Ducdame

by John Cowper Powys

  Philosophers may have had, ere now, sufficient detachment from human feelings to contemplate the cruel tricks of time from the point of view of eternity; but though William Hastings, as he followed his desperate patron at a slower pace, endeavoured to regard these things with ironic equanimity he found himself listening with the most agitated attention to the distant puffing of the great green-painted engine as it waited in the station.

  As for Rook, driven, as it might seem, by the Eumenides themselves, he had no strength left for any thought in his head except to reach that platform before the train moved out. On this return run he no longer visualized his encounter with Netta. His heart seemed on the point of bursting in his body, as he dashed along, keeping to the roadway in spite of the traffic, so as to be less impeded.

  He did suffer from a vague impression as he ran that if he only could find breath in him to shout her name the girl would be bound to hear him and unfasten her carriage door, even if the train were moving. But, as it happens in dreams, his voice seemed to die away, ineffectually, in his throat. The nearer he came to the station the more clearly he could hear the heavy snorting of the locomotive, waiting like a great leashed hound to rush forth again upon its way.

  He ran faster yet, and still faster, a strange enough figure in his long flapping ulster, his arms bent at the elbow, his fingers digging into the palms of his hands. Every second that passed seemed to him like something more living and terrible than just mere time; seemed to him like the pulse beat of a long-drawn-out gigantic arm—the invisible arm of his desire—the fingers of which were already clutching the door handle of Netta’s compartment, at which the railway guard was standing now with his whistle at his lips.

  The whole world was reduced to a very simple equation at that moment, to the coming together for ever, or to the rending apart for ever, of Netta Page and Rook Ashover. Nothing existed for him, as his breath came in gasps, but the formless outline of an unspoken cry, a cry that implied words and yet was never destined to be uttered in words; the cry, “Netta, stop! Netta, stop! Netta, it’s all right!”

  He actually heard the guard’s whistle now and the louder responding whistle of the engine. He rushed blindly forward. He did not realize that he was shouting wildly as he ran. Afraid that he would not have time to force his way through the doors and the crowds of the waiting room, by an infernal piece of misjudgment, one of those fatal blunders that seem like the very hoof of a demon outstretched to trip a man up, he veered aside when he heard the train moving, and rushing round the corner of the building, saw himself jumping on to the platform of one of the last carriages, perhaps of the guard’s van itself! God! There were high iron gates at this spot; gates to climb over which he would have had to be a veritable acrobat.

  It was over. It was all over. He was too late.

  He shook the iron bars of the gates with his hands, and out of his mouth came a hoarse frustrated howl.

  The train was moving too fast now and his eyes were too blinded to see her face at the window; but she saw him, and a kind-hearted commercial traveller in the seat opposite her was horrified to see a quiet-looking, white-faced woman leap up and begin fumbling with the handle of the door. “Can’t get out now, missy!” the worthy man protested; pulling her back with gentle firmness into her seat.

  When William Hastings arrived at the station he was more disturbed than surprised to observe a small crowd of porters and cab drivers collected round the gates to the left of the waiting room. At his appearance on the scene they thinned themselves out and he was aware of the figure of Rook Ashover, seated on the ground with his back to some iron railings, gasping for breath and crying like an infant.

  “Ashover! Rook Ashover!” murmured the clergyman, recovering his own breath in long deep sighs. “You’ll see her again, Ashover! You can find her again!”

  As he uttered the words he felt the silly futility of them, and the two pencil scrawls he had in his pocket, the letter and the address, seemed to possess pulses of their own which beat in unison with the beating of his heart.

  He got Rook on his feet at last. The wretched man insisted upon going into the station and making enquiries about the next train to London. There was no train at all, it appeared, until six o’clock that night and that was a slow stopping train that did not reach town till after midnight.

  Even Rook, distraught as he was, realized the folly of pursuing his friend any farther that day.

  It was, however, only by degrees, only after they had walked slowly back to the Antiger Arms together, that the full stark hopelessness of the situation dawned upon the distracted man’s mind. London! How could he possibly find her in London, whatever day he went, or whatever train he took?

