After My Fashion

by John Cowper Powys

  She kept going over in her mind every incident of the scene. It must be some woman that he cares a good deal for, she thought, otherwise he would have shown me the letter and just laughed at its sentiment. It must have been one particular letter in a long correspondence; or his surprise at seeing an unexpected hand would not have disarmed him. He must have known that it would reveal to me the whole story. He must have been thoroughly terrified of my seeing it.

  ‘Not quite so fast!’ she was compelled to cry out to her companion when, having reached the smooth turf of the crest of the hill, Canyot quickened his pace still more.

  He turned round and looked at her.

  They were alone in the midst of a wide treeless expanse, an expanse unbroken by any other human being, unbroken by bush or shrub or animal. Above their heads the larks sang; large cool shadows, one after another, floated over them, thrown by slow-travelling clouds, and from the little patches of thyme at their feet arose that peculiar faint sun-burnt pungency which more than anything else seems to be the attribute of the Downs.

  The immense undulating upland, along the crest of which they were now moving, was like some huge wave of the sea struck into immobility. This great green wave held up their two figures, isolating them completely from the rest of the world; carrying them through infinite blue ether on the planetary motion of the round earth.

  He stopped at her words and looked at her. Her cheeks were flushed and she was drawing her breath in little gasps.

  ‘Let’s sit down here,’ he said.

  They sat down side by side, the smell of the thyme becoming vividly distinct and little groups of blue butterflies chasing one another backwards and forwards across their feet. Her hands lay on her lap and Canyot possessed himself of one of them, holding it grimly, tightly, passionately.

  She could hardly release it without an exertion of moral force for which at that moment, as she panted for breath, she lacked the energy.

  She had not realized· how easy it would be for Canyot to repossess himself of such a privilege. She had not realized how the mere physical habit of lovemaking may outlast the emotional importance of it.

  He on his part took what was a mixture of pique with Richard, physical exhaustion, the revival of old habitual gestures, and real· affection for himself, for something much deeper in her. He had grasped her fingers so fiercely, just because he had not supposed for a moment that she would let him retain them. She did let him retain them; and his passion gathered intensity.

  ‘I hate human beings,’ she said after a few minutes’ silence. And in her heart, she thought, What does it matter if I do let Robert hold my hand? Richard has got some woman in Paris who writes to him letters that I’m not allowed to see. He is evidently entangled still with her or he would have told me the whole story. And it doesn’t seem fair that I should keep Robert at a distance when he goes on with his Paris entanglements.

  ‘I hate all human beings,’ she repeated, ‘because they always spoil everything. I do it myself, I know. I spoil things for myself.’

  Canyot gazed in a kind of sombre ecstasy at her downcast profile.

  ‘You’ve spoilt everything for me, Nelly,’ he said; ‘but I don’t hate you for it. I like things to be spoilt! There’s something in me that is glad when things are spoilt. I’m glad you’re married. I’m glad I’ve got to leave you in six days. I’m glad you are tormenting me at this moment with your speeches and your ways.’

  His tone was too familiar to her, and the peculiar mood he was in too reminiscent of former times, for Nelly to be shocked or startled.

  She gave him a little flickering smile. ‘Dear old Rob!’ she said.

  He lifted her hand to his lips but did not release it.

  ‘I don’t know whether you can possibly understand me,’ he continued. ‘You probably can’t. But the fact is I’ve come to the conclusion that if you can’t be glad of everything that happens to you, of everything that happens in your life, you’d better kill yourself at once. It’s one or the other, Nell.’

  ‘It’s certainly one or the other with you, Robert,’ she answered; ‘but you needn’t hurt my hand, whichever way it is.’

  He did not release her fingers even then; he went on in the same strain.

  ‘You can’t get back from me, you know, any of the things that have happened between us. Every kiss you’ve ever given me still remains mine and no one else’s.’

