Wood and Stone (5 page)

“You are quite right, Wone; you are quite right,” muttered the recluse in his beard, furtively glancing at Lacrima.

Mr. Wone continued his discourse, making large and eloquent allusion to the general relations in England between employer and employed, and
implying
plainly enough his full knowledge that at least one of his hearers belonged to the latter class. His air, as he spoke, betrayed a certain disordered
fanaticism
, quite genuine and deeply felt, but queerly mingled with an indescribable element of complacent self-conceit. Lacrima, in spite of considerable
sympathy
with much that he said, felt that there was, in the man himself, something so slipshod, so limp, so vague, and so patently vulgar, that both her respect for his sincerity and her interest in his opinions were reduced to nothing. Not only was he narrow-minded and ignorant; but there was also about him, in spite of the aggressive violence of his expressions, an odd sort of deprecatory, apologetic air, as though he were perpetually endeavouring to cajole his audience, by tacit references to his deferential respect for them. There was indeed more than a little in him of the sleek unction of the nonconformist preacher; and one could well understand how he might combine, precisely as Mr. Lickwit suspected, the divergent functions of the politician and the evangelist.

“I tell you,” he was saying, “the country will not long put up with this sort of thing. There is a
movement
, a tendency, a volcanic upheaval, a stirring of waters, which these plutocrats do not realize. There is a surging up from the depths of—of —” He paused for a word.

“Of mud,” murmured Mr. Quincunx.

“—Of righteous revolt against these atrocious
inequalities
! The working people are asleep no longer. They’re roused. The movement’s begun. The
thunder’s
gathering on the horizon. The armies of the exploited are feeling the impulse of their own strength, of that noble, that splendid anger, which, when it is conceived, will bring forth—will bring forth—”

“Damnation,” murmured Mr. Quincunx.

The three figures as they stood, thus consorted, on the little stone bridge, made up a dramatic group. The sinking sun threw their shadows in long wavering lines upon the white road, distorting them to so grotesque a length that they nearly reached the open gates of the station.

Human shadows! What a queer half-mocking
commentary
they make upon the vanity of our
passionate
excitements, roused by anything, quieted by nothing, as the world moves round!

Lacrima, in her shadow, was not beautiful at all. She was an elongated wisp of darkness. The beard of Mr. Quincunx looked as if it belonged to a
mammoth
goat, and the neck of Mr. Wone seemed to support, not a human cranium at all, but a round, wagging mushroom.

The hushed fields on each side of the way began to assume that magical softness which renders them,
at such an hour, insubstantial, unreal, remote,
transformed
. One felt as though the earth might indeed be worthy of better destinies than those that traced their fantastic trails up and down its peaceful surface. Something deeply withheld, seemed as though it only needed the coming of one god-like spirit to set it free forever, and, with it, all the troubled hearts of men. It was one of those moments which, whether the
participants
in them recognize them or not, at the actual time, are bound to recur, long afterwards, to their memory.

Lacrima, half-listening to Mr. Wone, kept her head anxiously turned in the direction of the sheds, into one of which she had observed James Andersen enter.

Maurice Quincunx, his mood clogged and clotted by jealousy, watched her with great melancholy grey eyes, while with his nervous fingers he plucked at his beard.

“The time is coming—the time is coming”; cried Mr. Wone, striking with the back of his fist, the parapet against which he leaned, “when this
exploitation
of the poor by the rich will end once for all!” The warmth of his feeling was so great, that large drops of sweat trickled down his sallow cheeks, and hanging for a moment at the end of his narrow chin, fell into the dust. The man was genuinely moved; though in his watery blue eyes no trace of any fire was visible. He looked, in his emotion, like an hypnotized sick person, talking in the stress of a morbid fever. It was the revolt of one who carried the obsequious slavery of generations in his blood, and could only rebel in galvanized moribund spasms. The fellow was unpleasing, uninspiring: not the
savage leader of a race of stern revolutionary devotees fired by the iron logic of their cause, but the inchoate inarticulate voice of clumsy protest, apologizing and propitiating, even while it protested. The vulgarity and meanness of the candidate’s tone made one wonder how such a one as he could ever have been selected by the obscure working of the Spirit of
Sacrifice
, to undertake this titanic struggle against the Spirit of Power. One turned away instinctively from his febrile rhetoric, to cast involuntary incense at the feet of the masterful enemy he opposed. He had no reticence in his enthusiasm, no reserve, no decency.

