Rodmoor

by John Cowper Powys

  The most remarkable picture in the room, attracting the attention at once of all who entered, was a dark, richly coloured, oval-shaped portrait—a portrait of a young man in a Venetian cloak, with a broad, smooth forehead, heavy-lidded penetrating eyes, and pouting disdainful mouth. This picture, said to have been painted under the influence of Giorgione by that incomparable artist’s best loved friend, passed for a portrait of Eugenio Flambard, the favourite secretary of the Republic’s most famous ambassador during his residence at the Papal Court.

  The majority of these treasures had been picked up by Baltazar during certain prolonged holidays in various parts of the Continent. This, however, was several years ago before the collapse of the investment, or whatever it was, which he inherited from Herman Renshaw.

  Since that time he had been more or less dependent upon Brand, a dependence which nothing but his happy relations with Brand’s mother and sister and his unfailing urbanity could have made tolerable.

  “Adrian, you old villain, why didn’t you tell me you’d seen Philippa. Brand informed me yesterday that you’ve seen her twice. This isn’t the kind of thing that pleases me at all. I don’t approve of these clandestine meetings. Do you hear me, you old reprobate? You don’t think it’s very nice, do you, for me to learn by accident—by a sort of wretched accident—of an event like this? If you must be at these little games you might at least be open about them. Besides, I have a brotherly interest in Philippa. I don’t want to have her innocence corrupted by an old satyr like you.”

  Sorio contented himself by murmuring the word “Rats.”

  “It’s all very well for you to cry ‘Rats!’ in that tone,” went on the other. “The truth is, this affair is going to become serious. You don’t suppose for a moment, do you, that your Nance is going to lie down, as they say, and let my extraordinary sister walk over her?”

  Adrian got up from his seat and began pacing up and down the little room.

  “It’s absurd,” he muttered, “it’s all absurd. I feel as if the whole thing were a kind of devilish dream. Yes, the whole thing! It’s all because I’ve got nothing to do but walk up and down these damned sands!”

  Baltazar watched him with a serene smile, his soft chin supported by his feminine fingers and his fair, curly head tilted a little on one side.

  “But you know, mon enfant,” he threw in with a teasing caress in his voice, “you know very well you’re the last person to talk of work. It was work that did for you in America. You don’t want to start that over again, do you?”

  Adrian stood still and glared at him.

  “Do you think I’m going to let that—as you call it—finish me forever? My life’s only begun. In London it was different. By God! I wish I’d stayed in London! Nance feels just the same. I know she does. She’ll have to get something, too, or we shall both go mad. It’s this cursed sea of yours! I’ve a good mind to marry her, out of hand, and clear off. We’d find something—somewhere—anywhere—to keep body and soul together.”

  “Why did you come to us at all, my dear, if you find us so dreadful?” laughed Baltazar, bending down to tie his shoe-string and pull up more tightly one of his silk socks.

  Adrian made no answer but continued his ferocious pacing of the room.

  “You’ll knock something over if you’re not careful,” protested his friend, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re the most troublesome fellow. You accept a person’s offer and make no end of a fuss over it, and then a couple of weeks later you roar like a bull and send us all to the devil. What’s the matter with us? What’s the matter with the place? Why can’t you and your precious Nance behave like ordinary people and make love to one another and be happy? She’s got all her time to herself and you’ve got all your time to yourself. Why can’t you enjoy yourselves and collect seaweed or starfish or something?”

  Adrian paused in his savage prowl for the second time.

  “It’s your confounded sea that’s at the bottom of it,” he shouted. “It gets on her nerves and it gets on mine. Little Linda was perfectly right to be scared of it.”

  “I fancied,” drawled the other, selecting a cigarette from an enamelled box and turning up the lamp, “you found little Linda’s fears rather engaging than otherwise.

  “It works upon us,” Sorio went on, heedless of the interruption, “it works upon us in some damnable kind of way! Nance says she hears it in her sleep. I’m sure I do. I hear it without a moment’s cessation. Listen to the thing now—shish, shish, shish, shish! Why can’t it make some other noise? Why can’t it stop altogether? It makes me long for the whole damned farce to end. It annoys me, Tassar, it annoys me!”

