Wood and Stone

by John Cowper Powys

  And if this is true of the general conditions of Nevilton geography, it is especially and accumulatively true of Nevil’s Gully, which, for some reason or other, is a very epitome of such sinister gravitation. If one’s latent mortality feels the drag of its clayish affinity in all quarters of this district, in Nevil’s Gully it becomes conscious of such oppression as a definite demonic presence. For above the Gully and above the cottages to which the Gully leads, the umbrageous mass of entangled leafiness hangs, fold upon fold, as if it had not known the woodman’s axe since the foot of man first penetrated these recesses. The beeches, to which reference has been made, are overtopped on the higher ground by ashes and sycamores, and these, in their turn, are surmounted, on the highest level of all, by colossal Scotch firs, whose forlorn grandeur gives the cottages their name.

  Philip hurried, in the growing darkness, across the sepulchral gully, and pushed open the gate of the secluded cattle-yard which was the original cause of this human hamlet. The houses of men in rural districts follow the habitations of beasts. Where cattle and the stacks that supply their food can conveniently be located, there must the dwelling be of those whose business it is to tend them. The convenience of Wild Pine as a site for a spacious and protected farm-yard was sufficient reason for the erection of a human shelter for the hands by whose labour such places are maintained.

  He crossed the yard with quick steps. A light burned in one of the sheds, throwing a fitful flicker upon the heaps of straw and the pools of dung-coloured water. Some animal, there—a horse or a cow or a pig—was probably giving birth to young.

  From the farm-yard he emerged into the cottage-garden, and stumbling across this, he knocked at the first door he reached. There was not the least sound in answer. Dead unbroken stillness reigned, except for an intermittent shuffling and stamping from the watcher or the watched in the farm-yard behind.

  He knocked again, and even the sounds in the yard ceased. Only, high up among the trees above him, some large nocturnal bird fluttered heavily from bough to bough.

  For the third time he knocked and then the door of the next house opened suddenly, emitting a long stream of light into which several startled moths instantly flew. Following the light came a woman’s figure.

  “If thee wants Lintot,” said the voice of this figure, “thee can’t see’ im till along of most an hour. He be tending a terrible sick beast.”

  “I want to see Ninsy,” shouted Philip, knocking again on the closed door.

  “Then thee must walk in and have done with it,” returned the woman. “The maid be laid up with heart-spasms again and can open no doors this night, not if the Lord his own self were hammering.”

  Philip boldly followed her advice and entered the cottage, closing the door behind him. A faint voice from a room at the back asked him what he wanted and who he was.

  “It is Philip,” he answered, “may I come in and see you, Ninsy? It is Philip—Philip Wone.”

  He gathered from the girl’s low-voiced murmur that he was welcome, and crossing the kitchen he opened the door of the further room.

  He found Ninsy dressed and smiling, but lying in complete prostration upon a low horse-hair sofa. He closed the door, and moving a chair to her side, sat down in silence, gazing upon her wistfully with his great melancholy eyes.

  “Don’t look so peaked and pining, Philip-boy,” she said, laying her white hand upon his and smiling into his face. “’Tis only the old trouble. ’Tis nothing more than what I expect. I shall be about again tomorrow or the day after. But I be real glad to see ’ee here! Father’s biding down in the yard, and ’tis a lonesome place to be laid-up in, this poor old house.”

  Ninsy looked exquisitely fragile and slender, lying back in this tender helplessness, her chestnut-coloured hair all loose over her pillow. Philip was filled with a flood of romantic emotion. The girl had always attracted him but never so much as now. It was one of his ingrained peculiarities to find hurt and unhappy people more engaging than healthy and contented ones. He almost wished Ninsy would stop smiling and chattering so pleasantly. It only needed that she should shed tears, to turn the young man’s commiseration into passion.

  But Ninsy did not shed tears. She continued chatting to him in the most cheerful vein. It was only by the faintest shadow that crossed her face at intervals, that one could have known that anything serious was the matter with her. She spoke of the books he had lent her. She spoke of the probable break-up of the weather. She talked of Lacrima Traffio.

