John Powys - Ducdame

As they descended into the valley hand in hand, there was that in the tones of both their voices that suggested the atmosphere of a reckless, unholy prank.

When they arrived at Mr. Drool’s house they found that Corporal Dick was lying comfortably in his own bed, that the doctor had departed, and that Mrs. Drool had turned Binnory out of his especial room and had made the place presentable for Cousin Ann’s reception.

The idiot boy was in a high state of excitement over all these developments. He watched his mother making up a cot for him by the kitchen fire with unbounded satisfaction, but he kept returning to the Corporal’s room to tell the lady “who be going to sleep wi’ I” what sounds and sights of the encompassing night were to be expected by his visitor.

The Corporal’s room and Binnory’s room were isolated from the rest of the house, so that Cousin Ann had no need to fear any difficulty or interruption in the performance of her nursing duties.

Uncle Dick was very quiet now, but Mrs. Drool told Rook that they had had considerable difficulty in keeping him in bed when they first got him undressed.

“Doctor told Drool,” she said, “that we was to watch out for new sympterums in his sad state. He said Drool had to sit up wi’ ’ee for fear ’ee’d do summat to hurt ’isself with his crazy old notions. What did he do up at house, Master Rook? There be a couple down this morning from Ash’ver Old Pyke who do tell how Martha Vabbin wrastled wi’ ’ee all night long, in backyard! They do say how he did shoot at she with’s rabbit gun and how she did beat on’s head to quiet ’un with a girt iron shovel!”

“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Drool,” the Squire of Ashover found himself saying in answer to this new version of recent events; and as he spoke he hesitated for a moment with that queer tightening of the nerves about the heart which indicates the forming of a subconscious resolution, of which the rational mind is only half aware. “Netta will understand,” he said to himself. “She will know I have stayed up with the old man. I could send Drool over to tell them, but it’s not a nice night for such a thing.”

“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Drool,” he repeated. “I’ll sit up with Mr. Richard myself. You and your husband can go to bed, just as usual. There is one thing, though, you might do for Lady Ann and me. You might send us up some sort of light supper — anything you have in the house — just on a tray, you know — let your son bring it up to us. We could have it in Mr. Richard’s room if it isn’t too much trouble.”

The result of this suggestion was that a couple of hours later Rook and Ann sat down to a substantial meal of cold pheasant, home-made bread and Dorchester pale ale, while their low-voiced conversation attuned itself to the peaceful breathings of the invalid. They had scarcely begun their repast when Ann became conscious that the idiot was making some curious vocal attempts, in her room opposite, to imitate the voices of some carol singers or “waits” who had visited the gamekeeper’s house earlier in the day. Binnory was practising a grotesque version of his own of the familiar ditty—“God rest you merry, gentlemen”; a version that seemed, as it reached her ears, to be mingled with a more questionable tavern catch, picked up from some less pious quarter.

Disturbed by this incongruous serenade, which the excitement of her nerves rendered the more noticeable, Cousin Ann got up, opened the door, and crossed the passage.

She found the idiot sitting on her bed while one of the pillows, decorated with her hat and cloak, was propped up horizontally against the wall beside him. “She be you, lady,” said the boy with a certain obstinate sulkiness in his voice, “and I be Squire. Us be singing ‘Born is the king’ to them ghosties what do bide out there.”

Lady Ann looked at the lad with a mixture of confusion and irritation. Then catching sight of her leather bag, open on a chair, with her heavy crimson dressing gown in it, she suddenly seemed to grow oblivious of the boy’s presence and, as if she were quite alone, threw off her tweed jacket, slipped out of her tweed skirt, and hurriedly put her dressing gown on.

“You be different from she now,” muttered Binnory, indicating the pillow with a jerk of his thumb.

Cousin Ann smiled at him as she had not often smiled at any one. The feeling of the soft garment against her limbs, in place of the other, made her suddenly vividly aware of that classic perfection of her form which had struck Netta so. The natural tingling of her relaxed muscles after their struggle through the snow increased this consciousness.

“Come in and have some supper with Mr. Ashover and me,” she said to the idiot gently. “And since I’m quite different now, we can put her back to bed, can’t we?”

She removed the cloak and hat from the pillow and replaced it at the head of the bed, patting it smooth with her hand. Then she led the boy across the passage and into the Corporal’s room where Rook had already disposed of half the great jug of Dorchester ale. Her thoughts, as she placed the boy between them and met Rook’s clouded gaze of appreciation, were fatal and masterful in their recognition of her chance-given opportunity.

She had at first that sickening sense of inability to eat a mouthful which used to come over her at hunt breakfasts in her father’s house before a great meet of Blackmore hounds; but it did not take more than a few sips of Mrs. Drool’s jug to remove that inhibition, and very soon she found herself enjoying the meal with full youthful zest.

“And do you remember the night Aunt Edith found us in the hayloft?” Rook said suddenly, his heart warmed by the soft look in the girl’s eyes. “How on earth did she get up the ladder, Coz? Or didn’t she get up the ladder? And that evening you nearly fell through the ice on Abbotsbury Pond? That was a mad Christmas, eh? The time your father had to go to Paris, and you and I had the whole place to ourselves?”

“That’ll larn ’ee to play the bitch in gentlemen’s houses — that’ll larn ’ee, ye sly baggage!”

The interruption came from the bed, but the old man turned over to the wall and once more his breathing was quiet and undisturbed.

“It’s not only thik old owl-devil wot I do hear o’ nights,” threw in Binnory. “There be hosts and hosts o’ them others, wot nobody but me take notice of.”

“What others do you mean, Binnory?” enquired Cousin Ann, her face radiant with a heathen happiness that quite ensorcerized the lad, as if it had been the rich honey drink of Valhalla.

“I mean them hosts of girt gray boggles that go flapping over Dorsal, lady; same as can’t bear to bide where Mister Pod do put ’em when they be deaded and shrouded.”

“Goodness, Rook! Who puts these ideas in this child’s head?” murmured Cousin Ann.

“Him as is over there, lady,” replied Binnory, answering for himself. “Granfer Dick do tell I of everythink. ’A do tell of how babies be born wot bain’t prayed over afore they be born, but be just dropped, like lambs at lambing-time. ’A do tell of babies that do cry like corncrakes after we, when us be up field-way or down river-way, till us dursn’t bide in them places after dark be come. ’A do tell of how slimmity puss-cats, in shape of wimmings from Lunnon, do catch great folks round them’s necks, and scrabbit them till they ain’t no blood left in ’em!”

“Blood!” the voice came suddenly and startlingly from the bed. “I’ve ’a seen that bloody bitch quelled and quieted. I’ve ’a put the Lord’s own lead in her.”

Cousin Ann rose to her feet, but the old man with a commanding sweep of his hand waved her off. He raised himself up in bed and stared wildly at them, searching for words.