Wood and Stone (50 page)

As they hurried across the enclosure, Phyllis
whispered
in his ears a remark that seemed to him either curiously irrelevant, or inspired in an occult manner by psychic telepathy. She had lately refrained from any reference to Lacrima. The Italian’s friendliness to her under the Hullaway elms had made her
reticent
upon this subject. On this occasion, however, though quite ignorant of James’ presence in the churchyard, she suddenly felt compelled to say to Luke, in an intensely serious voice:

“If some of you clever ones don’t stop that
marriage
of Master Goring, there’ll be some more holes dug in this place! There be some things what them above never will allow.”

He helped her over the wall, and watched her
overtake
her staggering parent, who had already reeled some distance down the road. Then he returned to his brother and roused him from his sleep. James was sulky and irritable at being so brusquely restored to consciousness, but the temperature of his mind appeared as normal and natural as ever.

They quitted the place without further
conversation
, and strode off in silence up the village street. The perpendicular slabs of the crowded head stones,
and the yet more numerous mounds that had neither name nor memory, resumed their taciturn and lonely watch.

To no human eyes could be made visible the poor thin shade that was once Jimmy Pringle, as it swept, bat-like, backwards and forwards, across the
dew-drenched
grass. But the shade itself, endowed with more perception than had been permitted to it while imprisoned in the “muddy vesture” of our flesh and blood, became aware, in its troubled flight, of a singular spiritual occurrence.

Rising from the base of that skull-crowned
monument
, two strange and mournful phantoms flitted waveringly, like huge ghost-moths, along the
protruding
edge of the church-roof. Two desolate and querulous voices, like the voices of conflicting winds through the reeds of some forlorn salt-marsh, quivered across the listening fields.

“It is strong and unconquered—the great heart of my Hill,” one voice wailed out. “It draws them. It drives them. The earth is with it; the planets are for it, and all their enchantments cannot prevail against it!”

“The leaves may fall and the trees decay,” moaned the second voice, “but where the sap has once flowed, Love must triumph.”

The fluttering shadow of Jimmy Pringle fled in terror from these strange sounds, and took refuge among the owls in the great sycamore of the Priory meadow. A falling meteorite swept downwards from the upper spaces of the sky and lost itself behind the Wild Pine ridge.

“Strength and cunning,” the first voice wailed
forth again, “alone possess their heart’s desire. All else is vain and empty.”

“Love and Sacrifice,” retorted the other, “outlast all victories. Beyond the circle of life they rule the darkness, and death is dust beneath their feet.”

Crouched on a branch of his protecting sycamore, the thin wraith of Jimmy Pringle trembled and shook like an aspen-leaf. A dumb surprise possessed the poor transmuted thing to find itself even less assured of palpable and familiar salvation, than when, after drinking cider at the Boar’s Head in Athelston, he had dreamed dreams at Captain Whiffley’s gate.

“The Sun is lord and god of the earth,” wailed the first voice once more. “The Sun alone is master in the end. Lust and Power go forth with him, and all flesh obeys his command.”

“The Moon draws more than the tides,” answered the second voice. “In the places of silence where Love waits, only the Moon can pass; and only the Moon can hear the voice of the watchers.”

From the red planet, high up against the
church-tower
, to the silver planet low down among the shadowy trees, the starlit spaces listened mutely to these antiphonal invocations. Only the distant
expanse
of the Milky Way, too remote in its translunar gulfs to heed these planetary conflicts, shimmered haughtily down upon the Wood and Stone of
Nevilton
—impassive, indifferent, unconcerned.

J
AMES ANDERSEN’S mental state did not fall away from the restored equilibrium into which the unexpected intervention of Ninsy Lintot had magnetized and medicined him. He went about his work as usual, gloomier and more taciturn, perhaps, than before, but otherwise with no deviation from his normal condition.

Luke noticed that he avoided all mention of
Lacrima
, and, as far as the younger brother knew, made no effort to see her. Luke himself received, two days after the incident in the Methodist cemetery, a somewhat enigmatic letter from Mr. Taxater. This letter bore a London post-mark and informed the stone-carver that after a careful consideration of the whole matter, and an interview with Lacrima, the writer had come to the conclusion that no good
purpose
would be served by carrying their plan into
execution
. Mr. Taxater had, accordingly, so the missive declared, destroyed the incriminating document which he had induced Luke to sign, and had relinquished all thought of an interview with Mr. Dangelis.

The letter concluded by congratulating Luke on his brother’s recovery—of which, it appeared, the
diplomatist
had been informed by the omniscient Mrs. Watnot—and assuring him that if ever, in any way, he, the writer, could be of service to either of the
two brothers, they could count on his unfailing regard. An obscure post-script, added in pencil in a very minute and delicate hand, indicated that the interview with Lacrima, referred to above, had
confirmed
the theologian in a suspicion that hitherto he had scrupulously concealed, namely, that their concern with regard to the Italian’s position was less called for than appearances had led them to
suppose
.

