In this story the author has been led to interest himself in the curious labyrinthine subtleties which mark the difference,—a difference to be observed in actual life, quite apart from moral values,—between the type of person who might be regarded as born to rule, and the type of person who might be regarded as born to be ruled over. The grand Nietzschean distinction is, in a sense, rejected here upon its own ground, a ground often inconsequently deserted by those who make it their business to condemn it. Such persons are apt to forget that the whole assumption of this distinction lies in a substitution of æsthetic values, for the values more commonly applied.
The pivotal point of the ensuing narrative might be described as an attempt to suggest, granting such an æsthetic test, that the hearts of “ill-constituted” persons,—the hearts of slaves, Pariahs, cowards, outcasts, and other victims of fate,—may be at least as interesting, in their bizarre convolutions, as the hearts of the bravest and gayest among us. And interest, after all, is the supreme exigency of the æsthetic sense!
In order to thrust back from its free horizons these invasions of its prerogatives by alien powers, Art must prove itself able to evoke the very tang and salt and bitter-sweetness of the actual pell-mell of life—its unfolding spaces, its shell-strewn depths. She must defend herself from those insidious traitors in her own camp who would betray her into the hands of the system-makers, by proving that she can approach nearer to the magic of the world, without a system, than all these are able to do, with all of theirs! She must keep the horizons open—that must be her main concern. She must hold fast to poetry and humour, and about her creations there must be a certain spirit of liberation, and the presence of large tolerant after-thoughts.
The curious thing about so many modern writers is, that in their earnest preoccupation with philosophical and social problems, they grow strained and thin and sententious, losing the mass and volume, as well as the elusive-blown airs, of the flowing tide. On the other hand there is an irritating tendency, among some of the cleverest, to recover their lost balance after these dogmatic speculations, by foolish indulgence in sheer burlesque—burlesque which is the antithesis of all true humour.
Heaven help us! It is easy enough to criticize the lath and plaster which, in so many books, takes the place of flesh and blood. It is less easy to catch, for oneself, the breath of the ineffable spirit!
Perhaps the deplorable thinness and sententiousness, to which reference has been made, may be due to the fact that in the excitement of modern controversy, our enterprising writers have no time to read. It is a strange thing, but one really feels as though, among all modern English authors, the only one who brings with him an atmosphere of the large mellow leisurely humanists of the past,—of the true classics, in fact,—is Mr. Thomas Hardy.
It is for this reason, for the reason that with this great genius, life is approached in the old ample ironic way, that the narrator of the following tale has taken the liberty of putting Mr. Hardy’s name upon his title-page. In any case mere courtesy and decency called for such a recognition. One could hardly have the audacity to plant one’s poor standard in the heart of Wessex without obeisance being paid to the literary over-lord of that suggestive region.
It must be understood, however, that the temerity of the author does not carry him so far as to regard his eccentric story as in any sense an attempted imitation of the Wessex novelist. Mr. Hardy cannot be imitated. The mention of his admirable name at the beginning of this book is no more than a humble salutation addressed to the monarch of that particular country, by a wayward nomad, lighting a bivouac-fire, for a brief moment, in the heart of a land that is not his.
WOOD AND STONE
CHAPTER I
LEO’S HILL
Midway between Glastonbury and Bridport, at the point where the eastern plains of Somersetshire merge into the western valleys of Dorsetshire, stands a prominent and noticeable hill; a hill resembling the figure of a crouching lion.
East of the hill, nestling at the base of a cone-shaped eminence overgrown with trees and topped by a thin Thyrsus-like tower, lies the village of Nevilton.
Were it not for the neighbourhood of the more massive promontory this conical protuberance would itself have stood out as an emphatic landmark; but Leo’s Hill detracts from its emphasis, as it detracts from the emphasis of all other deviations from the sea-level, between Yeoborough and the foot of the Quantocks.
It was on the apex of Nevilton Mount that the Holy Rood of Waltham was first found; but with whatever spiritual influence this event may have endowed the gentler summit, it is not to it, but to Leo’s Hill, that the lives and destinies of the people of Nevilton have come to gravitate. One might indeed without difficulty conceive of a strange supernatural conflict going on between the consecrated repository of Christian tradition guarding its little flock, and the impious heathen fortress to which day by day that flock is driven, to seek their material sustenance.
Even in Pre-Celtic times those formidably dug trenches and frowning slopes must have looked down on the surrounding valley; and to this day it is the same suggestion of tyrannical military dominance, which, in spite of quarries and cranes and fragrant yellow gorse, gives the place its prevailing character.
The rounded escarpments have for centuries been covered with pleasant turf and browsed upon by sheep; but patient antiquarian research constantly brings to light its coins, torques, urns, arrow-heads, amulets; and rumour hints that yet more precious things lie concealed under those grassy mounds.
The aboriginal tribes have been succeeded by the Celt; the Celt by the Roman; the Roman by the Saxon; without any change in the place’s inherent character, and without any lessening of its tyranny over the surrounding country. For though Leo’s Hill dominates no longer by means of its external strength, it dominates, quite as completely, by means of its interior riches.
It is, in fact, a huge rock-island, washed by the leafy waves of the encircling valleys, and containing, as its hid treasure, stone enough to rebuild Babylon.
In that particular corner of the West Country, so distinct and deep-rooted are the legendary survivals, it is hard not to feel as though some vast spiritual conflict were still proceeding between the two opposed Mythologies—the one drawing its strength from the impulse to Power, and the other from the impulse to Sacrifice.
A village-dweller in Nevilton might, if he were philosophically disposed, be just as much a percipient of this cosmic struggle, as if he stood between the Palatine and St. Peter’s.
Let him linger among the cranes and pulleys of this heathen promontory, and look westward to the shrine of the Holy Grail, or eastward to where rested the Holy Rood, and it would be strange if he did not become conscious of the presence of eternal spiritual antagonists, wrestling for the mastery.
He would at any rate be made aware of the fatal force of Inanimate Objects over human destiny.
There would seem to him something positively monstrous and sinister about the manner in which this brute mass of inert sandstone had possessed itself of the lives of the generations. It had come to this at last; that those who owned the Hill owned the dwellers beneath the Hill; and the Hill itself owned them that owned it.
The name by which the thing had come to be known indicated sufficiently well its nature.
Like a couchant desert-lion it overlooked its prey; and would continue to do so, as long as the planet lasted.
Out