Wood and Stone (48 page)

Luke had been informed by Mr. Quincunx of every detail of James’ movements and of Ninsy’s appearance on the scene. The recluse, as the reader may believe, did not spare himself in any point. He even
exaggerated
his fear of the agitated stone-carver, and as they hastened together towards Seven Ashes, he narrated, down to the smallest particular, the strange
conversation
they had had in his potato-garden.

“Why do you suppose,” he enquired of Luke, as they ascended the final slope of the hill, “he talked so much of someone giving me money? Who, on earth, is likely to give me money? People don’t as a rule throw money about, like that, do they? And if they did, I am the last person they would throw it to. I am the sort of person that kind and good people naturally hate. It’s because they know I know the deep little vanities and cunning selfishness in their blessed deeds.

“No one in this world really acts from pure motives. We are all grasping after our own gain. We are all pleased when other people come to grief, and sorry when things go well with them. It’s human nature, that’s what it is! Human nature is always vicious. It was human nature in me that made me send your
brother up this hill, instead of taking him back to the village. It was human nature in you that made you curse me as you did, when I first told you.”

Luke did his best to draw Mr. Quincunx back from these general considerations to his conversation with James.

“What did you say,” he enquired, “when he asked you about marrying Lacrima, supposing this
imaginary
kind person were available? Did you tell him you would do it?”

“You mean, was he really jealous?” replied the other, with one of his goblin-like laughs.

“It was a strange question to ask,” pursued Luke. “I can’t imagine how you answered it.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Quincunx, “we know very well what he was driving at. He wanted to sound me. Whatever may be wrong with him he was clever enough to want to sound me. We are all like that! We are all going about the world trying to find out each other’s weakest points, with the idea that it may be useful to us to know them, so as to be able to stick knives into them when we want to.”

“It was certainly rather a strange question
considering
that he is a bit attracted to Lacrima
himself
,” remarked Luke. “I should think you were very cautious how you answered.”

“Cautious?” replied Mr. Quincunx. “I don’t
believe
in caution. Caution is a thing for well-to-do people who have something to lose. I answered him exactly as I would answer anyone. I said I should be a fool not to agree. And so I should. Don’t you think so, Andersen? I should be a fool not to marry, under such circumstances?”

“It depends what your feelings are towards
Lacrima
,” answered the wily stone-carver.

“Why do you say that, in that tone?” said the recluse sharply. “You know very well what I feel towards Lacrima. Everyone knows. She is the one little streak of romance that the gods have allowed to cross my path. She is my only girl-friend in Nevilton.”

At that moment the two men reached Seven Ashes and the sound of their voices was carried to the
cemetery
, with the result already narrated.

It will be remarked as an interesting exception to the voluble candour of Mr. Quincunx, that in his conversation with Luke he avoided all mention of Lacrima’s fatal contract with Mr. Romer. He had indeed, on an earlier occasion, approached the
outskirts
of this affair, in an indirect manner and with much manœuvring. From what he had hinted then, Luke had formed certain shrewd surmises, in the direction of the truth, but of the precise facts he remained totally ignorant.

The shout for help which interrupted this
discussion
gave the two men a shock of complete surprise. They were still more surprised, when on entering the cemetery they found James standing over the apparently lifeless form of Ninsy Lintot, her clothes torn and her hair loose and dishevelled. Their
astonishment
reached its climax when they noticed the sane and rational way in which the stone-carver addressed them. He was in a state of pitiful
agitation
, but he was no longer mad.

By dint of their united efforts they carried the girl across the field, and laid her down beneath the
ash-trees
.
The fresher air of this more exposed spot had an immediate effect upon her. She breathed heavily, and her fingers, under the caress of James’ hands, lost their rigidity. Across her shadowy white face a quiver passed, and her head moved a little.

“Ninsy! Ninsy, dear!” murmured Andersen as he knelt by her side. By the light of the clear stars, which now filled the sky with an almost tropical splendour, the three men gazing anxiously at her face saw her eyes slowly open and her lips part in a tender recognitory smile.

