enough in this place, mid-day, without thinking of them ghost-stories.”

“Why do you say ghost-stories?” inquired Luke. “There’s nothing ghostly about that dirty old pond and there’s nothing ghostly about these hollow trees—not now, any way.”

“’Tis what you said about their listening, that seems ghostly-like to me,” replied the girl. “I am always like that, you know. Sometimes, down home, I gets a grip of the terrors from staring at old Mr. Pratty’s barn. ’Tis funny, isn’t it? I suppose I was born along of Christmas. They say children born then are wonderful ones for fancying things.”

Luke prodded the ground with his cane and looked at her in silence. Conscious of a certain
admiration
in his look, for the awkwardness of her pose only enhanced the magnetic charm of her person, she proceeded to remove her hat and lean her head with a wistful abandonment against the rough bark of the tree.

The clouds hung heavily over them, and it seemed that at any moment the rain might descend in torrents; but so far not a drop had fallen. Queer and mysterious emotions passed through Luke’s mind.

He felt in some odd way that he was at a
turning-point
in the tide of his existence. It almost seemed to him as though, silent and unmoving, under the roof of the little inn which he could see from where he sat, his brother was lying in the crisis of some dangerous fever. A movement, or gesture, or word, from himself might precipitate this crisis, in one direction or the other.

The girl crouched at his feet became to him, as he gazed at her, something more than a mere amorous acquaintance. She became a type, a symbol—an incarnation of the formidable writing of that
Moving
Finger, to which all flesh must bow. Her
half-coquettish
, half-serious apprehensions, about the
ghostliness of the things that are always
listening
, as the human drama works itself out in their dumb presence, affected him in spite of himself. The
village
of Hullaway seemed at that moment to have disappeared into space, and he and his companion to be isolated and suspended—remote from all
terrestial
activities, and yet aware of some confused struggle between. invisible antagonists.

From the splashing ducks in the pond who, every now then, so ridiculously turned up their squat tails to the cloudy heavens, his eye wandered to the impenetrable expectancy of the stone path which bordered the muddy edge of the water. With the quick sense of one whose daily occupation was
concerned
with this particular stone, he began calculating how long that time-worn pavement had remained there, and how many generations of human feet, hurrying or loitering, had passed along it since it was first laid down. What actual men, he
wondered
, had brought it there, from its resting-place, æons-old in the distant hill, and laid it where it now lay, slab by slab?

From where he sat he could just observe, between a gap in the trees of the Manor-Farm garden, the extreme edge of that Leonian promontory. It seemed to him as though the hill were at that moment being swept by a storm of rain. He shivered a little at the idea of how such a sweeping storm, borne on a northern wind, would invade those bare trenches and unprotected escarpments. He felt glad that his brother had selected Hullaway rather than that particular spot for his angry retreat.

With a sense of relief he turned his eyes once more
to the girl reclining below him in such a charming attitude.

How absurd it was, he thought, to let these vague superstitions overmaster him! Surely it was really an indication of cowardice, in the presence of a hypothetical Fate, to make such fantastic vows as that which he had recently made. It was all part of the atavistic survival in him of that
unhappy
“conscience,” which had done so much to darken the history of the tribes of men. It was like “touching wood” in honour of infernal deities! What was the use of being a philosopher—of being so deeply conscious of the illusive and subjective nature of all these scruples—if, at a crisis, one only fell back into such absurd morbidity? The vow he had registered in his mind an hour before, seemed to him now a piece of grotesque irrelevance—a lapse, a concession to weakness, a reversion to primitive inhibition. If it had been cowardice to make such a vow, it were a still greater cowardice to keep it.

He rose from his seat on the stocks, and began idly lifting up and down the heavy wooden bar which surmounted this queer old pillory. He finally left the thing open and gaping; its semi-circular cavities ready for any offender. Moved by a sudden
impulse
, the girl leant back still further against the tree, and whimsically raising one of her little feet, inserted it into the aperture. Amused at her
companion’s
interest in this levity, and actuated by a profound girlish instinct to ruffle the situation by some startling caprice, she had no sooner got one ankle into the cavity thus prepared for it, than with a sudden effort she placed the other by its
side, and coyly straightening her skirts with her hands, looked up smiling into Luke’s face.

Thus challenged, as it were, by this wilful little would-be malefactor, Luke was mechanically
compelled
to complete her imprisonment. With a
sudden
vicious snap he let down the enclosing bar.

She was now completely powerless; for the most drastic laws of balance made it quite impossible that she could release herself. It thus became inevitable that he should slip down on the ground by her side, and begin teasing her, indulging himself in sundry innocent caresses which her helpless position made it difficult to resist.

It was not long, however, before Phyllis, fearful of the appearance upon the scene of some of
Hullaway’s
inhabitants, implored him to release her.

Luke rose and with his hand upon the bar
contemplated
smilingly his fair prisoner.

“Please be quick!” the girl cried impatiently. “I’m getting so stiff.”

“Shall I, or shan’t I?” said Luke provokingly.

The corner of the girl’s mouth fell and her
under-lip
quivered. It only needed a moment’s further delay to reduce her to tears.

