After My Fashion

by John Cowper Powys

  That’s the worst of England, he thought. It’s such a confounded individualistic country, that a horrible old woman like that as long as she has money and ‘knows the neighbourhood’ can go on indefinitely making herself a general nuisance. In America, he supposed, she would have been put into her place and forced to mend her manners. Well! Well! After all, perhaps, there was something to be said for a system that encouraged everybody to grow into a ‘Character’, either a charming one or the reverse! It was better perhaps to have ‘laughing hyenas’ than monotonous herds of sheep!

  The next day was a day of pouring rain and Richard made no attempt to do more than visit the cathedral. He took the opportunity of carrying his notebooks there and reading to himself what he had written. On the whole he was not displeased with the result of his week’s work. He had composed about two hundred lines of this uneven dithyrambic ‘litany of the earth-soul’, its slow growing into consciousness, its use of the sentiency of all living things, its vague ‘dreaming on things to come’.

  He became conscious how deeply he had abandoned himself to these English fields and lanes and hedges, to these mossy walls and historic buildings, to these old quiet immemorial traditions.

  His return to his native land had stirred a thousand atavistic feelings in him, tastes and prejudices, devotions and queer old attachments.

  The lines he had written were full of the sounds and scents of the English country, and the more conscious, more human element in them was religious in the calm reserved English way and was rootedly, but not feverishly, pagan. Dithyrambic in its broken ebb and flow the poem might be; but the music of it was rich and slow and a little heavy – not by any means a song of air and flame! The thing might not be passionate and exciting; but the bleating of flocks was in it, and the sweet breath of cattle, and the patient labours of simple people under the sun and the rain, and the faint sad strange murmurs, like the winds at night, over summer grass, of the dead generations that found their survival in those who came after them.

  He returned to his inn late that night, having wandered far through the fields as the evening cleared, along the old canal bank, towards the sea. It had come upon him, as he walked there, especially in passing a particular group of poplar trees, pale and soaked with rain, shivering in the night wind like something human against the orange-coloured skyline, that he had known all this before. Yes, long before, under some other name perhaps, in the unending sequence of the great wayfaring, he must have stood, just as he was standing then, watching those trees whispering to each other with sad tender voices!

  And that night he pulled his chair close to the open window and sat for a long while looking out into the silent wet garden, where the darkness itself seemed to exhale an old forgotten fragrance, carrying the mind back to dumb deep-buried memories.

  It was one of those hours when a man feels the presence of all the days he has lived through, gathered up and folded together like the crowding of soft innumerable wings; an hour when what is to come hangs palpably imminent, like a vast pregnant shadow, before him, beckoning to those sheltering wings that they should let him go, let him move forward to his fate.

  Winnowed and purged by his days with the secrets of words, their mysterious alliances and treacheries, his soul seemed, as he sat at that window, reluctant to break the spell, hovering consciously between a past that was over, its wounds healed, and a future on whose threshold he wavered and hesitated, full of unknown things – beautiful, terrible, pitiful!

  He left the window at last with a sense as though he had made, for good or for evil, some great decision; as though at some dark crossroads he had chosen his way, and now could never, through all that should subsequently happen, retrace his footsteps.

  Never had Richard sunk into so deep a chasm of dreamless unconsciousness as he slid away into, almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. He awoke the next morning with a feeling as though he had slept not for seven hours, but for seven centuries; he wondered vaguely if he would ever sleep quite in that way again. Was it the very sleep of the ‘earth-soul’ he had been writing about into which, like a child entering the spaciousness of a mother’s dreams, he had been allowed to pass?

  He had the queerest feeling as he washed and dressed as though it were necessary to move very quickly, very stealthily and solemnly, about the room. Was some shadowy dead self, some phantom corpse of everything he had been before, actually lying on the bed he had quitted?

  He ran downstairs anyway with a distinct feeling of relief from psychic tension and oppressipn. And on the table in the breakfast room, lying on his plate, he found a letter from Nelly. He opened and read it standing by the window, while Trixie Flap, the Crown housemaid, watched him shrewdly, her hand on the mahogany sideboard.

