Wood and Stone: A Romance

by John Cowper Powys

Such imaginary appeals, so fantastic in the utterance, were indeed, as that large August-moon rose night by night upon the stubble-fields, far too remote from Nevilton’s common routine to enter the heads of any of that simple flock. The morning mists that diffused themselves, like filmy dream-figures, over the watchful promontory of Leo’s Hill, were as capable as any of these villagers of crying aloud that wrong was being done.

The loneliness in the midst of which Lacrima moved on her way—groping, as her enemy had taunted her with doing, so helplessly with her wistful hands—was a loneliness so absolute that it sometimes seemed to her as if she were already literally dead and buried. Now and then, with a pallid phosphorescent glimmer like the gleam of a corpse-light, the mortal dissolution of all the ties that bound her to earthly interests, itself threw a fitful illumination over her consciousness.

But Mr. Romer had over-reached himself in his main purpose. The moral disintegration which he looked for, and which the cynical apathy of Mr. Quincunx encouraged, had, by extending itself to every nerve of her spirit, rounded itself off, as it were, full circle, and left her in a mental state rather beyond both good and evil, than delivered up to the latter as opposed to the former. The infernal power might be said to have triumphed; but it could scarcely be said to have triumphed over a living soul. It had rather driven her soul far off, far away from all these contests, into some mysterious translunar region, where all these distinctions lapsed and merged.

Leo’s Hill itself had never crouched in more taciturn intentness than it did under that sweltering August sunshine, which seemed to desire, in the gradual scorching of the green slopes, to reduce even the outward skin of the monster to an approximate conformity with its tawny entrails.

Mr. Taxater’s departure from the scene at this juncture was not only, little as she knew it, a loss of support to Lacrima, it was also a very serious blow to Vennie Seldom.

The priest in Yeoborough, who at her repeated request had already begun to give her surreptitious lessons in the Faith, was not in any sense fitted to be a young neophyte’s spiritual adviser. He was fat. He was gross. He was lethargic. He was indifferent. He also absolutely refused to receive her into the Church without her mother’s sanction. This refusal was especially troublesome to Vennie. She knew enough of her mother to know that while it was her nature to resist blindly and obstinately any deviation from her will, when once a revolt was an established fact she would resign herself to it with a surprising equanimity. To ask Valentia for permission to be received into the Church would mean a most violent and distressing scene. To announce to her that she had been so received, would mean nothing but melancholy and weary acquiescence.

She felt deeply hurt at Mr. Taxater’s desertion of her at this moment of all moments. It was incredible that it was really necessary for him to be so long in town. As a rule he never left the Gables during the month of August. His conduct puzzled and troubled her. Did he care nothing whether she became a Catholic or not? Were his lessons mere casual by-play, to fill up his spare hours in an interesting and pleasant diversion? Was he really the faithful friend he called himself? Not only had he absented himself, but he had done so without sending her a single word.

As a matter of fact it was extremely rare for Mr. Taxater to write a letter, even to his nearest friends, except under the stress of theological controversy. But Vennie knew nothing of this. She simply felt hurt and injured; as though the one human being, upon whom she had reposed her trust, had deserted and betrayed her. He had spoken so tenderly, so affectionately to her, too, during their last walk together, before the unfortunate encounter with James Andersen in the Athelston porch!

It is true that his attitude over that matter of Andersen’s insanity, and also in the affair of Lacrima’s marriage, had a little shocked and disconcerted her. He had bluntly refused to take her into his confidence, and she felt instinctively that the conversation with Luke, from which she had been so curtly dismissed, was of a kind that would have hurt and surprised her.