After My Fashion

by John Cowper Powys

  ‘So you still keep up with at least one of them?’ said Nelly, bending down, precisely as she had done half an hour ago, to smell the phloxes.

  ‘Yes, I keep up with one of them,’ answered Richard. ‘If to “keep up with” means to burn letters unopened.’

  She lifted up her head at that, and her eyes flashed from her flushed face like two steel-blue blades. ‘Don’t lie, Richard! It’s not worth it. You know you’ve never burnt one of that woman’s letters before! And you wouldn’t have burnt that one, if you hadn’t been scared of my reading it. It’s no use lying. We may just as well face it. If you must keep these things going on, you must, I suppose. If you’re made like that, well! you are. But it’s rather a shock to me, my dear – just at first – you know.’

  Richard had never felt so miserable, so uncomfortable, or so much of a complete fool as he did at that moment.

  He did not know whether to be angry or relieved when the figure of Canyot, carrying a basket, appeared outside the gate.

  Nelly gave him one quick glance – and then she waved to him and shouted: ‘Wait, Robert! Please wait! I’m coming with you.’

  He waited just where he was without making a sign. He began picking the long grasses out of the hedge and sucking the sweetness from their stalks. He whistled as he did this and flicked away the flies from his forehead. He took no more notice of Richard than if the man had been one of the posts of the gate.

  ‘We’ve thought better of it, you see,’ said the writer, after a moment’s pause in which he gathered all his wits together to carry the thing through somehow.

  Oh how he hated these tense undignified scenes! In France, he thought, misquoting Laurence Sterne with a miserable inward laugh, they do these things better.

  ‘I’m sailing on Saturday,’ was the only response he got from Canyot, who now began nibbling the little sticky leaves of a briar rose.

  Richard turned and went into the house. He knocked at the door of the room he shared with Nelly.

  ‘I’m just coming,’ the girl called out. ‘May I come in?’ Richard pleaded, turning the handle of the door. The door was locked from the inside – for the first time!

  He walked back into the garden feeling thoroughly miserable. He had hoped for one swift all-obliterating all-forgiving embrace. She had deliberately forestalled this intention. She intended to go off for the whole day with Canyot, leaving the rift between them raw and unhealed.

  There was his rival, stolid and impassive, an ugly one-armed sentinel at the gate of their lost paradise. He had the end of a dockleaf in his mouth now. Would he eat up the whole hedge?

  Nelly came flying past him with tripping steps. She pretended that the haste of that moment was extreme so as to avoid having to give him a farewell kiss.

  She was out of the gate before he could open it for her, and instead of pausing then she ran past the young painter and up the hill-path crying as she ran, ‘Come on, Robert, we shall never get there if you’re so slow. Come on! I’ll race you to the top!’

  Canyot picked up the picnic basket provided for him by Mrs Winsome and strode after her. About ten yards away he stopped and looked back, waving his stick at Richard. ‘Sailing on Saturday!’ he shouted and turned again to pursue the girl whose light mauve dress was still visible from the garden moving rapidly among the elder bushes and furze.

  Richard waited till they were out of sight and then went straight into the kitchen. ‘Grace!’ he shouted, but Grace was in the rooms above and did not hear him. I can’t stand a lunch alone with the old man, he thought and began mechanically putting together some bread and cheese. This he crammed into his pocket along with some small cakes. ‘Grace!’ he shouted again. This time she heard him and came running down, her heavy West Country tread shaking the whole cottage. ‘You must look after Mr Moreton, today, Grace,’ he said, in the most offhand, easy manner he could assume. ‘We shall all be out.’