  “I think,” she said, speaking with extreme earnestness, “the young foreign lady is lovely to look at. I hope she’ll be happy in this marriage. They do say, poor dear, she is being driven to it. But with the gentry you never know. They aren’t like us. Father says they have all their marriages thought out for them, same as royalty. I wonder who Miss Gladys will marry after all! Father has met her several times lately, walking with that American gentleman.”

  “Has Jim Andersen been up to see you, Ninsy,” put in Mr. Wone’s emissary, “since this last attack of yours?”

  The fact that this question left his lips simultaneously with a rising current of emotion in his heart towards her is a proof of the fantastic complication of feeling in the young anarchist.

  He fretted and chafed under the stream of her gentle impersonal talk. He longed to rouse in her some definite agitation, even though it meant the introduction of his rival’s image. The fact that such agitation was likely to be a shock to her did not weigh with him. Objective consideration for people’s bodily health was not one of Philip’s weaknesses. His experiment met with complete success. At the mention of James Andersen’s name a scarlet flush came into the girl’s cheeks.

  “No—yes—no!” she answered stammering. “That is—I mean—not since I have been ill. But before—several times—lately. Why do you look at me like that, Philip? You’re not angry with me, are you?”

  Philip’s mind was a confused arena of contradictory emotions. Among the rest, two stood out and asserted themselves—this unpardonable and remorseless desire to trouble her, to embarrass her, to make her blush yet more deeply—and a strange wild longing to be himself as ill as she was, and of the same disease, so that they might die together!

  “My father wanted me to ask you,” he blurted out, “whether you would use your influence over Jim to get him to help in this election business. I told my father Jim would do anything you asked him.”

  The girl’s poor cheeks burned more deeply than ever at this.

  “I wish you hadn’t told him that, Philip,” she said. “I wish you hadn’t! You know very well I have no more influence over James than anyone else has. It was unkind of you to tell him that! Now I am afraid he’ll be disappointed, for I shall never dare to worry Jim about a thing like that. You don’t take any interest in this election, Philip, do you?”

  From the tone of this last remark the young anarchist gathered the intimation that Andersen had been talking about the affair to his little friend and had been expressing opinions derogatory to Mr. Wone’s campaign. She would hardly have spoken of so lively a local event in such a tone of weary disparagement, if some masculine philosopher had not been “putting ideas into her head.”

  “You ought to make him join in,” continued Philip. “He has such influence down at the works. It would be a great help to father. We labouring people ought to stand by one another, you know.”

  “But I thought—I thought—,” stammered poor Ninsy, pushing back her hair from her forehead, “that you had quite different opinions from Mr. Wone.”

  “Damn my opinions!” cried the excited youth. “What do my opinions matter? We are talking of Jim Andersen. Why doesn’t he join in with the other men and help father in getting up the strike?”

  “He—he doesn’t believe in strikes,” murmured the girl feebly.

  “Why doesn’t he!” cried the youth. “Does he think himself different, then, from the rest of us, because old Gideon married the daughter of a vicar? He ought to b
e told that he is a traitor to his class. Yes—a traitor—a turn-coat—a black-leg! That’s what he is—if he won’t come in. A black-leg!”

  They were interrupted by a sharp knock at the outer door. The girl raised herself on her elbow and became distressingly agitated.

  “Oh, I believe that is Jim,” she cried. “What shall I do? He won’t like to find you here alone with me like this. What a dreadful accident!”

  Philip without a moment’s delay went to the door and opened it. Yes, the visitor was James Andersen. The two men looked at one another in silence. James was the first to speak.

  “So you are looking after our invalid?” he said. “I only heard this afternoon that she was bad again.”

  He did not wait for the other’s response, but pushing past him went straight into Ninsy’s room.

  “Poor child!” he said, “Poor dear little girl! Why didn’t you send a message to me? I saw your father in the yard and he told me to come on in. How are you? Why aren’t you in bed? I’m sure you ought to be in bed, and not talking to such an exciting person as our friend Philip.”