  While they were waiting in the hotel yard for Mr. Twiney, who had retired to the tap room, Hastings handed over to Rook the letter which Netta had given him. Rook opened this as he stood there and read it leaning against the wheel of the gig; while Hastings went discreetly off to call the driver.

  The letter ran as follows:

  DEAREST ROOK:

  I beg you not to think hard of me because of the drink. I did it because I had to do it. Don’t think hard of me, Rook, my dear, dear love. I did it for the best, but I can’t stand it any longer. Don’t worry about me. I shall be all right. Good-bye, dearest Rook. There’s nothing for you to feel sorry about….

  NETTA.

  With his eyes full of tears and his mouth drooping at the corners, in that grotesque twitching way in which a proud man struggles against breaking down, Rook folded up this letter and hid it carefully in his pocket.

  He had recovered a good deal of his normal equanimity by the time Hastings brought Mr. Twiney back from the tap room; and that excellent man remarked to them both as they drove off, sitting side by side: “’Tis a wonder, gentlemen, ’tis a Bible wonder, how what do seem worse to we than dirty weather by thik old Gorm signpost do in the latter end when us turns about, seem Heaven’s own blessings! ’Tis a wonder that so’t should be. But so ’tis; and us has got to reckon wi’t.”

  The long drive back to Ashover was broken by only one brief stop, when both Mr. Twiney and Hastings insisted upon Rook’s drinking a glass of beer and eating a bit of cheese. The sky remained overcast all the way by that same strange filmy veil that Hastings had noted when he first awoke in the caravan.

  They reached Ashover by the middle of the afternoon; but when they approached the house Rook commanded Mr. TWiney to stop the gig.

  “Hastings!” he said, “would you do a good turn for me?”

  The priest, who had been throughout their drive singularly divided in his mind between his loyalty to Netta and his obvious duty to Rook, expressed himself ready to do anything.

  “Get out here, then, would you? And run into the house and ask for Lady Ann? You might tell her that I’ve driven on to the village with Mr. Twiney and that I rather think I shall stay the night with Lexie. Will you tell her that? Oh, and you might tell her, too”—he hesitated, conscious of the alert interest of Mr. Twiney—“you might tell her—well!—everything that’s happened; just as it did happen! Will you do that for me?” And he helped the clergyman to descend from the cart, and then, calling upon the driver to drive on, got up again into his place.

  CHAPTER XVI

  IT WAS the third day of June, and Pandie, having “done” the occupied chambers of Ashover House, was busy cleaning the windows and brushing the floors of the two small rooms which opened upon the landing opposite the large front bedrooms.

  The bedroom above the dining room looking out upon the linden tree was still used by Rook. Netta’s bed was covered by the same counterpane. Netta’s clothes still hung in the mahogany cupboard. Netta’s modest cold-cream pots and bottles of eau de Cologne still stood on the old-fashioned washstand.

  Lady Ann, too, now Lady Ann Ashover, had not moved out of the great “spare room” above the drawing room, which had been allotted to her from the moment she first arrived.

  It had been a shoc
k to Rook’s mother and something approaching a scandal to the inhabitants of the kitchen when it became evident that the master and mistress of the house aid not intend to share the same room. Martha spoke of it with hushed voice and gloomy solemnity to Pod, the evangelical sexton.

  “It be contrary to nature, that’s what I do say, Mr. Pod. Contrary to nature and contrary to the blessed Scriptures.”

  The sexton had no quarrel with this sentiment. Indeed he was prepared to go further than his friend in his reprobation of “these heathen ways what the gentry do pick up in their travels.” He put the case to Mrs. Vabbin with convincing logic. “If the holy Lord had meant us to sleep single He would never have put it into our brains to hammer up these here double beds. Double beds means sleeping double. Any turnip can see that. And who would have thought of girt double beds if the Lord hadn’t whispered into the patriarchs’ ears them holy texts about the Woman being subject to the Man?”