  ‘Nothing wrong, Mr Richard, I hope, begging your pardon? Nothing to do with burnin’ any certifications or such like? ’Tis a queer world and summat of the likes of they things do bring terrible trouble on folks’ heads. I knew’d ’ee and Miss Nelly had had a bit of a ruption. And what’s more I could have told ’ee ’twere comin’, this very mornin’, if ’ee’d a listened to I. ’Twas that girl hedge pig the Master brought in the house. I never did hold wi ‘bringin’ the like of them stinking pricklies into Christian families. I knew’d it ’ud mean trouble soon as I set eyes on ’un. Master ain’t as careful as ’a should be over these ’ere pick-ups.’ A kind o’ forgets that ’tis you and Miss Nelly’s kiss-luck time, when men and maidies be growin’ into married folk like, and lovin’ natural and unthinkin’ by night and by day. ‘A shouldn’t a’ done it. ’Twere a temptin’ them as is Above. A girt lousy prickleback, with a snout like Satan and little squimsy eyes. Do ’ee tell ’un of it, Mr Richard, do ’ee tell ’un of it. I can’t abide them stinkin’ things. Sparrerhawks and flitter-mice be all very well. They be honest fellow creatures, they be; but them hedge pigs,’ tisn’t behavin’ right to the Dear Lord to go meddlin’ wi’ the likes o’ they!’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Grace,’ said Richard when the woman stopped for breath. ‘But you know what Mr Moreton is. Well! you’ll be able to see for yourself that he only collects lucky things today. I may be back by tea time and I may not. Goodbye, Grace.’

  ‘Don’t ’ee go bein’ sour and angered agin’ our young leddy,’ whispered Grace. ‘Don’t ’ee get argufying with ’un. The way to manage us womenfolk is to be one thing or ‘tother. Kiss us soft and sweet or let’s have it hard so us knows what’s what. None of this burnin’ o’ dockiments and bidin’ the time. Out w’it, straight and forrard; that’s what I do say to my Jim.’

  ‘You say very well, Grace,’ responded the writer. ‘I’m sure I hope you’ll always be with us to keep us in the right path.’

  ‘And don’t ’ee let Miss Nelly go gadding off with young Mr Robert. There ain’t no maid nor wife in God’s kingdom what’s perfect sure of ‘erself when’t do come to them carryin’s on. We be all meanin’ for the best; but girls be girls and young fellers be young fellers and ‘tis hard to be stiff as a poker on haymaking days.’

  Richard looked gravely into the young woman’s face as if he were on the point of asking her what she really thought about his wife’s attitude to Canyot. But he turned away with a smile. ‘Well! Grace,’ he said, ‘you and I must make her so happy here, that she won’t be in need of any friends but us. Goodbye Grace!’ And he left the house and began walking gloomily and thoughtfully in the direction of the Happy Valley.

  *

  Old Mr Moreton was not altogether pleased when he found he was destined to spend a lonely Sunday. On weekdays he never expected much society. It seemed quite natural that they should all be occupied with their own affairs. But on Sundays it was rather different, because he felt a vague tradition in the air against going on just the same with his scientific work; and it was pleasant, as a change from that, to see something more of those he lived with.

  He ate the admirable meal prepared by Grace in rather melancholy silence which was not made any more cheerful by the servant’s comments on the events of the morning.

  ‘It ain’t nice of Miss Nelly and Master Richard to leave ’ee lonesome and solemn-like of a fine Zunday. It don’t seem kind o’ natural; and I be lorn to see ’ee so. I just out and told ‘un straight how it do seem to I. There’ll be sad goin’s on, present, I sez to ‘un, when the Missus and that young man get too fond like. Kiss and be friends, I sez to ‘un, and don’t fall into the sin o’ pride.’

  ‘Your mistress is in a difficult position, Grace,’ said the old man; ‘and I’d rather you didn’t talk about it. Mr Canyot has always been very considerate and civil. It’s a difficult position for her. But the young man is going away in a few days so we shall be quieter then. We shall go on quietly and as usual then. But Mr Canyot is always very civil to me—’ John Moreton sighed heavily – ‘very
civil and considerate.’

  When the meal was over and he was thinking of returning for his usual rest, Grace, who came to take away what was left of the gooseberry tart for her own consumption, surprised him by saying, ‘Why don’t ’ee go and see Mrs Shotover, over to Furze Lodge, sir? She be an old friend of your’n I reckon and a good friend o’ Miss Nelly’s. Maybe she’d be able to hearten’ ‘ee up a bit, in a manner of speaking.’

  The old man raised his head and stared at the maid. ‘Eh? what’s that, Gracie? Go to see her again?’ He blinked with his deep-set grey eyes and knitted his shaggy eyebrows. ‘But she and Nelly have been quarrelling since she was last here. But after all, that doesn’t matter; that’s nothing to do with me! I go quietly on my own way whatever fuss the womenfolk make, don’t I, Grace? Well perhaps I will walk up in Furze Lodge direction when I’ve rested a bit. I do feel as if I needed a little change today. One can’t work seven days a week.’

