Wood and Stone

by John Cowper Powys

  They both rose and listened intently, but the sound was not repeated; only a hot gust of wind coming, as it were, out of the lake itself, went quivering through the reeds.

  “I don’t imagine,” said Mr. Quincunx calmly, “that your young lady will be much alarmed. I fancy she has less fear of this kind of thing than that water-rat we heard just now. It’ll terrify Lacrima, though. But I understand that your charming sweetheart gets a good deal of amusement from causing people to feel terror!”

  Dangelis was so accustomed to the plain-spoken utterances of the hermit of Dead Man’s Lane that he received this indictment of his enchantress with complete equanimity.

  “All the same,” he remarked, “I think we’d better go and meet them, if you know the direction they’re coming. It’s not a very pleasant proposition, any way, to face escaped lunatics in a place like this.”

  “I tell you,” mutterd Mr. Quincunx crossly, “your darling Gladys is coming here for no other reason than to hear that girl’s cries. The more they terrify Lacrima, the better she’ll be pleased.”

  “I don’t know about Lacrima,” answered Dangelis. “I know that devil of a noise will scare me if I hear it again.”

  Mr. Quincunx did not reply. With his hand on his companion’s arm he was once more listening intently. At the back of his mind was gradually forming a grim remote wish that some overt act and palpable revelation of Gladys Romer’s interesting character might effect a change of heart in the citizen of Ohio.

  Such a wish had been obscurely present in his brain ever since they started on this expedition; and now that the situation was developing, it took a more vivid shape.

  “I believe,” he remarked at last, “I hear them coming down the path. Listen! It’s on the other side of the pond,—over there.” He pointed across the water to the left-hand corner of the lake. It was from the right-hand corner, where the keeper’s cottage stood, that the poor mad girl’s voice had proceeded.

  “Yes; I am sure!” he whispered after a moment’s pause. “Come! quick! get in here; then they won’t see us even if they walk round this way.”

  He pulled Dangelis beneath the over-hanging boughs of a large weeping willow. The droop of this tree’s delicate foliage made, in the semi-darkness in which they were, a complete and impenetrable hiding-place; and yet from between the trailing branches, when they held them apart with their hands, they had a free and unimpeded view of the whole surface of the lake.

  The sound of distant voices struck clearly now upon their ears; and a moment after, nudging his companion, Mr. Quincunx pointed to two cloaked figures advancing across the open space towards the water’s edge.

  “Hush!” whispered the recluse. “They are bound to come this way now.”

  The two girls were, however, for the moment, apparently occupied with another intention. The taller of the two stopped and picked up something from the ground, and then approaching close to the lake’s edge raised her arm and flung it far into the water.

  The object she threw must have been a stick or a stone of considerable size, for the splash it produced was startling.

  The result was also startling. From a little island in the middle of the lake, rose suddenly, with a tremendous flapping, several large and broad-winged birds. They flew in heavy circles, at first, over the island; and then, descending to the water’s level, went splashing and flapping across its surface, uttering strange cries.

  The noise made by these birds had hardly subsided, as they settled down in a thick bed of reeds, when, once more, that terrible inhuman wail rang out upon the night. Both men peered forth anxiously from their hiding-place, to see the effect of this sound upon their two friends.

  They could see that they both stood stone-still for a moment as if petrified by terror.

  Then they noticed that the taller of the two drew her companion still nearer to the water’s edge.

  “If that yell begins again,” whispered the American, “I shall go out and speak to them.”

  Mr. Quincunx made no answer. He prayed in his heart that something would occur to initiate this innocent Westerner a little more closely into the workings of his inamorata’s mind. It seemed indeed quite within the bounds of possibility that the recluse might be gratified in this wish, for the girls began rapidly advancing towards them, skirting the edge of the lake.

  The two men watched their approach in silence, the artist savouring with a deep imaginative excitement the mystical glamour of the scene.