  Mrs. Vabbin’s enormous countenance, with its little nose, little mouth, and little eyes, shone with a kind of interior lustre as she imbibed these oracles. “Pod be nothink to look at,” she remarked to Pandie afterward, “but when he opens his mouth to speak, the Holy Spirit do fly out’n and make a person’s heart grow weak, same as they girt drums down at Patchery Fair.”

  As April passed into May and May began to take upon itself the appearance of a summer month, Mrs. Ashover’s concern over this unnatural behaviour of the Squire and his bride began to quiet down. As far as she could see, the two treated each other just exactly as they had done before; and the knowledge communicated to her by Ann—for the niece concealed nothing from her aunt—of the child the girl expected before that autumn was over, was so unspeakably gratifying that everything else sank into insignificance in comparison.

  It was an infinite relief to her, too, that not for one second would Lady Ann consider the idea of her leaving Ashover. It was also a pleasant surprise to find that in the thousand and one details of managing the establishment, details passionately precious to the old lady’s heart, she was not going to be interfered with in any way by her daughter-in-law.

  The return upon the scene, gradual but sure, of the “county families” of the neighbourhood, was also a source of intense and secret satisfaction to the little woman. Lady Ann seemed ready to leave this aspect of her new life as completely as she had left the domestic side of things, entirely to her aunt. Mrs. Ashover found it difficult to persuade either Rook or her to take the least interest in the little society visits that began steadily increasing in number as it became more and more certain that that woman was gone for good.

  For the aunt it was a new light on her niece’s character to find that Lady Ann despised the “county families” and detested every sort of “society,” being quite content to spend her days in long rambling walks alone with Rook’s dog, or in just sitting on the seat under the linden listening to the thrushes. It was almost as if Netta’s mania for unsocial solitude had been bequeathed to her successor; but the happy old lady was too preoccupied with the success of her grand scheme to bother her head very much over this new phase or to worry herself as to what it indicated regarding the relations between husband and wife.

  The third day of June was Mrs. Ashover’s birthday; and now, as Pandie went in and out of the two little rooms she was attending to, rooms kept scrupulously clean in a sort of contented emptiness, as if waiting to be turned into a day nursery and night nursery when the autumn came, it occurred to her mind that it was time to remove the old lady’s breakfast things and receive her orders for the day.

  Through the open windows and the open doors of that panelled landing the warm sunshine was pouring into the old house bringing with it the pleasant sound of the mowing machine and the sweet smell of cut grass.

  Pandie hummed to herself as she went up the short flight of polished steps that led into the “new wing,” as it was called, at the end of which, looking out upon the orchard and upon the yellow gorse and green bracken of Battlefield, was her own bedroom and that of her friend Martha.

  Taking off her rough apron and tidying herself before the glass, preparatory to ascending to the third floor which was almost entirely taken up by Mrs. Ashover’s long, low-ceilinged boudoir, the red-haired servant changed her humming into the erratic strain of an ancient Somersetshire song, such as in all probability had never been heard before in that Frome-side manor.

  She moved to her open window, as she sang, tying up the strings of a spotlessly clean apron and rolling down her sleeves. Leaning out of the window she soon met the gaze of two elderly men resting at that moment in leisurely contentment from the not very arduous task of mowing the grass paths of the kitchen garden. It was the privilege of Mr. Twiney to steer the lawnmower, while Mr. Pod, acting the part of a human horse, marched in front, pulling the machine along by the aid of two slender cords.

  Mr. Pod was now with the utmost deliberation emptying the box of the lawnmower into a wheelbarrow, which was already half full of velvet-soft dark-green grass.

  Mr. Twiney was lighting his pipe. Hie two old cronies standing there in the early summer sunshine between the rows of immature green peas and immature sweet peas, between a border of yellow pansies and a hedge of pink and white peonies, gave an added sweetness to that ribald Sedgemoor song, as the hard-worked damsel trilled the lines like a great red-poll’d bird.