  “Sorry you find the elements so trying, Adriano,” replied the other languidly, “but I really don’t know what I can do to help you—I can only advise you to keep out of Philippa’s way. She’s an element more troublesome than any of them.”

  “Tassar!” shouted the enraged man in a burst of fury, “if you don’t stop dragging Philippa in, I’ll murder you! What’s Philippa to me? I hate her—do you hear? I hate the very sound of her name!”

  “Her name?” murmured Stork, meditatively, “her name? Oh, I think you’re quite wrong to hate that. Her name suggests all sorts of interesting things. Her name has quite a historic sound. It’s mediæval in colour and Greek in form. It makes me think of Euripides.”

  “This whole damned Rodmoor of yours,” moaned Adrian, “gets too much for me. Where on earth else, could a man find it so hard to collect his thoughts and look at things as they are? There’s something here which works upon the mind, Tassar, something which works upon the mind.”

  “What’s working on your mind, my friend,” laughed Baltazar Stork, “is not anything so vague as dreams or anything so simple as the sea. It’s just the quite definite but somewhat complicated business of managing two love affairs at the same time! I’m sorry for you, little Adrian, I’m extremely sorry for you. It’s a situation not unknown in the history of the world, in fact, it might be called quite common. But I’m afraid that doesn’t make it any pleasanter for you. However, it can be dealt with, with a little skill, Adrian, with just a little skill!”

  The man accused in this teasing manner turned furiously round, an angry outburst of blind protest trembling on his tongue. At that moment there was a low knock at the outer door. Baltazar jumped to his feet. “That must be Raughty,” he cried. “I begged him to come round to-night. I so longed for you to meet him.” He hastened out and admitted the visitor with a cordial welcome. After a momentary pause and a good deal of shuffling—for Dr. Raughty was careful to wear not only an overcoat but also goloshes and even gaiters when the weather was inclement—the two men entered the room and Stork began an elaborate introduction.

  “Dr. Fingal Raughty,” he said, “Mr. Adria—” but to his astonishment Sorio intervened, “The Doctor and I have already become quite well acquainted,” he remarked, shaking the visitor vigorously by the hand. “I’m afraid I wasn’t as polite as I ought to have been on that occasion,” he went on, speaking in an unnaturally loud voice and with a forced laugh, “but the Doctor will forgive me. The Doctor I’m sure will make allowances.”

  Dr. Raughty gave him a quick glance, at once friendly and ironical, and then he turned to Stork. “Mother Lorman’s dead,” he remarked with a little sigh, “dead at last. She was ninety-seven and had thirty grandchildren. She gurgled in her throat at the last with a noise like a nightingale when its voice breaks in June. I prefer deaths of this kind to any other, but they’re all pitiful.”

  “Nance tells me you were present at old Doorm’s death, Doctor,” said Adrian while their host moved off to the kitchen to secure glasses and refreshment.

  The Doctor nodded. “I measured that fellow’s skull,” he remarked gravely. “It was asymmetrical and very curiously so. The interesting thing is that there exists in this part of the coast a definite tradition of malformed skulls. They recur in nearly all the old families. Brand Renshaw is a splendid example. Hi
s skull ought to be given to a museum. It is beautiful, quite beautiful, in the anterior lobes.”

  Baltazar returned carrying a tray. The eyes of Dr. Raughty gleamed with a mellow warmth. “Nutmeg,” he remarked, approaching the tray and touching every object upon it lightly and reverently. “Nutmeg, lemon, hot water, gin—and brandy! It’s an admirable choice and profoundly adapted to the occasion. May I put the hot water on the hob until we’re ready for it?”

  While Baltazar once more withdrew from the scene, Dr. Raughty remarked, gravely and irritably, to Sorio that it was a mistake to substitute brandy for rum. “He does it because he can’t get the best rum, but it’s a ridiculous thing to do. Any rum is better than no rum when it’s a question of punch-making. Are you with me in this, Mr. Sorio?”