  “She won’t be talking to me much longer,” threw in that youth, following his rival to the side of the girl’s sofa. “I only came to ask her to do something for us in this election. She will tell you what I mean. Ask her to tell you. Don’t forget! Good-bye Ninsy,” and he held out his hand with a searching look into the girl’s face, a look at once wistfully entreating and fiercely reproachful.

  She took his hand. “Good night, Philip,” she said. “Think kindly of me, and think—” this was said in a voice so low that only the young man could hear—“think kindly of Jim. Good night!”

  He nodded to Andersen and went off, a sombre dangerous expression clouding the glance he threw upon the clock in the corner.

  “You pay late visits, James Andersen,” he called back, as he let himself out of the cottage-door.

  Left alone with Ninsy, the stone-carver possessed himself of the seat vacated by the angry youth. The girl remained quiet and motionless, her hands crossed on her lap and her eyes closed.

  “Poor child!” he murmured, in a voice of tender and affectionate pity. “I cannot bear to see you like this. It almost gives me a sense of shame—my being so strong and well—and you so delicate. But you will be better soon, won’t you? And we will go for some of our old walks together.”

  Ninsy’s mouth twitched a little, and big tears forced their way through her tightly shut eyelids.

  “When your father comes in,” he went on, “you must let me help him carry you upstairs. And I am sure you had better have the doctor tomorrow if you are not better. Won’t you let me go to Yeoborough for him tonight?”

  Ninsy suddenly struck the side of her sofa with her clenched hand. “I don’t want the doctor!” she burst out, “and I don’t want to get better. I want to end it all—that’s what I want!’ I want to end it all.”

  Andersen made a movement as if to caress her, but she turned her head away.

  “I am sick and tired of it all,” she moaned. “I wish I were dead. Oh, I wish I were dead!”

  The stone-carver knelt down by her side. “Ninsy,” her murmured, “Ninsy, my child, my friend, what is it? Tell me what it is.”

  But the girl only went on, in a low soft wail, “I knew it would come to this. I knew it. I knew it. Oh, why was I ever born! Why wasn’t it me, and not Glory, who died! I shall die. I want to die!”

  Andersen rose to his feet. “Ninsy!” he said in a stern altered voice. “Stop this at once—or I shall go straight away and call your father!”

  He assumed an air and tone as if quieting a petulant infant. It had its effect upon her. She swallowed down her rising fit of sobs and looked up at him with great frightened tearful eyes.

  “Now, child,” he said, once more seating himself, and this time successfully taking possession of a submissive little hand, “tell me what all this is about. Tell me everything.” He bent down and imprinted a kiss upon her cold wet cheek.

  “It is—” she stammered, “it is that I think you are fond of that Italian girl.” She hid her face in a fold of her rich auburn hair and went on. “They do tell me you walk with her when your brother goes with Miss Gladys. Don’t be angry with me, Jim. I know I have no right to say these things. I know I have no claim, no power over you. But we did keep company once, Jim, didn’t us? And it do stab my heart,—to hear them tell of you and she!”

  James Andersen looked frowningly at the window.

  The curtains were not drawn; and a dark ash-branch stretched itself across the casement like an extended threatening arm. Its form was made visible by a gap in the surrounding trees, through which a little cluster of stars faintly twinkled. The cloud veil had melted.

  “What a world this is!” the stone-carver thought to himself. His tone when he spoke was irritable and aggrieved.

  “How silly you are, Ninsy—with your fancies! A man can’t be civil to a poor lonesome foreign wench, without your girding at him as if he had done something wrong! Of course I speak to Miss Traffio and walk with her too. What else do you expect when the poor thing is left lonesome on my hands, with Luke and Miss Gladys amusing themselves? But you needn’t worry,” he added, with a certain unrestrained bitterness. “It’s only when Luke and his young lady are together that she and I ever meet, and I don’t think they’ll often be together now.”

  Ninsy looked at him with questioning eyes.

  “He and she have quarrelled,” he said curtly.

  “Over the American?” asked the girl.

  “Over the American.”

  “And you won’t be walking with that foreigner any more?”