  Well pleased with the result of her audacity the Dorsetshire maiden retired to the kitchen.

  ‘’Twill do the Master a gallon o’ good,’ she said to herself. ‘What with one thing and another the poor old gentleman do look mighty doddery. ’Twill hearten ’im up like, to pass the time o’ day with that old rappity-tappity.’

  The afternoon of that June day proved hotter than Mr Moreton had anticipated. The old man found the way long and exhausting. It was most of it uphill and bare of trees; the scorching sun struck fiercely upon his lean black-coated figure.

  He stopped frequently to rest and sat down at last in the middle of a cornfield, overtaken by a fit of dizziness.

  As he sat there, seeing the green world of innumerable waving stalks about him, the world as it must always appear at that season to field mice, partridges, hares and rabbits, the old naturalist felt a profound melancholy enter his heart like some jagged piece of iron.

  He knew nature too well to be able for long intervals to enjoy her external charm in the epicurean manner familiar to his son-in-law. As he hugged his dusty-trousered knees and blinked out of his deep-set eyes at those myriad green stalks, there came into his nostrils the smell of death. By shifting a little upon his haunches he was able to detect the cause of this smell; and what he saw did not diminish the prod of that iron in his soul.

  Near him lay on its side the dead body of a small rabbit gazing horribly and vacantly into the burning sky out of a great eye socket which was nothing but a dried-up hole of rusty blood. The old man knew at once that he was looking at one of the normal atrocities of creative nature, a rabbit killed by a weasel.

  He got up laboriously to his feet and tottered on, the beautiful sun-bathed world about him darkened for him and poisoned as if by a universal smell of murder. As he struggled forward in the fiery heat, the soles of his boots as hot as the cracked chalk earth beneath them, it presented itself once more to his mind that the only religious symbol in the world capable of covering and including the pain of this cruel chaos was the symbol of the Mass, where the wounded flesh and the spilt blood of the God-Man becomes an eternal protest, for those who enter into it, against all this blind suffering.

  At the gate of his old friend’s drive he was compelled to sit down once again to rest himself and he sat down on one side of the drive, resting his back against a sycamore tree. Here in his exhaustion he dozed off into an old man’s heavy sleep. He was aroused by a high-pitched feminine voice and he saw himself confronted by Mrs Shotover. The lady was bare-headed and carried her favourite tabby-cat in her arms. She was taking the air after her early tea. She scolded Mr Moreton for attempting that walk in the heat. She scolded him with the familiarity of an old friend and with the burnt-up malice of an old ‘flame’.

  ‘So you’ve come at last,’ she said in a gentler voice when, having got him safely into her drawing room, she made fresh tea for him which he drank with avidity. ‘I thought you and I would never see each other again.’

  He smiled feebly at her, his old half-ironical half-benevolent smile; but he was too tired to reply.

  ‘It isn’t quite like old days is it, John Moreton?’ she said. He nodded, smiling still, and then shook his head and sighed.

  ‘When you and I worried the life out of my George and your Cecily – dear innocents that they were!’

  He refused her offer of anything to eat with a wave of his hand. ‘You’re the same as ever, Betty,’ he said.

  He looked so bedraggled and helpless, lying against her cushions, so caught by the red-tongued hounds of the years, that she stepped up to his side and kissed him on the forehead. ‘Poor old John!’ she murmured, running her jewelled fingers through his stubbly grey hair.

  He grew a trifle more rested as time went on; and the obscure shadows across his face receded before the ancient cajolery of her voice.

  ‘What a world it is, Betty!’ he sighed at last. ‘What a world! You know I’ve come to a stage in my life when, except for hearing Nell laugh and seeing her look happy, I don’t care much what happens. My work interests me still, in a way, Betty, in a way. But not as it used to. If it wasn’t for the church and the Mass I couldn’t go on, Betty. I should just give up.’

  ‘But they don’t let you do that any more, you poor old heathen, do they?’ asked Mrs George Shotover.

  He gave her out of his cavernous eyes a most whimsical look. ‘Someone must remember the rabbits killed by weasels and the sheep slaughtered by man and the trees killed by ivy and the mice killed by owls and the flies in spiders’ webs. Someone must remember these things, little Betty!’

