Rodmoor

by John Cowper Powys

  It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon. Baltazar had found himself with little appetite for either breakfast or lunch, and at this moment, as he sat staring at a fireplace full of nothing but burnt out ashes, his eyes had such dark lines below them that one might have assumed that sleep as well as food had lost its savour for him in the last twelve hours. By his side on a little table stood an untasted glass of brandy, and at his feet in the fender lay innumerable, but in many cases only half-smoked, cigarettes.

  The impression which was now upon him was that of being one of two human creatures left alive, those two alone, after some world-destroying plague. He had the feeling that he had only to go out into the street to come upon endless dead bodies strewn about, in fantastic and horrible attitudes of death, and in various stages of dissolution. It was his Adriano who alone was left alive. But he had done something to him—so that he could only hear his voice without being able to reach him.

  “I must end this,” he said aloud; and then again, as if addressing another person, “We must put an end to this, mustn’t we, Tassar?”

  He rose to his feet and surveyed himself in one of his numerous beautifully framed mirrors. He passed his slender fingers through his fair curls and peered into his own eyes, opening the lids wide and wrinkling his forehead. He smiled at himself then—a long strange wanton smile—and turned away, shrugging his shoulders.

  Then he moved straight up to the picture of the Venetian Secretary and snapped his fingers at it. “You wait, you smirking ‘imp of fame’; you wait a little! We’ll show you that you’re not so deep or so subtle after all. You wait, Flambard, my boy, you wait a while; and we’ll show you plots and counterplots!”

  Then without a word he went upstairs to his bathroom. “By Jove!” he muttered to himself, “I begin to think Fingal’s right. The only place in this Christian world where one can possess one’s soul in peace is a tiled bathroom—only the tiles must be perfectly white,” he added, after a pause.

  He made an elaborate and careful toilet, brushing his hair with exhaustive assiduity, and perfuming his hands and face. He dressed himself in spotlessly clean linen and put on a suit that had never been worn before. Even the shoes which he chose were elegant and new. He took several minutes deciding what tie to wear and finally selected one of a pale mauve colour. Then, with one final long and wistful glance at himself, he kissed the tips of his fingers at his own image, and stepped lightly down the stairs.

  He paused for a moment in the little hallway to select a cane from the stick rack. He took an ebony one at last, with an engraved silver knob bearing his own initials. There was something ghastly about the deliberation with which he did all this, but it was ghastliness wasted upon polished furniture and decrepit flies—unless every human house conceals invisible watchers. He hesitated a little between a Panama hat and one of some light-coloured cloth material, but finally selected the former, toying carefully with its flexible rim before placing it upon his head, and even when it was there giving it some final touches.

  The absolute loneliness of the little house, broken only by an occasional voice from the tavern door, became, during his last moments there, a sort of passive accomplice to some nameless ritual. At length he opened the door and let himself out.

  He walked deliberately and thoughtfully towards the park gates, and, passing in, made his way up the leaf-strewn avenue. Arrived at the house, he nodded in a friendly manner at the servant who opened the door, and asked to be taken to Mrs. Renshaw’s room. The man obeyed him respectfully, and went before him up the staircase and down the long echoing passage.

  He found Mrs. Renshaw sewing at the half-open window. She put down her work when he entered and greeted him with one of those illumined smiles of hers, which Fingal Raughty was accustomed to say made him believe in the supernatural.

  “Thank you for coming to see me,” she said, as he seated himself at her side, spreading around him an atmosphere of delicate odours. “Thank you, Baltazar, so much for coming.”

  “Why do you always say that, Aunt Helen?” he murmured, almost crossly. It was one of the little long-established conventions between them that he should address his father’s wife in this way.

  There came once more that indescribable spiritual light into eyes. her faded “Well,” she said gaily, “isn’t it kind of a young man, who has so many interests, to give up his time to an old woman like me?”

