Wood and Stone (44 page)

It would have been clear to anyone who had
overheard
his recent conversation with Luke, and now watched his reception of Vennie’s instinctive protest, that whatever the actions of this remarkable man were, they rested upon a massive foundation of
unshakable
philosophy.

There was little further conversation between them; and at the vicarage gate, they separated with a certain air of estrangement. With undeviating feminine clairvoyance, Vennie was persuaded in the depths of her mind that whatever plan had been hit upon by the combined wits of the theologian and Luke, it was one whose nature, had she known it, would have aroused her most vehement condemnation. Nor in this persuasion will the reader of our curious narrative regard her as far astray from the truth.

Meanwhile the two brothers were also returning slowly along the road to Nevilton. Had Mr.
Clavering
, whose opinion of the younger stone-carver was probably lower than that of any of his other critics, seen Luke during this time, he might have formed a kindlier judgment of him. Nothing could have exceeded the tact and solicitude with which he guided the conversation into safe channels. Nothing could have surpassed, in affectionate tenderness, the quick, anxious glances he every now and then cast upon his brother. There are certain human
expressions
which flit suddenly across the faces of men and women, which reveal, with the seal of absolute
authenticity
, the depth of the emotion they betray. Such a flitting expression, of a love almost maternal in its passionate depth, crossed the face of Luke Andersen at more than one stage of their homeward walk.

James seemed, on the whole, rather better than earlier in the day. The most ominous thing he did was to begin a long incoherent discourse about the rooks which kept circling over their heads on their way to the tall trees of Wild Pine. But this
particular
event of the rooks’ return to their Nevilton
roosting
-place was a phase of the local life of that spot calculated to impress even perfectly sane minds with romantic suggestion. It was always a sign of the breaking up of the year’s pristine bloom when they came, a token of the not distant approach of the shorter equinoctial days. They flew hither, these funereal wayfarers, from far distant feeding-grounds. They did not nest in the Nevilton woods. Nevilton was to them simply a habitation of sleep. Many of them never even saw it, except in its morning and evening twilight. The place drew them to it at
night-fall
, and rejected them at sunrise. In the interval they remained passive and unconscious—huddled groups of black obscure shapes, tossed to and fro in their high branches, their glossy heads full of dreams beyond the reach of the profoundest sage. Before settling down to rest, however, it was their custom, even on the stormiest evenings, to sweep round, above the roofs of the village, in wide airy circles of restless flight, uttering their harsh familiar cries. Sailing quietly on a peaceful air or roughly buffeted by rainy gusts of wind—those westerly winds that are so wild and intermittent in this corner of England—these black tribes of the twilight give a character to their places of favourite resort which resembles nothing else in the world. The cawing of rooks is like the crying of sea-gulls. It is a sound that more
than anything flings the minds of men back to “old unhappy far-off things.”

The troubled soul of the luckless stone-carver went tossing forth on this particular night of embalmed stillness, driven in the track of those calmly circling birds, on the gust of a thought-tempest more
formidable
than any that the fall of the leaves could bring. But the devoted passion of the younger brother followed patiently every flight it took; and by the time they had reached the vicarage-gate, and turned down the station-hill towards their lodging, the wild thoughts had fallen into rest, and like the birds in the dusk of their sheltering branches, were soothed into blessed forgetfulness.

Luke had recourse, before they reached their
dwelling
, to the magic of old memories; and the end of that unforgettable day was spent by the two brothers in summoning up childish recollections, and in evoking the images and associations of their earliest compacts of friendship.

When he left his brother asleep and stood for a while at the open window, Luke prayed a vague heathen prayer to the planetary spaces above his head. A falling star happened to sweep downward at that moment behind the dark pyramid of Nevilton Mount, and this natural phenomenon seemed to his excited nerves a sort of elemental answer to his
invocation
; as if it had been the very bolt of
Sagittarius
, the Archer, aimed at all the demons that darkened his brother’s soul!

T
HE morning which followed James Andersen’s completion of his work in Athelston
church-porch
, was one of the loveliest of the season. The sun rose into a perfectly cloudless sky. Every vestige of mist had vanished, and the half-cut
cornfields
lay golden and unshadowed in the translucent air. Over the surface of every upland path, the little waves of palpable ether vibrated and quivered. The white roads gleamed between their tangled hedges as if they had been paved with mother-of-pearl. The heat was neither oppressive nor sultry. It penetrated without burdening, and seemed to flow forth upon the earth, as much from the general expanse of the blue depths as from the limited circle of the solar luminary.

James Andersen seemed more restored than his brother had dared to hope. They went to their work as usual; and from the manner in which the elder stone-carver spoke to his mates and handled his tools, none would have guessed at the mad
fancies
which had so possessed him during the previous days.

Luke was filled with profound happiness and relief. It is true that, like a tiny cloud upon the surface of this clear horizon, the thought of his projected
betrayal
of his mistress remained present with him.
But in the depths of his heart he knew that he would have betrayed twenty mistresses, if by that means the brother of his soul could be restored to sanity.

