Ducdame

by John Cowper Powys

  It was not an easy matter, struggling up that hill through the soft unfrozen snow, between rabbit holes and molehills, between furze bushes and hornbeam stumps; and when at last they reached the top and found themselves among the great dark trunks of the Scotch firs, it was natural enough that they should lean against each other for a moment’s breathing time before commencing the descent.

  The touch of his cousin’s cold cheek, the familiar associations aroused in him by the smell of the Irish-tweed jacket she wore, as they leant together against one of those rough tree trunks, plunged him into the irresponsible security of remembered things.

  Between the enormous sky spaces above the trees, void of star or planet, and the heavy snow masses that had descended out of their gulfs, there must have been proceeding, all that evening, some magnetic affinity that in the end would result in still further visitations from those airy heights.

  Some of these magnetic currents from the elements above the firmament must have passed through these two human bodies on their mysterious journey; for when after a while they began going down the hill on the Dorsal side, Rook became conscious that his former familiarities with his cousin had not blunted the edge of their attraction for each other.

  As they descended into the valley hand in hand, there was that in the tones of both their voices that suggested the atmosphere of a reckless, unholy prank.

  When they arrived at Mr. Drool’s house they found that Corporal Dick was lying comfortably in his own bed, that the doctor had departed, and that Mrs. Drool had turned Binnory out of his especial room and had made the place presentable for Cousin Ann’s reception.

  The idiot boy was in a high state of excitement over all these developments. He watched his mother making up a cot for him by the kitchen fire with unbounded satisfaction, but he kept returning to the Corporal’s room to tell the lady “who be going to sleep wi’ I” what sounds and sights of the encompassing night were to be expected by his visitor.

  The Corporal’s room and Binnory’s room were isolated from the rest of the house, so that Cousin Ann had no need to fear any difficulty or interruption in the performance of her nursing duties.

  Uncle Dick was very quiet now, but Mrs. Drool told Rook that they had had considerable difficulty in keeping him in bed when they first got him undressed.

  “Doctor told Drool,” she said, “that we was to watch out for new sympterums in his sad state. He said Drool had to sit up wi’ ’ee for fear ’ee’d do summat to hurt ’isself with his crazy old notions. What did he do up at house, Master Rook? There be a couple down this morning from Ash’ver Old Pyke who do tell how Martha Vabbin wrastled wi’ ’ee all night long, in backyard! They do say how he did shoot at she with’s rabbit gun and how she did beat on’s head to quiet ’un with a girt iron shovel!”

  “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Drool,” the Squire of Ashover found himself saying in answer to this new version of recent events; and as he spoke he hesitated for a moment with that queer tightening of the nerves about the heart which indicates the forming of a subconscious resolution, of which the rational mind is only half aware. “Netta will understand,” he said to himself. “She will know I have stayed up with the old man. I could send Drool over to tell them, but it’s not a nice night for such a thing.”

  “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Drool,” he repeated. “I’ll sit up with Mr. Richard myself. You and your husband can go to bed, just as usual. There is one thing, though, you might do for Lady Ann and me. You might send us up some sort of light supper—anything you have in the house—just on a tray, you know—let your son bring it up to us. We could have it in Mr. Richard’s room if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  The result of this suggestion was that a couple of hours later Rook and Ann sat down to a substantial meal of cold pheasant, home-made bread and Dorchester pale ale, while their low-voiced conversation attuned itself to the peaceful breathings of the invalid. They had scarcely begun their repast when Ann became conscious that the idiot was making some curious vocal attempts, in her room opposite, to imitate the voices of some carol singers or “waits” who had visited the gamekeeper’s house earlier in the day. Binnory was practising a grotesque version of his own of the familiar ditty—“God rest you merry, gentlemen”; a version that seemed, as it reached her ears, to be mingled with a more questionable tavern catch, picked up from some less pious quarter.

  Disturbed by this incongruous serenade, which the excitement of her nerves rendered the more noticeable, Cousin Ann got up, opened the door, and crossed the passage.

