Wood and Stone (43 page)

“It only shows how foolish those critics of the Catholic Church are, who blame her for laying stress upon the temporal side of our great struggle against evil. In this world, as things go, one always strikes sooner or later against the barrier of money. The money-question lies at the bottom of every
subterranean
abuse and every hidden iniquity that we unmask. It’s a wretched thing that it should be so, but we have to accept it; until one of Vennie’s angels”—he added in an under-tone—“descends to help us! Your poor brother began talking just now about the power of stone. I referred him to the Cross of our Lord—which is made of another material!

“But unfortunately in the stress of this actual struggle, you and I, my dear Andersen, find ourselves, as you see, compelled to call in the help, not of wood, but of gold. Gold, and gold alone, can furnish us with the means of undermining these evil powers!”

The texture of Mr. Taxater’s mind was so nicely inter-threaded with the opposite strands of
metaphysical
and Machiavellian wisdom, that this
discourse
, fantastic as it may sound to us, fell from him as naturally as rain from a heavy cloud. Luke
Andersen’s face settled into an expression of hopeless gloom.

“The thing is beyond us, then,” he said. “I
certainly
can’t provide an enormous sum like that. James’ and my savings together only amount to a few hundreds. And if no quixotic person can be discovered to help us, we are bound hand and foot.

“Oh I should like,” he cried, “to make this place ring and ting with our triumph over that damned Romer!”

“
Quis est iste Rex gloriœ?
” muttered the Theologian. “
Dominus fortis et potens; Dominus potens in prœlio.
”

“I shall never dare,” went on the stone-carver, “to get my brother away into a home. The least thought of such a thing would drive him absolutely out of his mind. He’ll have to be left to drift about like this, talking madly to everyone he meets, till something terrible happens to him. God! I could howl with rage, to think how it all might be saved if only that ass Quincunx had a little gall!”

Mr. Taxater tapped the young man’s wrist with his white fingers. “I think we can put gall into him between us,” he said. “I think so, Andersen.”

“You’ve got some idea, sir!” cried Luke, looking at the theologian. “For Heaven’s sake, let’s have it! I am completely at the end of my tether.”

“This American who is engaged to Gladys is
immensely
rich, isn’t he?” enquired Mr. Taxater.

“Rich?” answered Luke. “That’s not the word for it! The fellow could buy the whole of Leo’s Hill and not know the difference.”

Mr. Taxater was silent, fingering the gold cross upon his watch-chain.

“It remains with yourself then,” he remarked at last.

“What!” cried the astonished Luke.

“I happen to be aware,” continued the diplomatist, calmly, “that there is a certain fact which our friend from Ohio would give half his fortune to know. He certainly would very willingly sign the little
document
for it, that would put Mr. Quincunx and Miss Traffio into a position of complete security. It is only a question of ‘the terrain of negotiation,’ as we say in our ecclesiastical circles.”

Luke Andersen’s eyes opened very widely, and the amazement of his surprise made him look more like an astounded faun than ever—a faun that has come bolt upon some incredible triumph of
civilization
.

“I will be quite plain with you, young man,” said the theologian. “It has come to my knowledge that you and Gladys Homer are more than friends; have been more than friends, for a good while past.

“Do not wave your hand in that way! I am not speaking without evidence. I happen to know as a positive fact that this girl is neither more nor less than your mistress. I am also inclined to believe—though of this, of course, I cannot be sure—that, as a result of this intrigue, she is likely, before the autumn is over, to find herself in a position of
considerable
embarrassment. It is no doubt, with a view to covering such embarrassment—you
understand
what I mean, Mr. Andersen?—that she is making preparations to have her marriage performed earlier than was at first intended.”

“God!” cried the astounded youth, losing all
self-possession
,
“how, under the sun, did you get to know this?”

Mr. Taxater smiled. “We poor controversialists,” he said, “have to learn, in self-defence, certain innocent arts of observation. I don’t think that you and your mistress,” he added, “have been so extraordinarily
discreet
, that it needed a miracle to discover your secret.”

