John Powys: Wood and Stone

The descendant of the lords of Nevilton meditated for a moment with drooping head, her hands characteristically clasped behind her back. When she lifted up her chin and began to speak, there was the same concentrated light in her eyes and the same imperative tone in her voice.

“The thing for us to do,” she said, speaking hurriedly but firmly, “is to go — all four of us — straight away from here! I’m not going to leave you until things are settled. I’m going to get you all clean out of this, — clean away!”

She paused and looked at Lacrima. “Where’s Mr. Dangelis?” she asked.

Lacrima explained how the artist had written to Gladys that he was staying until the following day at the Gloucester Hotel in Weymouth.

Vennie’s face became radiant when she heard this. “Ah!” she cried, “God is indeed fighting for us! It’s Dangelis that I must see, and see at once. Where better could we all go, — at any rate for tonight — than to Weymouth? We’ll think later what must be done next. Dangelis will help us. I’m perfectly certain he’ll help us.

“Oh yes, we’ll go to Weymouth at once, — before there’s any risk of the Romers stopping us! We’ll walk to Yeoborough — that’ll give us time to think out our plans — and take the train from there.

“I’ll send a telegram to my mother late tonight, when there’s no chance of her communicating with the House. As to being seen in Yeoborough by any Nevilton people, we must risk that! God has been so good to us today that I can’t believe He won’t go on being good to us.

“Oh what a relief it’ll be, — what a relief, — to get away from Nevilton! And I shall be able to dip my hands in the sea!”

While these rapid utterances fell from Vennie’s excited lips, the face of Mr. Quincunx was a wonder to look upon. It was the crisis of his days, and he displayed his knowledge that it was so by more convulsive changes of expression, than perhaps, in an equal stretch of time, had ever crossed the visage of a mortal man.

“We’ll take your advice,” he said, at last, with immense solemnity.

Lacrima looked at him wistfully. Her face was very pale and her lips trembled.

“It isn’t only because of the child, is it, that he’s ready to go?” she murmured, clutching at Vennie’s arm, as Mr. Quincunx retired to make his brief preparations. “I shouldn’t like to think it was only that. But he is fond of me. He is fond of me!”

IT was Mr. Quincunx who had to find the money for their bold adventure. Neither Vennie nor Lacrima could discover a single penny on their persons. Mr. Quincunx produced it from the bottom of an old jam-pot placed in the interior recesses of one of his deepest cupboards. He displayed to his three friends, with not a little pride, the sum he was possessed of, — no less in fact than five golden sovereigns.

Their walk to Yeoborough was full of thrilling little excitements. Three times they concealed themselves on the further side of the hedge, to let certain suspicious pedestrians, who might be Nevilton people, pass by unastonished.

Once well upon their way, they all four felt a strange sense of liberation and expansion. The little Neapolitan walked between Mr. Quincunx and Lacrima, a hand given to each, and her childish high spirits kept them all from any apprehensive brooding.

Once and once only, they looked back, and Mr. Quincunx shook his fist at the two distant hills.

“You are right,” he remarked to Vennie, “it’s the sea we’re in want of. These curst inland fields have the devil in their heavy mould.”

They found themselves, when they reached the town, with an hour to spare before their train started, and entering a little dairy-shop near the station, they refreshed themselves with milk and bread-and-butter. Here Mr. Quincunx and the child waited in excited expectation, while the two girls went out to make some necessary purchases — returning finally, in triumph, with a light wicker-work suitcase, containing all that they required for several days and nights.

They were in the train at last, with a compartment to themselves, and, as far as they could tell, quite undiscovered by anyone who knew them.

Vennie had hardly ever in her life enjoyed anything more than she enjoyed that journey. She felt that the stars were fighting on her side or, to put it in terms of her religion, that God Himself was smoothing the road in front of her.

She experienced a momentary pang when the train, at last, passing along the edge of the backwater, ran in to Weymouth Station. It was so sweet, so strangely sweet, to know that three living souls depended upon her for their happiness, for their escape from the power of the devil! Would she feel like this, would she ever feel quite like this, when the convent-doors shut her away from this exciting world?

They emerged from the crowded station, — Mr. Quincunx carrying the wicker-work suit-case — and made their way towards the Esplanade.

The early afternoon sun lay hot upon the pavements, but from the sea a strong fresh wind was blowing. Both the girls shivered a little in their thin frocks, and as the red shawl of the young Italian had already excited some curiosity among the passers-by, they decided to enter one of the numerous drapery shops, and spend some more of Mr. Quincunx’s money.

They were so long in the shop that the nervous excitement of the recluse was on the point of changing into nervous irritation, when at last they reappeared. But he was reconciled to the delay when he perceived the admirable use they had made of it.

All three were wearing long tweed rain-cloaks of precisely the same tint of sober grey. They looked like three sisters, newly arrived from some neighbouring inland town, — Dorchester, perhaps, or Sherborne, — with a view to spending a pleasant afternoon at the sea-side. Not only were they all wrapped in the same species of cloak. They had purchased three little woollen caps of a similar shade, such things as it would have been difficult to secure in any shop but a little unfashionable one, where summer and winter vogues casually overlapped.

Mr. Quincunx, whose exaltation of mood had not made him forget to bring his own overcoat with him, now put this on, and warmly and comfortably clad, the four fugitives from Nevilton strolled along the Esplanade in the direction of St. John’s church.

To leave his three companions free to run down to the sea’s edge, Mr. Quincunx possessed himself of the clumsy paper parcels containing the hats they had relinquished and also of the little girl’s red shawl, and resting on a seat with these objects piled up by his side he proceeded to light a cigarette and gaze placidly about him. The worst of his plunge into activity being over, — for, whatever happened, the initial effort was bound to be the worst, — the wanderer from Dead Man’s Lane chuckled to himself with bursts of cynical humour as he contemplated the situation they were in.

But what a relief it was to see the clear-shining foam-sprinkled expanse of water lying spread out before him! Like the younger Andersen, Mr. Quincunx had a passionate love of Weymouth, and never had he loved it more than he did at that moment! He greeted the splendid curve of receding cliffs — the White Nore and St. Alban’s head — with a sigh of profound satisfaction, and he looked across to the massive bulk of Portland, as though in its noble uncrumbling stone — stone that was so much nearer to marble than to clay — there lurked some occult talisman ready to save him from everything connected with Leo’s Hill.

Yes, the sea was what he wanted just then! How well the salt taste of it, the smell of its sun-bleached stranded weeds, its wide horizons, its long-drawn murmur, blent with the strange new mood into which that morning’s events had thrown him!