After My Fashion

by John Cowper Powys

  He patted the earth down with the trowel and pressed it still more firmly round the drooping plant with his aged knuckles. He rose when his daughter approached, holding the trowel in his hand.

  ‘Come,’ he said, ‘let’s show them that I’m a believer in Christ, whatever I may think about that Eidolon Vulgaris they call God.’

  He took her by the hand and led her into the church. She noticed that the other hand, the one which held the trowel, was shaking from old age.

  It was not the first time he had insisted on celebrating the Anglican Mass at the noon hour.

  He retired into the vestry to robe while the girl sat, sad and thoughtful, in the pew she had known since childhood. She almost expected to see him come out with the trowel still tightly clutched in his fingers; but he was quite quiet and self-possessed when he did emerge, carrying with him the sacred elements. He went through the service in English till he came to the words of consecration. These, as he always did in his solitary celebrations, he pronounced in the traditional Latin.

  Nothing could surpass in reverence the passionate faith with which he then knelt down before the substance which he believed he had been permitted to transform into the actual flesh of his Redeemer.

  Nelly, with her head buried in her hands, sobbed quietly and softly. Her tears were an immense relief to her. Even as she wept she felt a strange thrill of happiness rise up from some unfathomable depth. She was too feminine to fret very much with regard to the unconventionally of the thing. The rite was a mystery to her, not a doctrine; and no irregularity in its administration could lessen its power over her senses and her soul.

  She rose from her knees and left the church before the service was over. She knew her father preferred her to come and go as she had a mind. In these matters he had always been singularly indulgent. She thought as she went out how curious it was that the unruly working of the human heart, its deep dark erratic plunges into the unknown, its incurable and obstinate fantasy, could be quelled and soothed as though by some simplicity of natural healing, in the presence of this ritual.

  But an idea had come to her as she had knelt there, an idea that she could not help regarding as something put into her mind by what Grace always described as They Above. She would take the opportunity of Canyot’s absence to walk over to West Horthing.

  She ran into the house full of recovered courage and energy, changed her dress, put on her best hat, and made haste to prepare lunch.

  During the meal her father was very silent, evidently brooding upon something. He had recovered his appetite however and looked more resolute and obstinate than unhappy. Nelly could not help thinking how strange it was that such a passionate act of faith in the very secret of love itself, as that service of the Mass amounted to, should leave a person just as little able to enter into the feelings of another person as before!

  The old man seemed conscious of no kind of inconsistency, of no sort of betrayal of his high office. Fierce fanatical pride made him prepared to go through anything and remain as he chose to remain.

  She looked shrewdly at his face across the table; and she knew that even if she said to him, ‘I don’t want to marry Robert,’ it would not alter his purpose one jot. And yet he had only just changed a morsel of bread into the very body of the Lord! Men are queer creatures!

  When the meal was over – he had taken not the least notice of her dress and hat – the old man retired to sleep for a while upon the horse-hair sofa in his own study. Nelly had never presumed to improve upon that sofa. It was all she ever dared to do, just to dust his books and shelves and cabinets.

  He stretched himself out at full length, a queer and disconcerting figure of inflexible assurance, his feet, with their great square-toed boots, protruding from beneath an old shawl of his wife’s. In repose his face assumed the expression of a very old peasant, worn out with labouring in the fields.

  Nelly took a quick glance at him through the french window as she passed down the garden. Poor old man! If only he could analyse her heart as scrupulously as he analysed his Sussex flora!

  Quietly and resolutely she opened the garden gate and set out towards the Downs. West Horthing was a village poised high above the great seigniorial park, at the point where the more luxuriant foliage of the lower slopes merges into the sheep-browsed turf of the bare upper Downs.

  In less than an hour after leaving her home Nelly found herself seated at the familiar dark-oak tea table, in the dainty drawing room of her friend Mrs Shotover. The old lady was alone and in just the humour to give her whole attention to the troubles of her youthful protégée.