He had already grown completely weary of Gladys. The clinging and submissive passion with which the proud girl had pursued him of late had begun to irritate his nerves. More than once—especially when her importunities interrupted his newer
pleasures
—he had found himself on the point of hating her. He was absolutely cynical—and always had been—with regard to the ideal of faithfulness in these matters. Even the startling vision of the indignant Dangelis putting into her hands—as he supposed the American might naturally do—the actual written words with which he betrayed her, only ruffled his equanimity in a remote and even half-humorous manner. He recalled her
contemptuous
treatment of him on the occasion of their first amorous encounter and it was not without a certain malicious thrill of triumph that he realized how thoroughly he had been revenged.

He had divined without difficulty on the occasion of their return from Hullaway that Gladys was on the point of revealing to him the fact that she was likely to have a child; and since that day he had taken care to give her little opportunity for such revelations. Absorbed in anxiety for James, he had been anxious to postpone this particular crisis between them till a later occasion.

The situation, nevertheless, whenever he had thought of it, had given him, in spite of its
complicated
issues, an undeniable throb of satisfaction. It was such a complete, such a triumphant victory,
over Mr. Romer. Luke in his heart had an
unblushing
admiration for the quarry-owner, whose masterly attitude towards life was not so very
different
from his own. But this latent respect for his employer rather increased than diminished his
complacency
in thus striking him down. The remote idea that, in the whirligig of time, an offspring of his own should come to rule in Nevilton house—as seemed by no means impossible, if matters were discreetly managed—was an idea that gave him a most delicate pleasure.

As they strolled back to breakfast together, across the intervening field, and admired the early dahlias in the station-master’s garden, Luke took the risk of testing his brother on the matter of Mr. Quincunx. He was anxious to be quite certain of his ground here, before he had his interview with the tenant of the Gables.

“I wish,” he remarked casually, “that Maurice Quincunx would show a little spirit and carry
Lacrima
off straight away.”

James looked closely at him. “If he would,” he said, “I’d give him every penny I possess and I’d work day and night to help them! O Luke—Luke!” he stretched out his arm towards Leo’s Hill and
pronounced
what seemed like a vow before the
Eumenides
themselves; “if I could make her happy, if I could only make her happy, I would be buried
tomorrow
in the deepest of those pits.”

Luke registered his own little resolution in the presence of this appeal to the gods. “Gladys? What is Gladys to me compared with James? All girls are the same. They all get over these things.”

Meanwhile James Andersen was repeating in a low voice to himself the quaint name of his rival.

“He is an ash-root, a tough ash-root,” he
muttered
. “And that’s the reason he has been chosen. There’s nothing in the world but the roots of trees that can undermine the power of Stone! The trees can do it. The trees will do it. What did that Catholic say? He said it was Wood against Stone. That’s the reason I can’t help her. I have worked too long at Stone. I am too near Stone. That’s the reason Quincunx has been chosen. She and I are under the power of Stone, and we can’t resist it, any more than the earth can! But ash-tree roots can undermine anything. If only she would take my money, if only she would.”

This last aspiration was uttered in a voice loud enough for Luke to hear; and it may be well believed that it fortified him all the more strongly in his dishonourable resolution.

During breakfast James continued to show signs of improvement. He talked of his mother, and though his conversation was sprinkled with
somewhat
fantastic imagery, on the whole it was rational enough.

While the meal was still in progress, the younger brother observed through the window the figure of a woman, moving oddly backwards and forwards along their garden-hedge, as if anxious at the same time to attract and avoid attention. He recognized her in a moment as the notorious waif of the
neighborhood
, the somewhat sinister Witch-Bessie. He made an excuse to his brother and slipped out to speak to her.

Witch-Bessie had grown, if possible, still more dehumanized since when two months ago she had cursed Gladys Romer. Her skin was pallid and livid as parchment. The eyes which stared forth from her wrinkled expressionless face were of a dull glaucous blue, like the inside of certain sun-bleached sea-shells. She was dressed in a rough sack-cloth petticoat, out of which protruded her stockingless feet, only half concealed by heavy labourer’s boots, unlaced and in large holes. Over her thin shoulders she wore a ragged woolen shawl which served the office not only of a garment, but also of a wallet; for, in the folds of it, were even now observable certain half-eaten pieces of bread, and bits of ancient cheese, which she had begged in her wanderings. In one of her withered hands she held a large bunch of
magenta
-coloured, nettle-like flowers, of the particular species known to botanists as marsh-wound-wort. As soon as Luke appeared she thrust these flowers into his arms.

“Gathered ’un for ’ee,” she whispered, in a thin whistling voice, like the soughing of wind in a bed of rushes. “They be capital weeds for them as be moon-smitten. Gathered ’un, up by Seven Ashes, where them girt main roads do cross. Take ’un, mister; take ’un and thank an old woman wot loves both of ’ee, as heretofore she did love your
long-sufferin
’ mother. I were bidin’ down by Minister’s back gate, expectin’ me bit of oddments, when they did tell I, all sudden-like, as how he’d been taken, same as
she
was.”