  He felt it would be indelibly and forever imprinted on his mind, this hot heavily scented night, this pallid-glimmering lake, those uneasy stirrings of the wild-geese in their obscure reed-bed, and the frightful hush of the listening woods, as they seemed to await a repetition of that unearthly cry.

  The girls had actually paused at the verge of the lake, just in front of their hiding-place; so near, in fact, that by stretching out his arm, from behind his willowy screen, Dangelis could have touched Gladys on the shoulder, when the fearfully expected voice broke forth again upon the night.

  The men could see the visible tremor of panic-fear quiver through Lacrima’s slight frame.

  “Oh, let us go!—let us go!” she pleaded, pulling with feverish fingers at her companion’s cloak.

  But Gladys folded her arms and flung back her head.

  “Little coward!” she murmured in a low unshaken voice. “I am not afraid of a mad girl’s yelling. Look! there’s one of those birds going back to the island!”

  Once more the inhuman wail trembled across the water.

  “Gladys! Gladys dear!” cried the panic-stricken girl, “I cannot endure it! I shall go mad myself if we do not go! I’ll do anything you ask me! I’ll go anywhere with you! Only—please—let us go away now!”

  The sound was repeated again, and this time it proceeded from a quarter much nearer them. All four listeners held their breath. Presently the Italian made a terrified gesture and pointed frantically to the right bank of the lake.

  “I see her!” she cried, “I see her! She is coming towards us!”

  The frightened girl made a movement as if she would break away from her companion and flee into the darkness of the trees.

  Gladys clasped her firmly in her arms.

  “No—no!” she said, “no running off! Remember our agreement! There’s nothing really to be afraid of. I’m not afraid.

  A slight quiver in her voice a little belied the calmness of this statement. She was indeed torn at that moment between a very natural desire to escape herself and an insatiable craving to prolong her companion’s agitation.

  In her convulsive terror the Italian, unable to free herself from the elder girl’s enfolding arms, buried her head in the other’s cloak.

  Thus linked, the two might have posed for a picture of heroic sisterly solicitude, in the presence of extreme danger.

  Once more that ghastly cry resounded through the silence; and several nocturnal birds, from distant portions of the wood, replied to it with their melancholy hootings.

  The white-garbed figure of the mad girl, her arms tossed tragically above her head, came swaying towards them. She moved unevenly, and staggered in her advance, as if her volition had not complete power over her movements. Gladys was evidently considerably alarmed herself now. She clutched at a chance of combining escape with triumph.

  “Say you let me off that promise!” she whispered hoarsely, “and we’ll run together! We’re quite close to the way out.”

  Who can read the obscure recesses of the human mind, or gauge the supernatural strength that lurks amid the frailest nerves?

  This reference to her sublime contract was the one thing needed to rouse the abandoned soul of the Pariah. For one brief second more the powers of darkness struggled over her bowed head with the powers of light.

  Then with a desperate movement the Italian rose erect, flung aside her cousin’s arms, turned boldly towards the approaching maniac, and ran straight to meet her. Her unexpected appearance produced an immediate ef
fect upon the unhappy girl. Her wildly-tossing arms fell to her side. Her wailing died away in pathetic sobs, and these also quickly ceased.

  Lacrima seemed to act like one possessed of some invincible magic. One might have dreamed that now for the first time for uncounted ages this unholy shrine of heathen tradition was invaded by an emissary of the true Faith.

  Gladys, who had reeled bewildered against the wood-work of an ancient weir, that formed the outlet to the lake, leaned in complete prostration of astonishment upon this support, and gazed helplessly and dumbly at the two figures. She was too petrified with amazement to notice the appearance of Ralph and Maurice, who, also absorbed in watching this strange encounter, had half-emerged from their concealment.

  The three onlookers saw the Italian lay her hands upon the girl’s forehead, smooth back her hair, kiss her gently on the brow, and fling her own cloak over her bare shoulders. They heard her murmuring again and again some soft repetition of soothing words. Dangelis caught the liquid syllables of the Tuscan tongue. Evidently in her excitement the child of Genoa the Superb had reverted to the language of her fathers.