“Thank God!” cried James, “You are better now, Ninsy, aren’t you? Here is Luke and Mr. Quincunx. They came to find us. They’ll help me to get you safe home.”

The girl murmured some indistinct and broken phrase. She smiled again, but a pathetic attempt she made to lift her hand to her throat proved her helpless weakness. Tenderly, as a mother might, James anticipated her movement, and restored to as natural order as he could her torn and ruffled dress.

At that moment to the immense relief of the three watchers the sound of cart-wheels became audible. The vehicle proved to be a large empty wagon driven by one of Mr Goring’s men on the way back from an outlying hamlet. They all knew the driver, who pulled up at once at their appeal.

On an extemporized couch at the bottom of the wagon, made of the men’s coats,—Mr. Quincunx being the first to offer his,—they arranged the girl’s passive form as comfortably as the rough vehicle allowed. And then, keeping the horses at a
walking-pace
,
they proceeded along the lane towards Wild Pine.

For some while, as he walked by the cart’s side, his hand upon its well-worn edge, James experienced extreme weariness and lassitude. His legs shook under him and his heart palpitated. The demon which had been driven out of him, had left him, it seemed, like his biblical prototype, exhausted and half-dead. By the time, however, that they reached the corner, where Root-Thatch Lane descends to the village, and Nevil’s Gully commences, the cool air of the night and the slow monotonous movement had restored a considerable portion of his strength.

None of the men, as they went along, had felt in a mood for conversation. Luke had spent his time, naming to himself, with his accustomed interest in such phenomena, the various familiar constellations which shone down upon them between the dark boughs of the Scotch-firs.

The thoughts of Mr. Quincunx were confused and strange. He had fallen into one of his self-
condemnatory
moods, and like a solemn ghost moving by his side, a grim projection of his inmost identity kept rebuking and threatening him. As with most retired persons, whose lives are passed in an uninterrupted routine, the shock of any unusual or unforseen
accident
fell upon him with a double weight.

He had been much more impressed by the wild agitation of James, and by the sight of Ninsy’s
unconscious
and prostrate figure, than anyone who knew only the cynical side of him would have
supposed
possible. The cynicism of Mr. Quincunx was indeed strictly confined to philosophical conversation.
In practical life he was wont to encounter any sudden or tragic occurrence with the unsophisticated
sensitiveness
of a child. As with many other sages, whose philosophical proclivities are rather instinctive than rational, Mr. Quincunx was liable to curious lapses into the most simple and superstitious misgivings.

The influence of their slow and mute advance, under the majestic heavens, may have had
something
to do with this reaction, but it is certain that this other Mr. Quincunx—this shadowy companion with no cabbage-leaf under his hat—pointed a most accusing finger at him. Before they reached Nevil’s Gully, the perturbed recluse had made up his mind that, at all costs, he would intervene to prevent this scandalous union of his friend with John Goring. Contract or no contract, he must exert himself in some definite and overt manner to stave off this outrage.

To his startled conscience the sinister figure of Mr. Homer seemed to extend itself, Colossus-like, from the outstretched neck of Cygnus, the heavenly Swan, to the low-hung brilliance of the “lord-star” Jupiter, and accompanying this Satanic shadow across his vision, was a horrible and most realistic image of the frail Italian, struggling in vain against the brutal advances of Mr. Goring. He seemed to see Lacrima, lying helpless, as Ninsy had been lying, but with no protecting forms grouped reassuringly around her.

The sense of the pitiful helplessness of these girlish beings, thrust by an indifferent fate into the midst of life’s brute forces, had pierced his conscience with an indelible stab when first he had seen her prostrate in the cemetery. For a vague transitory moment, 
he had wondered then, whether his sending her in pursuit of a madman had resulted in a most
lamentable
tragedy; and though Andersen’s manner had quickly reassured him as it had simultaneously
reassured
Luke, the original impression of the shock remained.

