Wood and Stone Read online

  North of the churchyard, beyond the main village street with its formal town-like compactness, the ground slopes imperceptibly up, past a few enclosed cottage-orchards, to where, embosomed in gracious trees and Italianated gardens, stands the pride and glory of Nevilton, its stately Elizabethan house.

  This house, founded in the reign of Henry VIII, synchronized in its foundation with the overthrow of the Cistercian Order, and was constructed entirely of Leonian stone, removed for the purpose of building it from the scene of the Priory’s destruction. Twice over, then, in their human history, since they left the entrails of that brooding monster over which the Nevilton people see the sun set each day, had these carved pieces of sandstone contributed to the pride of the rulers of men.

  Their first use had not been attended with an altogether propitious destiny. How far their present use will prove of happier omen remains a secret of the adamantine Fates. The imaginary weaving of events, upon which we are just now engaged, may perhaps serve, as certain liturgical formulæ of propitiation served in former days, as a means of averting the wrath of the Eumenides. For though made use of again and again for fair and pious purposes, something of the old heathen malignity of the Druid hill still seems to hang about the stone it yields; and over the substance of that stone’s destiny the two Mythologies still struggle; Power and Sacrifice dividing the living and the dead.

  CHAPTER II

  NEVILTON

  UNTIL within some twenty years of the date with which we are now concerned, the distinguished family who originally received the monastic estates from the royal despot had held them intact and unassailed. By an evil chance however, the property had extended itself, during the eighteenth century, so as to include the larger portion of Leo’s Hill; and since that day its possession had been attended by misfortune. The ancient aboriginal fortress proved as fatal to its modern invaders as it had proved in remoter times to Roman, Saxon and Norman.

  A fanciful imagination might indeed have amused itself with the curious dream, that some weird Druidic curse had been laid upon that grass-grown island of yellow rock, bringing disaster and eclipse to all who meddled with it. Such an imagination would have been able to fortify its fancy by recalling the suggestive fact that at the bottom of the large woodland pond, indicated in this narrative under the name of Auber Lake, was discovered, not many years before, an immense slab of Leonian stone, inscribed with symbols baffling interpretation, but suggesting, to one antiquarian mind at least, a hint of pre-historic Devil-Worship. However this may be, it is certain that the family of Seldom found themselves finally faced with the alternative of selling the place they loved or of seeing it lapse under their hands into confusion and neglect. Of these evil alternatives they chose the former; and thus the estates, properties, royalties, and appurtenances, of the historic Manor of Nevilton fell into the hands of a clever financier from Lombard Street.

  The family of Mr. Mortimer Romer had never at any time bowed its knee in kings’ houses. Nor were its religious antecedents marked by orthodox reputation. Mr. Romer was indeed in every sense of the word a “self-made man.” But though neither Christian nor Jew,—for his grandfather, the fish-monger of Soho, had been of the Unitarian persuasion—it cannot be denied that he possessed the art of making himself thoroughly respected by both the baptized and the circumcised. He indeed pursued his main purpose, which was the acquiring of power, with an unscrupulousness worthy of a Roman Emperor. Possibly it was this Roman tenacity in him, combined with his heathen indifference to current theology, which propitiated the avenging deities of Leo’s Hill. So far at any rate he had been eminently successful in his speculations. He had secured complete possession of every quarry on the formidable eminence; and the company of which he was both director and president was pursuing its activities in a hundred new directions. It had, in the few last years, gone so far as to begin certain engineering assaults upon those remote portions of the ancient escarpments that had been left untouched since the legions of Claudius Caesar encamped under their protection.