  The letter was brief enough.

  ‘Dear Mr Storm, Please come over and see me. At once, if you don’t mind? It’s impossible to tell you more in a letter. I must talk to somebody. I am very worried, so please come as soon as you get this. In the morning if possible. I’ll look out for you. I am sorry to trouble you.’

  And the letter was hurriedly signed, ‘Nelly’.

  Richard looked at his watch and then at the self-conscious back of Trixie Flap who was now fidgeting with something on the sideboard.

  ‘Let’s have some tea at once, Trixie, please,’ he said, seating himself at the table and beginning to cut the loaf. ‘Never mind about the porridge. I’m in a hurry. I’ve got to go somewhere.’

  When he next looked at his watch it was after ten and he was already halfway to Littlegate. He could not have given any lucid account of what trees or beasts or rustics he had passed on his way. He might have passed much more remarkable things than early flowering knapweed and they would have been unnoticed. That phrase I’ll look out for you with its pathetic confidence in his friendship had stuck a dart into his heart whose sweet rankling made him oblivious of all outward objects.

  He came upon her quite suddenly, leaning against a gate, staring with woebegone eyes in front of her, without hat or gloves. She turned when she heard his step and leaped forward to meet him, her cheeks burning.

  She gave him her hand. She made a little hesitating movement as if she would have given him both her hands. Instead of that she gave him the loveliest smile that Richard had ever seen on a human countenance. ‘Thank God you’ve come!’ she said with a sigh of content.

  They instinctively moved to the gate which Richard rapidly opened, untwisting its rustic defences with a trembling hand.

  ‘Let’s get off the road,’ he said. ‘Then we can talk better.’

  They risked the wrath of the farmer and crossed the field to the shelter of a large ash tree which grew in the hedge bank. At the foot of this tree they were isolated from the whole world.

  It was a hot, still, thundery day, the sun having a semitropical feeling in it owing to the rain that had fallen.

  ‘I’m afraid the grass is damp,’ said Richard. ‘With that thin dress …’ He looked at her tenderly. ‘Oh, I know!’ he cried impulsively, and taking off his coat he spread it upon the ground.

  The girl looked grave. ‘After getting warm walking …’ she murmured, ‘I don’t think you ought to—’

  ‘But just feel how hot the sun is – burning hot!’ And he made her sit down by his side; even going so far as to give her a little friendly pull closer to him when she seemed shy of taking more than the minutest share of the tweed jacket spread out beneath them.

  Nelly sat with her legs stretched straight out in front of her, Richard with his knees under his chin; and when he told her that it was like sitting together on a magic carpet that only needed one talismanic word to transport them both to some Happy Valley out of reach of all annoyance, she nodded in contented agreement.

  The hot thundery heavy sunshine fell upon them like an actual stream of attenuated gold, as though the very father of gods and men were blessing them with full hands.

  ‘Well – now we are alone and safe,’ said Richard
, hugging his knees with his clenched fingers and letting his eyes rest on the childish indoor shoes she was wearing, strapped with a thin leather strap above the instep, ‘let’s hear the worst. Out with it Miss Nelly! I can tell you in advance, by a sort of presentiment, that I shall be able to find a solution. Out with it Miss Nelly!’

  ‘You may drop the Miss – if you like,’ said the girl in a low voice, plucking a long feathery grass blade and pulling it to pieces on her lap.

  ‘Well, out with it, Nelly!’ he repeated.

  She drew in her breath as if for a great burst of volubility; and then suddenly, instead of telling him anything, she broke into a flood of tears. Richard longed to take that fair forehead with its pearl-white transparent skin, its delicate blue veins, its exquisite arched eyebrows, and those wet cheeks hidden in her hands, and comfort them with caresses; but it seemed somehow as if it would be stealing an unfair advantage of her just then. So he just laid one of his hands lightly on her shoulder. ‘Come, come, little one,’ he said. ‘I’m certain we can settle all these things if you only tell me.’