Luke Andersen recovered his equanimity with a
vigorous
effort. “Well?” he said, rising from his seat and looking anxiously at his brother, “what then?”

As he uttered these words the young stone-carver’s mind wrestled in grim austerity with the ghastly hint thrown out by his companion. He divined with an icy shock of horror the astounding proposal that this amazing champion of the Faith was about to unfold. He mentally laid hold of this proposal as a man might lay hold upon a red-hot bar of iron. The interior fibres of his being hardened themselves to grasp without shrinking its appalling treachery.

Luke had it in him, below his urbane exterior, to rend and tear away every natural, every human scruple. He had it in him to be able to envisage, with a shamelessness worthy of some lost soul of the Florentine’s Inferno, the fire-scorched walls of such a stark dilemma. The palpable suggestion which now hung, as it were, suspended in the air between them, was a suggestion he was ready to grasp by the throat.

The sight of his brother’s gaunt figure, every line of which he knew and loved so well, turned his conscience to adamant. Sinking into the depths of his soul, as a diver might sink into an ice-cold sea, he felt that there was literally
nothing
he would not do, if his dear Daddy James could be restored to sanity and happiness.

Gladys? He would walk over the bodies of a
hundred
Gladyses, if that way, and that alone, led to his brother’s restoration!

“What then?” he repeated, turning a bleak but resolute face upon Mr. Taxater.

The theologian continued: “Why, it remains for you, or for someone deputed by you, to reveal to our unsuspecting American exactly how his betrothed has betrayed him. I have no doubt that in the
disturbance
this will cause him we shall have no
difficulty
in securing his aid in this other matter. It would be a natural, an inevitable revenge for him to take. Himself a victim of these Romers, what more appropriate, what more suitable, than that he should help us in liberating their other victims? If he is as wealthy as you say, it would be a mere bagatelle for him to set our good Quincunx upon his feet forever, and Lacrima with him! It is the kind of thing it would naturally occur to him to do. It would be a revenge; but a noble revenge. He would leave Nevilton then, feeling that he had left his mark; that he had made himself felt. Americans like to make themselves felt.”

Luke’s countenance, in spite of his interior
acquiescence
, stiffened into a haggard mask of dismay.

“But this is beyond anything one has ever heard of!” he protested, trying in vain to assume an air of levity. “It is beyond everything. Actually to convey, to the very man one’s girl is going to marry, the news of her
seduction
! Actually to ‘coin her for drachmas,’ as it says somewhere! It’s a monstrous thing, an incredible thing!”

“Not a bit more monstrous than your original sin in seducing the girl,” said Mr. Taxater.

“That is the usual trick,” he went on sternly, “of you English people! You snatch at your little
pleasures
, without any scruple, and feel yourselves quite honourable. And then, directly it becomes a question of paying for them, by any form of public
confession
, you become fastidiously scrupulous.”

“But to give one’s girl away, to betray her in this shameless manner oneself! It seems to me the
ultimate
limit of scurvy meanness!”

“It only seems to you so, because the illusion of chivalry enters into it; in other words, because
public
opinion would condemn you! This honourable shielding of the woman we have sinned with, at every kind of cost to others, has been the cause of endless misery. Do you think you are preparing a happy marriage for your Gladys in your ‘honourable’ reticence? By saving her from this union with Mr. Dangelis—whom, by the way, she surely cannot love, if she loves you—you will be doing her the best service possible. Even if she refuses to make you her husband in his place—and I suppose her infatuation would stop at that!—there are other ways, besides marriage, of hiding her embarrassed condition. Let her travel for a year till her trouble is well over!”

Luke Andersen reflected in silence, his drooping figure indicating a striking collapse of his normal urbanity.

At last he spoke. “There may be something in what you suggest,” he remarked slowly. “Obviously,
I
can’t be the one,” he added, after a further pause, “to strike this astounding bargain with the
American
.”

“I don’t see why not,” said the theologian, with a certain maliciousness in his tone, “I don’t see why
not. You have been the one to commit the sin; you ought naturally to be the one to perform the penance.”