  The bulk of Mr. Romer’s stone-works were on the Hill itself; but others, intended for the more delicate finishing touches, were situated in a convenient spot close to Nevilton Station. Out of these sheds and yards, built along the railway-track, arose, from morning to night, the monotonous, not unpleasing, murmur of wheels and saws and grindstones. The contrast between these sounds and the sylvan quietness of the vicarage garden, which sloped down towards them, was one of the most significant indications of the clash of the Two Mythologies in this place. The priest meditating among his roses upon the vanity of all but “heavenly habitations” might have been in danger of being too obtrusively reminded of the pride of the houses that are very definitely “made with hands.” Perhaps this was one of the reasons why the present incumbent of Nevilton had preferred a more undisturbed retreat.

  The general manager of Mortimer Romer’s quarries was a certain Mr. Lickwit, who served also as his confidential adviser in many other spheres.

  The works at Nevilton Station were left to the superintendence of two brothers named Andersen, skilled stone-cutters, sons of the famous Gideon Andersen known to architects all over the kingdom for his designs in Leonian stone. Both Gideon and his wife Naomi were buried in Nevilton churchyard, and the brothers were condemned in the village as persons of an almost scandalous piety because of their innocent habit of lingering on warm summer evenings over their parents’ grave. They lived together, these two, as lodgers with the station-master, in a newly built cottage close to their work. Their social position in the place was a curious and anomalous one. Their father’s reputation as a sculptor had brought him into touch with every grade of society; and the woman who became his wife was by birth what is usually termed a lady. Gideon himself had been a rough and gross fellow; and after his wife’s death had hastened to take his sons away from school and apprentice them to his own trade. They were in many respects a noteworthy pair, though scarcely favourites, either with their fellow-workmen or their manager.

  James Andersen, the elder by some ten years, was of a morose, reserved temper, and though a capable workman never seemed happy in the workshop. Luke, on the contrary, possessed a peculiarly sunny and serene spirit.

  They were both striking in appearance. The younger approximated to that conventional type of beauty which is popularly known as being “like a Greek god.” The elder, tall, swarthy, and sinister, suggested rather the image of some gloomy idol carved on the wall of an Assyrian temple. What, however, was much more remarkable than their appearance was their devoted attachment to one another. They lived, worked, ate, drank, walked and slept together. It was impossible to separate them. Had Mr. Lickwit dismissed James, Luke would immediately have thrown down his tools. Had Luke been the banished one, James would have followed him into exile.

  It had fallen to Mr. Romer, some seven years before our narrative begins, to appoint a new vicar to Nevilton; and he had appointed one of such fierce ascetic zeal and such pronounced socialistic sympathies, that he had done nothing since but vehemently and bitterly repent his choice.

  The Promotor of Companies had been betrayed into this blunder by the impulse of revengeful caprice, the only impulse in his otherwise well-balanced nature that might be termed dangerous to himself.

  He had quarrelled with the bishop over some matter connected with his stone-works; and in order to cause this distinguished prelate grief and annoyance he had looked about for someone to honour who was under the episcopal ban. The bishop, however, was of so discreet a temper and so popular in his diocese that the only rebel to his authority that could be discovered was one of the curates of a church at Yeoborough who had insisted upon preaching the Roman doctrine of Transubstantiation.

  The matter would probably have lapsed into quiescence, save for the crafty interference in the local newspaper of a group of aggressive Nonconformists, who took this opportunity of sowing desirable dissension between the higher and lower orders of the hated Establishment.


  Mr. Romer, who, like Gallio, cared for none of these things, and was at heart a good deal worse than a Nonconformist, seized upon the chance offered by the death of Nevilton’s vicar; and installed as his successor this rebel to ecclesiastical authority.

  Once installed, however, the Rev. Hugh Clavering speedily came to an understanding with his bishop; compromised on the matter of preaching Transubstantiation; and apparently was allowed to go on believing in it.