  Both of the elderly men were arrested by her voice; but Mr. Pod only gave her a cursory glance and turned to his wheelbarrow. Mr. Twiney, however, jerked his thumb in the direction of his companion, as much as to say, “Don’t ’ee mind his being there, me pretty maid; I be a-listening to ’ee!” and then made a deliberately gallant gesture, beckoning the wench to come down and speak to him.

  Pandie did not hesitate. With one glance at the looking glass on the chest of drawers she ran down the stairs, slipped through the scullery unnoticed by Martha, and emerged from the back door.

  Mr. Twiney, moving leisurely toward her in his shirt sleeves, had the air of one whose professional duty required him at that juncture to survey with care certain gooseberry bushes and certain rhubarb stalks and to pick off the blighted leaves of particular standard roses whose buds were still green.

  Arriving at length, after many pauses, at a point opposite to the kitchen door he proceeded to greet the red-haired maiden with a gesture of dignified surprise; and, like a man interrupted in the preoccupation of a lifetime, began to unbend the austerity of his visage into a grave but indulgent urbanity.

  “A fine morning, Pandie, me girl!” he exclaimed. “’Tis good growing weather for both beasties and roots. Them peas be wonderful well come on, and I’ve never seed they onions so high. ’Tis the same with me old mare down in village. She do put her old head out of winder and hollers to everythink what traipses along. ’Tis real summer be come this season, same as it used to be when us were childer. Old Pod he be got his bit of mead, down by river, most ready for cutting; only it be so full of them sour weeds that ’twon’t make good hay. Now there’s me own little patch up by churchyard, maidie! Pod had dunged his mead with nothink but cow-dung, while all them dead folk, right down from King Charley’s time, do make hay for I and me old mare!”

  Pandie nodded her head sympathetically.

  “You was always a lucky man, Mr. Twiney,” she remarked. “Though they do say that grass what’s nourished by corpses makes milk bad for butter. But maybe horses be different; though me old father used to say that horses be more human than we be. They be sensitive beasts, I reckon. But maybe your horse takes kind of natural to churchyard grass, Mr. Twiney?”

  “Maybe she do. Maybe she don’t,” replied the gardener. “There be more sextons in my family, come to think of it, than there be in Pod’s; though he did cut me out with the parson that is. Not that I grudge it to the poor man. If it weren’t for what he gets for thik little job ’twould be workhouse for ’ee; and all the village do know it.”

  The two interlocutors stared gravely at each other,
while over them both floated, on waves of aromatic sunshine, the scent of currant bushes and gooseberry bushes, the scent of heavy peony blooms, of the sun-warmed leaves of budding briar-roses and of the barrowful of cut grass.

  Pandie pondered in her heart for some piece of news that would enhance her value in the eyes of her friend. She recalled the occasion when by a heaven-sent piece of luck Lady Anil had been so nervous and “beyond herself” that she had confided in the servant that this was the beginning of her fifth month of pregnancy.

  How dearly would she have loved to reveal this fact to Mr. Twiney!

  Still more powerfully was she tempted to speak of a matter that she and Martha Vabbin had been discussing for the last three months: the extraordinary change that had taken place in Lady Ann’s own habits and ways; her long preoccupied silences under the linden, when she neither sewed nor read; her long hours of heavy thought at her own window, her long lonely walks with the dog.

  But the most agitating urge of all, an urge that only the strongest inbred loyalty could have resisted, was the desire to make a confidant of Mr. Twiney concerning the two separate bedrooms and concerning certain inexplicable scenes that had taken place between the Squire and his new lady, scenes of which she had not even dared to speak to Mrs. Vabbin herself!

  Suddenly the right inspiration came to her.

  “’Tis Missus’s birthday to-day—the old Missus’s, I mean. And she’ve a-got in her head to do what she’ve a-always done on her birthdays; and that’s to picnic out in Antiger High Mead. I’m a-going up now to her room to take her orders for what Martha have to pack in hampers; and pretty soon they’ll be sending for thee own self about driving of them out there.”