At that moment, as he helped to lift Ninsy out of the wagon, and carry her through the farm-yard to her father’s cottage, the cynical recluse felt an almost quixotic yearning to put himself to any inconvenience and sacrifice any comfort, if only one such soft feminine creature as he supported now in his arms, might be spared the contact of gross and violating hands.

James Andersen, as well as Mr. Quincunx, remained silent during their return towards the village. In vain Luke strove to lift off from them this oppression of pensive and gentle melancholy. Neither his stray bits of astronomical pedantry, nor his Rabelaisean jests at the expense of a couple of rural amorists they stumbled upon in the over-shadowed descent, proved arresting enough to break his companion’s silence.

At the bottom of Root-Thatch Lane Mr. Quincunx separated from the brothers. His way led directly through the upper portion of the village to the
Yeoborough
road, while that of the Andersens passed between the priory and the church.

The clock in St. Catharine’s tower was striking ten as the two brothers moved along under the churchyard wall. With the departure of Mr.
Quincunx
James seemed to recover his normal spirits. This recovery was manifested in a way that rejoiced
the heart of Luke, so congruous was it with all their old habits and associations; but to a stranger
overhearing
the words, it would have seemed the reverse of promising.

“Shall we take a glance at the grave?” the elder brother suggested, leaning his elbows on the
moss-grown
wall. Luke assented with alacrity, and the ancient stones of the wall lending themselves easily to such a proceeding, they both clambered over into the place of tombs.

Thus within the space of forty-eight hours the brothers Andersen had been together in no less than three sepulchral enclosures. One might have
supposed
that the same destiny that made of their father a kind of modern Old Mortality—less pious, it is true, than his prototype, but not less addicted to invasions of the unprotesting dead—had made it inevitable that the most critical moments of his sons’ lives should be passed in the presence of these mute witnesses.

They crossed over to where the head-stone of their parents’ grave rose, gigantic and imposing in the clear star light, as much larger than the other monuments as the beaver, into which Pau-
Puk-Keewis
changed himself, was larger than the other beavers. They sat down on a neighbouring mound and contemplated in silence their father’s work. The dark dome of the sky above them, strewn with innumerable points of glittering light, attracted Luke once more to his old astronomical speculations.

“I have an idea,” he said, “that there is more in the influence of these constellations than even the astrologers have guessed. Their method claims to be
a scientific one, mathematical in the exactness of its inferences. My feeling about the matter is, that there is something much more arbitrary, much more living and wayward, in the manner in which they work their will upon us. I said ‘constellations,’ but I don’t believe, as a matter of fact, that it is from them at all that the influences come. The natural and obvious thing is that the
planets
should affect us, and affect us very much in the same way as we affect one another. The ancient races
recognized
this difference. The fixed stars are named after animals, or inanimate objects, or after
powerful
, but not more than human, heroes. The planets are all named from immortal gods, and it is as gods,—as wilful and arbitrary gods—that they influence our destinies.”

James Andersen surveyed the large and brilliant star which at that moment hung, like an enormous glow-worm, against the southern slope of Nevilton Mount.

“Some extremely evil planet must have been very active during these last weeks with Lacrima and with me,” he remarked. “Don’t get alarmed, my dear,” he added, noticing the look of apprehension which his brother turned upon him. “I shan’t worry you with any more silly talk. Those voices in my head have quite ceased. But that does not help Lacrima.” He laughed a sad little laugh.

“I suppose,” he added, “no one can help her in this devilish situation,—except that queer fellow who’s just left us. I would let him step over my dead body, if he would only carry her off and fool them all!”

Luke’s mind plunged into a difficult problem. His brother’s wits were certainly restored, and he seemed calm and clear-headed. But was he clear-headed enough to learn the details of the curious little
conspiracy
which Mr. Taxater’s diplomatic brain had evolved? How would this somewhat ambiguous transaction strike so romantic a nature as his?