As they strolled back to breakfast together, across the intervening field, and admired the early dahlias in the station-master’s garden, Luke took the risk of testing his brother on the matter of Mr. Quincunx. He was anxious to be quite certain of his ground here, before he had his interview with the tenant of the Gables.
“I wish,” he remarked casually, “that Maurice Quincunx would show a little spirit and carry Lacrima off straight away.”
James looked closely at him. “If he would,” he said, “I’d give him every penny I possess and I’d work day and night to help them! O Luke — Luke!” he stretched out his arm towards Leo’s Hill and pronounced what seemed like a vow before the Eumenides themselves; “if I could make her happy, if I could only make her happy, I would be buried tomorrow in the deepest of those pits.”
Luke registered his own little resolution in the presence of this appeal to the gods. “Gladys? What is Gladys to me compared with James? All girls are the same. They all get over these things.”
Meanwhile James Andersen was repeating in a low voice to himself the quaint name of his rival.
“He is an ash-root, a tough ash-root,” he muttered. “And that’s the reason he has been chosen. There’s nothing in the world but the roots of trees that can undermine the power of Stone! The trees can do it. The trees will do it. What did that Catholic say? He said it was Wood against Stone. That’s the reason I can’t help her. I have worked too long at Stone. I am too near Stone. That’s the reason Quincunx has been chosen. She and I are under the power of Stone, and we can’t resist it, any more than the earth can! But ash-tree roots can undermine anything. If only she would take my money, if only she would.”
This last aspiration was uttered in a voice loud enough for Luke to hear; and it may be well believed that it fortified him all the more strongly in his dishonourable resolution.
During breakfast James continued to show signs of improvement. He talked of his mother, and though his conversation was sprinkled with somewhat fantastic imagery, on the whole it was rational enough.
While the meal was still in progress, the younger brother observed through the window the figure of a woman, moving oddly backwards and forwards along their garden-hedge, as if anxious at the same time to attract and avoid attention. He recognized her in a moment as the notorious waif of the neighborhood, the somewhat sinister Witch-Bessie. He made an excuse to his brother and slipped out to speak to her.
Witch-Bessie had grown, if possible, still more dehumanized since when two months ago she had cursed Gladys Romer. Her skin was pallid and livid as parchment. The eyes which stared forth from her wrinkled expressionless face were of a dull glaucous blue, like the inside of certain sun-bleached sea-shells. She was dressed in a rough sack-cloth petticoat, out of which protruded her stockingless feet, only half concealed by heavy labourer’s boots, unlaced and in large holes. Over her thin shoulders she wore a ragged woolen shawl which served the office not only of a garment, but also of a wallet; for, in the folds of it, were even now observable certain half-eaten pieces of bread, and bits of ancient cheese, which she had begged in her wanderings. In one of her withered hands she held a large bunch of magenta-coloured, nettle-like flowers, of the particular species known to botanists as marsh-wound-wort. As soon as Luke appeared she thrust these flowers into his arms.
“Gathered ’un for ’ee,” she whispered, in a thin whistling voice, like the soughing of wind in a bed of rushes. “They be capital weeds for them as be moon-smitten. Gathered ’un, up by Seven Ashes, where them girt main roads do cross. Take ’un, mister; take ’un and thank an old woman wot loves both of ’ee, as heretofore she did love your long-sufferin’ mother. I were bidin’ down by Minister’s back gate, expectin’ me bit of oddments, when they did tell I, all sudden-like, as how he’d been taken, same as she was.”
“It’s most kind of you, Bessie,” said Luke graciously. “You and I have always been good friends.”
The old woman nodded. “So we be, mister, and let none say the contrary! I’ve a dangled ’ee, afore-now, in these very arms. Dost mind how ’ee drove that ramping girt dog out of Long-Load Barton when the blarsted thing were for laying hold of I?”
“But what must I do with these?” asked the stone-carver, holding the bunch of pungent scented flowers to his face.
“That’s wot I was just a-going to tell ’ee,” whispered the old woman solemnly. “I suppose he’s in there now, eh? Let ’un be, poor man. Let ’un be. Maybe the Lord’s only waitin’ for these ’ere weeds to mend ’is poor swimey wits. You do as I do tell ’ee, mister, and ’twill be all smoothed out, as clean as church floor. You take these blessed weeds, — ‘viviny-lobs’ my old mother did call ’em — and hang ’em to dry till they be dead and brown. Then doddy a sprinkle o’ good salt on ’em, and dip ’em in clear water. Be you followin’ me, mister Luke?”
The young man nodded.
“Then wot you got to do, is for to strike ’em ’against door-post, and as you strikes ’em, you says, same as I says now.” And Witch-Bessie repeated the following archaic enchantment.
Marshy hollow woundy-wort,
Growing on the holy dirt,
In the Mount of Calvary
There was thou found.
In the name of sweet Jesus
I take thee from the ground.
O Lord, effect the same,
That I do now go about.
Luke listened devoutly to these mysterious words, and repeated them twice, after the old woman. Their two figures, thus concerted in magical tutelage, might, for all the youth’s modern attire, have suggested to a scholarly observer some fantastic heathen scene out of Apuleius. The spacious August sunshine lay splendid upon the fields about them, and light-winged swallows skimmed the surface of the glittering railway-line as though it had been a flowing river.
When she was made assured in her mind that her pupil fully understood the healing incantation, Witch-Bessie shuffled off without further words. Her face, as she resumed her march in the direction of Hullaway, relapsed into such corpse-like rigidity, that, but for her mechanical movement, one might have expected the shameless flocks of starlings who hovered about her, to settle without apprehension upon her head.
The two brothers labored harmoniously side by side in their work-shop all that forenoon. It was Saturday, and their companions were anxious to throw down their tools and clear out of the place on the very stroke of the one o’clock bell.
James and Luke were both engaged upon a new stone font, the former meticulously chipping out its angle-mouldings, and the latter rounding, with chisel and file, the capacious lip of its deep basin. It was a cathedral font, intended for use in a large northern city.
Luke could not resist commenting to his brother, in his half-humorous half-sentimental way, upon the queer fact that they two — their heads full of their own anxieties and troubles — should be thus working upon a sacred font which for countless generations, perhaps as long as Christianity lasted, would be associated with so many strange and mingled feelings of perturbation and hope.
“It’s a comical idea,” he found himself saying, though the allusion was sufficiently unwise, “this idea of Gladys’ baptism.”
He regretted his words the moment they were out of his mouth; but James received them calmly.
“I once heard,” he answered, “I think it was on the sands at Weymouth, two old men discussing quite reverently and gravely whether an infant, baptized before it was born, would be brought under the blessing of the Church. I thought, as I listened to them, how vulgar and gross-minded our age had become, that I should have to tremble with alarm lest any flippant passer-by should hear their curious speculation. It seemed to me a much more important matter to discuss, than the merits of the black-faced Pierrots who were fooling and howling just beyond. This sort of seriousness, in regard to the strange borderland of the Faith, has always seemed to me a sign of pathetic piety, and the very reverse of anything blasphemous.”