  In earlier days, before her engagement to Robert, she had been accustomed to confide all her girlish whims, caprices, hopes and ambitions to the sympathetic ears of the mistress of Furze Lodge. But during the last six months, since she had definitely accepted Mr Canyot, her visits had become fewer and fewer. For Mrs Shotover had from the very first strongly disapproved of the engagement. Nelly had tried to dispel her prejudice. Twice or even three times she had brought Mr Canyot to see her. But it was no use. The painter had refused to be what Nelly called his ‘real nice self. He had shown himself taciturn and reserved, brusque and awkward. He had refused to respond to Mrs Shotover’s friendly little jests. He had even on one occasion been positively rude. And the old lady’s initial prejudice against him, a thing based upon nothing more tangible than that he wasn’t Altogether the gentleman’, had grown into something uncommonly like hostility. The issue of it had been that Nelly had gradually dropped the habit of confiding in her old friend.

  But on this occasion, long before she had satisfied her hunger on the tea-cakes and raspberry jam which Mrs Shotover produced for her especial benefit, she had poured into her ears all her troubles.

  She had even, after a momentary hesitation which made the old woman want to hug her to her heart, told her the whole story of her meeting with Richard Storm.

  ‘Number two eh?’ laughed the ancient creature. ‘Oh, that’s nothing. Don’t you worry about that, sweetheart. Why, at your age, my dear, it was number five with me. You were too quick to proclaim things. That was all. No harm done. In my time we weren’t allowed to make fools of ourselves till Papa and Mamma had studied half the genealogies of the county. You young people are so hasty. On today, off tomorrow – bit like Henry the Eighth, wasn’t it? You all want to have religious services performed over your least flirtations. It’s the influence of that domestic immoralist Robert Browning. Never marry a man called Robert, my dear. All Roberts are descended from Robert the Devil.‘

  Nelly interrupted her with a laughing sigh.

  ‘Poor old Robert!’ she murmured. ‘He’ll be really hurt, I’m afraid.’ The accumulated stirrings of revolt that betrayed her into this very definite bulletin of the state of her heart frightened her as she uttered it. She had really begun to put her weight, then, against the teeth of the trap? And it seemed as if they yielded a little. Or was it just a passing response to the perilous irresponsibility of her hostess?

  ‘Don’t you worry yourself ill over any Robert. They’re none of them worth it. Nor any Richard either, for the matter of that! But you may bring number two to see me if you like. I’ve read something of his in the Mercure de France. It pleased me; if I’m not confusing him with that clever Belgian – you know who I mean?’

  Nelly hadn’t the least idea who she meant, but she begged earnestly to be allowed to see the article in question.

  ‘Not I!’ laughed the old woman mischievously. ‘I’m not going to corrupt your mind. Does your Richard write in his native tongue as well?’

  ‘Oh yes! He wrote that Life of – of – who was it now?’ And Nelly felt a vivid pang of humiliation because at that moment, when she especially wanted to do so, she could not recall the Life of Someone, to which reference had been made during their silly quarrel in the tea shop. ‘It was those two dogs,’ she muttered, blushing.

  The old woman looked at her whimsically. ‘Dogs?’ she cried, getting up fro
m the table. ‘You don’t mean to say that number two writes Lives of Dogs? Well, that is interesting.’ She stooped, as they both moved towards the sofa, and addressed a great complacent tabby-cat that lay curled up in the corner of it.

  ‘Do you hear that, Tabbyskins? He writes Lives of Dogs. Perhaps if you’re very nice to him and don’t show your claws, but only purr, when he strokes your fur the wrong way, he will write your life – the Life of Mrs Tabbyskins Shotover, the great Sussex Thinker. You’ll like to have your life written by a real poet, wouldn’t you my treasure? Well, my dear– ‘and turning to her young guest she pulled her affectionately down by her side and patted her on the knee’–now tell me a little more about this Mr Storm of yours. He’s a gentleman, I suppose?’

  Nelly smiled. “Yes, I should certainly say he is that,’ she answered. ‘When you don’t notice that they’re not, they generally are, aren’t they, Granny?’

