Wood and Stone

by John Cowper Powys

  “I’ve never killed a man. I can say that, at all events.

  “That’s right! Run off to her dear Maurice,—her dear brave Maurice! Perhaps he’ll take her on his knees again, and she’ll play the sweet little innocent,—like that day when I peeped through the window!”

  This final dart had hardly reached its objective before Lacrima without attempting any retort rushed from the room.

  “I will go and see Maurice. I will! I will!” she murmured to herself as she ran down the broad oak stair-case, and slipped out by the East door.

  Simultaneously with these events, a scene of equal dramatic intensity, though of a very different character, was being enacted in the vicarage drawing-room.

  Vennie, as we have noted, had resolved to postpone for the present her reception into the Catholic Church. She had also resolved that nothing on earth should induce her to reveal to her mother her change of creed until the thing was an accomplished fact. The worst, however, of the kind of mental suppression in which she had been living of late, is that it tends to produce a volcanic excitement of the nerves, liable at any moment to ungovernable upheavals. Quite little things—mere straws and bagatelles—are enough to set this eruption beginning; and when once it begins, the accumulated passion of the long days of fermentation gives the explosion a horrible force.

  One perpetual annoyance to Vennie was her mother’s persistent fondness for family prayers. It seemed to the girl as though Valentia insisted on this performance, not so much out of a desire to serve God, as out of a sense of what was due to herself as the mistress of a well-conducted establishment.

  Vennie always fancied she discerned a peculiar tone of self-satisfaction in her mother’s voice, as, rather loudly, and extremely clearly, she read her liturgical selections to the assembled servants.

  On this particular morning the girl had avoided the performance of this rite, by leaving her room earlier than usual and taking refuge in the furthest of the vicarage orchards. Backwards and forwards she walked, in that secluded place, with her hands behind her and her head bent, heedless of the drenching dew which covered every grass-blade and of the heavy white mists that still hung about the tree-trunks. She was obliged to return to her room and change her shoes and stockings before joining her mother at breakfast, but not before she had prayed a desperate prayer, down there among the misty trees, for the eternal rest of James Andersen’s soul.

  This little incident of her absence from prayers was the direct cause of the unfortunate scene that followed.

  Valentia hardly spoke to her daughter while the meal proceeded, and when at last it was over, she retired to the drawing-room and began writing letters.

  This was an extremely ill-omened sign to anyone who knew Mrs. Seldom’s habits. Under normal conditions, her first proceeding after breakfast was to move to the kitchen, where she engaged in a long culinary debate with both cook and gardener; a course of action which was extremely essential, as without it,—so bitter was the feud between these two worthies,—it is unlikely that there would have been any vegetables at all, either for lunch or dinner. When anything occurred to throw her into a mood of especially good spirits, she would pass straight out of the French window on to the front lawn, and armed with a pair of formidable garden-scissors would make a selection of flowers and leaves appropriate to a festival temper.

  But this adjournment at so early an hour to the task of letter-writing indicated that Valentia was in a condition of mind, which in anyone but a lady of her distinction and breeding could have been called nothing less than a furious rage. For of all things in the world, Mrs. Seldom most detested this business of writing letters; and therefore,—with that perverse self-punishing instinct, which is one of the most artful weapons of offence given to refined gentle-women, —she took grim satisfaction in setting herself down to write; thus producing chaos in the kitchen, where the gardener refused to obey the cook, and miserable remorse in the heart of Vennie, who wandered up and down the lawn meditating a penitential apology.

  Satisfied in her heart that she was causing universal annoyance and embarrassment by her proceeding, and yet quite confident that there was nothing but what was proper and natural in her writing letters at nine o’clock in the morning, Valentia began, by gentle degrees, to recover her lost temper.

  The only real sedative to thoroughly aggravated nerves, is the infliction of similar aggravation upon the nerves of others. This process is like the laying on of healing ointment; and the more extended the disturbance which we have the good fortune to create, the sooner we ourselves recover our equanimity.