“It’s most kind of you, Bessie,” said Luke
graciously
. “You and I have always been good friends.”

The old woman nodded. “So we be, mister, and let none say the contrary! I’ve a dangled ’ee,
afore-now
, in these very arms. Dost mind how ’ee drove that ramping girt dog out of Long-Load Barton when the blarsted thing were for laying hold of I?”

“But what must I do with these?” asked the stone-carver, holding the bunch of pungent scented flowers to his face.

“That’s wot I was just a-going to tell ’ee,”
whispered
the old woman solemnly. “I suppose
he’s
in there now, eh? Let ’un be, poor man. Let ’un be. Maybe the Lord’s only waitin’ for these ’ere weeds to mend ’is poor swimey wits. You do as I do tell ’ee, mister, and ’twill be all smoothed out, as clean as church floor. You take these blessed weeds,—‘viviny-lobs’ my old mother did call ’em—and hang ’em to dry till they be dead and brown. Then doddy a sprinkle o’ good salt on ’em, and dip ’em in clear water. Be you followin’ me, mister Luke?”

The young man nodded.

“Then wot you got to do, is for to strike ’em ’against door-post, and as you strikes ’em, you says, same as I says now.” And Witch-Bessie repeated the following archaic enchantment.

Luke listened devoutly to these mysterious words, and repeated them twice, after the old woman. Their two figures, thus concerted in magical tutelage, might, for all the youth’s modern attire, have
suggested
to a scholarly observer some fantastic heathen scene out of Apuleius. The spacious August
sunshine
lay splendid upon the fields about them, and light-winged swallows skimmed the surface of the glittering railway-line as though it had been a
flowing
river.

When she was made assured in her mind that her pupil fully understood the healing incantation,
Witch-Bessie
shuffled off without further words. Her face, as she resumed her march in the direction of Hullaway, relapsed into such corpse-like rigidity, that, but for her mechanical movement, one might have expected the shameless flocks of starlings who hovered about her, to settle without apprehension upon her head.

The two brothers labored harmoniously side by side in their work-shop all that forenoon. It was Saturday, and their companions were anxious to throw down their tools and clear out of the place on the very stroke of the one o’clock bell.

James and Luke were both engaged upon a new stone font, the former meticulously chipping out its angle-mouldings, and the latter rounding, with chisel and file, the capacious lip of its deep basin. It was a cathedral font, intended for use in a large northern city.

Luke could not resist commenting to his brother, in his half-humorous half-sentimental way, upon the queer fact that they two—their heads full of their
own anxieties and troubles—should be thus working upon a sacred font which for countless generations, perhaps as long as Christianity lasted, would be
associated
with so many strange and mingled feelings of perturbation and hope.

“It’s a comical idea,” he found himself saying, though the allusion was sufficiently unwise, “this idea of Gladys’ baptism.”

He regretted his words the moment they were out of his mouth; but James received them calmly.

“I once heard,” he answered, “I think it was on the sands at Weymouth, two old men discussing quite reverently and gravely whether an infant, baptized before it was born, would be brought under the blessing of the Church. I thought, as I listened to them, how vulgar and gross-minded our age had become, that I should have to tremble with alarm lest any flippant passer-by should hear their curious speculation. It seemed to me a much more
important
matter to discuss, than the merits of the
black-faced
Pierrots who were fooling and howling just beyond. This sort of seriousness, in regard to the strange borderland of the Faith, has always seemed to me a sign of pathetic piety, and the very reverse of anything blasphemous.”

Luke had made an involuntary movement when his brother’s anecdote commenced. The calmness and reasonableness with which James had spoken was balm and honey to the anxious youth; but he could not help speculating in his heart whether his brother was covertly girding at him. Did he, he wondered, realize how far things had gone between him and the fair-haired girl?

“It’s the sort of question, at any rate,” he remarked rather feebly, “that would interest our friend Sir Thomas Browne. Do you remember how we read together that amazing passage in the Urn Burial?”

“‘But the iniquity of oblivion,’” quoted James in answer, “‘blindly scattereth her Poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it. Time has spared the epitaph of Hadrian’s Horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon without the favour of the everlasting register…. Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. To weep into Stones are fables.’”

He pronounced these last words with a slow and emphatic intonation.

“Fables?” he repeated, resting his hand upon the rim of the font, and lowering his voice, so as not to be heard by the men outside. “He calls them fables because he has never worked as we do—day in and day out—among nothing else. The reason he says that to weep into Stones are fables is that his own life, down at that pleasant Norwich, was such a happy one. To weep into Stones! He means, of course, that when you have endured more than you can bear, you become a Stone. But that is no fable!
Or if it was once, it isn’t so today. Mr. Taxater said the Stone-Age was over. In my opinion, Luke, the Stone-Age is only now beginning. The reason of that is, that whereas, in former times, Stone was moulded by men; now, men are moulded by Stone. We have receded, instead of advancing; and the iniquity of Time which turned animals into men, is now turning men back into the elements!”