Wood and stone; a romance

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Preface

THE following narrative gathers itself round what is, perhaps, one of the most absorbing and difficult problems of our age; the problem namely of getting to the bottom of that world-old struggle between the "well-constituted'* and the "ill-constituted," which the writings of Nietzsche have recently called so startlingly to our attention.

Is there such a thing at all as Nietzsche's bom and trained aristocracy? In other words, is the secret of the universe to be reached only along the lines of Power, Courage, and Pride? Or, — on the contrary, — is the hidden and basic law of things, not Power but Sacrifice, not Pride but Love?

Granting, for the moment, that this latter alternative is the true one, what becomes of the drastic distinction between "well-constituted" and "ill-constituted"?

In a universe whose secret is not self-assertion, but self-abandonment, might not the "well-constituted" be regarded as the vanquished, and the "ill-constituted" as the victors? In other words, who, in such a universe, are the "well-constituted"?

But the difficulty does not end here. Supposing we rule out of our calculation both of these antipodal possibilities, — both the universe whose inner fatality is the striving towards Power, and the universe whose inner fatality is the striving towards Love, — will

PREFACE there not be found to remain two other rational hypotheses, either, namely, that there is no inner fatality about it at all, that the whole thing is a blind, fantastic, chance-drifting chaos; or that the true secret lies in some subtle and difficult reconciliation, between the will to Power and the will to Love?

The present chronicle is an attempt to give an answer, inevitably a very tentative one, to this formidable question; tiie writer, feeling that, as in all these matters, where the etusiveness of human nature plays so prominent a part, there is more hope of approaching the truth, indirectly, and by means of the imaginative mirror of art, than directly, and by means of rational theorising.

The whole question is indeed so intimately associated with the actual panorama of life and the evasive caprices of flesh and blood, that eveiy kind of drastic and clinching formida breaks down under its pressure.

Art, alone, — that mysterious daughter of Life, -

PREFACE ix not be allowed to theae hasty philosophical condu- BonB and spasmodic ethical systems, to block up and dose in, as th^ are so ready to do, the large free horisons of humour and poetry. The magic of the world* mocldng both our gravity and our flippancy, withdraws itsdf from our shrewd rationalisations, only to take refuge all the deeper in our intrinsic and evasive hearts. [

In this story the author has been led to interest himself in the curious labyrinthine subtleties which mark the difference, — a difference to be observed in actual life, quite apart from moral values, — between the type of person who might be regarded as bom to rule, and the type of person who might be regarded as bom to be ruled over. The grand Nietsschean distinction b, in a sense, rejected here upon its own ground, a ground often inconsequently deserted by those who make it their business to condemn it. Such persons are apt to forget that the whole assumption of this distinction lies in a substitution of (Esthetic values, for the values more commonly applied.

The pivotal point of the ensuing narrative might be described as an attempt to suggest, granting such an Aesthetic test, that the hearts of "ill-constituted'* persons, — the hearts of slaves. Pariahs, cowards, outcasts, and other victims of fate, — may be at least as interesting^ in their bizarre convolutions, as the hearts of the bravest and gayest among us. And interest^ after all, is the supreme exigency of the esthetic sense!

In order to thrust back from its free horizons these invasions of its prerogatives by alien powers. Art must prove itself able to evoke the very tang and salt and bitter-sweetness of the actual pell-mell of life — its unfolding spaces, its shell-strewn depths. She must defend herself from those insidious traitors in her own camp who would betray her into the hands of the system -makers, by proving that she can approach nearer to the magic of the world, without a system, than all these are able to do, with all of theirs! She must keep the horizons open — that must be her main concern. She must hold fast to poetry and humour, and about her creations there must he a certain spirit of liberation, and the presence of large tolerant after-thoughts.

The curious thing about so many modern writers is, that in their earnest preoccupation with philosophical and social problems, they grow strained and thin and sententious, losing the mass and volume, as well as the elusive-blown airs, of the flowing tide. On the other band there is an irritating tendency, amonj; some of the cleverest, to recover their lost balance after these dogmatic speculations, by fooUsh

PREFACE xi brings with him an atmosphere of the large mellow leisurely humanists of the past, — of the true classics, in fact, — is Bfr. Thomas Hardy.