“You may perhaps not know,” he blundered on; “that the General Election is much nearer than people think. Mr. Romer will find this out; he will find it out; he will find it out! I have good authority for what I say. I speak of what I know, young lady.” This was said rather severely, for Lacrima’s attention was so obviously wandering.—“Of course you will not breathe a word of this, up there,” —he nodded in the direction of the House. “It would not do. But the truth is, he is making a great mistake. I am prepared for this campaign, and he is not. He is even thinking of reducing the men’s wages still further. The fool—the fool—the fool! For he
is
a fool, you know, though he thinks he is so clever.”

Even Mr. Wone would scarcely have dared to utter these bold asseverations in the ear of Gladys Romer’s cousin, if Maurice’s innate indiscretion had not made it the gossip of the village that the Italian was ill-treated “among those people.” To the pathetic man’s poor vulgar turn of mind there was
something soothing in this confidential abuse of the lord of Nevilton Manor to his own relation. It had a squalid piquancy. It was itself a sort of revenge.

Once more he began his spasmodic enunciation of those sad economic platitudes that are the refuge of the oppressed; but Mr. Quincunx had crossed the road, in the pursuit of a decrepit tiger-moth, and was listening no more. Lacrima’s attention was
completely
withdrawn.

“Well, dear friends,” he concluded, “I must really be getting back to my supper. Mrs. Wone will be unbearable if I am late.” He hesitated a moment as if wondering whether the occasion called for any further domestic jocosity, to let these high matters lightly down to earth; but he contented himself with shaking hands with Mr. Quincunx and removing his hat to Lacrima.

“Good night, dear friends,” he repeated, drifting off, up the road, humming a hymn tune.

“Poor man!” whispered the girl, “he means well.”

“He ought to be shot!” was the unexpected
response
of the hermit of Dead Man’s Cottage, as he let the tiger-moth flutter down into the edge of the field. “He is no better than the rest. He is an idiot. He ought to learn Latin.”

They moved together towards the station.

“I don’t like the way you agree with people to their face,” said Lacrima, “and abuse them behind their backs.”

“I don’t like the way you hang about the roads with handsome stone-cutters,” was Mr. Quincunx’s surly retort.

Meanwhile, a quite interesting little drama had
been unfolding itself in the neighbourhood of the half-carved block of sandstone. Instructed, by a swift flash of perception, into what the situation implied, Luke’s quick magnetic fingers soon drew from his companion’s an electric responsive clasp, as they leant together over the mouldings. The warmth and pliable softness of the girl’s body seemed to challenge the man with intimations of how quickly it would yield. He pointed to the shed-door, wide open behind them.

“I will show you my work, in there, in a moment,” he murmured, “as soon as they have gone.”

Her breast rose and fell under the increased
excitement
of her breathing. Violent quivers ran up and down her frame and communicated themselves to him. Their hearts beat fiercely in reciprocal
agitation
. Luke’s voice, as he continued his conventional summary of the quality and destination of the stone, shook a little, and sounded queer and detached.

“It is for Shaftesbury church,” he said, “for the base of the column that supports the arch. This particular moulding is one which my father designed. You must remember that upon it will rest a great deal of the weight of the roof.”

His fellow workmen had now collected their tools and were shuffling nervously past them. It required all Gladys’ sang-froid to give them the casual nod due from the daughter of the House to those who laboured in its service. As soon as they were well upon their way, with a quick glance at the distant figures of Lacrima and James, Gladys turned rapidly to her companion.

“Show me,” she said.