After reading and weighing this last intimation, before he tore up the letter into small fragments, the cynical Luke came to the conclusion that the devoted champion of the papacy had found out that his co-religionist had fallen from grace; in other words, that Lacrima Traffio was no longer a Catholic. It could hardly be expected, the astute youth argued, that Mr. Taxater should throw himself into a
difficult
and troublesome intrigue in order that an
apostate
from the inviolable Faith, once for all delivered to the Saints, should escape what might reasonably be regarded as a punishment for her apostacy.

The theologian’s post-script appeared to hint that the girl was not, after all, so very unwilling, in this matter of her approaching marriage. Luke, in so far as he gave such an aspect of the affair any particular thought, discounted this plausible suggestion as a mere conscience-quieting salve, introduced by the writer to smooth over the true cause of his reaction.

For his own part it had been always of James and not of Lacrima he had thought, and since James had now been restored to his normal state, the question of the Italian’s moods and feelings affected him very little. He was still prepared to discuss with his
brother any new chance of intervention that might offer itself at the last moment. He desired James’ peace of mind before everything else, but in his heart of hearts he had considerable doubt whether the mood of self-effacing magnanimity which had led his brother to contemplate Lacrima’s elopement with Mr. Quincunx, would long survive the return of his more normal temper. Were he in James’ position, he told himself grimly, he should have much preferred that the girl should marry a man she hated rather than one she loved, as in such a case the field would be left more open for any future “
rapprochement
.”

Thus it came about that the luckless Pariah, by the simple accident of her inability to hold fast to her religion, lost at the critical moment in her life the support of the one friendly power, that seemed capable, in that confusion of opposed forces, of
bringing
to her aid temporal as well as spiritual, pressure. She was indeed a prisoner by the waters of Babylon, but her forgetfulness of Sion had cut her off from the assistance of the armies of the Lord.

The days passed on rapidly now, over the heads of the various persons involved in our narrative. For James and Lacrima, and in a measure for Mr.
Quincunx
, too,—since it must be confessed that the shock of Ninsy’s collapse had not resulted in any permanent tightening of the recluse’s moral fibre,—they passed with that treacherous and oblivious smoothness which dangerous waters are only too apt to wear, when on the very verge of the cataract.

In the stir and excitement of the great political struggle which now swept furiously from one end of
the country to the other, the personal fortunes of a group of tragically involved individuals, in a small Somersetshire village, seemed to lose, for all except those most immediately concerned, every sort of emphasis and interest.

The polling day at last arrived, and a considerable proportion of the inhabitants of Nevilton, both men and women, found themselves, as the end of the fatal hours approached, wedged and hustled, in a state of distressing and exhausted suspense, in the densely crowded High Street in front of the
Yeoborough
Town Hall.

Mr. Clavering himself was there, and in no very amiable temper. Perverse destiny had caused him to be helplessly surrounded by a noisy high-spirited crew of Yeoborough factory-girls, to whom the event in progress was chiefly interesting, in so far as it afforded them an opportunity to indulge in uproarious chaff and to throw insulting or amorous challenges to various dandified youths of their acquaintance, whom they caught sight of in the confusion. Mr. Clavering’s ill-temper reached its climax when he became aware that a good deal of the free and
indiscreet
badinage of his companions was addressed to none other than his troublesome parishioner, Luke Andersen, whose curly head, surmounted by an aggressively new straw hat, made itself visible not far off.

The mood of the vicar of Nevilton during the last few weeks had been one of accumulative annoyance. Everything had gone wrong with him, and it was only by an immense effort of his will that he had succeeded in getting through his ordinary pastoral
labour, without betraying the unsettled state of his mind and soul.

He could not, do what he might, get Gladys out of his thoughts for one single hour of the day. She had been especially soft and caressing, of late, in her manner towards him. More submissive than of old to his spiritual admonitions, she had dropped her light and teasing ways, and had assumed, in her recent lessons with him, an air of pliable wistfulness, composed of long, timidly interrupted glances from her languid blue eyes, and little low-voiced murmurs of assent from her sweetly-parted lips.

It was in vain that the poor priest struggled against this obsession. The girl was as merciless as she was subtle in the devices she employed to make sure of her hold upon him. She would lead him on, by
hesitating
and innocent questions, to expound some
difficult
matter of faith; and then, just as he was launched out upon a high, pure stream of mystical
interpretation
, she would bring his thoughts back to herself and her deadly beauty, by some irresistible feminine trick, which reduced all his noble speculations to so much empty air.

Ever since that night when he had trembled so helplessly under the touch of her soft fingers beneath the cedars of the South Drive, she had sought
opportunities
for evoking similar situations. She would prolong the clasp of her hand when they bade one another good night, knowing well how this apparently natural and unconscious act would recur in throbs of adder’s poison through the priest’s veins, long after the sun had set behind St. Catharine’s tower.

She loved sometimes to tantalize and trouble him
by relating incidents which brought herself and her American fiancé into close association in his mind. She would wistfully confide to him, for example, how sometimes she grew weary of love-making, begging him to tell her whether, after all, she were wise in risking the adventure of marriage.