  Valentia had already cast several longing glances through the window at the heavy sunshine falling mistily on the asters and petunias, and in another moment she would probably have left her letter and joined her daughter in the garden, had not Vennie anticipated any such movement by entering the room herself.

  “I ought to make you understand, mother,” the girl began as soon as she stepped in, speaking in that curious strained voice which people assume when they have worked themselves up to a pitch of nervous excitement, “that when I don’t appear at prayers, it isn’t because I’m in a sulky temper, or in any mad haste to get out of doors. It’s—it’s for a different reason.”

  Valentia gazed at her in astonishment. The tone in which Vennie spoke was so tense, her eyes shone with such a strange brilliance, and her look was altogether so abnormal, that Mrs. Seldom completely forget her injured priestess-vanity, and waited in sheer maternal alarm for the completion of the girl’s announcement.

  “Its because I’ve made up my mind to become a Catholic, and Catholics aren’t allowed to attend any other kind of service than their own.”

  Valentia rose to her feet and looked at her daughter in blank dismay. Her first feeling was one of overpowering indignation against Mr. Taxater, to whose treacherous influence she felt certain this madness was mainly due.

  There was a terrible pause during which Vennie, leaning against the back of a chair, was conscious that both herself and her mother were trembling from head to foot. The soft murmur of wood-pigeons wafted in from the window, was now blended with two other sounds, the sound of the tolling of the church-bell and the sound of the music of Mr. Love’s circus, testing the efficiency of its roundabouts.

  “So this is what it has come to, is it?” said the old lady at last. “And I suppose the next thing you’ll tell me, in this unkind, inconsiderate way, is that you’ve decided to become a nun!”

  Vennie made a little movement with her head.

  “You have?” cried Valentia, pale with anger. “You have made up your mind to do that? Well—I wouldn’t have believed it of you, Vennie! In spite of everything I’ve done for you; in spite of everything I’ve taught you; in spite of everything I’ve prayed for;—you can go and do this! Oh, you’re an unkind, ungrateful girl! But I know that look on your face. I’ve known it from your childhood. When you look like that there’s no hope of moving you. Go on, then! Do as you wish to do. Leave your mother in her old age, and destroy the last hope of our family. I won’t speak another word. I know nothing I can say will change you. “She sank down upon the chintz-covered sofa and covered her face with her hands.

  Vennie cursed herself for her miserable want of tact. What demon was it that had tempted her to break her resolution? Then, suddenly, as she looked at her mother swaying to and fro on the couch, a strange impulse of hard inflexible obstinacy rose up in her.

  These wretched human affections,—so unbalanced and selfish,—what a relief to escape from them altogether! Like the passing on its way, across a temperate ocean, of some polar iceberg, there drove, at that moment, through Vennie’s consciousness, a wedge of frozen, adamantine contempt for all these human, too-human clingings and clutchings which would fain imprison the spirit and hold it down with soft-strangling hands.

  In her deepest heart she turned almost savagely away from this grey-haired woman, sitting there so hurt in her earthly affections and ambitions. She uttere
d a fierce mental invocation to that other Mother,—her whose heart, pierced by seven swords, had submitted to God’s will without a groan!

  Valentia, who, it must be remembered, had not only married a Seldom, but was herself one of that breed, felt at that moment as though this girl of hers were reverting to some mad strain of Pre-Elizabethan fanaticism. There was something mediæval about Vennie’s obstinacy, as there was something mediæval about the lines of her face. Valentia recalled a portrait she had once seen of an ancestor of theirs in the days before the Reformation. He, the great Catholic Baron, had possessed the same thin profile and the same pinched lips. It was a curious revenge, the poor lady thought, for those evicted Cistercians, out of whose plundered house the Nevilton mansion had been built, that this fate, of all fates, should befall the last of the Seldoms!

  The tolling of the bell, which hitherto had gone on, monotonously and insistently, across the drowsy lawn, suddenly stopped.

