by Sarban
She swam vigorously back to warm herself, and, having made shift to dry herself on her vest, dressed and set off round the margin of the pond to look more closely at the statue from dry land.
While still a good space from where it stood, and while it was still hidden from her by the thicket, she was checked. The artificial channels of the stream had been long choked with weeds and the water had overflowed all the low ground to the head of the pond, making a marsh where willows and alders had grown into a dense jungle. It might have been possible to burst a way through these at the cost of tearing the clothes off her back and floundering knee-deep in mud, but Frances hesitated and decided to attempt easier ways of approach first.
Working a way round through the wood behind proved, however, no easier. Fetch what compass she would, working her way through the saplings and undergrowth on the drier ground, she was inevitably stopped by the marsh wherever she tried to turn into the little delta. Nor could she by any manner of peering and prying through the leaves from any position get the least glimpse of the statue from the wood. Feeling somewhat hotter and drier than she was before her bathe she gave up the attempt and walked slowly back to the house.
***
At luncheon on the third day of Frances’s stay at Chevrel House, Miss Dorfray looked up and said:
‘You should bathe!’
They were the first words that had been spoken since the beginning of the meal, but it was not the abruptness so much as the intimacy of the suggestion that startled Frances. Even though by a steady and tactful refusal to notice it she had overcome Miss Dorfray’s timidity so far as to be able to take a hand in the cooking and clearing up and to insist on having her meals in the kitchen with her without embarrassing her too painfully, Frances had not expected Miss Dorfray either to be concerning herself with her well-being or to recommend something to improve it with quite that assurance.
‘Yes. You should,’ Miss Dorfray nodded briefly as one who thoroughly understood what she was talking about and admitted no disputing of the facts. ‘That is what we always did in India when we felt like you do, in the hot weather before the rain came.’
Frances smiled.
‘Oh, I’m all right. Not that I’m averse to bathing. . . .’
It was odd to find Miss Dorfray offering advice; she had seemed such a fumbling and incompetent creature, not at all the sort of woman you would expect to discuss so shrewdly a slight malaise in another and prescribe for it so decisively.
‘It is the right thing to do,’ Miss Dorfray said. ‘The thunder causes a tension in the atmosphere before it breaks. The skin feels it. That is what makes you nervous and uneasy. As soon as we felt like that we used to go and lave ourselves all over with cold water. It relaxes the nerves, and it is in sympathy with the rain that will come. We used to stand in our baths and pour the water over ourselves with copper dippers, but if you have a tank that you can plunge in safely it is much better.’
Frances smiled again.
‘I’d love to. Really, though, I didn’t think I’d been showing signs of—of’—‘nervousness’ did not seem quite the right word, and as Frances hunted for a better one she acknowledged how pointless it was to deny that she felt fretful, impatient, unable to settle to anything all morning. She regarded Miss Dorfray a little guiltily.
‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Dorfray. ‘You see I know the signs so well. It has been getting hotter and closer all day. The thunder is gathering; you can feel it’s weight on the air. I saw you trying to paint out on the lawn this morning and I could see perfectly well that you felt you couldn’t do anything right. And, of course, when you feel you can’t do what you want, the more you fret, and the more you fret the less you can concentrate. I’m afraid you won’t do any better this afternoon and you’ll only make matters worse if you force yourself. Just go and douche yourself with cold water and don’t try to do anything that needs concentration. Try to be in sympathy with the coming release of tension. I shall not do anything more today until the rain comes.’
Frances detected, uncomfortably, something that sounded rather like quackery, like the faint echo of some faith-healing jargon, in Miss Dorfray’s simple therapy. But her diagnosis was correct.
That firm and enthusiastic resolution to work hard over her studies of foliage had faltered somewhat. Or rather, Frances was quick to add in her own defence, its execution had been postponed. After all, she could not let Miss Dorfray wait over her and muddle through the housework without lending a hand. She was not a complacent Homo Œeconomicus, like Eric, who, having created the demand for sacrifice by offering his money, would sit back in confident and unimpassioned expectation that the classical economic laws would organise the supply. Frances did not deny that it was slightly eccentric to pay for board and lodging and then tidy one’s room, cook one’s own breakfast, wash the dishes and peel the potatoes for dinner, but she had never objected to anything on the grounds of eccentricity alone and she would have been ashamed to let Miss Dorfray do it all. Nevertheless, it did interfere with her painting.
Then, when after two days she had thought she was beginning to see how the business of living and the business of study could be arranged in proper proportion, and she had set up her easel on the fringe of the beech wood with the greater part of the morning free before her, she had found herself unaccountably disturbed and distracted. Frowning and fretting there, unable in the least to get on and understand why she could not, she had almost concluded that she was suffering from some emotional effects of her break with Eric. Reason bristled at such a conclusion: she had not for a moment doubted the rightness of her action or regretted it. She refused to be bluffed by the insidious word, subconscious, into believing that she could, without knowing it, be yearning for Eric. Still, something was wrong with her nerves.