At that moment two interruptions occurred
simultaneously
. From the door or the King’s Arms emerged the landlord, and began making vehement signals to Luke; while from the corner of the road to Nevilton appeared the figures of two young ladies, walking briskly towards them, absorbed in earnest conversation. These simultaneous events were
observed
in varying ratio by the captive and her
captor
. Luke was vaguely conscious of the two ladies
and profoundly agitated by the appearance of the landlord. Phyllis was vaguely conscious of the
landlord
and was profoundly agitated by the appearance of the ladies. The young stone-carver gave a quick thoughtless jerk to the bar; and without waiting to see the result, rushed off towards the inn. The heavy block of wood, impelled by the impetus he had given it, swung upwards, until it almost reached the perpendicular. Then it descended with a crash. The girl had just time to withdraw one of her ankles. The other was imprisoned as hopelessly as before.

Phyllis was overwhelmed with shame and
embarrassment
. She had in a moment recognized Gladys, and she felt as those Apocalyptic unfortunates in Holy Scripture are reported as feeling when they call upon the hills to cover them.

It had happened that Ralph Dangelis had been compelled to pay a flying visit to London on business connected with his proposed marriage. The two cousins, preoccupied, each of them, with their
separate
anxieties, had wandered thus far from home to escape the teasing fussiness of Mrs. Romer, who with her preparations for the double wedding gave neither of them any peace.

They approached quite near to the group of elms before either of them observed the unfortunate Phyllis.

“Why!” cried Gladys suddenly to her
companion
. “There’s somebody in the stocks!”

She went forward hastily, followed at a slower pace by the Italian. Poor Phyllis, her bundle by her side, and her cheeks tear-stained, presented a woeful enough appearance. Her first inclination was
to hide her face in her hands; but making a brave effort, she turned her head towards the new-comers with a gasping little laugh.

“I put my foot in here for a joke,” she stammered, “and it got caught. Please let me out, Miss Romer.”

Gladys came quite near and laid her gloved hand upon the wooden bar.

“It just lifts up, Miss,” pleaded Phyllis, with tears in her voice. “It isn’t at all heavy.”

Gladys stared at her with a growing sense of
interest
. The girl’s embarrassment under her
scrutiny
awoke her Romer malice.

“I really don’t know that I want to let you out in such a hurry,” she said. “If it’s a game you are playing, it would be a pity to spoil it. Who put you in? You must tell me that, before I set you free! You couldn’t have done it yourself.”

By this time Lacrima had arrived on the scene.

The shame-faced Phyllis turned to her. “Please, Miss Traffio, please, lift that thing up! It’s quite easy to move.”

The Italian at once laid her hands upon the block of wood and struggled to raise it; but Gladys had no difficulty in keeping the bar immoveable.

“What are you doing?” cried the younger girl indignantly. “Take your arm away!”

“She must tell us first who put her where she is,” reiterated Miss Romer. “I won’t have her let out ’till she tells us that!”

Phyllis looked piteously from one to the other. Then she grew desperate.

“It was Luke Andersen,” she whispered.

“What!” cried Gladys. “Luke? Then he’s been
out walking with you? Has he? Has he? Has he?”

She repeated these words with such concentrated fury that Phyllis began to cry. But the shock of this information gave Lacrima her chance. Using all her strength she lifted the heavy bar and released the prisoner. Phyllis staggered to her feet and picked up her bundle. Lacrima handed the girl her hat and helped her to brush the dust from her clothes.

“So
you
are Luke’s latest fancy, are you?” Gladys said, scowling fiercely at the glove-maker.

The pent-up feelings of the young woman broke forth at once. Moving a step or two away from them and glancing at a group of farm-men who were crossing the green, she gave full scope to her revenge.

“I’m only Annie Bristow’s friend,” she retorted. “Annie Bristow is going to marry Luke. They are right down mad on one another.”

“It’s a lie!” cried Gladys, completely forgetting herself and looking as if she could have struck the mocking villager.

“A lie, eh?” returned the other. “Tisn’t for me to tell the tale to a young lady, the likes of you. But we be all guessing down in Mr. North’s factory, who ’twas that gave Luke the pretty lady-like ring wot he lent to Annie!”

Gladys became livid with anger. “What ring?” she cried. “Why are you talking about a ring?”

“Annie, she stuck it, for devilry, into that hole in Splash-Lane stone. She pushed it in, tight as ’twere a sham diamint. And there it do bide, the lady’s pretty, ring, all glittery and shiny, at bottom of that there hole! We maids do go to see ’un glinsying
and gleaming. It be the talk of the place, that ring be! Scarce one of the childer but ’as ’ad its try to hook ’un out. But ’tis no good. I guess Annie must have rammed it down with her mother’s girt skewer. ’Tis fast in that stone anyway, for all the world to see. Folks, maybe, ’ll be coming from Yeoborough, long as a few days be over, to see the lady’s ring, wot Annie threw’d away, ’afore she said ‘yes’ to her young man!”

These final words were positively shouted by the enraged Phyllis, as she tripped away, swinging her bundle triumphantly.

It seemed for a moment as though Gladys
meditated
a desperate pursuit, and the infliction of
physical
violence upon her enemy. But Lacrima held her fast by the hand. “For heaven’s sake, cousin,” she whispered, “let her go. Look at those men watching us!”

Gladys turned; but it was not at the farm-men she looked.

Across the green towards them came the two Andersens, Luke looking nervous and worried, and his brother gesticulating strangely. The girls
remained
motionless, neither advancing to meet them nor making any attempt to evade them. Gladys seemed to lose her defiant air, and waited their approach, rather with the look of one expecting to be chidden than of one prepared to chide. On all recent occasions this had been her manner, when in the presence of the young stone-carver.

The sight of Lacrima seemed to exercise a magical effect upon James Andersen. He ceased at once his excited talk, and advancing towards her, greeted
her in his normal tone—a tone of almost paternal gentleness.