Wood and Stone: A Romance

by John Cowper Powys

Romer was seized with a mad lust of contest. He struggled desperately to force his way through to the front, but the entangled mass of agitated, perspiring people proved an impassable barrier.

He began hastily summing up in his mind what kind of destruction they could achieve that would cause him any serious annoyance. He remembered with relief that all the more delicate pieces of carved work were down at Nevilton Station. They could do little damage to solid blocks of stone, which were all they would find inside those wooden sheds. They might injure the machinery and the more fragile of the tools, but they could hardly do even that, unless they were aided by some of his own men. He wondered if his own men—the men on strike—were among them, or if the rioters were only roughs from Yeoborough. Let them burn the sheds down! He did not value the sheds. They could be replaced tomorrow. Their utmost worth was hardly the price of a dozen bottles of champagne. It gave him a thrill of grim satisfaction to think of the ineffectualness of this horde of gesticulating two-legged creatures, making vain assaults upon slabs of impervious rock. Man against Stone! It was a pleasant and symbolic struggle. And it could only have one issue.

Finding it impossible to move forward, and not caring to be observed by anyone who knew him hemmed in in this ridiculous manner among staring females and jocose youths, Romer edged himself backwards, and, hot and breathless, got clear of the crowd.

The physical exhaustion of this effort—for only a man of considerable strength could have advanced an inch through such a dense mass—had materially diminished his thirst for a personal encounter. He smiled to himself to think how humorous it would be if he could, even now, overtake the escaping Mr. Wone, and offer his rival restorative refreshment, in the cool shades of his garden! For the prime originals of this absurd riot to be drinking claret-cup upon a grassy lawn, while the misled and deluded populace were battering their heads against the stony heart of Leo’s Hill, struck Mr. Romer as a curiously suitable climax to the days’ entertainment. Hardly thinking of what he did, he clambered up the side of a steep bank, where a group of children were playing, and looked across the valley. Surely that solitary black figure retreating so furtively, so innocently, along the path towards the wood, could be no one but the Christian Candidate!

Mr. Romer burst out laughing. The discreet fugitive looked so absurdly characteristic in his shuffling retirement, that he felt for the moment as if the whole incident were a colossal musical-comedy farce. A puff of smoke above the heads of the crowd, and a smell of burning, made him serious again. “Damn them!” he muttered. “They shall not get off without anything being done.”

From his present position he was able to discern how he could get round to the sheds. On their remoter side he saw that the crowd had considerably thinned away. He made out the figures of some policemen there, bending, it appeared, over something upon the ground.

It did not take him long to descend from his post, to skirt the western side of the quarries, and to reach the spot. He found that the object upon the ground was no other than his manager Lickwit, gasping and pallid, with a streak of blood running down his face. From the policemen he learnt that an entrance had been forced into the sheds, and the more violent of the rioters—the ones who had laid Mr. Lickwit low—were now regaling themselves in that shelter upon the contents of a barrel of cider, whose hiding-place someone had unearthed. The fire was already trampled upon and extinguished. He learnt further that a messenger had been sent to summon more police to the spot, and that it was to be hoped that the revellers within the shed would continue their opportune tippling until their arrival. This, however, was not what fate intended. Reeling and shouting, the half-a-dozen joyous Calibans emerged from their retreat and proceeded to address the people, all vociferating at the same time, and each interrupting the other. The more official and respectable among the politicians had either retired altogether from the scene or were cautiously watching it, from the safe obscurity of the general crowd, and the situation around the stone-works was completely in the hands of the rioters.

Mr. Romer, having done what he could for the comfort of his manager, who was really more frightened than hurt, turned fiercely upon the aggressors. He commanded the two remaining policemen—the third was helping Lickwit from the scene—to arrest on the spot these turbulent ruffians, who were now engaged in laying level with the ground a tool-shed adjoining the one they had entered. They were striking at the corner-beams of this erection with picks and crow-bars. Others among the crowd, pushing their less courageous neighbours forward, began throwing stones at the policemen, uttering, as they did so, yells and threats and abusive insults.

The mass of the people behind, hearing these yells, and yielding to a steady pressure from the rear, where more and more inquisitive persons kept arriving, began to sway ominously onward, crowding more and more thickly around the open space, where Mr. Romer stood, angrily regarding them.