  “Nonsense, nonsense, Aunt Helen!” he cried, with a rich caressing intonation, laying one of his slender hands tenderly upon hers. “It makes me absolutely angry with you when you talk like that!”

  “But isn’t it true, Tassar?” she answered. “Isn’t this world meant for the young and happy?”

  “As if I cared what the world was meant for!” he exclaimed. “It’s meant for nothing at all, I fancy. And the sooner it reaches what it was meant for and collapses altogether, the better for all of us!”

  A look of distress that was painful to witness came into Mrs. Renshaw’s face. Her fingers tightened upon his hand and she leant forward towards him. “Tassar, Tassar, dear!” she said very gravely, “when you talk like that you make me feel as if I were absolutely alone in the world.”

  “What do you mean, Aunt Helen?” murmured the young man in a low voice.

  “You make me feel as if it were wrong of me to love you so much,” she went on, bending her head and looking down at his feet.

  As he saw her now, with the fading afternoon light falling on her parted hair, still wavy and beautiful even in its grey shadows, and on her broad pale forehead, he realized once more what he alone perhaps, of all who ever had known her realized, the unusual and almost terrifying power of her personality. She forced him to think of some of the profound portraits of the sixteenth century, revealing with an insight and a passion, long since lost to art, the tragic possibilities of human souls.

  He laughed gently. “Dear, dear Aunt Helen!” he cried, “forget my foolishness. I was only jesting. I don’t give a fig for any of my opinions on these things. To the deuce with them all, dear! To free you from one single moment of annoyance, I’d believe every word in the Church Catechism from ‘What is your name?’ down to ‘without doubt are lost eternally’!”

  She looked up at this, and made a most heart-breaking effort not to smile. Her abnormally sensitive mouth—the mouth, as Baltazar always maintained, of a great tragic actress—quivered at the corners.

  “If I had taught you your catechism,” she said, “you would remember it better than that!”

  Baltazar’s eyes softened as he watched her, and a strange look, full of a pity that was as impersonal as the sea itself, rose to their surface. He lifted her hand to his lips.

  “Don’t do that! You mustn’t do that!” she murmured, and then with another flicker, of a smile, “you must keep those pretty manners, Tassar, for all your admiring young women!”

  “Confound my young women!” cried the young man. “You’re far more beautiful, Aunt Helen, than all of them put together!”

  “You make me think of that passage in ‘Hamlet,’” she rejoined, leaning back in her chair and resuming her work. “How does it go? ‘Man delights me not nor woman either—though by your smiling you seem to say so!’”

  “Aunt Helen!” he cried earnestly, “I have something important to say to you. I want you to understand this. It’s sweet of you not to speak of Adriano’s illness. Any one but you would have condoled with me most horribly already!”

  She raised her eyes from her sewing. “We must pray for him,” she said. “I have been praying for him all day—and all last night, too,” she added with a faint smile. “I let Philippa think I didn’t know what had happened. But I knew.” She shuddered a little. “I knew. I heard him in the ‘workshop.’”

  “What I wanted to say, Aunt Helen,” he went on, “was this. I want you to remember—whatever happens to either of us—that I love you more than any one in the world. Yes—yes,” he continued, not allowing her to interrupt, “
better even than Adriano!”

  A look resembling the effect of some actual physical pain came into her face. “You mustn’t say that, my dear,” she murmured. “You must keep your love for your wife when you marry. I don’t like to hear you say things like that—to an old woman.” She hesitated a moment. “It sounds like flattery, Tassar,” she added.

  “But it’s true, Aunt Helen!” he repeated with almost passionate emphasis. “You’re by far the most beautiful and by far the most interesting woman I’ve ever met.”

  Mrs. Renshaw drew her hand across her face. Then she laughed gaily like a young girl. “What would Philippa say,” she said, “if she heard you say that?”

  Baltazar’s face clouded. He looked at her long and closely.

  “Philippa is interesting and deep,” he said with a grave emphasis, “but she doesn’t understand me. You understand me, though you think it right to hide your knowledge even from yourself.”

