John Powys: Wood and Stone

“I wonder if it’s possible that there’s any truth in that strange idea of Vennie’s that Leo’s Hill has a definite evil power over this place? Upon my soul I’m almost inclined to wish it has! God, how it does rain!”

He looked at his watch. “I shall have to go down to the station in a minute,” he remarked.

One curious feature of this conversation between the two men was that there began to grow up a deep and vague irritation in Mr. Taxater’s mind against his companion. Luke’s tone when he alluded to that picture-card—“a comic one”—struck him as touching a depth of cynical inhumanity.

The theologian could not help thinking of that gorgeous-coloured image of the wayward girl, represented as Ariadne, which now hung in the entrance-hall of her father’s house. He recalled the magnificent pose of the figure, and its look of dreamy exultation. Somehow, the idea of this splendid heathen creature being the wife of Clavering struck his mind as a revolting incongruity. For such a superb being to be now stretching out hopeless arms towards her Nevilton lover, — an appeal only answered by comic post-cards, — seemed to him a far bitterer commentary upon the perversity of the world than that disappearance of Vennie into a convent which so shocked Luke.

He extended his legs and fumbled with the gold cross upon his watch-chain. He seemed so clearly to visualize the sort of look which must now be settling down on that pseudo-priest’s ascetic face. He gave way to an immoral wish that Clavering might take to drink. He felt as though he would sooner have seen Gladys fallen to the streets than thus made the companion of a monkish apostate.

He wondered how on earth it had been managed that Mr. Romer had remained ignorant of the cause of Dangelis’ flight and the girl’s precipitate marriage. It was inconceivable that he should be aware of these things and yet retain this imperturbable young man in his employment. How craftily Gladys must have carried the matter through! Well, — she was no doubt paying the penalty of her double-dyed deceptions now. The theologian experienced a sick disgust with the whole business.

The rain increased in violence. It seemed as though the room where they sat was isolated from the whole world by a flood of down-pouring waves. The gods of the immense Spaces were weeping, and man, in his petty preoccupation, could only mutter and stare.

Luke rose to his feet. “To Homer and his Stone-Works,” he cried, emptying his glass at one gulp down his throat, “and may he make me their Manager!”

Mr. Taxater also rose. “To the tears that wash away all these things,” he said, “and the Necessity that was before them and will be after them.”

They went out of the house together, and the silence that fell between them was like the silence at the bottom of deep waters.

THE END

John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) was born in Derbyshire, brought up in the West Country (the Somerset — Dorset border area was to have a lasting influence on him), went to Cambridge University and then became a teacher and lecturer mainly in the USA where he lived for about thirty years. On returning to the UK, after a short spell in Dorset, he settled in Wales in 1935 where he lived for the rest of his long life. In addition to his Autobiography his masterpieces are considered to be Wolf Solent, Glastonbury Romance, Weymouth Sands and Porius . But his lesser, or less well-known, works shouldn’t be overlooked, they spring from the same weird, mystical, brilliant and obsessive imagination.