Wood and Stone: A Romance

by John Cowper Powys

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 work-shop. 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 Promoter 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.