After My Fashion

by John Cowper Powys

  ‘I should like to have known your mother,’ he said earnestly.

  ‘You’d have liked her much better than me,’ she responded. ‘She would have never said horrid things to you.’

  They moved on to the grave of Benjamin and Susanna. It gave them both a peculiar satisfaction to feel how they were linked by this churchyard.

  ‘Why didn’t they call you Talbot?’ she asked.

  ‘They must have known what a rebel I was going to be. It wouldn’t do for a friend of revolutionaries to be called Talbot.’

  ‘Are you a revolutionary?’ she inquired. ‘You seem to me most awfully conservative – much more conservative than I am.’

  ‘I don’t know what I am,’ said Richard. ‘I met a man in Paris who’d have made a Red of me if I’d seen much more of him. I’m afraid I’m too easily influenced.’

  ‘I like people who can be influenced,’ she said gravely. ‘Father certainly can’t and I don’t think Robert can – except by me!’

  This last phrase was thrown in after a pause and was accompanied by that mischievous elfish smile which had puzzled Richard before.

  Leaving the grave of Dr Storm they moved together towards the house, Nelly silent and preoccupied, pondering something.

  Suddenly she turned to him with shining eyes. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do with you?’ she cried. ‘I’m going to take you for a picnic! I often do that with my best friends – with Mrs Shotover for example–’ and she shot a whimsical glance at Richard which was received, this time, very amiably. ‘Grace will look after Father. He hates picnics. Besides, he’ll want his rest after lunch. And we’ll go off and have all the afternoon to ourselves till tea time! Shall we do that? Would you like to? Unless you’d prefer to look at the painted ladies again!’

  Richard’s contentment at this proposal was so evident that it did not need his feeble joke, ‘I prefer them unpainted!’ to show her what he was feeling.

  Gay and radiant, with a happiness in their hearts only permitted once or twice in a lifetime to the sons and daughters of men, they went together into the kitchen and assisted Grace, who leered at them both like the sly Shakespearean wench she was and even winked at her young mistress, in preparing sandwiches and cake and bread and butter and jam.

  Hearing their voices and laughter the old naturalist came in too after a while. Richard was surprised at the friendly humorous chuckles he bestowed on the expedition and at the alacrity with which he added to their basket of provisions, a flask of wine from his study cupboard.

  ‘A shame to leave any of this for the good man who comes after me!’ he said, with chuckling unction and maliciously twinkling eyes. ‘It’s what I use in my Mass; and if you young people drink it up, there won’t be any left for the Eidolon Vulgaris!’

  He escorted thme to the gate and wished them good luck with such mellow and ironic benevolence that Richard could not help thinking of the dignified bonhomie of the Rabelaisian Grangousier.

  Nelly did not hesitate for a moment as to the direction they should take. She led him along a little secluded path bordered by blossoming elders which emerged after a mile or two of circuitous ascent upon a high ridge of arable upland, covered at the season by a waving sea of green rye and barley.

  She led him across these cornfields, walking with swinging youthful steps in front of him along the narrow chalk path; every now and then stopping and turning round to point out to him how red-bright the fumitory was and to indicate to him some little plant associated with her earlier memories.

  When they reached the further brink of this ridge, where the ryefield ended in a thickset hedge and the path in a three-barred well-worn stile, Richard cried aloud with delight at the beauty of the valley that lay stretched before them. It was enclosed on the further end by a wood of oaks and hazel; and the edges of it, sloping down by soft degrees to a grassy level floor, were covered with thyme and cistus, milkwort and trefoil.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ cried the girl in a voice of such thrilling happiness that it made even the turtle dove’s crooning seem less golden in contentment. ‘I call it the Happy Valley. I never come here unless I’m in my best mood of all.’ And she added after a pause, ‘I haven’t been here for two years!’

  Richard helped her over the stile and they lifted the basket across. ‘How heavy it is!’ she said with a quick frown of solicitude. ‘I oughtn’t to have let you carry it all that way. How thoughtless I am! I quite forgot the old thing. Here, let’s hide it under the hedge. We don’t want it yet do we? We can come back for it when I’ve shown you the Happy Valley.’

