Wood and Stone: A Romance

by John Cowper Powys

“I submit, I submit,” muttered the artist blandly. “I only hope this scouting business needn’t commence till we have got well through Camel’s Cover and Badger’s Bottom! I must confess I am not altogether in love with the sound of those places, though no doubt they are harmless enough. But you people do certainly select the most extraordinary names for your localities. Our own little lapses in these things are classical compared with your Badgers and Camels and Ashes and Dead Men!”

Mr. Quincunx did not condescend to reply to this. He continued to plough his way across the field, every now and then glancing nervously at the sky, which grew more and more threatening. Walking behind him and a little on one side, the American was singularly impressed by the appearance he presented, especially when the faint light of the pallid and cloud-flecked moon fell on his uplifted profile. With his corrugated brow and his pointed beard, Mr. Quincunx was a noticeable figure at any time, but under the present atmospheric conditions his lean form and striking head made a picture of forlorn desolation worthy of the sombre genius of a Bewick.

Dangelis conceived the idea of a picture, which he himself might be capable of evoking, with this melancholy, solitary figure as its protagonist.

He wondered vaguely what background he would select as worthy of the resolute hopelessness in Mr. Quincunx’s forlorn mien.

It was only after they had traversed the sloping recesses of Camel’s Cover, and had arrived at the crest of the Wild Pine ridge, that he was able to answer this question. Then he knew at once. The true pictorial background for his eccentric companion could be nothing less than that line of wind-shaken, rain-washed Scotch firs, which, visible from all portions of Nevilton, had gathered to themselves the very essence of its historic tragedy.

These trees, like Mr. Quincunx, seemed to derive a grim satisfaction from their submission to destiny. Like him, they submitted with a definite volition of resolution. They took, as he took, the line of least resistance with a sort of stark voluptuousness. They did not simply bow to the winds and rains that oppressed them. They positively welcomed them. And yet all the while, just as he did, they emitted a low melancholy murmur of protest, a murmur as completely different from the howling eloquence of the ashes and elms, as it was different from the low querulous sob of the larches and elders. The rusty-red stain, too, in the rough bark of their trunks, was also singularly congruous with a certain reddish tinge, which often darkened the countenance of the recluse, especially when his fits of goblin-humour shook him into convulsive merriment.

As they paused for a moment on this melancholy ridge, looking back at the flickering lights of the village, and down into the darkness in front of them, the painter made a mental vow that before he left Nevilton he would sublimate his vision of Mr. Quincunx into a genuine masterpiece. Plunging once more into the shadows, they followed a dark lane which finally emerged into a wide-sloping valley. In the depths of this was the secluded hollow, full of long grass and tufted reeds, which was the place known as Badger’s Bottom.

The entrance to Auber Wood was now at hand; and as they reached its sinister outskirts, they both instinctively paused to take stock of their surroundings. The night was more sultry than ever. The leaves and grasses swayed with an almost imperceptible movement, as if stirred, not by the wind, but by the actual heavy breathing of the Earth herself, troubled and agitated in her planetary sleep.

Sombre banks of clouds moved intermittently over the face of a blurred moon, and, out of the soil at their feet, rose up damp exotic odours, giving the whole valley the atmosphere of an enormous hot-house.

It was one of those hushed, steamy nights, pregnant and listening, which the peculiar conditions of our English climate do not often produce, and which are for that very reason often quite startling in their emotional appeal. The path which the two men took, after once they had entered the wood, was one that led them through a gloomy tunnel of gigantic, overhanging laurel-bushes.