Miss Dorfray’s explanation, when she heard it, relieved her. She should have realised herself that the cause was simply the oppressive closeness of the weather. There was undoubtedly thunder in the air; here, in the narrow valley, walled from the winds by the muffling woods, the atmosphere was exceptionally heavy. She might feel like sniggering at Miss Dorfray’s talk about sympathetic anticipation of nature’s own refreshment of the air, but she agreed heartily with the prescribed action.
‘I certainly think that’s the right idea,’ she said. She paused, reflecting that she had said nothing so far to Miss Dorfray about her discovery of the pond on her first evening. ‘I wonder—’ she began again—‘I saw a pond in the woods that looks pretty deep and quite clean: would anyone mind my having a dip there?’
Miss Dorfray had begun to gather up the used plates. She stood a moment, unmoving, looking down, as though trying to think what pond Frances could mean.
‘The fish-pond?’ she asked at length. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think—Well, of course—’ she appeared to pull her thoughts together and she went on more confidently—‘Of course, there isn’t anybody to mind, now. The pond belongs to us. It’s quite private. You can bathe whenever you like there. No-one will come. Yes, if I were you that’s just what I should do. In fact, our niece bathes there quite often.’
I wonder, thought Frances, why she had to think so hard to remember that?
It was a little far-fetched to imagine that there might have been some objection to her swimming in the old pond, if it was safe to do so, but for an instant Frances had felt that Miss Dorfray’s hesitation implied that there was. The final invitation, however, was definite enough and Frances accepted it gratefully, though she was glad, all the same, that she had not admitted swimming there already without asking permission. She rose and began to help clearing the table.
Afterwards Miss Dorfray went to lie down. Frances went up to her own room, still arguing with her conscience whether she ought not to make an effort to work in spite of the heat. She certainly felt she could do nothing else: she had not the habit of an afternoon nap; she knew she could not settle down to a book; it must be either painting or following Miss Dorfray’s advice. Af
ter half an hour’s moody loitering she took her towel and went out, across the lawn and down the path through the woods to the pond.
The wood was very still and close; the sultry air had almost palpably thickened among the leaves and the trees seemed fixed in some glassy, solid medium that prevented the slightest movement. The tension of the atmosphere, which Miss Dorfray had spoken of, was more than perceptible: it was insistent. To Frances it seemed that the earth, the trees, the green plants and the whole complex of living organisms about her had ceased to respire. Holding their breath a myriad immobile living things crowded on either side of her narrow path, all waiting in intolerable suspense for the puff of wind and loud patter of drops that would let motion and life begin again.
Perspiring, half-stifled and oppressed by all that heavy, immobile longing for release, Frances came out through the saplings and blew a gusty breath of relief upon the bank of the pond. A glimpse of flurried motion across the water and a hasty, heavy thrashing sound on the air made her start and stare across to the opposite side. There, a great grey bird with trailing legs had risen from a patch of grass and was flapping up to clear the tops of the trees. As he mounted he gave a single harsh croak that sounded unnaturally loud and vibrant in that shut-in place.
The heron disappeared beyond the tree-tops and Frances glanced quickly up to the head of the pond. She remembered with excitement the delightful thing that stood there, hidden by the boughs down-sweeping from the thicket. In haste, and wondering why she had delayed so long in coming to see it again, she took off her clothes and dived in.
She swam slowly to enjoy to the full the sudden revelation of the statue when she came nearly to the middle of the pond, and instead of then going immediately up to look at it from close at hand, she continued across to the other bank. From there, also, she found, the statue was hidden. It stood, in fact, in a kind of alcove of leafy trees and was visible only from somewhere close on each side of the long axis of the pond.
Frances raised herself and climbed out onto the bank. Why set up a statue, she wondered, where it could be seen only by a swimmer? Or was its concealment from the banks simply an accident of Time and Nature? Perhaps when the figure was first set there the place where the stream divided and flowed into the pond had been clear of bushes and saplings; and there had no doubt been a walk over the dam at the opposite end, before it was overgrown with willows, which would have afforded a pleasing view of the figure at the end of a watery vista flanked with tall young trees.
The patch of grass she had climbed out on was wider than the other verge, where she had left her clothes, and the grass was shorter. Also, a little path twisted away from it between the trees. It seemed altogether a better way to approach the pond and it struck her that there was something in the look of the place suggesting that someone came there occasionally. She looked more tentatively about her and discovered that the grass was shorter because it had been cut some time since—roughly mown in a little half circle. Miss Dorfray’s niece bathed in the pond: this must be the place she used.