It is for this reason, for the reason that with this great genius, life is approached in the old ample ironic way, that the narrator of the following tale has taken the liberty of putting Mr. Hardy's name upon his title-page. In any case mere courtesy and decency called for such a recognition. One could hardly have the audacity to plant one's poor standard in the heart of Wessex without obeisance being paid to the literary over-lord of that suggestive region.

It must be understood, however, that the temerity of the author does not carry him so far as to regard his eccentric story as in any sense an attempted imitation of the Wessex novelist. Mr. Hardy cannot be imitated. The mention of his admirable name at the beginning of this book is no more than a humble salutation addressed to the monarch of that particular country, by a wayward nomad» lighting a bivouac-fire, for a brief moment, in the heart of a land that is not his.

Contents

PAOB

I. Leo's Hill 1

II. Nbvilton 9

CHAPTER I LEas HILL

MIDWAY between Glastonbury and Bridporty at the point where the eastern plains of Somersetshire merge into the western valleys of Dorsetshire, stands a prominent and noticeable hill; a hill resembling the figure of a crouching lion.

East of the hill, nestling at the base of a cone-shaped eminence overgrown with trees and topped by a thin Thyrsus-like tower, lies the village of Ne\41ton.

W^ere it not for the neighbourhood of the more massive promontory this conical protuberance would itself have stood out as an emphatic landmark; but Leo*s Hill detracts from its emphasis, as it detracts from the emphasis of all other deviations from the sea-level, between Yeoborough and the foot of the Quantocks.

It was on the apex of Nevilton Mount that the Holy Rood of W^altham was first found; but with whatever spiritual influence this event may have endowed the gentler summit, it is not to it, but to Leo*s Hill, that the lives and destinies of the people of Ne\nlton have come to gravitate. One might indeed without difficulty conceive of a strange supernatural conflict going on between the consecrated repository of Christian tradition guarding its little flock, and the impious heathen fortress to which day by day that flock is driven, to seek their material sustenance.

Even in Pre-Celtic times those formidably dug trenches and frowning slopes must have looked down on the surrounding valley; and to this day it is the same suggestion of tyrannical military dominance, which, in spite of quarries and cranes and fragrant yellow gorse, gives the place its prevailing character.

The rounded escarpments have for centuries been covered with pleasant turf and browsed upon by sheep; but patient antiquarian research constantly brings to light its coins, torques, urns, arrow-heads, amulets; and rumour hints that yet more precious things lie concealed under those grassy mounds.

The aboriginal tribes have been succeeded by the Celt; the Celt by the Roman; the Roman by the SaKon; without any change in the place's inherent

LEO'S HILL qnritual conflict were still proceeding between the two opposed Mythologies — the one drawing its strength from the impulse to Power, and the other from the impulse to Sacrifice.

A village-dweller in Nevilton might, if he were philosophically disposed, be just as much a percipient of this cosmic struggle, as if he stood between the Palatine and St. Peter's.

Let him linger among the cranes and pulleys of this heathen promontory, and look westward to the shrine of the Holy Grafl, or- eastward to where rested the Holy Rood, and it would be strange if he did not become conscious of the presence of eternal spiritual antagonists, wrestling for the mastery.

He would at any rate be made aware of the fatal force of Inanimate Objects over human destiny.

There would seem to him something positively monstrous and sinister about the manner in which this brute mass of inert sandstone had possessed itself of the lives of the generations. It had come to this at last; that those who owned the Hill owned the dwellers beneath the Hill; and the Hill itself owned them that owned it.

The name by which the thing had come to be known indicated suflSciently well its nature.

Like a couchant desert-lion it overlooked its prey; and would continue to do so, as long as the planet lasted.

Out of its inexhaustible bowels the tawny monster fed the cities of seven countries — cities whose halls, churches, theatres, and markets, mocked the caprices of rain and sun as obdurately as their earth-bound parent herself.

The sandstone of Leo's Hill remains, so architects tell us, the only rival of granite, as a means for the perpetuation of human monuments. Even granite wears less well than this, in respect to the assaults of rain and flood. The solitary mysterious monoliths of Stonehenge, with their unknown, alien origin, alone seem to surpass it in their eternal perdurance.

As far as Nevilton itself is concerned everything in the place owes its persuasive texture to this resistant yet soft material. From the lordly Elizabethan mansion to the humblest pig-stye, they all proceed from the entrails of Leo's Hill; and they all still wear — these motley whelps of the great dumb beast — ita tawny skin, its malleable sturdiness, its enduring consistence.