  Vennie started and ran hurriedly to the door.

  “They are burying James Andersen,” she cried, “and I ought to be there. It would look unkind and thoughtless of me not to be there. Good-bye, mother! We’ll talk of this when I come back. I’m sorry to be so unsatisfactory a daughter to you, but perhaps you’ll feel differently some day.”

  Left to herself, Valentia Seldom rose and went back to her letter. But the pen fell from her limp fingers, and tears stained the already written page.

  The funeral service had only just commenced when Vennie reached the churchyard. She remained at the extreme outer edge of the crowd, where groups of inquisitive women are wont to cluster, wearing their aprons and carrying their babies, and where the bigger children are apt to be noisy and troublesome. She caught a glimpse of Ninsy Lintot among those standing quite close to where Mr. Clavering, in his white surplice, was reading the pregnant liturgical words. She noticed that the girl held her hands to her face and that her slender form was shaking with the stress of her emotion.

  She could not see Luke’s face, but she was conscious that his motionless figure had lost its upright grace. The young stone-carver seemed to droop, like a sun-flower whose stalk has been bent by the wind.

  The words of the familiar English service were borne intermittently to her ears as they fell from the lips of the priest who had once been her friend. It struck her poignantly enough,—that brave human defiance, so solemn and tender, with which humanity seems to rise up in sublime desperation and hoist its standard of hope against hope!

  She wondered what the sceptical Luke was feeling all this while. When Mr. Clavering began to read the passage which is prefaced in the Book of Common Prayer by the words, “Then while the earth be cast upon the Body by some standing by, the priest shall say,”—the quiet sobs of poor little Ninsy broke into a wail of passionate grief, grief to which Vennie, for all her convert’s aloofness from Protestant heresy, could not help adding her own tears.

  It was the custom at Nevilton for the bearers of the coffin, when the service was over, to re-form in solemn procession, and escort the chief mourners back to the house from which they had come. It was her knowledge of this custom that led Vennie to steal away before the final words were uttered; and her hurried departure from the churchyard saved her from being a witness of the somewhat disconcerting event with which the solemn transaction closed.

  The bringing of James’ body to the church had been unfortunately delayed at the start by the wayward movements of a luggage-train, which persisted in shunting up and down over the level-crossing, at the moment when they were carrying the coffin from the house. This delay had been followed by others, owing to various unforeseen causes, and by the time the service actually began it was already close upon the hour fixed for the confirmation.

  Thus it happened that, soon after Vennie’s departure, at the very moment when the procession of bearers, followed by Luke and the station-master’s wife, issued forth into the street, there drove up to the church-door a two-horsed carriage containing Gladys and her mother, the former all whitely veiled, as if she were a child-bride. Seeing the bearers troop by, the fair-haired candidate for confirmation clutched Mrs. Romer’s arm and held her in her place, but leaning forward in the effort of this movement she presented her face at the carriage window, just as Luke himself emerged from the gates.

  The two young people found themselves looking one another straight in the eyes, until with a shuddering spasm that shook her whole frame, Gladys sank back into her seat, as if from the effect of a crushing blow received full upon the breast.

  Luke passed on, following the bearers, with something like the ghost of a smile upon his drawn and contorted lips.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  VENNIE SELDOM

  IT was not towards her mother’s house that Vennie directed her steps when she left the churchyard. She turned sharp to the west, and walked rapidly down the central street of the village into the square at the end of it.

  Here she found an arena of busy and stirring confusion, dominated by hissing spouts of steam, hoarse whistlings from the “roundabout” engines, and occasional bursts of extravagant melody, as the circus-men made their musical experiments, pending the opening of the show.

  Vennie’s intention, in crossing the square, was to pay a morning visit to Mr. Quincunx, whose absence from Andersen’s funeral had struck her mind as extraordinary and ominous. She feared that the recluse must be ill. Nothing less than illness, she thought, would have kept him away from such an event. She knew how closely he and the younger stone-carver were associated, and it was inconceivable that any insane jealousy of the dead could have held him at home. Of course it was possible that he had been compelled to go to work at Yeoborough as usual, but she did not think this likely.