  In earlier days Mrs Shotover had encouraged her to use this endearment; and it was a sign of reconciliation that she used it now.

  ‘His grandfather was a D.D. and is buried in our churchyard,’ the girl added with solemnity.

  Mrs Shotover smiled. ‘My dear!’ she cried, ‘I hope you don’t think that D.D. is a mark of gentility. They used to make ‘em D.D.s when they dedicated their sermons to Queen Anne. Parson Adams was a D.D. and they used to give him his meals in kitchens and places. What was your beau’s grandfather’s name?’

  ‘Storm,’ murmured Nelly, frowning a little. Then her face brightened. ‘But it says on the tombstone that Susanna was the daughter of John Molyneux Talbot.’

  Mrs Shotover chuckled. ‘You’ve certainly got hostages for his good behaviour in your churchyard! Susanna’s a good name. Though if I remember right, one of them found it difficult once to keep herself to herself! But Susanna Talbot is a good sound name for anybody’s grandmamma. Well, my sweet child, you must bring your Stormy Petrel over here for me to scrutinize. I’ll ferret him out, depend on it! I’ll show him up if he’s a blackguardly villain. I’ll storm his defences. What did he do in the war? Did he fight? Was he in the Legion? Of course he’s in love with you, my dear! Who wouldn’t be? But we must be careful. We must take our time. Who knows? He may have the most obstinate little ménage hidden away somewhere! We mustn’t have our sweet Nell made unhappy. We must go very slow. Very slow and very carefully.’ And the old lady proceeded to put her caution into practice by kissing her companion as mischievously and slyly as if it were the girl’s wedding morning.

  Nelly replied as freely as she could to all her friend’s questions. One thing, however, instinct told her to keep unrevealed; and that was the fact of Mr Richard Storm being so much older than herself. Let her, she thought, find that out after she sees how nice and young and unspoilt he is in his mind!

  It was a little later in the afternoon, while they were looking at Mrs Shotover’s fine roses, that Nelly ventured upon the topic of the writer’s desire to secure some quiet lodging in that neighbourhood so as to work undisturbed at some new enterprise.

  The old lady laughed uproariously. ‘My dear girl you have indeed got on! Lodgings in the neighbourhood? What next? Why in my time they used to be satisfied if they came down from town for very short weekends. You’re surely not such a dear stupid as to think he’d land himself out here for the summer if there wasn’t someone he was after. Of course it may not be you. He may have an inamorata in Selshurst – though that’s not likely. Much more possible he’s got some little French friend down at Fogmore. But don’t you fool your innocent little heart into believing that bosh about his having to write some great work. They all have to write great works when they want to enjoy themselves!’

  Nelly made no reply for some minutes to this tirade. Then, with her hand on the stem of a great cluster of red roses into which she was prepared to plunge her face if what she said became too embarrassing, she uttered a faint protest.

  ‘But Granny, I can’t quite understand you. You don’t mean that if a man were really immoral, and really had – people – like you speak of – dependent upon him – whether in Fogmore or anywhere else – that it would be right for him to marry?’

  The old lady promptly defeated the girl’s intention of burying her face in the rosebush after this outbreak, by pulling her back into the path. ‘Little goose!’ she cried with severe emphasis. ‘Get this into your pretty head. There are no such things as moral men in these days – except such dear stick-in-the-muds as neither you nor I could stand for a fortnight! Well! perhaps that’s going a little far, considering that my dear old George was faithful to me for forty years. But you would probably have been bored with George. What you girls have to do is to draw the line between honest naughtiness and sheer ill-bred blackguardism. If you’re looking for a Sir Galahad, my dear baby, you’d better give up the thought of marrying anybody. What you have to do is to choose some well-bred gentleman who knows the world and make him fall in love with you. He’ll deal with his past life for himself. That’ll be his affair – your affair will be to keep him interested and to bear him children. Men with any sensitiveness are faithful to their children, even if they’re not faithful to their wives. The sooner you get over this Sir Galahad business the sooner you’ll be a sensible little girl.