Who can resist a momentary wonder at the strange mutability of the fate that governs these things? The actual slabs, for example, out of which the high shafts and slender pinnacles of the church-tower were originally hewn, must once have lain in littered heaps for children to scramble upon, and dof;,-; to rub

LEO'S HILL this tyrant of the western vales becomes amberstreaked when it restricts the play of fountains, orange-tinted when it protects herbacious borders, and rich as a petrified sunset when it drinks the evening light from the mellow front of a Cathedral Tower.

Apart from any geological affinity, it might almost seem as though this Leonian stone possessed some weird occult relation to those deep alluvial deposits which render the lanes and fields about Nevilton so thick with heavy earth.

Though closer in its texture to sand than to clay, it is with clay that its local usage is more generally associated, and it is into a clay-bed that it crumbles at last, when the earth retakes her own. Its prevailing colour is rather the colour of clay than of sand, and no material that could be found could lend itself more congruously to the clinging consistence of a clay floor.

It would be impossible to conceive of a temple of marble or Portland stone rising out of the embrace of the thick Nevilton soil. But Leonian sandstone seems no more than a concentrated petrifaction of such soil — its natural evocation, its organic expression. The soil calls out upon it day and night with friendly recognition, and day and night it answers the call. There is thus no escape for the human victims of these two accomplices. In confederate reciprocity the stone receives them from the clay, and the clay receives them from the stone. They pass from homes built irretrievably of the one, into smaller and more permanent houses, dug irretrievably out of the other.

The character of the soil in that comer of Somersetshire is marked, beyond everything else, by the clinging tenacity of its soft, damp, treacherous earth. It is'a. spot loved by the west-wind, and by the rains brought by the west- wind. Overshadowed by the lavish fertility of its abounding foliage, it never seems to experience enough sunshine to draw out of it the eternal presence of this oppressive dampness. The lush pastures may thicken, the rich gardens blossom, the ancient orchards ripen; but an enduring sense of something depressing and deep and treacherous lurks ever in the background of these pleasant things. Not a 6eld but has its overshadowing trees; and not a tree but has its roots loosely buried in that special kind of .soft, heavy earth, which an hour's rain can change into clinging mud.

It is in the Nevilton churchyard, when a new grave is being dug, that this sinister peculiarity of the earth-floor is especially noticeable. The sight of those raw, rough heaps of yellow clay, tossed out upon grass and flowers, is enough to make the living shrink back in terror from the oblong hole into which

LEO'S HELL in any place does the peculiar congruity between the yeUowness of the local clay and the yellowness of the local stone show so luridly as among these patient hillocks.

The tombstones here do not relieve the pressure of fate by appealing, in marble whiteness, away from the anthropophagous earth, to the free clouds of heaven. They are of the earth, and they conspire with the earth. They yearn to the soil, and the soil yearns to them. They weigh down upon the poor relics consigned to their care, in a hideous partnership with the clay that is working its will upon them.

And the rank vegetation of the place assists this treachery. Orange-tinted lichen and rusty-red weather-stains alternate with the encroachments of moss and weeds in reducing each separate protruding slab into conformity with what is about it and beneath it. This churchyard, whose stone and clay so cunningly intermingle, is in an intimate sense the very navel and centre of the village. Above it rises the tall perpendicular tower of St. Catharine's church; and beyond it, on the further side of a strip of pasture a stagnant pond, and a solitary ^camore, stands the farm that is locally named "the Priory." This house, the most imposing of all in the village except the Manor, has as its immediate background the umbrageous conical eminence where the Holy Rood was found. It is a place adapted to modern usage from a noble fragment of monastic ruin. Here, in medieval days, rose a rich Cistercian abbey, to which, doubtless, the pyramidal mount, in the background, oflFered a store of consecrated legends.

North of the churchyard, beyond the main village street with its formal town-like compactness, the ground slopes imperceptibly up, past a few enclosed cottage-orchards, to where, embosomed in gracious trees and Italianated gardens, stands the pride and glory of Ne\-iIton, its stately Elizabethan house.

This house, founded in the reign of Henry VIIJ, synchronized In its foundation with the overthrow of the Cistercian Order, and was constructed entirely of Leonian stone, removed for the purpose of building it from the scene of the Priory's destruction. Twice over, then, in their human history, since they left the entrails of that brooding monster over which the Nevilton people see the sun set each day, had these carved pieces of sandstone contributed to the pride of the rulers of men.