  The next thing they saw was the slow retreat of the two together, towards the keeper’s cottage; the arm of the Italian clinging tenderly round the maniac’s waist.

  At this point Dangelis stepped forward and made himself known to Gladys.

  The expression on the face of Mr. Romer’s daughter, when she recognized the American, was a palimpsest of conflicting emotions. Her surprise was still more intense when Mr. Quincunx stepped out from the shadow of the drooping tree and raised his hat to her. Her eyes for the moment looked positively scared; and her mouth opened, like the mouth of a bewildered infant. The tone with which the citizen of Ohio addressed the confused young lady made the heart of Mr. Quincunx leap for joy.

  “I am astonished at you,” he said. “I should not have believed such a thing possible! Your only excuse is that this infernal jest of yours has turned out so well for the people concerned, and so shamefully for yourself. How could you treat that brave foreign child so brutally? Why—I saw her trembling and trembling, and trying to get away; and you were holding—actually holding her—while that poor mad thing came nearer! It’s a good thing for you that the Catholic spirit in her burst out at last. Do you know what spell she used to bring that girl to her senses? A spell that you will never understand, my friend, for all this baptism and confirmation business! Why—she quoted passages out of the Litany of Our Lady! I heard her clearly, and I recognized the words. I am a damned atheist myself, but if ever I felt religion to be justified it was when your cousin stopped that girl’s crying. It was like real magic. You ought to be thoroughly proud of her! I shall tell her when I see her what I feel about her.”

  Gladys rose from her seat on the weir and faced them haughtily. Her surprise once over, and the rebuke having fallen, she became mistress of herself again.

  “I suppose,” she said, completely ignoring Mr. Quincunx, “we’d better follow those two, and see if Lacrima gets her safely into the house. I fancy she’ll have no difficulty about it. Of course if she had not done this I should have had to do it myself. But not knowing Italian”—she added this with a sneer—“I am not so suitable a mad-house nurse.”

  “It was her good heart, Gladys,” responded the American; “not her Italian, nor her Litany, that soothed that girl’s mind. I wish your heart, my friend, were half as good.”

  “Well,” returned the fair girl quite cheerfully, “we’ll leave my heart for the present, and see how Lacrima has got on.”

  She took the arm which Dangelis had not offered, but which his chivalry forbade him to refuse, and together they proceeded to follow the heroic Genoese.

  Mr. Quincunx shuffled unregarded behind them.

  They had hardly reached the keeper’s cottage, a desolate and ancient erection, of the usual stone material, darkened with damp and overshadowed by a moss-grown oak, when Lacrima herself came towards them.

  She started with surprise at seeing, in the shadowy obscurity, the figures of the two men.

  Her surprise changed to pleasure when she recognized their identity.

  “Ah!” she said. “You come too late. Gladys and I have had quite an adventure, haven’t we, cousin?”

  Mr. Quincunx glanced at the American to see if he embraced the full generosity of the turn she gave to the situation.

  Gladys took advantage of it in a moment. “You see I was right after all,” she remarked. “I knew you would lose your alarm directly you saw that girl! When it came to the point you were braver than I. You dear thing!” She kissed the Italian ostentatiously, and then retook possession of her admirer’s arm.

  “I got her up to her room without waking her father,” said Lacrima. “She had left the door wide open. Gladys is going to ask Mr. Romer to have her sent away to some sort of home. I believe they’ll be able to cure her. She talked quite sensibly to me. I am sure she only wants to be treated gently. I’m afraid her father’s unkind to her. You are going to arrange for her being sent away, aren’t you, Gladys?”

  The elder girl turned. “Of course, my dear, of course. I don’t go back on my word.”

  The four friends proceeded to take the nearest path through the wood. One by one the frightened wild-geese returned to their roosting-place on the island. The water-rats resumed uninterrupted their night-prowls along the reedy edge of the lake, and the wood-pigeons settled down in peace upon their high branches.