  “I shan’t be walking with her any more.”

  Ninsy sank back on her pillow with a sigh of ineffable relief. Had she been a Catholic she would have crossed herself devoutly. As it was she turned her head smilingly towards him and extended her arms. “Kiss me,” she pleaded. He bent down, and she embraced him with passionate warmth.

  “Then we belong to each other again, just the same as before,” she said.

  “Just the same as before.”

  “Oh, I wish that cruel doctor hadn’t told me I mustn’t marry. He told father it would kill me, and the other one who came said the same thing. But wouldn’t it be lovely if you and I, Jim—”

  She stopped suddenly, catching a glimpse of his face. Her happiness was gone in a moment.

  “You don’t love me. Oh, you don’t love me! I know it. I have known it for many weeks! That girl has poisoned you against me—the wicked, wicked thing! It’s no use denying it. I know it. I feel it,—oh, how can I bear it! How can I bear it!”

  She shut her eyes once more and lay miserable and silent. The wood-carver looked gloomily out of the window. The cluster of stars now assumed a shape well-known to him. It was Orion’s Belt. His thoughts swept sadly over the field of destiny.

  “What a world it is!” he said to himself. “There is that boy Philip gone with a tragic heart because his girl loves me. And I—I have to wait and wait in helplessness, and see the other—the one I care for—driven into madness. And she cares not a straw for me, who could help her, and only cares for that poor fool who cannot lift a finger. And meanwhile, Orion’s Belt looks contemptuously down upon us all! Ninsy is pretty well right. The lucky people are the people who are safe out of it—the people that Orion’s Belt cannot vex any more!”

  He rose to his feet. “Well, child,” he said, “I think I’ll be going. It’s no use our plaguing one another any further tonight. Things will right themselves, little one. Things will right themselves! Its a crazy world—but the story isn’t finished yet.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” he added gently, bending over her and pushing the hair back from her forehead. “Your old James hasn’t deserted you yet. He loves you better than you think—better than he knows himself perhaps!”

  The girl seized the hand that caressed her and pressed it against her lips. Her breast rose and fell in qu
ick troubled breathing.

  “Come again soon,” she said, and then, with a wan smile, “if you care to.”

  Their eyes met in a long perplexed clinging farewell. He was the first to break the tension.

  “Good-night, child,” he said, and turning away, left the room without looking back.

  While these events were occurring at Wild Pine, in the diplomatist’s study at the Gables Mr. Wone was expounding to Mr. Taxater the objects and purposes of his political campaign.

  Mrs. Wotnot, leaner and more taciturn than ever, had just produced for the refreshment of the visitor a bottle of moderately good burgundy. Mr. Taxater had demanded “a little wine,” in the large general manner which his housekeeper always interpreted as a request for something short of the very best. It was clear that for the treasures of innermost wine-cellars Mr. Wone was not among the privileged.

  The defender of the papacy had placed his visitor so that the light of the lamp fell upon his perspiring brow, upon his watery blue eyes, and upon his drooping, sandy-coloured moustache. Mr. Taxater himself was protected by a carefully arranged screen, out of the shadow of which the Mephistophelian sanctity of his patient profile loomed forth, vague and indistinct.

  Mr. Wone’s mission was in his own mind tending rapidly to a satisfactory conclusion. The theologian had heard him with so much attention, had asked such searching and practical questions, had shown such sympathetic interest in all the convolutions and entanglements of the political situation, that Mr. Wone began to reproach himself for not having made use of such a capable ally earlier in the day.

  “It is,” he was saying, “on the general grounds of common Christian duty that I ask your help. We who recognize the importance of religion would be false to our belief if we did not join together to defeat so ungodly and worldly a candidate as this Romer turns out to be.”

  It must be confessed that in his heart of hearts Mr. Wone regarded Roman Catholics as far more dangerous to the community than anarchists or infidels, but he prided himself upon a discretion worthy of apostolic inspiration in thus seeking to divide and set asunder the enemies of evangelical truth. He found the papist so intelligent a listener,—that hardly one secret of his political designs remained unshared between them.