  Richard was certainly relieved to get rid of the weight when it actually was out of his hands, but he had not been conscious of it as a burden. He felt that day as if all the baskets in the world might be piled on his back and he would be oblivious to it.

  They ran down the thyme-scented slope hand in hand, and when they reached level ground he pressed her fingers so tightly in his own before releasing them that poor Canyot’s engagement ring hurt her severely.

  It may have been the sharpness of the ring bringing melancholy thoughts, or it may have been the shy happiness of a heart too full for expression, but she walked very silently by his side through the rest of the Happy Valley. It was Richard, not she, who exclaimed with astonished delight at the huge masses of budding honeysuckle that overspread the bushes above them. It was Richard, not she, who pointed to the sprays of wild roses, the first he had seen that year.

  When they reached the end of the valley, where the path they were following entered the wood, they stopped by mutual consent and leaned over the old weather-worn gate covered with a minute grey lichen and looked into the cool leafy shadows.

  ‘Why don’t you take off your hat?’ he said suddenly, in a voice that to himself sounded strange and forced. ‘Like you did in the Selshurst garden,’ he added in a louder tone, making an effort, so it seemed to himself, to conceal the wild beating of his heart.

  As he spoke he flung down his own hat and stick on to the bracken fronds beside them.

  Her breath came unevenly, in funny little gasps. She put her hands feebly up to her head and pulled out the hat pins one by one; and then holding the hat on the top of the gate stuck the pins she had removed into it, one by one again, her fingers visibly trembling. High up in a beech tree above them a little invisible warbler kept uttering its own name in a monotonous chant, as if drunk with the sunshine and the pride of its well-hidden nest. ‘Chiff-chaff! Chiff-chaff! chiff-chaff!’ that invisible owner of those leafy solitudes kept repeating.

  Richard took her hat and laid it gently down, balancing it carefully upon a last year’s plant of hart’s tongue fern, still glossy and unfaded.

  As he did so one of those weakly fluttering pale-coloured moths, which frequent shadowy places and move so helplessly when they’re disturbed, flew against his face.

  When he turned to her again he noticed that her eyes were so large and bright that it was as if a disembodied spirit was gazing into his very soul. The slight movement he instinctively had made towards her was stopped suddenly by that look and he clutched the top of the gate and drew a deep breath.

  Then it was that the brightness in her eyes softened, melted, grew infinitely passive and tender, and by an impulse that seemed to come from some power outside themselves they threw their arms around each other and clung together, their lips joined and their hearts beating as if they were two hearts in one body.

  ‘Chiff-chaff! chiff-chaff! chiff-chaff!’ repeated the little invisible lord of the sanctuary they had invaded, giving to their encounter the winged blessing of the very Eros of the woods.

  Very gently the girl released herself and a sigh of happiness that seemed beyond even the happiness of that place of enchantment rose from her lips and floated away among the leaves.

  Then she nestled against him, her head bent so low that he could not see her face.

  For a long space they stood thus silently together, he leaning against the gate and sh
e leaning against him. Then with his hands on each side of her fair head he lightly lifted up her face as if it had been a delicate white flower and holding it away from him kissed her with a long silent kiss that seemed to throw so strange a trance upon them both that even after he had released her and she leaned, with her head on her hands, against that confederate gate-bar, and he rested motionless beside her, his arms about her body, they seemed like people drugged, spellbound, magnetized, ‘entoiled in woofèd fantasies’.

  ‘Chiff-chaff! chiff-chaff! chiff-chaff!’ repeated the relentless warbler; and neither of the two to the end of their lives forgot that particular sound. It blended with the faint, relaxed, indescribably sweet languor that took possession of the maiden, and it blended with the infinitely tender if less deep emotion that filled the heart of the man.

  At length she moved aside from his caresses and put up her hands against him as he tried to kiss her again.

