Wood and Stone: A Romance

by John Cowper Powys

He humorously speculated whether this man also, this ancient challenger of popular futility, had been driven to strange excesses by the provocative resistance of some feeble girl, making her mute appeals to the suppressed conscience in him, and calling in the help of tender compassionate gods? Had they softened this buried chieftain’s heart, these gods of slavish souls and weak wills, before he went down into darkness? Or had he defied them to the last and died lonely, implacable, contemptuous?

The quarry-owner’s ears began to grow irritated at last by these raucous metallic sounds and by the laughter and the shouting. It was so precisely as if this foolish crowd were celebrating, in drunken ecstasy, a victory won over him, and over all that was clear-edged, self-possessed, and effectual, in this confused world. He struck off the heads of some of the grey thistles with his cane, and wished they had been the heads of the Christian Candidate and his oratorical associates.

Presently his attention was excited by a tremendous hubbub at the northern extremity of the hill. The crowd seemed to have gone mad. They cheered again and again, and seemed vociferating some popular air or some marching-song. He could almost catch the words of this. The curious thing was that he could not help in his heart dallying with the strange wish that in place of being the man at the top, he had been one of these men at the bottom. How differently he would have conducted the affair. He knew, from his dealings with the country families, how deep this revolutionary rage with established tradition could sink. He sympathized with it himself. He would have loved to have flung the whole sleek structure of society into disorder, and to have shaken these feeble rulers out of their snug seats. But this Wone had not the spirit of a wood-louse! Had he—Romer—been at this moment the arch-revolutionary, in place of the arch-tyrant, what a difference in method and result! Did they think, these idiots, that eloquent words and appeals to Justice and Charity would change the orbits of the planets?

He strode impatiently to the edge of the tumulus. Yes, there was certainly something unusual going forward. The crowd was swaying outwards, was scattering and wavering. Men were running to and fro, tossing their hats in the air and shouting. At last there really was a definite event. The whole mass of the crowd seemed to be seized simultaneously with a single impulse. It began to move. It began to move in the direction of his new quarries. The thrill of battle seized the heart of the master of Nevilton with an exultant glow. So they were really going to attempt something—the incapable sheep! This was the sort of situation he had long cried out for. To have an excuse to meet them, face to face, in a genuine insurrection, this was worthier of a man’s energy than quarrelling with wretched Social Meetings.

He ran down the side of the tumulus and hastened to meet the approaching mob. By leaving the path and skirting the edge of several disused quarries he should, he thought, easily be able to reach his new works long before they did. The tall cranes served as a guide. To his astonishment he found, on approaching his objective, that the mob had swerved, and were now streaming forward in a long wavering line, between the Half Moon tavern and the lower slopes, towards the southern end of the hill.

“Ah!” he muttered under his breath, “this is more serious! They are going to attack the offices.”

By this time, the bulk of the crowd had got so far that it would have been impossible for him to intercept or anticipate them.

Among the more cautious sight-seers who, mixed with women and children, were trailing slowly in the rear, he was quite certain he made out the figures of Wone and his fellow-politicians. “Just like him,” he thought. “He has stirred them up with his speeches and now he is hiding behind them! I expect he will be sneaking off home presently.” The figure he supposed to be that of the Christian Candidate did, as a matter of fact, shortly after this, detach himself from the rest of his group and retire quietly and discreetly towards the path leading to Nevilton.

Romer retraced his steps as rapidly as he could. He repassed the tumulus, crossed a somewhat precipitous bank between two quarries, and emerged upon the road that skirts the western brow of the hill. This road he followed at an impetuous pace, listening, as he advanced, for any sound of destruction and violence. When he arrived at the open level between the two largest of his quarries he found himself at the edge of a surging and howling mob. He could see over their heads the low slate roofs of his works, and he could see that someone, mounted on a large slab of stone, was haranguing the people near him, but more than this it was impossible to make out and it was extremely difficult to get any closer. The persons on the outskirts of the crowd were evidently strangers, and with no interest in the affair at all beyond excited curiosity, for he heard them asking one another the most vague and confused questions.

Presently he observed the figure of a policeman rise behind the man upon the stone and jerk him to the ground. This was followed by a bewildering uproar. Clenched hands were raised in the air, and wild cries were audible. He fancied he caught the sound of the syllable “fire.”