John Powys: Wood and Stone

“Higher!” cried Old Flick in an excited voice, beating the air with his hand and humming a strange snatch of a tune that might have inspired the dances of Polynesian cannibals. “Higher, I tell ’ee.”

The girl felt compelled to obey; and putting one hand on her hip and lifting up her skirt with the other, she proceeded, shyly and in forlorn silence, to dance an old Neapolitan folk-dance, such as might be witnessed, on any summer evening, by the shores of Amalfi or Sorrento.

It was at this moment that Mr. Quincunx made his appearance against the sky-line above them. He looked for one brief second at the girl’s bare arms, waving curls, and light-swinging body, and then leapt down between them.

All nervousness, all timidity, seemed to have fallen away from him like a snake’s winter-skin under the spring sun. He seized the child’s hand with an air of indescribable gentleness and authority, and made so menacing and threatening a gesture that Old Flick, staggering backwards, nearly fell to the ground.

“Whose child is this?” he demanded sternly, soothing the frightened little dancer with one hand, while with the other he shook his cane in the direction of the gasping and protesting old man.

“Whose child is this? You’ve stolen her, you old rascal! You’re no Italian, — anyone can see that! You’re a damned old tramp, and if you weren’t so old and ugly I’d beat you to death; do you hear? — to death, you villain! Whose child is she? Can’t you speak? Take care; I’m badly tempted to make you taste this, — to make you skip and dance a little!

“What do you say? Job Love’s circus? Well, — he’s not an Italian either, is he? So if you haven’t stolen her, he has.”

He turned to the child, stooping over her with infinite tenderness, and folding the shawl of which she had again possessed herself, with hands as gentle as a mother’s, about her shoulders and head.

“Where are your parents, my darling?” he asked, adding with a flash of amazing presence of mind, — “your ‘padre’ and ‘madre’?”

The girl seemed to get the drift of the question, and with a pitiful little smile pointed earth-ward, and made a sweeping gesture with both her hands, as if to indicate the passing of death’s wings.

“Dead? — both dead, eh?” muttered Mr. Quincunx. “And these rascals who’ve got hold of you are villains and rogues? Damned rogues! Damned villains!”

He paused and muttered to himself. “What the devil’s the Italian for a god-forsaken rascal? — ‘Cattivo!’ ‘Tutto cattivo!’—the whole lot of them a set of confounded scamps!”

The child nodded her head vigorously.

“You see,” he cried, turning to Old Flick, “she disowns you all. This is clearly a most knavish piece of work! What were you doing to the child? eh? eh? eh?” Mr. Quincunx accompanied these final syllables with renewed flourishes of his stick in the air.

Old Flick retreated still further away, his legs shaking under him. “Here, — you can clear out of this! Do you understand? You can clear out of this; and go back to your damned master, and tell him I’m going to send the police after him!

“As for this girl, I’m going to take her home with me. So off you go, — you old reprobate; and thankful you may be that I haven’t broken every bone in your body! I’ve a great mind to do it now. Upon my soul I’ve a great mind to do it!

“Shall I beat him into a jelly for you, — my darling? Shall I make him skip and dance for you?”

The child seemed to understand his gestures, if not his words; for she clung passionately to his hands, and pressing them to her lips, covered them with kisses; shaking her head at the same time, as much as to say, “Old Flick is nothing. Let Old Flick go to the devil, as long as I can stay with you!” In some such manner as this, at any rate, Mr. Quincunx interpreted her words.

“Sheer off, then, you old scoundrel! Shog off back to your confounded circus! And when you’ve got there, tell your friends, — Job Love and his gang, — that if they want this little one they’d better come and fetch her!

“Dead Man’s Lane, — that’s where I live. It’s easily enough found; and so is the police-station in Yeoborough, — as you and your damned kidnappers shall discover before you’ve done with me!”

Uttering these words in a voice so menacing that the old man shook like an aspen-leaf, Mr. Quincunx took the girl by the hand, and, ascending the grassy slope, walked off with her across the field.

Old Flick seemed reduced to a condition bordering upon imbecility. He staggered up out of that unpropitious hollow, and stood stock-still, like one petrified, until they were out of sight. Then, very slowly and mumbling incoherently to himself, he made his way back towards the village.

He did not even turn his head as he passed Mr. Quincunx’s cottage. Indeed, it is extremely doubtful how far he had recognized him as the person they encountered on their way, and still more doubtful how far he had heard or understood, when the tenant of Dead Man’s Lane indicated the place of his abode.

The sudden transformation of the timid recluse into a formidable man of action did not end with his triumphant retirement to his familiar domain. Some mysterious fibre in his complicated temperament had been struck, and continued to be struck, by the little Dolores, which not only rendered him indifferent to personal danger, but willing and happy to encounter it.

The event only added one more proof to the sage dictum of the Chinese philosopher, — that you can never tell of what a man is capable until he is stone-dead.

DURING the hours when Mr. Quincunx was undergoing this strange experience, several other human brains under the roofs of Nevilton were feeling the pressure of extreme perturbation.

Gladys, after a gloomy breakfast, which was rendered more uncomfortable, not only by her father’s chaffing references to the approaching ceremony, but by a letter from Dangelis, had escaped to her room to be assisted by Lacrima in dressing for the confirmation.

In his letter the artist declared his intention of spending that night at the Gloucester Hotel in Weymouth, and begged his betrothed to forgive this delay in his return to her side.

This communication caused Gladys many tremors of disquietude. Could it be possible that the American had found out something and that he had gone to Weymouth to meditate at leisure upon his course of action?

In any case this intimation of a delay in his return irritated the girl. It struck her in her tenderest spot. It was a direct flouting of her magnetic power. It was an insult to her sex-vanity.

She had seen nothing of Luke since their Sunday’s excursion; and as Lacrima, with cold submissive fingers, helped her to arrange her white dress and virginal veil, she could hear the sound of the bell tolling for James Andersen’s funeral.

Mingled curiously enough with this melancholy vibration falling at protracted intervals upon the air, like the stroke of some reiterated hammer of doom, came another sound, a sound of a completely opposite character, — the preluding strains, namely, of the steam roundabouts of Porter’s Universal Show.

It was as though on one side of the village the angel of death were striking an iron-threatening gong, while, on the other side, the demons of life were howling a brazen defiance.

The association of the two sounds as they reached her at this critical hour brought the figure of Luke vividly and obsessingly into her mind. How well she knew the sort of comment he would make upon the bizarre combination! Beneath the muslin frills of her virginal dress, — a dress that made her look fairer and younger than usual, — her heart ached with sick longing for her evasive lover.