By these arts, and others that it were tedious to enumerate, the girl gradually reduced the unfortunate clergyman to a condition of abject slavery. The worst of it was that, though his release from her constant presence was rapidly approaching—with the near date of the ceremonies for which he was
preparing
her—instead of being able to rejoice in this, he found himself dreading it with every nerve of his harassed senses.

Clavering had felt himself compelled, on more than one occasion, to allude to the project of Lacrima’s marriage, but his knowledge of the Italian’s character was so slight that Gladys had little difficulty in
making
him believe, or at least persuade himself he believed, that no undue pressure was being put upon her.

It was of Lacrima that he suddenly found himself thinking as, hustled and squeezed between two obstreperous factory-girls, he watched the serene and self-possessed Luke enjoying with detached amusement the vivid confusion round him. The fantastic idea came into his head, that in some sort of way Luke was responsible for those sinister
rumours
regarding the Italian’s position in Nevilton, which had thrust themselves upon his ears as he moved to and fro among the villagers.

He had learnt of the elder Andersen’s recovery from
Mrs. Fringe, but even that wise lady had not been able to associate this event with the serious illness of Ninsy Lintot, to whose bed-side the young
clergyman
had been summoned more than once during the last week.

Clavering felt an impulse of unmitigated hatred for the equable stone-carver as he watched him
bandying
jests with this or the other person in the crowd, and yet so obviously holding himself apart from it all, and regarding the whole scene as if it only existed for his amusement.

A sudden rush of some extreme partisans of the popular cause, making a furious attempt to
overpower
the persistent taunts of a group of young farmers who stood above them on a raised portion of the pavement, drove a wedge of struggling
humanity
into the midst of the crowd who surrounded the irritable priest. Clavering was pushed, in spite of his efforts to extricate himself, nearer and nearer to his detested rival, and at last, in the most
grotesque
and annoying manner possible, he found
himself
driven point-blank into the stone-carver’s very arms. Luke smiled, with what seemed to the heated and flustered priest the last limit of deliberate
impertinence
.

But there was no help for it. Clavering was forced to accept his preferred hand, and return, with a measure of courtesy, his nonchalant greeting. Squeezed close together—for the crowd had
concentrated
itself now into an immoveable mass—the
fortunate
and the unfortunate lover of Gladys Romer listened, side by side, to the deafening shouts, which, first from one party and then from the other, heralded
the appearance of the opposing candidates upon the balcony above.

“I really hardly know,” said Luke, in a loud
whisper
, “which side you are on. I suppose on the
Conservative
? These radicals are all Nonconformists, and only waiting for a chance of pulling the Church down.”

“Thank you,” retorted the priest raising his voice so as to contend against the hubbub about them. “I happen to be a radical myself. My own hope is that the Church
will
be pulled down. The Church I believe in cannot be touched. Its foundations are too deep.”

“Three cheers for Romer and the Empire!” roared a voice behind them.

“Wone and the People! Wone and the
working-man
!” vociferated another.

“You’ll be holding your confirmation soon, I understand,” murmured Luke in his companion’s ear, as a swaying movement in the crowd squeezed them even more closely together.

Hugh Clavering realized for the first time in his life what murderers feel the second before they strike their blow. He could have willingly planted his heel at that moment upon the stone-carver’s face. Surely the man was intentionally provoking him. He must know—he could not help knowing—the
agitation
in his nerves.

“Romer and Order! Romer and Sound Finance!” roared one portion of the mob.

“Wone and Liberty! Wone and Justice!” yelled the opposing section.

“I love a scene like this,” whispered Luke.
“Doesn’t it make you beautifully aware of the contemptible littleness of the human race?”

“I am not only a radical,” retorted Clavering, “but I happen also to be a human being, and one who can’t take so airy a view of an occasion of this kind. The enthusiasm of these people doesn’t at all amuse me. I sympathize with it.”

The stone-carver was not abashed by this rebuke. “A matter of taste,” he said, “a matter of taste.” Then, freeing his arm which had got uncomfortably wedged against his side, and pushing back his hat, “I love to associate these outbursts of popular
feeling
with the movements of the planets. Tonight, you know, one ought to be able to see—”

Clavering could no longer contain himself. “Damn your planets!” he cried, in a tone so loud, that an old lady in their neighbourhood ejaculated, “Hush! hush!” and looked round indignantly.

“I beg your pardon,” muttered the priest, a little ashamed. “What I mean is, I am most seriously concerned about this contest. I pray devoutly Wone will win. It’ll be a genuine triumph for the working classes if he does.”

“Romer and the Empire!” interpolated the
thunderous
voice behind them.

“I don’t care much for the man himself,” he went on, “but this thing goes beyond personalities.”

“I’m all for Romer myself,” said Luke. “I have the best of reasons for being grateful to him, though he is my employer.”

“What do you mean? What reasons?” cried Clavering sharply, once more beginning to feel the most unchristian hatred for this urbane youth.