  And it was then that the Promoter of Companies learned for the first time how much easier it is to make a priest than to unmake him. For situation after situation arose in which the master of the Leonian quarries found himself confronted by an alien Power—a Power that refused to worship Sandstone. Before this rupture, however, the young Priest had persuaded Mr. Romer to let him live in the Old Vicarage, a small but cheerful house just opposite the church door. The orthodox vicarage, a rambling Early Victorian structure standing in its own grounds at the end of the West Drive, was let—once more at the Priest’s suggestion—to the last living representatives of the dispossessed Seldoms.

  It indicated a good deal of spirit on the part of Valentia Seldom and her daughter thus to return to the home of their ancestors.

  Mrs. Seldom was a cousin of the man who had sold the estate. Her daughter Vennie, brought up in a school at Florence, had never seen Nevilton, and it was with the idea of taking advantage for the girl’s sake of their old prestige in that corner of England that Valentia accepted Mr. Romer’s offer and became the vicarage tenant.

  The quarry-owner himself was influenced in carrying through this affair, by his anxiety, for the sake of his daughter, to secure a firmer footing with the aristocracy of the neighborhood. Here again, however, he was destined to disappointment: for once in possession of her twenty years’ lease the old lady showed not the least intention of letting herself be used as a social stepping-stone.

  She had, indeed, under her own roof, cause enough for preoccupation and concern.

  Her daughter—a little ghost-moth of a girl, of fragile delicacy—seemed entirely devoid of that mysterious magnetic attraction which lures to the side of most virgins the devotion of the opposite sex. She appeared perfectly content to remain forever in her tender maidenhood, and refused to exert the slightest effort to be “nice” to the charming young people her mother threw in her way. She belonged to that class of young girls who seem to be set apart by nature for other purposes than those of the propagation of the race.

  Her wistful spirit, shrinking into itself like the leaves of a sensitive plant at the least approach of a rough hand, responded only to one passionate impulse, the impulse of religion.

  She grew indeed so estranged from the normal world, that it was not only Valentia who concealed the thought that when she left the earth the ancient race of Seldoms would leave it with her.

  Nor was it only in regard to her child’s religious obsession that the lady suffered. She had flatly refused to let her enter into anything but the coldest relations with “those dreadful people at the House”; and it was with a peculiar shock of dismay that she found that the girl was not literally obeying her. It was not, however, to the Romers themselves that Vennie made her shy overtures, but to a luckless little relative of that family now domiciled with them as companion to Gladys Romer.

  This young dependent, reputed in the village to be of Italian origin, struck the gentle heart of the last of the Seldoms with indescribable pity. She could not altogether define the impression the girl produced upon her, but it was a singularly oppressive one, and it vexed and troubled her.

  The situation was wretchedly complicated. It was extremely difficult to get a word with the little companion without encountering Gladys; and any approach to intimacy with “the Homer girl” would have meant an impossible scene with Mrs. Seldom. Nor was it a light undertaking, in such hurried interviews as she did manage to secure, to induce the child to drop her reserve. She would fix her great brown foreign eyes—her name was Lacrima Traffio—on Vennie’s face, and make curious little helpless gestures with her hands when questions were asked her; but speak of herself she would not.

  It was clear she was absolutely dependent on her cousins. Vennie gathered as much as that, as she once talked with her under the church wall, when Gladys was chatting with the vicar. A reference to her own people had nearly resulted in an outburst of tears. Vennie had had to be content with a broken whisper: “We come from Rapallo—they are all dead.” There was nothing, it appeared, that could be added to this.

  It was perhaps a little inconsistent in the old lady to be so resolute against her daughter’s overtures to Lacrima, as she herself had no hesitation in making a sort of protégé of another of Mr. Romer’s tribe.

  This was an eccentric middle-aged bachelor who had drifted into the place soon after the newcomer’s arrival and had established himself in a dilapidated cottage on the outskirts of the Auber woods.

  Remotely related to Mrs. Romer, he had in some way become dependent on her husband, whose financial advantage over him was not, it seemed, as time went on, exerted in a very considerate manner.