  It was, however, not only anxiety lest her mother’s queer friend should be ill that actuated her. She felt,—now that her ultimatum had been delivered,—that the sooner she entered the Catholic Church and plunged into her novitiate, the better it would be. When events had happened, Mrs. Seldom accepted them. It was during the days of uncertain waiting that her nerves broke down. Once the daughter were actually a postulant in a convent, she felt sure the mother would resign herself, and resume her normal life.

  Valentia was a very independent and self-sufficient woman. With her favourite flowers and her favourite biographies of proconsular personages, the girl felt convinced she would be much less heart-broken than she imagined.

  Her days in Nevilton being thus numbered, Vennie could not help giving way to a desire that had lately grown more and more definite within her, to have a bold and unhesitating interview with Mr. Quincunx. Perhaps even at this last hour something might be done to save Lacrima from her fate!

  Passing along the outskirts of the circus, she could not resist pausing for a moment to observe the numerous groups of well-known village characters, whom curiosity had drawn to the spot.

  She was amazed to catch sight of the redoubtable Mr. Wone, holding one of his younger children by the hand and surveying with extreme interest the setting up of a colossal framework of gilded and painted wood, destined to support certain boat-shaped swings. She felt a little indignant with the worthy man for not having been present at Andersen’s funeral, but the naive and childlike interest with which, with open mouth and eyes, he stood gaping at this glittering erection, soothed her anger into a smile. He really was a good sort of man, this poor Wone! She wondered vaguely whether he intended himself to indulge in the pastime of swinging in a boat-shaped swing or whirling round upon a wooden horse. She felt that if she could see him on one of these roundabouts,—especially if he retained that expression of guileless admiration,—she could really forgive him everything.

  She caught a glimpse of two other figures whose interest in the proceedings appeared extremely vivid, no less persons than Mr. John Goring and his devoted henchman, Bert Leerd. These two were engaged in reading a glaring advertisement which depicted a young woman clad in astounding spangles dancing on a tight-rope, and it was
difficult to say whether the farmer or the idiot was the more absorbed.

  She was just turning away, when she heard herself called by name, and from amid a crowd of women clustering round one of Mr. Love’s bric-a-brac stalls, there came towards her, together, Mrs. Fringe and Mrs. Wotnot.

  Vennie was extremely surprised to find these two ladies,—by no means particularly friendly as a rule,—thus joined in partnership of dissipation, but she supposed the influence of a circus, like the influence of religion, has a dissolvent effect upon human animosity. That these excellent women should have preferred the circus, however, to the rival entertainment in the churchyard, did strike her mind as extraordinary. She did not know that they had, as a matter of fact, “eaten their pot of honey” at the one, before proceeding, post-haste, to enjoy the other.

  “May we walk with you, miss, a step?” supplicated Mrs. Fringe, as Vennie indicated her intention of moving on, as soon as their salutations were over.

  “Thank you, you are very kind, Mrs. Fringe. Perhaps,—a little way, but I’m rather busy this morning.”

  “Oh we shan’t trouble you long,” murmured Mrs. Wotnot, “It’s only,—well, Mrs. Fringe, here, had better speak.”

  Thus it came about that Vennie began her advance up the Yeoborough road supported by the two housekeepers, the lean one on the left of her, and the fat one on the right of her.

  “Will I tell her, or will you tell her?” murmured the plump lady sweetly, when they were clear of the village.

  Mrs. Wotnot made a curious grimace and clasped and unclasped her hands.

  “Better you; much, much better, that it should be you,” she remarked.

  “But ’twas thy tale, dearie; ’twas thy tale and surprisin’ discoverin’s,” protested Mrs. Fringe.

  “Those that knows aren’t always those that tells,” observed the other sententiously.