  ‘I see you put my kisses with all the other horrid things you’re glad to have happened to you,’ remarked the girl, in a voice full of a teasing affectionate mockery; ‘but to keep true to your present theory, what you ought to remember best are the times when I’ve been most bad to you.’

  ‘You’ve never been bad to me,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t be. You can hurt me and hurt me and hurt me. You can marry a hundred Richards. I shall only like you the better. And it’ll be part of what I have to put into my paint box.’

  ‘Oh there’s a ladybird!’ cried Nelly suddenly. ‘Do look!’ She took advantage of his disarmed attention to release her hand.

  ‘What do you mean by your paint box?’ she inquired when the ladybird had flown away.

  ‘I mean,’ said Robert, making a futile effort to regain her lost fingers, ‘that my painting draws its life from every single thing which destiny takes away from me.’

  The girl looked at him in whimsical gravity. ‘Then if you had had me,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t be in your paint box any more?’

  ‘The Nelly part of you wouldn’t,’ he answered solemnly, ‘but your soul would – because I should never have got hold of that!’

  ‘But the Nelly part of me is my soul,’ she protested; ‘that’s what I am really and truly.’

  He looked at her grimly and sardonically.

  ‘No! No! my dear,’ he said. ‘This is Nelly,’ and he touched her shoulder. ‘And this is Nelly,’ and he touched her knee. ‘But the thing in you which says “I am I” isn’t Nelly at all. It isn’t even a girl. It isn’t even a human being.’

  She smiled somewhat uneasily. ‘What is it then?’ she asked. ‘I don’t at all like the idea of being something that isn’t myself.’

  ‘It is yourself. It’s the self that nobody in the world can ever take away or invade or imprison, as they can this Nelly,’ and he gave her propped-up knees a vicious little shake. ‘But it’s something that I could never, never get hold of, even if I had you absolutely for my own.’

  She looked frowningly at the hot grey-green turf at her feet where a heavily winged brown butterfly was fluttering aimlessly.

  ‘What is it you really care for in me?’ she suddenly inquired.

  The thoughts that had led her to this were queerly complicated. That discovery that Richard corresponded with some Paris woman and received letters which he dreaded to show to her had stained with a sort of muddy tincture the whole outlook of her mind. It not only spoilt Richard for her. It spoilt herself for herself. It muddied up, as it were, the whole business of love between human beings. It made her doubt her own integrity, her own charm. If she didn’t satisfy Richard, if her love couldn’t work the miracle of making them really one – mustn’t that be because there was something wanting in herself? She felt a horrible suspicion of her own nature. She realized for the first time how cruelly alone everyone is in the world; how one doesn’t evoke love simply by being what one is without any effort.

  It was at that point in her train of thought that she said, ‘What is it in me?’

  Her question completely broke down Canyot’s self-control. He jumped up from the ground. He took her by the wrist and swung her up upon her feet. He threw his arm round her and embraced her passionately; kissing her so brusquely, that he kissed the tip of her nose, and her open mouth and her lace collar, in one rapid series of indiscriminate hugs.

  When he let her go he was pale and trembling and hardly dared to look into her eyes. But the effect of his violence upon Nelly was not to make her in the least angry with him. She saw his remorse. She bent f
orward and gave him a quick affectionate little kiss upon his cheek. Then she smiled sadly and tenderly. ‘You’ll only make yourself unhappy by that, Robert dear, and it doesn’t do any good. I do love you; but I could never like your doing that. So what’s the use?’

  He stood staring at her, like an animal that has been punished for some unknown fault. The colour, coming slowly back into his face, covered it with funny red blotches.

  ‘I’m a fool,’ he muttered, ‘a damned fool! Let’s go on now.’ And they resumed their rapid stride, side by side.

  They reached Toat Farm without any further personal conversation. The weight of the basket of provisions he carried wearied him and reduced his speed; so that when they arrived at the place the girl was quite cool and collected and able to be nice to Sally-Maria and Sally-Maria’s aunt.