  Maurice Quincunx, for such was his unusual name, was an illegitimate descendant of one of the most historic houses in the neighborhood, but both his poverty and his opinions caused him to live what was practically the life of a hermit, and made him shrink away, even more nervously than little Vennie Seldom, from any intercourse with his equals.

  The present possessors of his queer ancient name were now the Lords of Glastonbury, and had probably never so much as heard of Maurice’s existence.

  He would come by stealth to pay Valentia visits, preferring the evening hours when in the summer she used to sit with her work, on a terrace overlooking a sloping orchard, and watch Vennie water her roses.

  The vicarage terrace was a place of extraordinary quiet and peace, eminently adapted to the low-voiced, nervous ramblings of a recluse of Maurice Quincunx’s timidity.

  The old lady by degrees quite won this eccentric’s heart; and the queerly assorted friends would pace up and down for hours in the cool of the evening talking of things in no way connected either with Mr. Romer or the Church—the two subjects about which Mr. Quincunx held dangerously strong views.

  Apart from this quaint outcast and the youthful parson, Mrs. Seldom’s only other intimate in the place was a certain John Francis Taxater, a gentleman of independent means, living by himself with an old housekeeper in a cottage called The Gables, situated about half-way between the vicarage and the village.

  Mr. Taxater was a Catholic and also a philosopher; these two peculiarities affording the solution to what otherwise would have been an insoluble psychic riddle. Even as it was, Mr. Taxater’s mind was of so subtle and complicated an order, that he was at once the attraction and the despair of all the religious thinkers of that epoch. For it must be understood that though quietly resident under the shadow of Nevilton Mount, the least essay from Mr. Taxater’s pen was eagerly perused by persons interested in religious controversy in all the countries of Europe.

  He wrote for philosophical journals in London, Paris, Rome and New York; and there often appeared at The Gables most surprising visitors from Germany and Italy and Spain.

  He had a powerful following among the more subtle-minded of the Catholics of England; and was highly respected by important personages in the social, as well as the literary circles, of Catholic society.

  The profundity of his mind may be gauged from the fact that he was able to steer his way successfully through the perilous reefs of “modernistic” discussion, without either committing himself to heretical doctrine or being accused of reactionary ultramontanism.

  Mr. Taxater’s written works were, however, but a trifling portion of his personality. His intellectual interests were as rich and varied as those of some great humanist of the Italian Renaissance, and his personal habits were as involved and original as his thoughts were complicated and deep.

  He was perpetually engaged
in converting the philosopher in him to Catholicism, and the Catholic in him to philosophy—yet he never permitted either of these obsessions to interfere with his enjoyment of life.

  Luke Andersen, who was perhaps of all the inhabitants of Nevilton most conscious of the drama played around him, used to maintain that it was impossible to tell in the last resort whether Mr. Taxater’s place was with the adherents of Christ or with the adherents of Anti-Christ. Like his prototype, the evasive Erasmus, he seemed able to be on both sides at the same time.

  Perhaps it was a secret consciousness of the singular position of Nevilton, planted, as it were, between two streams of opposing legend, that originally led Mr. Taxater to take up his abode in so secluded a spot.

  It is impossible to tell. In this as in all other transactions of his life he combined an unworldly simplicity with a Machiavellian astuteness. If the Day of Judgment revealed him as being on the side of the angels, it might also reveal him as having exercised, in the microcosmic Nevilton drama, as well as in his wider sphere, one of the most subtle influences against the Powers of Darkness that those Powers ever encountered in their invisible activity.

  At the moment when the present narrative takes up the woven threads of these various persons’ lives there seemed every prospect that in external nature at least there was going to be an auspicious and halcyon season. June had opened with abnormal pleasantness. Exquisite odours were in the air, wafted from woods and fields and gardens. White dust, alternating with tender spots of coolness where the shadows of trees fell, lent the roads in the vicinity that leisured gala-day expectancy which one notes in the roads of France and Spain, but which is so rare in England.