  ‘And the butterflies caught by John Moreton!’ she laughed mischievously at him.

  ‘And the butterflies, too,’ he said. ‘But they would have died anyway,’ he added. ‘And my killing-bottles only send them to sleep, you know. I wish you’d put me into a killing-bottle, Betty!’

  ‘But surely they don’t let you say Mass any more, you dear old lunatic? I can’t imagine the Reverend Sugary Salt, as I call him, allowing such a thing!’

  The late Vicar of Littlegate regarded his hostess with a glance full of suppressed and chuckling amusement. ‘Have you never heard of a Midnight Mass?’ he said.

  The old lady’s face grew very grave. ‘That’s what you’ve been up to, John Moreton, is it? Well! You just listen to me. That sort of thing’s got to stop. Do you hear? Got to stop and stop at once!’

  She paused and looked at him very anxiously, with tears in her eyes. ‘So it’s pranks of that sort has brought you downhill so fast, is it?’

  She got up out of her chair and stood in front of him, scowling at him with knitted brow and quivering lips.

  ‘John Moreton! John Moreton!’ she cried, waving her forefinger at him. ‘I’m afraid you’re no better than a muddle-headed old fool!’

  But he smiled at her so reassuringly and made his next remark in so quiet and normal a manner that she relaxed her tense expression and resumed her seat.

  ‘Dear old Betty!’ he said. ‘It’s not such a very nice world, after all, that old people like you and me should want to live on indefinitely. Why don’t you smoke your cigarettes, Betty, as you used to? You haven’t reformed, I hope?’

  Comforted by his tone she did light a cigarette then.

  ‘John Moreton,’ she said after a pause, sending a puff of smoke through her daintily curved nostrils, ‘do you believe in a life after death?’

  Her ancient admirer looked at her rather wistfully.

  ‘As keen on life as ever, Betty, I see! Oh, my dear, I don’t know! And to tell you the honest truth I don’t greatly care. The whole thing is such a bitter sorry business that we should all be well enough out of it, to my thinking. But there may be another life. Oh yes! certainly there may be. I think Christ is alive. If I didn’t think that, I should go crazy.’

  They chatted on, after that, on less serious topics; till at last Mrs Shotover spoke what was rankling in her mind. ‘I shall never forgive Nelly,’ she said. ‘I shall never forgive her. To turn on an old friend for the sake of a ma
n! And what did I say to her? Nothing but the plain truth; that she’s turning your house into I don’t know what, with her husband and her lover!’

  The old naturalist rose slowly to his feet. ‘I must be walking home now, Betty; and you mustn’t talk like that.’ He staggered a little as he spoke and leant against the table.

  ‘Of course I shall have Thomas drive you back,’ said the lady. But you may take this from me, John Moreton: it’s your fault; it’s your going and getting yourself turned out of your living that has brought your girl down to this miserable mess-up. You may say what you please but the truth is you have driven that girl into all this. Canyot is a ruffian and this other fellow is a sly, sneaking, self-satisfied, conceited prig. And here the silly girl is, married to one of them, and hanging on to the other! You’ve brought about a pretty kettle of fish, John Moreton, by your pranks and your manias!’

  The old man wilted under her storm of words like an ancient hollyhock bowed down by a cruel wind. He made a feeble movement with his hands and sank back upon the sofa.

  ‘Ring for your Thomas, Betty dear,’ he gasped. ‘That walk’s been too much for me. I am no doubt very much to blame – very much to blame. But we must forget and forgive, Betty; forget and forgive.’

  Chapter 10

  Nelly was glad that it was Canyot’s way to make her walk fast by his side. She was glad that it was his way to be silent when he was strongly moved. The effort of keeping pace with him soothed her; and his silence made it possible for her to collect her thoughts and arrive at some sort of understanding with herself.

  It had been the most unpleasant shock she had ever known, this business of the letter. It was not only a blow to her love, to her pride, to her happiness. It was a blow to something deeper than these; to that innate respect for life as a thing of quite definite aesthetic values, which made up the very illusion of her soul.

  Except for the young man by her side now, she had never known anything of love or lovemaking; and though Mrs Shotover had riddled her with cynical advice she had not really been roused from her illusion by the old lady’s words.