  They ate their lunch in the woman’s cottage and she made them tea. The dumb child seemed hostile to Nelly, for she refused to accept a morsel of food while they remained there and a queer inarticulate anger against them both was obviously smouldering in her sullen eyes. ‘She is jealous, poor little thing!’ whispered Nelly as they went out, and the whole complicated misery of human emotions swept over her in one drowning wave. Was there no such thing in the world as disinterested love?

  But Canyot’s picture impressed her much more than she had anticipated. The artist had managed to communicate to those shadows in the water a strange passionate beauty full of wistful hints and intimations; the wind that stirred the rank-growing melancholy hemlocks seemed, as the girl gazed at them, to be the very wind of fate itself carrying the burden of old sorrows, of old baffled longings, out of some deep unknown into some still obscurer future.

  She understood, as she looked, fascinated and silent, at what he had done, something of what he really did mean by his queer phrase about the ‘paint box’.

  It was not till quite late in the afternoon that they prepared to leave Toat Farm. At the last minute Robert discovered to his dismay that Sally-Maria was missing. Her aunt called loudly for her and they all searched for her in the places where the child generally was accustomed to play. But in the end they had to leave without saying goodbye to her.

  If her aunt’s final conjecture was correct, she had run off; as she usually did when she was unhappy, to the cottage over the hill where lived Old Miss Stone’. With this explanation Robert had to be contented.

  The incident of Sally-Maria’s disappearance threw a gloom over them both as they walked back slowly across the Downs; and nothing that Nelly could find to say to her companion seemed able to lift it.

  She herself was occupied with the very difficult question as to how the broken and ruffled stream of her love for her husband could be restored to its former level course.

  She surprised herself by the bitterness she felt about it, by the anger she felt towards him.

  Her present desire, which she herself did not dare to bring into the light of complete consciousness, was to excite his jealousy to the breaking point.

  She wished to make him suffer exactly the same pain that she herself was suffering. She wished to have him not only begging for her forgiveness, but in a blind helpless manner – the clearness of all human issues tarnished and stained – doubtful as to her love.

  Meanwhile as she walked by Canyot’s side there slowly settled down upon her the consciousness that things could never be quite the same. If she had actually caught him in the act of making love to this Paris woman, she could hardly have felt more deceived, more betrayed, more disillusioned. And yet in one part of her brain she had known that it was almost certain that he had entanglements. Woman-like, she had suppressed that knowledge, thought it down, thought it away, thought it into faint unreality.

  Everything about her present feeling towards Richard puzzled and bewildered her. She was surprised at herself for not being more hurt than she was. She recalled how as a young girl she had often imagined herself in just this very position – the position of a betrayed wife – and how she had always, in imagination, felt a kind of passionate passivity in suffering, a sweet tenacious clinging devotion to the erring one that nothing could shake. In place of this she found herself sickened with the whole business of life, dulled and stupefied, as if with a species of nausea. What especially surprised her was that the strong, clean, pure flow of her own love for her husband seemed to have received some disastrous alloy, some influx of poisonous bitterness.

  Was she, after all, she asked herself, something different from the devoted, passionate, tenacious Nelly, in whom she had believed?

  Was she, as Mrs Shotover had so bluntly told her, no better than an intriguing flirt whose infatuation for a man turned to gall and wormwood at the first catastrophe?

  Or had Richard, by his miserable business, really poisoned with a fatal poison the well-spring of her love?

  It is strange, she thought, these terrible little accidents of betrayal – what they can destroy! Like some evil acid thrown upon sensitive flesh, they seem able to bite to the very bone! Nelly sighed, as she walked, from a heart most ‘sorely charged’. It seemed so ridiculously small, the whole matter of this clandestine correspondence, of this burnt letter, revealing a sequence – so she told herself – of letters that had not been burnt! A ridiculously small matter! and yet it seemed to have given to the very essence of her being a strange organic shock.

  She felt as if since he had thrown the thing into the fire two or three long bitter years had passed over her head instead of a few hours.