  Long before Dead Man’s Lane was reached the two couples had drifted conveniently apart in their lingering return.

  Mr. Quincunx had seldom been more tender towards his little friend than he was that night; and Lacrima, still strangely happy in the after-ebb of her supernatural exultation, nestled closely to his side as they drifted leisurely across the fields.

  In what precise manner the deeply-betrayed Gladys regained the confidence of her lover need not be related. The artist from Ohio would have been adamantine indeed, could he have resisted the appeal which the amorous telepathy of this magnetic young person gave her the power of expressing.

  Meanwhile, in her low-pitched room, with the shadow of the oak-tree coming and going across her face, as the moonlight shone out or faded, Nance Purvis lay placidly asleep, dreaming no more of strange phantoms or of stinging whips, but of gentle spirits from some translunar region, who caressed her forehead with hands softer than moth’s wings and spoke to her in a tongue that was like the moonlight itself made audible.

  CHAPTER XIII

  LACRIMA

  MR. JOHN GORING was feeding his rabbits. In the gross texture of his clayish nature there were one or two curious layers of a pleasanter material. One of these, for instance, was now shown in the friendly equanimity with which he permitted a round-headed awkward youth, more than half idiotic, to assist him at this innocent task.

  Between Mr. Goring and Bert Leerd there existed one of those inexplicable friendships, which so often, to the bewilderment of moral philosophers, bring a twilight of humanity into the most sinister mental caves. The farmer had saved this youth from a conspiracy of Poor-Law officials who were on the point of consigning him to an asylum. He had assumed responsibility for his good-behaviour and had given him a lodging—his parents being both dead—in the Priory itself.

  Not a few young servant-girls, selected by Mr. Goring rather for their appearance than their disposition, had been dismissed from his service, after violent and wrathful scenes, for being caught teasing this unfortunate; and even the cook, a female of the most taciturn and sombre temper, was compelled to treat him with comparative consideration. The gossips of Nevilton swore, as one may believe, that the farmer, in being kind to this boy, was only obeying the mandate of nature; but no one who had ever beheld Bert’s mother, gave the least credence to such a story.

  Another of Mr. Goring’s softer aspects was his mania for tame rabbits. These he kept in commodious and spacious hutches at the back of his house, and every year wonderful and intere
sting additions were added to their number.

  On this particular morning both the farmer and his idiot were absorbed and rapt in contemplation before the gambols of two large new pets—great silky lop-eared things—who had arrived the night before. Mr. Goring was feeding them with fresh lettuces, carefully handed to him by his assistant, who divested these plants of their rough outer leaves and dried them on the palms of his hands.

  “The little ’un do lap ’em up fastest, master,” remarked the boy. “I mind how those others, with them girt ears, did love a fresh lettuce.”

  Mr. Goring watched with mute satisfaction the quivering nostrils and nibbling mouth of the dainty voracious creature.

  “Mustn’t let them have more than three at a time, Bert,” he remarked. “But they do love them, as you say.”

  “What be going to call this little ’un, master?” asked the boy.

  Mr. Goring straightened his back and drew a deep breath.

  “What do you think, Bert, my boy?” he cried, in a husky excited tone, prodding his assistant jocosely with the handle of his riding-whip; “what do you think? What would you call her?”

  “Ah! I knew she were a she, master!” chuckled the idiot. “I knew that, afore she were out of the packer-case! Call ’er?” and the boy leered an indescribable leer. “By gum! I can tell ’ee that fast enough. Call ’er Missy Lacrima, pretty little Missy Lacrima, wot lives up at the House, and wot is going to be missus ’ere afore long.”

  Mr. Goring surveyed his protégé for a moment with sublime contentment, and then humorously flicked at his ears with his whip.

  “Right! my imp of Satan. Right! my spawn of Belial. That is just what I was thinking.”

  “She be silky and soft to handle,” went on the idiot, “and her, up at the House, be no contrary, or I’m darned mistaken.”