  Adrian expressed such complete and emphatic agreement that for the moment the Doctor seemed almost embarrassed.

  On Baltazar’s return to the room, however, he hazarded another suggestion. “What about having the kettle itself brought in here?”

  Stork looked at him without speaking and placed on the table a small plate of macaroons. The Doctor glanced whimsically at Sorio and, helping himself from the little plate, muttered in a low voice after he had nibbled the edge of a biscuit, “Yes, these seem perfectly up to par to-day.”

  The three men had scarcely settled themselves down in their respective chairs around the fire than Adrian began speaking hurriedly and nervously.

  “I have an extraordinary feeling,” he said, “that this evening is full of fatal significance: I suppose it’s nothing to either of you, but it seems to me as though this damned shish, shish, shish, shish of the sea were nearer and louder than usual. Doctor, you don’t mind my talking freely to you? I like you, though I was rude to you the other day—but that’s nothing—” he waved his hand, “that’s what any fool might fall into who didn’t know you. I feel I know you now. That word about the rum—forgive me, Tassar!—and the kettle—yes, particularly about the kettle—hit me to the heart. I love you, Doctor Raughty. I announce to you that my feeling at this moment amounts to love—yes, actually to love!

  “But that’s not what I wanted to say.” He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, stretched his legs straight out, let his chin sink upon his chest and glared at them with sombre excitement. “I feel to-night,” he went on, “as though some great event were portending. No, no! What am I saying? Not an event. Event isn’t the word. Event’s a silly expression, isn’t it, Doctor,—isn’t it—dear, noble-looking man? For you do look noble, you know, Doctor, as you drink that punch—though to say the truth your nose isn’t quite straight as I see it from here, and there are funny blotches on your face. No, not there. There! Don’t you see them, Tassar? Blotches—curious purply blotches.”

  While this outburst proceeded Mr. Stork fidgeted uneasily in his chair. Though sufficiently accustomed to Sorio’s eccentricities and well aware of his medical friend’s profound pathological interest in all rare types, there was something so outrageous about this particular tirade that it offended what was a very dominant instinct in him, his sense, namely, of social decency and good breeding. Possibly in a measure because of the “bar sinister” over his own origin, but much more because of the nicety of his aesthetic taste, anything approaching a social fiasco or faux pas always annoyed him excessively. Fortunately, however, on this occasion nothing could have surpassed the sweetness with which Adrian’s wild phrases were received by the person addressed.

  “One would think you’d drunk half the punch already, Sorio,” Baltazar murmured at last. “What’s come over you to-night? I don’t think I’ve ever known you quite like this.”

  “Remind me to tell you something, Mr. Sorio, when you’ve finished what you have to say,” remarked Dr. Raughty.

  “Listen, you two!” Adrian began again, sitting erect, his hands on the arms of his chair. “There’s a reason for this feeling of mine that there’s something fatal on the wind to-night. There’s a reason for it.”

  “Tell us as near as you can,” said Dr. Raughty, “what exactly it is that you’re talking about.”

  Adrian fixed upon him a gloomy, puzzled frown.

  “Do you suppose,” he said slowly, “that it’s for nothing that we three are together here in hearing of that—”

  Baltazar interrupted him. “Don’t say ‘shish, shish, shish ‘again, my dear. Your particular way of imitating the Great Deep gives me no pleasure.”

  “What I meant was,” Sorio raised his voice, “it’s a strange thing that we three should be sitting together now like this when two months ago I was in prison in New York.”

  Baltazar made a little deprecatory gesture, while the Doctor leaned forward with grave interest.

  “But that’s nothing,” Sorio went on, “that’s a trifle. Baltazar knows all about that. The thing I want you two to recognise is that something’s on the wind,—that something’s on the point of happening. Do you feel like that—or don’t you?”

  There was a long and rather oppressive silence, broken only by the continuous murmur which in every house in Rodmoor was the background of all conversation.

  “What I was going to say a moment ago,” remarked the Doctor at last, “was that in this place it’s necessary to protect oneself from that.” He jerked his thumb towards the window. “Our friend Tassar does it by the help of Flambard over there.” He indicated the Venetian. “I do it by the help of my medicine-chest. Hamish Traherne does it by saying his prayers. What I should like to know is how you,” he stretched a warning finger in the direction of Sorio, “propose to do it.”