  When they reached the top of the hill above Hill Cottage they were surprised to see a small motorcar standing by the gate.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Canyot brusquely. ‘If it’s a visitor I shall clear off. In fact,’ he added, ‘I think I shall be off anyway. I don’t feel in a mood for meeting people.’

  He gave her his hand and looked into her eyes, hoping for some final glance of tenderness; but her gaze was fixed upon the unusual object at the gate. ‘Goodnight, Robert,’ she repeated, almost mechanically, as with a wave of his hand he strode away.

  She was met at the door by her husband. Directly she saw him she knew that something was wrong. ‘Is it Father?’ she asked. Richard nodded without speaking and stood aside for her to go in.

  Her father’s bedroom was upon the ground floor. Its door stood wide open.

  Directly the girl stepped across the threshold she knew that the old naturalist was dying. By his side stood the doctor, a quiet self-contained young man with an expressionless face; at the foot of the bed sobbed Grace, her big tears streaming down her rosy cheeks and falling upon her apron.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Nelly to the doctor. ‘Is it his heart?’

  It was Richard who answered her question. He stepped up close to her side and put his arm round her waist. ‘It was a sun stroke it seems,’ he said. ‘He was brought back from West Horthing in Mrs Shotover’s carriage. He must have become unconscious on the way. Grace was alone. Mrs Shotover’s man carried him in and then went for the doctor. I have been several times to the top of the hill to look out for you. I found him like this when I came in and he has not changed since.’

  The old man was lying on his back with his eyes closed. His breath was loud and unnatural, resembling the sound of water in an iron pipe. His mouth was wide open and every now and then a convulsive spasm crossed his face.

  Nelly went up to him and bent down above him – ‘Father!’ she whispered. And then in a louder tone, a tone full of a sudden desperate fear, ‘Father!’

  Her voice seemed to reach the dying man’s ears; for he made a little feeble movement with his hands.

  The young doctor drew a step back.

  ‘Can’t anything be done to make that breathing easier?’ whispered Richard with something like a tone of reproach. ‘It must hurt him to breathe like that.’

  Suddenly John Moreton opened his eyes and gazed at his daughter. The girl fell upon her knees and kissed his hand as it stirred faintly on the counterpane. Wildly and str
angely the old man looked at her. His breathing grew shriller, harsher, huskier. It became the most dominant thing in the room. It became a living separate entity, a palpable horror that pressed with a ghastly weight upon them all; that tyrannized over them all. It was as if, in that repulsive sound, Death itself – the old eternal antagonist – was mocking them, was menacing them with an unintelligible threat.

  Nelly spread out her arms over the bed and hid her face. It was not easy for her to look into those bewildered wild eyes with their inexplicable appeal. An unnatural longing suddenly seized Richard that he might rush from the room and escape, escape into the largeness of the evening, from this pitiful struggle. He felt as if every breath the dying man drew rent and tore at his own throat. He felt stifled; as if it were he himself that were wrestling there with an invisible enemy.

  The impassive young doctor contemplated the scene with serene detachment. He had seen hundreds of deaths in France and this particular death had less effect upon his emotional capacity than the shooting of an aged dog.

  Nelly’s head, buried in the white counterpane, was full of a turmoil of remorse. Why hadn’t she been a better, a kinder, a more considerate girl? Her sobs shook the bed and mingled with the horrible rattling in the old man’s throat.

  Suddenly John Moreton jerked up his head from the pillow and held it erect. The young doctor was reminded of a similar movement in the neck of a frightened tortoise.

  Inside the old man’s mind, at that moment everything was absolutely clear. In a flash he saw the whole scene. He saw the impassive doctor. He saw the weeping servant. He saw his daughter lift her tear-stained face from the bed and gaze at him with desperate love. He caught in Richard’s eye a look of fidgety irritation, a look that said ‘let’s get this melancholy business over and go for a walk on the Downs’.