  She made a gallant effort and stopped crying, turning to him a look of almost frightened apology. ‘Don’t be angry with me,’ she murmured. ‘I really don’t often give way like this. I think it must be the thunder in the air. It’s so hot and close isn’t it?’

  Richard hurriedly assented. ‘Oh awfully close! But do try and tell me now. I’m sure I’m the right person to be told.’

  ‘It’s about Father,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s written several times to London lately and he’s written to Selshurst. And now it’s all decided. They’ve accepted his resignation. Someone’s coming from Selshurst to take the service. And there’s to be a new vicar. He’s not to be allowed to officiate in the church again. In fact it’s more like being turned out than resigning. There’ll only be one more quarter’s salary coming in; and that’s the end. After that we’ve got nothing! And we’ve not saved a penny. God knows what we shall do. What hastened all so and brought things to a head was some parishioner from over the hill complaining to the bishop – no Little-, gate person would have done it. I believe it was the foreman at Toat Farm. He’s a silly officious old fool. He’s always been a trouble. He must have told them about Father’s leaving out prayers and things. Whenever it says God in the service he changes it to Christ. It’s very, very cruel – happening like this. But I suppose it was bound to come sooner or later. I suppose it would sound odd if a stranger heard him. He didn’t always change it to Christ. Sometimes he changed it to Lord but he always changed it – except when he was thinking of his butterflies or something, and then he forgot and said it like anybody else. I suppose it couldn’t go on like that, could it? Though the people here didn’t seem to notice any difference.’

  She stopped breathlessly and looked at her companion with appealing eyes.

  Richard felt compelled to confess to her that it did seem a little strange for a priest to expurgate the syllable God out of the Christian worship. He admitted that he did not very clearly see how it could ‘go on’ quite like that.

  ‘But cannot your Father make any special use of his scientific knowledge? He seemed to me a man of unusual mental power. Couldn’t he get a biological position in some college?’

  Nelly frowned just a tiny bit at this, and thought in her heart, How curiously stupid the nicest of men are! Any woman who’d seen Father would know at once that he was quite hopeless in things like that. I suppose the truth is all men are a little hopeless themselves. How any of them do any practical work I can’t think!

  And she sighed and smiled, and then frowned again.

  ‘No. I suppose that’s out of the question,’ said Richard and stared helplessly at the little crossed ankles lying in the grass beside him, over which the ash leaves above their heads threw a tracery of delicate shadows.

  Sitting there in his shirtsleeves he felt as though he were prepared to undertake any quixotic labour on behalf of this young girl. But what form could it take?

  ‘I think perhaps I ought to tell you something else,’ said Nelly gravely. ‘Perhaps you’ve guessed I’m engaged to be married to Mr Canyot?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Richard with a beating heart.

  She was evidently making a tremendous effort to be entirely frank with him and he felt a wave of vibrant pity for her in her manifest embarrassment.

  ‘Mr Canyot’s been so different since he lost his mother. He misunderstands things. I mean he confuses things. But it’s all too much my own fault!’ She pulled up a large handful of sun-warmed grass and threaded it around her fingers.

  Richard could not help noticing that she still wore the ring which he had from the first day assumed to be her engagement ring.

  ‘I ought to tell you that we had a bad quarrel that day when we walked back together from Selshurst.’

  Now we come to it! thought Richard.

  ‘And the quarrel,’ she went on, ‘if you want to know, was absurdly enough about you!’

  ‘About me?’ cried Richard, putting a good deal more astonishment into his tone than he actually felt. What he really felt was something much more like the edge and fringe of extreme foolishness; for he began to fear that he had exaggerated altogether the link between her and himself.

  She is treating me as her father confessor, he thought. She is talking to me about her love affair. And a very cynical and rather bitter emotion passed through him.