  ‘Give me my hat, dearest one,’ she said. ‘We must be good now. We’ve so much to think of. I feel as if I ought to think of everybody now, for the rest of my life. I’ve been so happy with you, my dear!’ She surprised him by suddenly lifting up one of his hands and pressing it against her lips. The gesture touched him more than anything she had ever done. A great wave of tenderness rose up in him, so that at that moment he would have willingly marched straight to death for her sake.

  But as she dropped his hand her old mocking-elf’s smile flickered over her white face. ‘Poor old Robert,’ she murmured. ‘Look! I’ve still got on his ring.’

  She held up her fingers so that he might see his rival’s gift. It was a simple enough matter – a little turquoise set in pearls; but Richard regarded it with gloom. It brought back to him with a rush of painful thoughts all the troublesome circumstances that hemmed them round.

  ‘Are you going on wearing it now?’ he asked as she put on her hat and they turned away together leaving the little chiff-chaff in possession of his leafy paradise.

  ‘I’m not going to take it off today’ she answered. ‘It’s unlucky to take off one ring till you’ve got another!’ And she laughed a naughty child’s laugh at his discomforted face.

  Her response irritated him. It seemed the sort of thing that a well-bred girl oughtn’t to say. It was a silly servant-girl remark, he thought, and he teased himself in sulky silence over it till they were halfway back through the Happy Valley. It somehow made him think of Mrs Shotover. Had that confounded old woman really corrupted the girl? Had she put coarse, common, cynical notions into her head?

  Observing the effect of her words, Nelly gave way to an irresistible temptation and did what she could to make it worse. ‘How do I know,’ she said, with a mocking little laugh, ‘that you won’t feel quite differently tomorrow? I’d better not throw Robert away too quickly.’

  If she had intended to wound him she certainly succeeded. His swarthy face darkened and he raised one of his brown thin hands to his mouth, an instinctive habit of his when seriously annoyed. If the gesture was caused by a desire to hide a certain ugly, cruel, revengeful curve of his lips, it hid nothing at all from her; and she went still further …

  ‘Robert has faith in me,’ she said, ‘whatever I do and whatever I say, too. Oh you don’t know what things I’ve said to him! And he’s taken them all like the dear lamb he is. Poor old Rob! I’ve been a bad girl to him I’m afraid.’

  ‘What a wonderful mass of honeysuckle!’ Richard cried in a sort of desperation, anxious to do anything to put an end to this miserable estrangement. ‘I’m going to get you some.’ And he proceeded to clamber up the bank and make his way into the middle of the brushwood. He derived a savage pleasure from the nettle stings and thorn pricks through which he struggled. He felt as though in forcing his way through these obstacles towards the resplendent fragrant clusters above him he were fighting back to those delicious moments of love which her teasing had spoilt.

  But how could she drag in that business of ‘dear old Robert’ and his turquoise ring? A ‘lamb’ did she call him? A confounded old tiger! But how could she, after kissing him like that and being kissed, drag things down to banality and commonness and silly servant-girl superstitions? Or was she, after all, quite a different person from what he had imagined, from the Nelly he had fancied himself so fond of? Was she, really, playing the two of them off against each other and ready to take which ever seemed the more desirable catch? He was able for the moment – perhaps the thorn pricks and nettle stings helped him – to think of her thus grossly without the Feast shame; and he thought to himself how queer it was that the fact of men and women being thrilled by one another’s caresses did not in the least really bring them together. They seemed indeed to pay the penalty for that momentary unity by a more absolute relapse into their separate hostile identities when the rare moment was past.

  Then he thought within his heart, But after all I love her. But this ‘love’ or whatever it is, seems to have no influence upon our clashes with each other, as fierce separate units of nature, each struggling for its own purposes! He derived, as men of his type do, a revengeful satisfaction from this sort of pedantic analysis.

  That he could analyse the girl thus and detach himself from her so quickly after their first embrace gave him a malicious satisfaction and soothed his vanity like a costly ointment.

  On the strength of it he tore and rent at the reluctant tangles of yellow and rose-pink sweetness, pulling down huge trailing sprays of it, heedless of scratches upon face and hands, and gathering it in his arms in massed confusion, all mixed up with bindweed and bryony.