Their first use had not been attended with an altogether propitious destiny. How far their present use will prove of happier omen remains a secret of the adamantine Fates. The imaginary weaving of events, upon which we are just now engaged, may perhaps serve, as certain liturgical formulic of pro-

Chapter II

T TNTIL within some twenty years of the date I J with which we are now concerned* the distinguished family who originally received the monastic estates from the royal despot had held them intact and unassailed. By an evil chance however, the property had extended itself» during the eighteenth century, so as to include the larger portion of Leo*s Hill; and since that day its possession had been attended by misfortune. The ancient aboriginal fortress proved as fatal to its modern invaders as it had proved in remoter times to Roman, Saxon and Norman.

A fanciful imagination might indeed have amused itself with the curious dream, that some weird Druidic curse had been laid upon that grass-grown island of yellow rock, bringing disaster and eclipse to all who meddled with it. Such an imagination would have been able to fortify its fancy by recalling the suggestive fact that at the bottom of the large woodland pond, indicated in this narrative under the name of Auber Lake, was discovered, not many years before, an immense slab of Leonian stone, inscribed with symbols baffling interpretation, but suggesting, to one antiquarian mind at least, a hint of pre-historic Devil- Worship. However this may be, it is certain that the family of Seldom found themselves finally faced with the altcroative of selling the place they loved or of seeing it lapse under their hands into confusion and neglect. Of these evil alternatives they chose the former; and thus the estates, properties, royalties, and appurtenances, of the historic Manor of Nevilton fell into the hands of a clever financier from Lombard Street.

The family of Mr. Mortimer Romer had never at any time bowed its knee in kings' houses. Nor were its religious antecedents marked by orthodox reputation. Mr. Romer was indeed in every sense of the word a "self-made man," But though neither Christian nor Jew, — for his grandfather, the fish-monger of Soho, had been of the Unitarian persuasion — it cannot be denied that he possessed the art of making himself thoroughly respected by both the baptized and the circumcised. He indeed pursued his main purpose, which was the acquiring of power, with an unscrupulousness worthy of a Roman Emperor. Possibly it was this Roman tenacity in him, combined ritb his heathen indifference to current theology.

Hill itadf ; but others, intended for the more delicate Unialting touches. Were situated in a convenient spot dose to Nevilton Station. Out of these sheds and yards, built along the railway-track, arose, from morning to night, the monotonous, not unpleasing, murmur of wheels and saws and grindstones. The contrast between these sounds and the sylvan quietness of the vicarage garden, which sloped down towards them, was one of the most significant indications of the clash of the Two Mythologies in this place. The priest meditating among his roses upon the vanity of all but "" heavenly habitations'' might have been in danger of being too obtrusively reminded of the pride of the houses that are very definitely "made with hands.'' Perhaps this was one of the reasons why the present incumbent of Nevilton had preferred a more undisturbed retreat.

The general manager of Mortimer Romer's quarries was a certain Mr. Lickwit, who served also as his confidential adviser in many other spheres.

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 li WOOD AND STONE

anomalous one. Their father's rcputatioa 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 aud 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 Anderseu, the elder by some ten years, was of a morose, reserved temper, and though a capable workman never seemed happy in the workshop. 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, tali, swarthy, and sinister, suggested rather the image of some gloomy idol carved on the wall of an Assyrian temple. What, qrmpatliies, 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 ci4>rice» the only impulse in his otherwise wellbalanoed 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; aad apparently was allowed lo go od 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 I^est had persuaded Mr. Romer to let him live in the Old Vicarage, a small but cheerful house ju^t 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.

It indicated a good deal of spirit on the part of Vaientia Seldom and her daughter thus to return to the home of their ancestors.

Mrs. Seldom was a cousin of the man who had diowed not the least intention of letting herself be used as a social stepping-stone.

She had, indeed, under her own roof, cause enough for preoccupation and concern.

Her daughter — a little ghost-moth of a girl, of fragile delicacy — seemed entirely devoid of that mysterious magnetic attraction which lures to the aide of most virgins the devotion of the opposite sex. She appeared perfectly content to remain forever in her tender maidenhood, and refused to exert the slightest effort to be ^*nice" to the charming young people her mother threw in her way. She belonged to that class of young girls who seem to be set apart by nature for other purposes than those (rf the propagation of the race.