He went before her and stood in the entrance of the work-shop. When she had passed him into its interior, he casually closed behind them one of the rough folding doors. The contrast from the
horizontal
sun outside, turning the sandstone blocks into ruddy gold, to the shadowy twilight within, was strangely emphatic. He began to speak; saying he hardly knew what—some kind of stammered
nonsense
about the bases and capitals and carved
mouldings
that lay around them. But Gladys, true to her feminine prerogative, swept all this aside. With a bold audacity she began at once.

“How nice to be alone and free, for a little while!”

Then, moving still further into the shadow, and standing, as if absorbed in interest, before the rough beginnings of a fluted pillar which reached as high as the roof—

“What kind of top are you going to put on to that thing?”

As she spoke she leant against the pillar with a soft, weary relaxation of her whole form.

“Come near and tell me about it,” she whispered, as if her breath caught in her throat.

Luke recognized the tone—the tone that said, so much more distinctly than words, “I am ready. Why are you so slow?” He came behind her, and as gently and lightly as he could, though his arms trembled, let his fingers slide caressingly round her flexible figure. Her breath came in quick gasps, and one hot small hand met his own and pressed it against her side. Encouraged by this response, he boldly drew her towards him. She struggled a little; a shy girlish struggle, more than half conventional—and
then, sliding round in his arms with a quick feline movement, she abandoned herself to her craving, and embraced him shamelessly and passionately. When at last in sheer weariness her arms relaxed and she sank down, with her hands pressed to her burning cheeks, upon an unfinished font, Luke Andersen thought that never to his dying day would he forget the serpentine clinging of that supple form and the pressure of those insatiable lips. He turned, a little foolishly, towards the door and kicked with his foot a fragment of a carved reredos. Then he went back to her and half-playfully, half-amorously, tried to remove her hands from her face.

“Don’t touch me! I hate you!” she said.

“Please,” he whispered, “please don’t be unkind now. I shall never, never forget how sweet you’ve been.”

“Tell me more about this work of yours,” she suddenly remarked, in a completely changed voice, rising to her feet. “I have always understood that you were one of our best workmen. I shall tell my father how highly I think of what you’re doing—you and your brother. I am sure he will be glad to know what artists he has among his men.”

She gave her head a proud little toss and raised negligent deliberate hands to her disarranged fair hair, smoothing it down and readjusting her
wide-brimmed
hat. She had become the grand lady again and Luke had become the ordinary young
stonemason
. Superficially, and with a charming grace, he adapted himself to this change, continuing his
conventional
remarks about fonts, pillars, crosses, and capitals; and calling her “Miss” or “Miss Gladys,” with scrupulous discretion. But in his heart, all the
while, he was registering a deep and vindictive vow—a vow that, at whatever risk and at whatever cost, he would make this fair young despot suffer for her caprice. Gladys had indeed, quite unwittingly, entered into a struggle with a nature as remorseless and unscrupulous as her own. She had dreamed, in her imperial way, of using this boy for her
amusement
, and then throwing him aside. She did not for a moment intend to get entangled in any sentimental relations with him. A passing “amour,” leading to nothing, and in no way committing her, was what she had instinctively counted on. For the rest, in
snatching
fiercely at any pleasure her fervent senses craved, she was as conscienceless and antinomian, as a young tiger out of the jungle. Nor had she the remotest sense of danger in this exciting sport. Corrupt and insensitive as any amorous courtezan of a pagan age, she trusted to her freedom from innocence to assure her of freedom from disaster. Vaguely enough in her own mind she had assumed, as these masterful “blond beasts” are inclined to assume, that in pouncing on this new prey she was only dealing once more with that malleable and timorous humanity she had found so easy to mould to her purpose in other quarters. She reckoned, with a pathetic simplicity, that Luke would be clay in her hands. As a matter of fact this spoiled child of the wealth produced by the Leonian stone had audaciously flung down her challenge to one who had as much in him as herself of that stone’s tenacity and imperviousness. The daughter of sandstone met the carver of sandstone; and none, who knew the two, would have dared to predict the issue of such an encounter.

The young man was still urbanely and discreetly discoursing to his lady-visitor upon the contents of the work-shop, when the tall figure of James Andersen darkened the door.