After My Fashion (16 page)

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 man! 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.'

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.

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 forward 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?