John Powys: Wood and Stone

“I am rather anxious to get on with my walk,” threw in Vennie, looking from one to another with some embarrassment, “and I really don’t care very much about hearing things of this kind.”

“Tell ’er! Tell ’er! Tell ’er!” cried Mrs. Wotnot.

Mrs. Fringe cast a contemptuous look at her rival house-keeper.

“Our friend baint quite her own self today, miss,” she remarked with a wink at Vennie, “the weather or summat’ ’ave moved ’er rheumatiz from ’er legs, and settled it in ’er stummick.”

“Tell her! Tell her!” reiterated the other.

Mrs. Fringe lowered her voice to a pregnant whisper.

“The truth be, miss, that our friend here heered these wicked young things talk quite open-like about their gay goings on. So plain did they talk, that all wot the Blessed Lord ’is own self do know, of such as most folks keeps to ’emselves, went burnin’ and shamin’ into our friend’s ’stonished ears. And wot she did gather was that Miss Gladys, for certin’ and sure, be a lost girl, and Mr. Luke ’as ’ad ’is bit of fun down to the uttermost drop.”

The extraordinary solemnity with which Mrs. Fringe uttered these words and the equally extraordinary solemnity with which Mrs. Wotnot nodded her head in corroboration of their truth had a devastating effect upon Vennie. There was no earthly reason why these two females should have invented this squalid story. Mrs. Fringe was an incurable scandal-monger, but Vennie had never found her a liar. Besides there was a genuine note of shocked sincerity about her tone which no mere morbid suspicion could have evoked.

The thing was true then! Gladys and Luke were lovers, in the most extreme sense of that word, and Dangelis was the victim of an outrageous betrayal.

Vennie had sufficient presence of mind to avoid the eyes of both the women, eyes fixed with ghoulish and lickerish interest upon her, as they watched for the effect of this revelation, — but she was uncomfortably conscious that her cheeks were flaming and her voice strained as she bade them good-bye. Comment, of any kind, upon what they had revealed to her she found absolutely impossible. She could only wish them a pleasant time at the circus if they were returning thither, and freedom from any ill effects due to their accompanying her so far.

When she was alone, and beginning to climb the ascent of Dead Man’s Lane, the full implication of what she had learnt thrust itself through her brain like a red-hot wedge. Vennie’s experience of the treacherousness of the world had, as we know, gone little deeper than her reaction from the rough discourtesy of Mr. Clavering and the evasive aloofness of Mr. Taxater. This sudden revelation into the brutishness and squalour inherent in our planetary system had the effect upon her of an access of physical nausea. She felt dizzy and sick, as she toiled up the hill, between the wet sun-pierced hedges, and under the heavy September trees.

The feeling of autumn in the air, so pleasant under normal conditions to human senses, seemed to associate itself just now with this dreadful glance she had had into the basic terrors of things. The whole atmosphere about her seemed to smell of decay, of decomposition, of festering mortality. The pull and draw of the thick Nevilton soil, its horrible demonic gravitation, had never got hold of her more tenaciously than it did then. She felt as though some vast octopus-like tentacles were dragging her earthward.

Vennie was one of those rare women for whom, even under ordinary conditions, the idea of sex is distasteful and repulsive. Presented to her as it was now, mingled with treachery and deception, it obsessed her with an almost living presence. Sensuality had always been for her the one unpardonable sin, and sensuality of this kind, turning the power of sex into a mere motive for squalid pleasure-seeking, filled her with a shuddering disgust.

So this was what men and women were like! This was the kind of thing that went on, under the “covert and convenient seeming” of affable lies!

The whole of nature seemed to have become, in one moment, foul and miasmic. Rank vapours rose from the ground at her feet, and the weeds in the hedge took odious and indecent shapes.

An immense wave of distrust swept over her for everyone that she knew. Was Mr. Clavering himself like this?

This thought, — the thought of what, for all she could tell, might exist between her priest-friend and this harlot-girl, — flushed her cheeks with a new emotion. Mixed at that moment with her virginal horror of the whole squalid business, was a pang of quite a different character, a pang that approached, if it did not reach, the sharp sting of sheer physical jealousy.

As soon as she became aware of this feeling in herself it sickened her with a deeper loathing. Was she also contaminated, like the rest? Was no living human being free from this taint?

She stopped and passed her hand across her forehead: She took off her hat and made a movement with her arms as if thrusting away some invisible assailant. She felt she could not encounter even Mr. Quincunx in this obsessed condition. She had the sensation of being infected by some kind of odious leprosy.

She sat down in the hedge, heedless of the still clinging dew. Strange and desperate thoughts whirled through her brain. She longed to purge herself in some way, to bathe deep, deep, — body and soul, — in some cleansing stream.

But what about Gladys’ betrothed? What about the American? Vennie had scarcely spoken to Dangelis, hardly ever seen him, but she felt a wave of sympathy for the betrayed artist surge through her heart. It could not be allowed, — it could not, — that those two false intriguers should fool this innocent gentleman!

Struck by a sudden illumination as if from the unveiled future, she saw herself going straight to Dangelis and revealing the whole story. He should at least be made aware of the real nature of the girl he was marrying!

Having resolved upon this bold step, Vennie recovered something of her natural mood. Where was Mr. Dangelis at this moment? She must find that out, — perhaps Mr. Quincunx would know. She must make a struggle to waylay the artist, to get an interview with him alone.

She rose to her feet, and holding her hat in her hand, advanced resolutely up the lane. She felt happier now, relieved, in a measure, of that odious sense of confederacy with gross sin which had weighed her down. But there still beat vaguely in her brain a passionate longing for purification. If only she could escape, even for a few hours, from this lust-burdened spot! If only she could cool her forehead in the sea!

As she approached Mr. Quincunx’s cottage she experienced a calm and restorative reaction from her distress of mind. She felt no longer alone in the world. Having resolved on a drastic stroke on behalf of clear issues, she was strangely conscious, as she had not been conscious for many months, of the presence, near her and with her, of the Redeemer of men.

It suddenly was borne in upon her that that other criminal abuse, which had so long oppressed her soul with a dead burden, — the affair of Lacrima and Goring, — was intimately associated with what she had discovered. It was more than likely that by exposing the one she could prevent the other.

Flushed with excitement at this thought she opened Mr. Quincunx’s gate and walked up his garden-path. To her amazement, she heard voices in the cottage and not only voices, but voices speaking in a language that vaguely reminded her of the little Catholic services in the chapel at Yeoborough.

Mr. Quincunx himself answered her knock and opened the door. He was strangely agitated. The hand which he extended to her shook as it touched her fingers.

But Vennie herself was too astonished at the sight which met her eyes to notice anything of this. Seated opposite one another, on either side of the solitary’s kitchen-fire, were Lacrima and the little Dolores. Vennie had interrupted a lively and impassioned colloquy between the two Italians.