  She found the idiot sitting on her bed while one of the pillows, decorated with her hat and cloak, was propped up horizontally against the wall beside him. “She be you, lady,” said the boy with a certain obstinate sulkiness in his voice, “and I be Squire. Us be singing ‘Born is the king’ to them ghosties what do bide out there.”

  Lady Ann looked at the lad with a mixture of confusion and irritation. Then catching sight of her leather bag, open on a chair, with her heavy crimson dressing gown in it, she suddenly seemed to grow oblivious of the boy’s presence and, as if she were quite alone, threw off her tweed jacket, slipped out of her tweed skirt, and hurriedly put her dressing gown on.

  “You be different from she now,” muttered Binnory, indicating the pillow with a jerk of his thumb.

  Cousin Ann smiled at him as she had not often smiled at any one. The feeling of the soft garment against her limbs, in place of the other, made her suddenly vividly aware of that classic perfection of her form which had struck Netta so. The natural tingling of her relaxed muscles after their struggle through the snow increased this consciousness.

  “Come in and have some supper with Mr. Ashover and me,” she said to the idiot gently. “And since I’m quite different now, we can put her back to bed, can’t we?”

  She removed the cloak and hat from the pillow and replaced it at the head of the bed, patting it smooth with her hand. Then she led the boy across the passage and into the Corporal’s room where Rook had already disposed of half the great jug of Dorchester ale. Her thoughts, as she placed the boy between them and met Rook’s clouded gaze of appreciation, were fatal and masterful in their recognition of her chance-given opportunity.

  She had at first that sickening sense of inability to eat a mouthful which used to come over her at hunt breakfasts in her father’s house before a great meet of Blackmore hounds; but it did not take more than a few sips of Mrs. Drool’s jug to remove that inhibition, and very soon she found herself enjoying the meal with full youthful zest.

  “And do you remember the night Aunt Edith found us in the hayloft?” Rook said suddenly, his heart warmed by the soft look in the girl’s eyes. “How on earth did she get up the ladder, Coz? Or didn’t she get up the ladder? And that evening you nearly fell through the ice on Abbotsbury Pond? That was a mad Christmas, eh? The time your father had to go to Paris, and you and I had the whole place to ourselves?”

  “That’ll larn ’ee to play the bitch in gentlemen’s houses—that’ll larn ’ee, ye sly baggage!”

  The interruption came from the bed, but the old man turned over to the wall and once more his breathing was quiet and undisturbed.

  “It’s not only thik old owl-devil wot I do hear o’ nights,” threw in Binnory. “There be hosts and hosts o’ them others, wot nobody but me take notice of.”

  “What others do you mean, Binnory?” enquired Cousin Ann, her face radiant with a heathen happiness that quite ensorcerized the lad, as if it had been the rich honey drink of Valhalla.

  “I mean them hosts of girt gray boggles that go flapping over Dorsal, lady; same as can’t bear to bide where Mister Pod do put ’em when they be deaded and shrouded.”

  “Goodness, Rook! Who puts these ideas in this child’s head?” murmured Cousin Ann.

  “Him as is over there, lady,” replied Binnory, answering for himself. “Granfer Dick do tell I of everythink. ’A do tell of how babies be born wot bain’t prayed over afore they be born, but be just
dropped, like lambs at lambing-time. ’A do tell of babies that do cry like corncrakes after we, when us be up field-way or down river-way, till us dursn’t bide in them places after dark be come. ’A do tell of how slimmity puss-cats, in shape of wimmings from Lunnon, do catch great folks round them’s necks, and scrabbit them till they ain’t no blood left in ’em!”

  “Blood!” the voice came suddenly and startlingly from the bed. “I’ve ’a seen that bloody bitch quelled and quieted. I’ve ’a put the Lord’s own lead in her.”

  Cousin Ann rose to her feet, but the old man with a commanding sweep of his hand waved her off. He raised himself up in bed and stared wildly at them, searching for words.

  Binnory, too frightened to move or breathe, gazed at him with mouth and eyes open. Granfer Dick had always been more than human to the lad, and this burst of excitement in him was as though the eternal hills had begun to cry out.