  ‘Yes, it was about you, about us,’ the girl went on. It was a faint comfort to him to remark that she did blush – she blushed so quickly; it was the misfortune of her transparent complexion – at the word ‘us’.

  ‘He was troubled in his mind because I liked you, because we liked each other. He said I looked at you and talked to you differently from the way I did with him. Well! you are different, a lot different, from Robert, aren’t you?’

  Richard dryly admitted that he did differ from Mr Robert Canyot.

  ‘We quarrelled over that all the way home. He was rude to me. He was really angry. And I’m afraid I got angry too and said things that hurt him.’

  ‘Things that hurt him,’ repeated Richard, helping her out.

  ‘I said I had a right to choose my own friends. I said … more than I ought to have said!’ And she gave Richard that same indescribably lovely smile that he had received from her three times before.

  I wonder if she looks at Canyot like that? he thought. If she doesn’t, I’m blessed if he is her choice! At any rate as long as she gives me that look I know we’ve got something very deep between us.

  ‘I said,’ she went on, looking down now at the grass-blades twisted round her fingers and smiling to herself a quaint elfish enigmatic smile that seemed to separate her in some queer way from all possible lovers and turn her into a mocking sexless thing of childish unapproachableness.

  ‘I said I did like you very much indeed; and that, if he wasn’t careful, I should fall in love with you, and fall out of love with him – I said that, on purpose, to annoy him. I wanted to annoy him as much as I possibly could.’

  ‘I see,’ said Richard. ‘You said that to hurt your lover as much as ever you could, to punish him for being, as you say, so absurdly jealous.’

  Again there flickered over her downcast face that peculiarly detached, mischievous and elfish ripple of merriment.

  ‘And what did he do?’ inquired Richard, feeling like a man who squeezes a nettle tighter and tighter in the hope that the smart would diminish if he only squeezed hard enough. ‘What did he do when you said that to him?’

  She laughed aloud then, a ringing peal of reed-throated laughter like a blackbird in the rain. ‘You won’t be too horrified if I tell you?’ she asked.

  He promised hurriedly to receive, any account of this incident with complete equanimity.

  ‘He shook me!’ she cried with another ripple of reed-like merriment. ‘Shook me ever so hard. Till I rattled like a pea pod.’

  There was really nothing for Richard to say or
to do in response to this – unless he were prepared to shake her himself.

  A little unkindly – but he surely had some excuse – he brought her back to the point from which she had commenced this narration. ‘You say his mother’s death has not improved things between you?’

  She did become grave at this; very grave and quiet. ‘Poor Robert!’ she sighed. ‘Yes, it upset him completely. He made it difficult for me to go to the funeral. And he has been writing me such strange letters since.’

  Her face assumed an unhappy and puzzled expression. ‘You don’t suppose,’ she said, turning to Richard with that peculiarly wistful look that had disarmed him at the beginning, ‘that the death of a person’s mother can really unsettle a person’s mind?’

  ‘I hope not, I’m sure, Nelly,’ was all he found himself able to say to this. Then the temptation arose violently in him to tell her about the letter he had himself received from Canyot. He fought this down with resolute energy. No! it would be a caddish thing to do – I must play fair in this business.

  He recompensed himself for this piece of virtue by a very mischievous move.

  ‘Do tell me,’ he said, ‘while we’re talking so frankly together, what you told Mrs Shotover about me. I’m sure you must have given her your most real impression. There was no reason for pretending things to “annoy” her.’

  If he had wanted to cause his companion agitation and discomfort he certainly succeeded. Nelly pulled up her knees beneath her frock, gave a little twist away from him, dug one of her hands into the ground to support herself, and jumped up on her feet.

  ‘I don’t think you ought to have asked me that,’ she said, frowning down upon him like an accusing angel.

  Richard jumped up too, and picked up his coat.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ he retorted. ‘You admitted she’d been teasing you about me. People don’t tease people about things like that out of a blue sky. Besides, you said she called me funny nicknames, making puns on my name.’