  Baltazar at this point jumped up from his seat.

  “Oh, shut up, Fingal,” he cried peevishly. “You’ll make Adrian unendurable. I’m perfectly sick of hearing references to this absurd salt-water. Other people have to live in coast towns besides ourselves. Why can’t you let the thing take its proper position? Why can’t you take it for granted? The whole subject gets on my nerves. It bores me, I tell you, it bores me to tears. For Heaven’s sake, let’s talk of something else—of any damned thing. You both make me thoroughly wretched with your sea whispers. It’s as bad as having to spend an evening at Oakguard alone with Aunt Helen and Philippa.”

  His peevishness had an instantaneous effect upon Sorio who pushed him affectionately back into his chair and handed him his glass. “So sorry, Tassar,” he said. “I won’t do it again. I was beginning to feel a little odd to-night. One can’t go through the experience of cerebral dementia—doesn’t that sound right, Doctor?—without some little trifling after-effects. Come, let’s be sensible and talk of things that are really important. It’s not an occasion to be missed, is it, Tassar, having the Doctor here and punch made with brandy instead of rum, on the table? What interests me so much just now,” he placed himself in front of the fire-place and sighed heavily, “is what a person’s to do who hasn’t got a penny and is unfit for every sort of occupation. What do you advise, Doctor? And by the way, why have you eaten up all the macaroons while I was talking?”

  This remark really did seem a little to embarrass the person indicated, but Sorio continued without waiting for a reply.

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right, Tassar. It’s a mistake to be sensitive to the attraction of young girls. But it’s difficult—isn’t it, Doctor?—not to be. They’re so maddeningly delicious, aren’t they, when you come to think of it? It’s something about the way their heads turn—the line from the throat, you know—and about the way they speak—something pathetic, something—what shall I call it?—helpless. It quite disarms a person. It’s more than pathetic, it’s tragic.”

  The Doctor looked at him meditatively. “I think there’s a poem of Goethe’s which would bear that out,” he remarked, “if I’m not mistaken it was written after he visited Sicily—yes, after that storm at sea, you remember, when the story of Christ’s walking on the waves came into his mind.”

  Sorio wrinkled up his eyes and peered at the speaker with a sort of humorous maligni
ty.

  “Doctor,” he said, “pardon my telling you, but you’ve still got some crumbs on your moustache.”

  “The one word,” put in their host, while Dr. Haughty moved very hastily away from the table and surveyed himself with a whimsical puckering of all the lines in his face, at one of Stork’s numerous mirrors, “the one word that I shall henceforth refuse to have pronounced in my house is the word ‘sea.’ I’m surprised to hear that Goethe—a man of classical taste—ever refers to such Gothic abominations.”

  “Ah!” cried Sorio, “the great Goethe! The sly old curmudgeon Goethe! He knew how to deal with these little velvet paws!”

  Dr. Raughty, reseating himself, drummed absentmindedly with his fingers upon the empty macaroon plate. Then with a soft and pensive sigh he produced his tobacco pouch, and filling his pipe, struck a match.

  “Doctor,” murmured Sorio, his rebellious lips curved into a sardonic smile and his eyes screwed up till they looked as sinister as those of his namesake, Hadrian, “why do you move your head backwards and forwards like that, when you light your pipe?”

  “Don’t answer him, Fingal,” expostulated Baltazar, “he’s behaving badly now. He’s ‘showing off’ as they say of children.”

  “I’m not showing off,” cried Sorio loudly, “I’m asking the Doctor a perfectly polite question. It’s very interesting the way he lights his pipe. There’s more in it than appears. There’s a great deal in it. It’s a secret of the Doctor’s; probably a pantheistic one.”

  “What on earth do you mean by a ‘pantheistic’ one? How, under Heaven, can the way Fingal holds a match be termed ‘pantheistic’?” protested Stork irritably. “You’re really going a little too far, Adriano mio.”