  From the grassy level below Nelly watched his movements. ‘Bless his heart!’ she said to herself. ‘I love him! I love him! I love him! This is not a dream. This is really true. I am standing in my Happy Valley watching my man pick me honeysuckle.’

  Then she thought, ‘I mustn’t tease him. I won’t tease him. I’ll be sweet to him when he comes back. But how could he get so angry when he’s just found out I love him? When we’ve just been together like that?

  ‘How peculiar men are! Everything seems on the surface with them – how you behave, how you look, what you say. As if it mattered what you said! Don’t they ever say things by opposites? Don’t they ever rage and stamp and scratch and bite and tease without it meaning anything at all; anything except – oh! I don’t know – a sort of stretching out of one’s arms and legs, after sitting in the same position too long? No I suppose they don’t. I suppose they can’t be superficial, however much they try! I suppose their surface is the same as their depth. I suppose they’re all surface!

  ‘Mrs Richard Storm. It sounds rather nice. I don’t think I shall want to keep him in Littlegate. It would be lovely to have a flat in Paris. But Father can’t be left. Oh how annoying it is not to be entirely alone in the world! No! Father can’t be left. And I must make Robert completely understand that I really shall belong to him much more when I’m married to Richard than I am now. Because he gets on my nerves now with everything unsettled and I can’t love him as much as I do really without his wanting to marry me. But when I’m married to Richard he can’t want to marry me, so I shall be free to be as lovely to him as ever I like. For I won’t stand it if Richard gets jealous. If he has me altogether that must be enough for him. I won’t allow him to be jealous! I won’t have it.’

  When Richard did finally come scrambling down the bank to her side his arms were so full of honeysuckle that he looked like a moving bush.

  ‘Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane!’ cried the girl running to meet him, and with feminine mischief kissing his face through the masses of honeysuckle before he could catch hold of her. ‘Well done! How perfectly beautiful! How sweet they are – intoxicating.’ She pressed a spray to her face and inhaled the heavy fragrance. ‘Oh Richard how happy I am! What a day this is. Oh! my dear, my dear—’

  Her words died away, as dropping the great scented bundle at their feet, he clasped her slim form tightly to him and kissed her on the mouth, c
heeks, eyelids and chin. Then, while he held her close with one arm round her body, he passed his free hand caressingly over her forehead.

  ‘You do really love me, sweetheart?’ he said, searching half-angrily, half-tenderly, for that absolute conviction of certitude in those soft feminine eyes for which the whole human race since the beginning has sought in vain.

  She answered with so passionate and clinging a kiss that it was difficult to retain the questioning mood, and with the masses of golden-pink sweetness, like an offering to them from her own special gods of her Happy Valley, held in both their arms, they moved slowly back to where they had left their basket.

  Their meal was unspoilt by any further difference. Bareheaded they sat opposite each other on a bank of thyme and milkwort; the now un-analytical Richard insisting on twisting a spray of his treasure trove round her head, and round her neck too, while in eager solemnity she untied the provisions.

  They ate hungrily and happily, enjoying themselves without thought of past and future, dividing lettuce sandwiches and jam sandwiches between them with the laughing greed of lovers who can afford to play with the lower appetites, as children play with toys.

  Having drunk to the very dregs the liberal bottle of milk supplied by Grace they discovered at the bottom of the basket, lying by the side of the vicar’s flask of port wine, nothing less than Nelly’s silver christening mug.

  ‘Let’s christen our meeting with this!’ cried the girl; and jumping to their feet they filled the little cup to the brim.

  The sun shining upon the red wine made it glow like the blood of a god; and when they had both drunk of it and kissed each other ‘with purple-stained mouth’, they poured out what was left as a heathen libation to the powers – whatever they might have been – who had brought about their encounter.

  In queer unlovely places, many months after this, in sordid streets, in depressing offices, on crowded pavements, Richard Storm had many occasions to remember that moment of his life, when wreathed with honeysuckle, round head and neck and waist, this girl, the very incarnation of youthful passion, poured out the wine cup upon the earth.