  Mrs. Renshaw’s face changed in a moment. It became haggard and obstinate. “We mustn’t talk any more about understanding and about love,” she said. “God’s will is that we should all of us only completely love and understand the person He leads us, in His wisdom, to marry.”

  Baltazar burst into a fit of heathen laughter. “I thought you were going to end quite differently, Aunt Helen,” he said. “I thought the only person we were to love was going to be God. But it seems that it is man—or woman,” he added bitterly.

  Mrs. Renshaw bent low over her work and the shadow grew still deeper upon her face. Seeing that he had really hurt her, Baltazar changed his tone.

  “Dear Aunt Helen!” he whispered gently, “how many happy hours, how many, how many!—have we spent together reading in this room!”

  She looked up quickly at this, with the old bright look. “Yes, it’s been a happy thing for me, Tassar, having you so near us. Do you remember how, last winter, we got through the whole of Sir Walter Scott? There’s no one nowadays like him—is there? Though Philippa tells me that Mr. Hardy is a great writer.”

  “Mr. Hardy!” exclaimed her interlocutor whimsically. “I believe you would have come to him at last—perhaps you will, dear, some day. Let’s hope so! But I’m afraid I shall not be here then.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Tassar,” she said without looking up from her work. “It will not be you who will leave me.”

  There was a pause between them then, and Baltazar’s eyes wandered out into the hushed misty garden.

  “Mr. Hardy does not believe in God,” he remarked.

  “Tassar!” she cried reproachfully. “You know what you promised just now. You mustn’t tease me. No one deep down in his heart disbelieves in God. How can we? He makes His power felt among us every day.”

  There was another long silence, broken only by the melancholy cawing of the rooks, beginning to gather in their autumnal roosting-places.

  Presently Mrs. Renshaw looked up. “Do you remember,” she said very solemnly, “how you promised me one day never again to let Brand or Philippa speak disrespectfully of our English hymn-book? You said you thought the genius of some of our best-known poets was more expressed in their hymns than in their poetry. I have often thought of that.”

  A very curious expression came into Baltazar’s face. He suddenly leaned forward. “Aunt Helen,” he said, “this illness of Adrian’s makes me feel, as you often say, how little security there is for any of our lives. I wish you’d say to me those peculiarly sad lines—you know the one I mean?—the one I used to make you smile over, when I was in a bad mood, by saying it always made me think of old women in a work-house! You know the one, don’t you?”

  The whole complicated subtlety of Mrs. Renshaw’s character showed itself in her face now. She smiled almost playfully but at the same moment a supernatural light came in her eyes. “I know,” she said, and without a moment’s hesitation or the least touch of embarrassment, she began to sing, in a low plaintive melodious voice, the following well-known stanza. As she sang she beat time with her hand; and there came over her hearer the obscure vision of some old, wild, primordial religion, as different from paganism as it was different from Christianity, of which his mysterious friend was the votary and priestess. The words drifted away through the open window into the mist and the falling leaves.

  “Rest comes at length, though life be long and weary,

  The day must dawn and darksome night be past;

  Faith’s journey ends in welcome to the weary,

  And heaven, the heart’s true home, will come at last.”

  When it was finished there was a strange silence in the room, and Baltazar rose to his feet. His face was pale. He moved to her side and, for the first and last time in their curious relations, he kissed her—a long kiss upon the forehead.

  With a heightened colour in her cheeks and a nervous deprecatory smile on her lips, she went with him to the door. “Listen, dear,” she said, as she took his hand, “I want you to think of that poem of Cowper’s written when he was most despairing—the one that begins ‘God moves in a mysterious way.’ I want you to remember that though what he lays upon us seems crushing, there is always something behind it—infinite mercy behind infinite mystery.”

  Baltazar looked her straight in the face. “I wonder,” he said, “whether it is I or you who is the most unhappy person in Rodmoor!”