The luckless youth distorted his countenance into such a wry grimace, that he caused it to resemble the stone gargoyles which protruded their lewd tongues from the church roof above them.

“It’s a scurvy thing to do, all the same,” he muttered.

“It is only relatively—’ scurvy,’ as you call it,” replied Mr. Taxater. “In an absolute sense, the ‘scurviness’ would be to let your Gladys deceive an honest man and make herself unhappy for life, simply to save you two from any sort of exposure. But as a matter of fact, I am
not
inclined to place this very delicate piece of negotiation in your hands. It would be so fatally easy for you—under the
circumstances
—to make some precipitate blunder that would spoil it all.”

“Don’t think,” he went on, observing the face of his interlocutor relapsing into sudden cheerfulness, “that I let you off this penance because of its unchivalrous character. You break the laws of chivalry quite as
completely
by putting me into the possession of the facts.

“I shall, of course,” he added, “require from you some kind of written statement. The thing must be put upon an unimpeachable ground.”

Luke Andersen’s relief was not materially
modified
by this demand. He began to fumble in his pocket for his cigarette-case.

“The great point to be certain of,” continued Mr. Taxater, “is that Quincunx and Lacrima will accept the situation, when it is thus presented to
them. But I don’t think we need anticipate any difficulty. In case of Dangelis’ saying anything to Mr. Romer, though I do not for a moment imagine he will, it would be well if you and your brother were prepared to move, if need were, to some other scene of action. There is plenty of demand for skilled workmen like yourselves, and you have no ties here.”

The young man made a deprecatory movement with his hands.

“We neither of us should like that, very much, sir. James and I are fonder of Nevilton than you might imagine.”

“Well, well,” responded the theologian, “we can discuss that another time. Such a thing may not be necessary. I am glad to see, my friend,” he added, “that whatever wrong you have done, you are willing to atone for it. So I trust our little plan will work out successfully. Perhaps you will look in, tomorrow night? I shall be at leisure then, and we can make our arrangements. Well, Heaven protect you,
‘a sagitta volante in die, a negotio perambulante in tenebris.
’”

He crossed himself devoutly as he spoke, and giving the young man a friendly wave of the hand, and an encouraging smile, let himself out through the gate and proceeded to follow the patient Vennie.

He overtook his little friend somewhere not far from the lodge of that admirable captain, whose neatly-cut laurel hedge had witnessed, according to the loquacious Mrs. Fringe, the strange encounter between Jimmy Pringle and his Maker. Vennie was straying slowly along by the hedge-side, trailing her hand through the tall dead grasses. Hearing Mr. Taxater’s footsteps, she turned eagerly to meet him.

“Well,” she asked, “what does Luke say about his brother? Is it as bad as we feared?”

“He doesn’t think,” responded the theologian, “any more than I do, that the thing has gone further than common hallucination.”

“And Lacrima—poor little Lacrima!—have you decided what we must do to intervene in her case?”

“I think it may be said,” responded the scholar gravely, “that we have hit upon an effective way of stopping that marriage. But perhaps it would be pleasanter and easier for you to remain at present in ignorance of our precise plan. I know,” he added, smiling, “you do not care for hidden conspiracies.”

Vennie frowned. “I don’t see why,” she said, “there should be anything hidden about it! It seems to me, the thing is so abominable, that one would only have to make it public, to put an end to it completely.

“I hope”—she clasped her hands—“I do hope, you are not fighting the evil one with the weapons of the evil one? If you are, I am sure it will end unhappily. I am sure and certain of it!”

She spoke with a fervour that seemed almost prophetic; and as she did so, she unconsciously waved—with a pathetic little gesture of protest—the bunch of dead grasses which she held in her hand.

Mr. Taxater walked gravely by her side; his
profile
, in its imperturbable immobility, resembling the mask of some great mediæval ecclesiastic. The only reply he made to her appeal was to quote the famous Psalmodic invocation: “
Nisi Dominus
œ
dificaverit
domum
, in vanum laboraverunt qui œdificant eam
.
”