John Powys: Wood and Stone

Everything in this little parlour pleased her. The blue vases on the mantelpiece containing dusty “everlasting flowers,” the plush-framed portraits of the landlady’s deceased parents, enlarged to a magnitude of shadowy dignity by some old-fashioned photographic process, the quaint row of minute china elephants that stood on a little bracket in the corner, the glaring antimacassar thrown across the back of the armchair, the sea-scents and sea-murmurs floating in through the window, the melodious crying of a fish-pedler in the street; all these things thrilled her with a sense of freedom and escape, which over-brimmed her heart with happiness.

What matter, after all, she thought, that her little compatriot with the wonderful eyes had been the means of arousing her friend from his inertia! Her long acquaintance with Mr. Quincunx had mellowed her affection for him into a tenderness that was almost maternal. She could even find it in her to be glad that she was to be saved from the burden of struggling alone with his fits of melancholia. With Dolores to keep him amused, and herself to look after his material wants, it seemed probable that, whatever happened, the dear man would be happier than he had ever dreamed of being!

The uncertainty of their future weighed upon her very little. She had the true Pariah tendency to lie back with arms outstretched upon the great tide, and let it carry her whither it pleased. She had done this so long, while the tide was dark and evil, that to do it where the waters gleamed and shone was a voluptuous delight.

While her protégées were thus enjoying themselves Vennie sought out and entered, with a resolute bearing, the ancient Gloucester Hotel. The place had recently been refitted according to modern notions of comfort, but in its general lines, and in a certain air it had of liberal welcoming, it preserved the Georgian touch.

She was already within the hall-way when, led by an indefinable impulse to look back, she caught sight of Dangelis himself walking rapidly along the Esplanade towards the very quarter from which she had just come. Without a moment’s hesitation she ran down the steps, crossed the road and followed him.

The American seemed to be inspired by some mania for fast walking that afternoon. Vennie was quite breathless before she succeeded in approaching him, and she did not manage to do this until they were both very nearly opposite Brunswick Terrace.

Just here she was unwilling to make herself known, as her friends might at any moment emerge from their lodging. She preferred to follow the long strides of the artist still further, till, in fact he had led her, hot and exhausted in her new cloak, quite beyond the limits of the houses.

Where the town ceases, on this eastern side, a long white dusty road leads across a mile or two of level ground before the noble curve of cliffs ending in St. Alban’s Head has its beginning. This road is bounded on one hand by a high bank of shingle and on the other by a wide expanse of salt-marshes known in that district under the name of Lodmoor. It was not until the American had emerged upon this solitary road that his pursuer saw fit to bring him to a halt.

“Mr. Dangelis!” she called out, “Mr. Dangelis!”

He swung round in astonishment at hearing his name. For the first moment he did not recognize Vennie. Her newly purchased attire, — not to speak of her unnaturally flushed cheeks, — had materially altered her appearance. When she held out her hand, however, and stopped to take breath, he realized who she was.

“Oh Mr. Dangelis,” she gasped, “I’ve been following you all the way from the Hotel. I so want to talk to you. You must listen to me. It’s very, very important!”

He held his hat in his hand, and regarded her with smiling amazement.

“Well, Miss Seldom, you are an astonishing person. Is you mother here? Are you staying at Weymouth? How did you catch sight of me? Certainly — by all means — tell me your news! I long to hear this thing that’s so important.”

He made as if he would return with her to the town, but she laid her hand on his arm.

“No — no! let’s walk on quietly here. I can talk to you better here.”

The roadway, however, proved so disconcerting, owing to great gusts of wind which kept driving the sand and dust along its surface, that before Vennie had summoned up courage to begin her story, they found it necessary to debouch to their left and enter the marshy flats of Lodmoor. They took their way along the edge of a broad ditch, whose black peat-bottomed waters were overhung by clumps of “Michaelmas daisies” and sprinkled with weird glaucous-leafed plants. It was a place of a singular character, owing to the close encounter in it of land and sea, and it seemed to draw the appeal of its strange desolation almost equally from both these sources.

Vennie, on the verge of speaking, found her senses in a state of morbid alertness. Everything she felt and saw at that moment lodged itself with poignant sharpness in her brain and returned to her mind long afterwards. So extreme was her nervous tension that she found it difficult to disentangle her thoughts from all these outward impressions.

The splash of a water-rat became an episode in her suspended revelation. The bubbles rising from the movements of an eel in the mud got mixed with the image of Mrs. Wotnot picking laurel-leaves. The flight of a sea-gull above their heads was a projection of Dangelis’ escape from the spells of his false mistress. The wind shaking the reeds was the breath of her fatal news ruffling the man’s smiling attention. The wail of the startled plovers was the cry of her own heart, calling upon all the spirits of truth and justice, to make him believe her words.

She told him at last, — told him everything, walking slowly by his side with her eyes cast down and her hands clasped tight behind her.

When she had finished, there was an immense intolerable silence, and slowly, very slowly, she permitted her glance to rise to her companion’s face, to grasp the effect of her narration upon him.

How rare it is that these world-shaking revelations produce the impression one has anticipated! To Vennie’s complete amazement, — and even, it must be allowed, a little to her dismay, — Dangelis regarded her with a frank untroubled smile.

“You, — I—” she stammered, and stopped abruptly. Then, before he could answer her, “I didn’t know you knew all this. Did you really know it, — and not mind? Don’t people mind these things in — in other countries?”

Dangelis spoke at last. “Oh, yes of course, we mind as much as any of you; that is to say, if we do mind, — but you must remember, Miss Seldom, there are circumstances, situations, — there are, in fact feelings, — which make these things sometimes rather a relief than otherwise!”

He threw up his stick in the air, as he spoke, and caught it as it descended.

“Pardon me, one moment, I want — I want to see if I can jump this ditch.”

He threw both stick and hat on the ground, and to Vennie’s complete amazement, stepped back a pace or two, and running desperately to the brink of the stream cleared it with a bound. He repeated this manœuvre from the further bank, and returned, breathing hard and fast, to the girl’s side.

Picking up his hat and stick, he uttered a wild series of barbaric howls, such howls as Vennie had never, in her life, heard issuing from the mouth of man or beast. Had Gladys’ treachery turned his brain?

But no madman could possibly have smiled the friendly boyish smile with which he greeted her when this performance was over.

“So sorry if I scared you,” he said. “Do you know what that is? It’s our college ‘yell.’ It’s what we do at base-ball games.”