  She let his hand fall. “What we suffer,” she said, “seems to me like the weight of some great iron engine with jagged raw edges—like a battering-ram beating us against a dark mountain. It swings backwards and forwards, and it drives us on and on and on.”

  “And yet you believe in God,” he whispered.

  She smiled faintly. “Am I not alive and speaking to you, dear? If behind it all there wasn’t His will, who could endure to live another moment?”

  They looked into one another’s face in silence. He made an attempt to say something else to her but his tongue refused to utter what his heart suggested.

  “Good-bye, Aunt Helen,” he said.

  “Good night, Tassar,” she answered, “and thank you for coming to see me.”

  He left the house without meeting any one else and walked with a deliberate and rapid step towards the river. The twilight had already fallen, and a white mist coming up over the sand-dunes was slowly invading the marshes. The tide had just turned and the full-brimmed current of the river’s out-flowing poured swift and strong between the high mud-banks.

  The Loon was at that moment emphasizing and asserting its identity with an exultant joy. It seemed almost to purr, with a kind of feline satisfaction, as its dark volume of brackish water rushed forward towards the sea. Whatever object it touched in its swift passage, it drew from it some sort of half-human sound—some whisper or murmur or protest of querulous complaining.

  The reeds flapped; the pollard-roots creaked; the mud-promontories moaned; and all the while, with gurglings and suckings and lappings and deep-drawn, inward, self-complacent laughter, the sliding body of the slippery waters swept forward under its veil of mist.

  On that night, of all nights, the Loon seemed to have reached that kind of emphasis of personality which things are permitted to attain—animate as well as inanimate—when their functional activity is at its highest and fullest.

  And on that night, carefully divesting himself of his elegant clothes, and laying his hat and stick on the ground beside them, Baltazar Stork, without haste or violence, and with his brain supernaturally clear, drowned himself in the Loon.

  XXVI

  NOVEMBER MIST

  BALTAZAR’S death, under circumstances which could leave no doubt as to the unhappy man’s intention to destroy himself, coming, as it did, immediately after his friend’s removal to the Asylum, stirred the scandalous gossip of Rodmoor to its very dregs.

  The suicide’s body—and even the indurated hearts of the weather-battered bargemen who discovered it, washed down by the tide as far as the New Bridge, were touched by its beauty—was buried, after a little privat
e extemporary service, just at the debatable margin where the consecrated churchyard lost itself in the priest’s flower-beds. Himself the only person in the place exactly aware of the precise limits of the sacred enclosure—the enclosure which had never been enclosed—Mr. Traherne was able to follow the most rigid stipulations of his ecclesiastical conscience without either hurting the feelings of the living or offering any insult to the dead. When it actually came to the point he was, as it turned out, able to remove from his own over-scrupulous heart the least occasion for future remorse.

  The Rodmoor sexton—the usual digger of graves—happened to be at that particular time in the throes, or rather in the after-effects, of one of his periodic outbursts of inebriation. So it happened that the curate-in-charge had with his own hands to dig the grave of the one among all his parishioners who had remained most distant to him and had permitted him the least familiarity.

  Mr. Traherne remained awake in his study half the night, turning over the pages of ancient scholastic authorities and comparing one doctrinal opinion with another on the question of the burial of suicides.

  In the end, what he did, with a whimsical prayer to Providence to forgive him, was to begin digging the hole just outside the consecrated area, but by means of a slight northward excavation, when he got a few feet down, to arrange the completed orifice in such a way that, while Baltazar’s body remained in common earth, his head was lodged safe and secure, under soil blessed by Holy Church.

  One of the most pious and authoritative of the early divines, Mr. Traherne found out, maintained, as no fantastic or heretical speculation but as a reasonable and reverent conclusion, the idea that the surviving portion of a man—his “psyche” or living soul—had, as its mortal tabernacle, the posterior lobes of the human skull, and that it was from the head rather than from the body that the shadowy companion of our earthly days—that “animula blandula” of the heathen emperor—melted by degrees into the surrounding air and passed to “its own place.”