  ‘It’s a choice between boredom, my sweet, and uncertainty. If the fellow’s a gentleman and not a fool, you’ll never have anything worse than uncertainty. And the woman who can’t live with uncertainty had better go into a nunnery or die an old maid. The wives who go about looking, as they say, “unhappy” are either selfish creatures who’re as bad as the men they condemn, in their fussiness over their, precious little selves, or they are unlucky innocents who’ve never had any Granny to tell them what this world is like. Don’t look so wild and scared, child. Things aren’t as bad as all that. If your Stormy Petrel has had his little pleasures, as no doubt he has, it’s quite likely that he’ll make a most quiet companion. The worst ones often do. For my part I’d sooner see you married to a man of the world – that’s to say if he were a gentleman – than to some hot-headed boy who’d clear off bag and baggage directly he got tired of you and found some other scatter-brain.’

  It was at this point that Nelly was encouraged to reveal what she had hitherto held back. ‘He is a lot older than me, Granny. His hair is just a little tiny bit grey, at the sides!’

  The old woman patted her on the back and chuckled mischievously. ‘It’ll soon be grey at the top as well,’ she threw out, ‘if you’re as naïve with him as you’ve been sometimes with me.’

  She escorted her visitor as far as the end of the drive, between the old beeches.

  ‘Old Nancy there,’ she said, pointing to a little cottage that stood just at the corner where the drive left the road, ‘takes lodgers sometimes. But no hurry, my dear, no hurry. Bring him up to see me as soon as you like. And don’t let your thoughts run too quickly ahead!’ This final word seemed to her advisable, considering the radiant expression that came into Nelly’s face when she mentioned the possibility of Nancy’s cottage.

  ‘Oh youth! youth!’ sighed the old lady as she returned alone to her house, ‘but I always knew she was never properly in love with that ruffian Canyot. I wonder if number two does care at all? Oh youth! Oh youth!’

  Chapter 4

  At the very moment when, in the house of his enemy, his betrothed was drinking tea, the ‘ruffian Canyot’, as that same enemy had styled him, was seated with his sketchbook on the bank of an old moat-like pond only five or six miles away.

  This pond fronted a ruined priory now converted into a farmhouse and was a place of rare imaginative possibilities.

  By his side stood a child of about eleven, ugly and untidy, but with large intelligent eyes, eyes that surveyed the young man’s face with intent concentrated sympathy.

  ‘We’re friends, eh?’ said Robert Canyot.

  The little girl nodded furiously and frowned a little.

  ‘And you can’t tease me and orde
r me about, as most friends do, because you can’t speak, eh, Sally-Maria?’ Once more the child nodded.

  ‘Because, you know, I found out last night that a grown-up person who I thought loved me best of all didn’t really and truly love me; not in her deep-down heart; not as you will love, I hope, someone some day, Sally-Maria.’

  The child made a quick sudden movement with her hands as if in protest. Then she stooped down and kissed his sleeve. Canyot patted her gently on the head. ‘Yes, when they’re grown up they’re not faithful and true like you kiddy. Better let them go. Don’t you think so, Sally-Maria? No use trying to hold them when they want to go.’ He continued for a while sketching in silence, the child watching every movement of his pencil in fascinated absorption. ‘How many times have I been here, Sally-Maria?’

  The little girl smiled at him at last and held up four fingers. ‘As many as that? You’ve watched with me four times – four long afternoons; and you’re not tired of me yet!. You can’t be a real girl, Sally-Maria. You must be a bird or a cat or a squirrel. Perhaps you’re a goblin. But you can’t be a girl. If you were I should be looking about for you everywhere today. I should be saying to myself, “Where’s Sally-Maria gone?” And you’d be off with some nice new friend! And then if you did come back, just out of pity, you’d look at me sideways, wondering to yourself how you ever could have cared for such a stupid fellow. Wouldn’t you, Sally-Maria?’

  The dumb child shook her head violently at this and even made a strange inarticulate sound with her mouth – a sound that resembled the whistling rattle of a missel thrush.