  Anxious not to increase the old man’s excitement by unnecessary opposition, and not quite free from the fumes of the Dorchester ale, Rook remained passive in his seat, while his cousin leaned against the edge of his chair ready to spring over to the bed the moment the need arose.

  It was at her that the Corporal now pointed his long gaunt arm, the white nightshirt clinging tight round the bony wrist, the forefinger outstretched.

  “Where be the spirit of your people, Ann Poynings? Where be your love and your maiden beauty this bitter day? Have you no thought to put a hand out and stop this ruin of hopes and expectations; this crumbling down of what took a thousand years to build? What be your girl-pride and your lady-pride; your maidenhead-fears and your virgin-fears, compared with Ashover going down into a rumour of dust and dirt? Ay! Ay! Your cheeks are rosy-bright and your eyes shining. You do know what an old man would say but must forbear to say. You do know well enough! Ay! If ye be as comely in shift and smock as ye be in cramosin, he that be now sitting aside of ’ee would be a gowk and a gammon to let the ice freeze on the cold sheets!”

  His arm sank down on the bed and his head fell back on the pillow.

  Lady Ann went quickly over to him and pulled the bedclothes up under his chin. He met her gaze with a look of beseeching intensity, the wild glare dying out from his face like the reflection of a blown-out torch from a murky pool.

  Then to the girl’s amazement one of his wrinkled eyelids closed in a fantastic goblinish wink and he heaved over against the wall and remained dead-still.

  She stood by his side for a second or two, contemplating his giant frame under the chequered coverlet. The thoughts that passed at that moment through the head of Missy Sparrow-hawk would have been difficult to put into intelligible words.

  She protracted her pose at the bedside longer than was necessary. When she did turn away from her now peacefully breathing patient, it was not at Rook she looked but at the boy.

  “Better run down now, Binnory, and get into bed! Do you want the lady to come down and tuck you up? Very well, then! Be a good boy and undress yourself quietly and I’ll come down and say good-night to you in five, six, seven, ten minutes.”

  The lad obeyed her without demur. He glanced reverently at the sleeping form, touched his forehead mechanically, as he had been taught to do when addressing the gentry, and slipped quietly down the stairs.

  The cousins were left alone with the sleeping man. Rook got up and walked over to the window.

  “Shall I open it a little?” he asked. The soi-disant trained nurse nodded.

  He pulled the sash down.

  The night outside was windless and hushed as a vast mausoleum, but before he pulled up the window again they both heard in the stillness the soft shuffling muted thud—snow upon snow—where some bowed-down branch was eased of its clinging load.

  “It’ll begin again before morning,” said Rook, turning toward the girl. “Perhaps we shall be completely snowed up here! I hope the Drools have plenty more of that ale in the house.”

  He spoke casually and lightly to conceal his growing agitation. Vaguely in his mind he associated the great darkened mass of frozen cloud-stuff that covered the earth with the inevitableness of the fate that was gathering about him.

  “I’ll just run down to see that the boy’s all right,” said Cousin Ann, yielding to a little nervous shiver, “and then I’ll go straight to bed. Good-night, Cousin.” She made a slight movement toward him, and then, drawing herself up, lifted her half-extended hand to her own hair and adjusted its braids.

  “Good-night, my dear,” murmured Rook brusquely, emptying the last drop of ale into his glass and swallowing it at a gulp.

  She closed the door. He heard her go downstairs and enter the front kitchen. He waited, listening intently, his knuckles pressed upon the table. Why should the ticking of the clock be echoed so ridiculously by the irrepressible beating of his heart?

  He heard the shutting of the kitchen door and her quick rush up the stairs. Then her own door was shut; and the house was as silent as Antiger Great Knoll.

  An overpowering restlessness came upon him. He glanced round the Corporal’s room, at the gilded clock on the mantelpiece, at the lithograph of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, at the old man’s Sunday clothes hanging on wooden pegs, at the mother-of-pearl shells on the little mahogany table, at the shiny horsehair armchair, at the spotted china dogs that glowered at each other from red-tasselled brackets. Finally he could stand it no more. “I’ll have a breath of air,” he said to himself. “A breath of air, Uncle Dick,” he repeated aloud, apostrophizing the form on the bed.