Her wistful spirit, shrinking into itself like the leaves of a sensitive plant at the least approach of a rough hand, responded only to one passionate impulse, the impulse of religion.

She grew indeed so estranged from the normal world, that it was not only Valentia who concealed the thought that when she left the earth the ancient race of Seldoms would leave it with her.

Nor was it only in regard to her child's religious obsession that the lady suffered. She had flatly refused to let her enter into anything but the coldest relations with ** those dreadful people at the House*'; and it was with a peculiar shock of dismay that she found that the girl was not literally obeying her. It was not, however, to the Romers themselves that Vennie made her shy overtures, but to a luckless little relative of that family now domiciled with them as companion to Gladys Romer.

This young dependent, reputed in the village to be of Italian origin, struck the gentle heart of the last of the Seldoms with indescribable pity. She could not altogether define the impression the girl produced upon her, but it was a singularly oppressive one, aad it vesed and troubled her.

The situation was wretchedly complicated. It was extremely difficult to get a word with the little companion without encountering Gladys; and any approach to intimacy with "the Romer girl" would have meant an impossible scene with Mrs, Seldom. Nor was it a hght undertaking, in such hurried interviews as she did manage to secure, to induce the child to drop her reserve. She would fix her great brown foreign eyes — her name was Lacrima Traffio — on Vennie's face, and make curious little helpless gestures with her hands when questions were asked her; but speak of herself she would not.

It was clear she was absolutely dependent on her cousins. Vennie gathered as much as that, as she mrrival and had established himself in a dilapidated cottage on the outskirts of the Auber woods.

Remotely related to Mrs. Romer» he had in some way become dependent on her husband, whose financial advantage over him was not» it seemed» as time went on» exerted in a very considerate manner.

Maurice Quincunx, for such was his unusual name, was an illegitimate descendant of one of the most historic houses in the neighborhood, but both his poverty and his opinions caused him to live what was practically the life of a hermit, and made him shrink away, even more nervously than little Vennie Seldom, from any intercourse with his equals.

The present possessors of his queer ancient name were now the Lords of Glastonbury, and had probably never so much as heard of Maurice's existence.

He would come by stealth to pay Valentia visits, preferring the evening hours when in the summer she used to sit with her work, on a terrace overlooking a sloping orchard, and watch Vennie water her roses.

The vicarage terrace was a place of extraordinary quiet and peace, eminently adapted to the low-voiced, nervous ramblings of a recluse of Maurice Quincunxes timidity.

The old* lady by degrees quite won this eccentric's heart; and the queerly assorted friends would pace up and down for hours in the cool of the evening talking of things in no way connected either with Mr. Romer or the Church — the two subjects about which Mr. Quincunx held dangerously strong views.

Apart from this quaint outcast and the youthful parson, Mrs. Seldom's only other intimate in the place waa a certain John Francis Taiuta, a gentleman of independent means, living by hini««ilf with an old houaekeeper in a cottage called The Gablesi situated about half-way between the vicarage and the village.

Mr. Tazater was a Catholic and also a philosopher; these two peculiarities affording the solution to what otherwise would have been an insoluble psychic riddle. Even as it was, Mr. Tazater'a mind was cf 80 subtle and complicated an order, that he was at once the attraction and the despair of all the tehgious thinkers of that epoch. For it must be understood that though quietly resident under the shadow of Nevilton Mount, the least essay from Mr. Tazater's pen was eagerly perused by persons interested in religious controversy in all the countries of Europe.

He wrote for philosophical journals in London, Paris, Rome and New York; and there often appeared at The Gables most surprising visitors into^sts were as rich and varied as those of some great humanist of the Italian Renaissance* and his personal habits were as involved and original as his thoughts were complicated and deep.

He was perpetually engaged in converting the philosopher in him to Catholicism* and the Catholic in him to philosophy — yet he never permitted either of these obsessions to interfere with his enjoyment of life.

Luke Andersen* who was perhaps of all the inhabitants of Nevilton most conscious of the drama fdayed around him* used to maintain that it was impossible to tell in the last resort whether Mr. Taxater's place was with the adherents of Christ or with the adherents of Anti-Christ. lake his prototype* the evasive Erasmus* he seemed able to be on both sides at the same time.

Perhaps it was a secret consciousness of the singular position of Nevilton* planted, as it were, between two streams of opposing legend, that originally led Mr. Taxater to take up his abode in so secluded a spot.