The heron, too, would frequent it, no doubt. Something pale in the grass caught Frances’s eye. She bent and then drew back, grimacing but still scared, half in disgust, half in pity. A frog lay there, belly upwards, its human-looking little arms and smooth thighs spread out in a helpless, pathetic posture, and across its wide, soft throat was a gash where the bayonet bill had stabbed it. Pity for the little corpse almost moved Frances to give it burial in the cool depth of the pond; but it was only the unexpected suggestion of humanity in the creature’s sprawled attitude that moved her pity: it would feel like frog, and the flies were already finding it. She moved aside, filled her lungs and plunged again into the water.
She reached the head of the pond, and grasping the rough herbage of the edge to one side of the base-stone of the statue, hoisted herself out and knelt to consider the figure at leisure. At once, from this new position, so close to the figure, she noticed another incongruity. Chevrel House was ill-kept, inside it was shabby and not thoroughly clean; the Dorfray family were not putting up much of a fight against the superior forces of decay. Outside, the garden was overgrown and the woods were a wild tangle. This once pretty little ornamental water was being won back by the undefeated old forest and changed into a hidden woodland pool, so defended by bosky thickets that soon only herons and water-voles would be able to find a way to it. Yet here, round about the base of the figure, in just this one place among all the rank wildness of Chevrel House’s grounds, there were clear signs of regular attention and care.
The undergrowth had been cut back and the lush annual weeds mown down so as to open a path running in an arc round the back of the figure; but the boughs of the taller trees that leaned down to screen the statue had nowhere been touched: the object had been to provide access while preserving privacy. Treading gingerly because of the sharp green stubble the sickle had left, Frances moved round the figure, touching it and examining it closely. Another thing was obvious: someone regularly cleaned the statue itself and its stone base. On the bronze there were none of the green stains of oxidisation that would have been expected on a figure set up out of doors as long ago as this must have been, and the white stone, though weathered, was quite clear of moss and lichens. It looked newly washed and even the deepest recesses of the carving were as clean as if it had been a piece exhibited in a gallery.
On her knees again Frances studied the carved stone. She had no doubts whatever about its Indian origin now. The design, if it could be called a design, was a welter of figures, human, animal and half-human, half-animal, all swarming, teeming, writhing and crawling over each other in typically Indian proliferation. Some were cut in such high relief as to be almost free-standing and in the soft voluptuous mass of those detached forms there was again the unmistakable character of Indian sculpture. The artist had been a master of his material; he had worked the fine-grained stone as deeply and intricately as if it had been box-wood or ivory and had achieved a freedom in the moulding of his plastic forms as great as though he had been working in clay.
Frances could relate the carving to nothing in her experience and make no guess at its aesthetic or mythological significance. It seemed to her at first more a frolic of the sculptor than anything: the joyful indulgence of a sheer love for rounded shapes and the exulting exercise of a masterly skill in representing every posture and presentation of limbs that the suppleness of animals bodies allows.
Then, as she examined the details, she did begin to guess at some other purpose, that riot of living bodies could not have been a mere exercise in virtuosity. It was not joyful, and if the thing expressed exultation it was not that the figures themselves exulted but the hand that carved them or the eye for whose pleasure they had been brought out from the stone to writhe and sprawl there. Frances found a kind of disquiet growing on her: disquiet with something almost like revulsion in it. In scarcely any, even of the purely animal figures, was the disposition of body to limbs regular or restful. The attitudes were natural, in that the sculptor had attempted no arrangement of limbs that is mechanically impossible for living bone and muscle: but they were involuntary. They were the tormented, frantic movements and unexpected attitudes into which bodies may be thrown by terror or physical pain. If that seemed so in the plunging, terrified beasts—the horses and unicorns, the tigers madly clawing and twisting to bite their own sides: in the crocodiles leaping and grasping, arching their bodies backwards and lashing in agony—it was still more so in the human and semi-human figures. There the gleeful sensuality that had known so well how to emphasise and exhibit every feminine characteristic showed itself on closer study to be the instrument of another kind of mastery. Postures and gestures that might at first sight be taken for some kind of whim, primitive coquetry or attitudes perhaps of an erotic dance, were seen to be the effects of some strange and violent compulsion. There was nothing tangible indicated—no bonds or captors’ hands to account for those writhings and struggles—nothing indeed that
could positively contradict the view that the sculptor had chosen to depict his subjects thus, the better to show off his talent for creating the illusion of living, resilient flesh and muscle, the more emphatically to present the rounded forms he loved. But, wherever human features could be discerned they were contorted with fear and pain, and looked at in conjunction with the tormented beasts, human or fabulous figures, these slave-girls and odalisques, these women with fishes’ heads or frog’s feet or girls with reptiles’ scaly skins and lizards’ tails, all suggested most vividly subjection to some cruel and terrifying power. The most frightening thing of all was this, that there was no pity for the tortured things: the sculptor had enjoyed their agonies—he or the inhuman master whose demands he had to satisfy. There Frances had her clue to the purpose of the work: only the fervour or fanaticism of religion could have demanded such a welter of tormented bodies: no sculptor could have produced them with such realism and relish who did not believe it was right for the gods to punish and to savour the squirmings of the damned.