  “I hope she won’t think I’m running away,” he thought as he descended the creaking stairs. “But, no! She’s a sensible girl and a man ought to cool his head after all that ale!”

  The gamekeeper’s backyard was no longer isolated from the surrounding planetary spaces. No mere fragmentary instalment of the inter-stellar darkness had lodged itself there. The whole weight of the great Opposite of Light, the whole volume of light’s negation and antithesis, bore down upon him out of aërial infinitude. The superincumbent ocean of blackness, swallowing up all form, all colour, all past, all future, was indeed enough to drown fathom-deep every scruple left in his human brain.

  He found himself recalling, as he stood there in the trodden snow, a particularly outrageous oracle of his brother Lexie, most mischievously germane to the matter in hand. He was on the point of turning to go in when a faint night wind, touching his face as it journeyed from nowhere to nowhere, seduced him into making a few further steps over the vegetable stumps and clumps of Mr. Drool’s garden.

  Peering through that blind opacity he could just make out the vague line of the garden hedge. The Antiger Woods were entirely invisible. The elm trees by the side of the lane showed themselves as vague pillars of darkness within the dome of darkness. It struck his mind as a strange thing, that, though all distinctions were blotted out, he still was conscious of the snow at his feet as being something white, rather than black or gray. Did human beings inherit some queer colour sense, quite apart from the vision of the eye; a tactile sense, perhaps; derived from some remote animal or even vegetable atavism?

  Ah! Ah! what was that? …

  A most uncanny sound, blood-curdling and shocking, came suddenly to his ears from the invisible heart of the snow-bound hills. He smiled to himself when it was repeated, for he was sceptical enough not to be startled a second time by any nocturnal terror.

  He stood still, listening. The second time, however, proved to be the last time. Only once again until the hour of his death did Rook Ashover hear that sound; nor did he ever come to any rational conclusion as to that sound’s origin.

  Often and often after that night it was his destiny to wonder what that thing was. It was louder and more appalling than the cry of any wild creature. When Rook tried to describe it to Lexie he emphasized the fact that it seemed to come to him through some heavy, remote intervening substance. The nearest description he seemed able to give of it was that it suggested the united exultation of a host of peopl
e buried underground.

  The occurrence might have altered the course of events that night—for all his inhuman callousness—if it had not been that his wanderings through Mr. Drool’s garden had brought him to that side of the house from which he could see his cousin’s window.

  There was her white figure standing in full candlelight against the small square panes!

  Had she also heard the sound? Rook never knew. To her—for some subconscious reason—he always kept complete silence upon that mystery.

  Whether she was even aware that he had gone out he never knew, any more than he knew whether the gamekeeper and his wife were conscious or unconscious of his nocturnal movements.

  He did not stand there for long. He could see her turn away from the window and blow out her candle, and that single natural gesture, more than all the other forces that were combining against him, stiffened the nerves of his resolution.

  Back to the door and up the creaking steps, and once more he was in Corporal Dick’s room!

  The old man had apparently slept without any change of position.

  Rook rapidly undressed, and putting on his overcoat as a dressing gown, lit a cigarette at the fire, using a torn letter from his pocket to transport the necessary flame.

  He smiled to himself to see how his hand shook as he did this.

  With hurried indrawing breaths he smoked about half of the cigarette, leaning against the mantelpiece. Then, throwing the rest of it on the coals, he moved to the door and went out into the passage.

  As he left the room he heard the old man muttering in his sleep. He waited breathlessly for a moment, his hand on the door-knob.

  “Die out? Never—never—I’ll shoot the bitch like a rabbit first!”

  The words were followed by an inarticulate moan and that again by dead silence. Rook left the Corporal’s door open and moved silently across the landing.

  Without knocking he turned the handle of the door opposite. It opened easily, and entering with a beating heart he left it ajar behind him.