John Powys: Ducdame

The elder Ashover’s gaze transferred itself from his brother’s face to the wall of the churchyard. “Unhappy‚” he repeated after a pause‚ and the word sounded like the splash of a stone that someone had thrown into a deep well.

“But, Rook‚ what a girl she is! What a girl! She feels things with her whole body. Do you know what I mean? She thinks with her body.”

Rook turned his head still farther away.

“The brain is better for that‚” he muttered; but Lexie went on:

“I believe she’s reached the point of absolute hatred for him. And shall I tell you what has done it? It’s that book of his — that book.” His brother emitted a sound that might have been a chuckle or a groan. “That book—” repeated Lexie. But the other remained silent.

“What do you do to all these women, Rook‚ to make them so fond of you? The thing’s getting ridiculous. There’s Cousin Ann — well! We all know what she and Mother are up to! And now it seems as if I’ve only to mention your name to Nell and she jumps out of her skin. Do you know what she said? She said you had a perfect right to live with Netta if you wanted to; and that it was outrageous of people to make such a fuss. She trembled all over like a bit of quaking grass when she talked about it.”

Rook Ashover made no reply of any kind to this. His face grew hard. But Lexie rambled on without the least embarrassment.

“It’s no use beating about the bush any more, Rook. You’ve got yourself into a pretty bloody predicament. No one can possibly tell what the upshot will be.”

The elder man’s sullenness did melt at this.

“The upshot will be that you and I will be the last of the Ashovers,” he remarked grimly.

Lexie’s resemblance to the least heroic of the Cæsars became strikingly marked.

“Mother hasn’t said anything more, has she?” he enquired anxiously. “God! It was awful when she actually talked of you and Netta before Ann. Rook, tell me. Would you send Netta away and marry Ann if I went over to the enemy? Or would you hold out even against me?”

His brother seemed to regard this question as unworthy of any serious answer. He simply disregarded it.

“You’re sure you do right in risking these walks, my dear?” He touched Lexie’s forehead as he spoke and ran his fingers through the young man’s thick hair as if he had been a woman.

“I can’t help feeling,” he went on, “that you may, after all, be sacrificing everything by not doing what that doctor said. As long as we’re together you’ll always be tempted to go beyond your strength; and I’m the worst person in the world for the business of reminding you. I can’t realize things as I ought. I forget so.”

Lexie had begun fumbling once more with one of the buttonholes of his brother’s overcoat; but he dropped his hand now.

“I’m as fit as a badger in Field-Cover!” he cried. “It’s when you talk like that—”

The malignant mechanism of chance stopped the words in his mouth.

He swayed a little and bent his head, poking automatically with his stick at the mud under his feet which showed faint traces of frost marks.

Rook clutched at his shoulder.

“Lexie, don’t! Lexie, what is it? You’re not going to faint, are you?”

But the young man had already gained his composure.

“Let’s go into the churchyard‚” he said, taking his brother’s arm.

They moved together through the gate and followed the path that led to the base of the tower.

“Do sit down for a bit,” pleaded Rook. “It frightens me when you get like that.”

“Here? Near the old man?” and Lexie made a scarcely perceptible grimace in the direction of their father’s grave.

“Yes; here.”

And they sat down side by side on a flat tombstone, the name and date of which had been obliterated by many Novembers.

The rank autumnal grass in the uncut portion of the enclosure rose before them in the moonlight or lay in tangled swathes on the ground like the uncombed hair of a titanic skull.

The bent stems and rain-battered leaves of the hedge parsley that grew where the graves ended resembled now an enchanted Lilliputian forest through which some fairy beasts had trampled, leaving it outraged and desolate.

There was only one tree in that portion of the churchyard, a very old elm, lopped and beheaded and almost leafless, but with a trunk of such sturdy proportions and so deeply indented that it resembled the torso of a gigantic pillar, half buried in the earth but still bearing witness to its old obscure importance.

The two men contemplated this colossal relic, their attention drawn to it by a low sound that suddenly emerged from its headless jagged top and died away.

“Do you hear?” whispered Lexie. “What’s that? There’s no wind. There’s something alive up there.”

They both listened intently but the sound was not repeated.

“It’s queer to think of these women — Nell, Netta, Cousin Ann, and our mother — all lying in their beds in the moonlight and all agitated in some way over you.”

“Damn you, Lexie! Why over me? Why the devil not over you? With all this refusing to do what Twickenham tells you and all this walking too far, there’s enough in your goings-on to keep every one of us awake at night.”

He had hardly spoken the words when, with a wild tumbling of soft feathery wings, a couple of brown owls flew out of the headless tree. One flew straight across the water meadows; while the other, swinging round and rising over the heads of the two men, vanished behind the masonry of the tower.

“Netta is absurd about owls,” said Rook. “She says that she must have been a field mouse once and owls ate her. I tell her that she was much more likely a great stoat who ate little owls. What are you laughing at, you devil? I suppose you think Netta hasn’t the brain of a sparrow? And you think she can’t appreciate the country? And you think. I’m making an absolute idiot of myself by having her here?”

“We needn’t go into all that now,” responded Lexie. “Have a cigarette?” And with a series of movements that were concentrated in their punctiliousness he proceeded to light a match.

Rook shook his head. But he watched with curious interest the tiny Promethean flame lift up its eternal living protest between cold moonlight and cold mortality.

They were both silent for a space. Then Lexie suddenly uttered the words: “The left side would be better than the right.”

Rook stared blankly at the little rings of smoke that followed one another into the phantasmal air.

“What on earth are you talking about? What left side?”

Lexie deposited a carefully preserved ash end upon the stone between them, where the little gray heap lay undisturbed, like the excrement of a wandering moon moth.

“Of the tree, brother Rook‚” he said, contorting the imperial ruggedness of his face into one of his humorous grimaces; “of the tree. And don’t let the matter pass out of your forgetful mind! Mother’s sure to want to bury me over there by the old man. And I don’t want to be buried there. I want to be on the left side of the tree. Only for the Lord’s sake let me lie deep. You know what elms are! It’s one of those funny tricks of Nature; like the throats of whales. Monstrous trunks; and then silly little tendrils hardly bigger than turf-roots. I don’t want to be exposed, brother Rook. So get that fixed in your mind. The left side of the tree; and seven feet down!”

The voice of the sick man died away into space; just as, a little while before, the fluttering of the owls had died away. Both sounds were now travelling, at a rate measurable to science, toward the moon. If the vibration of them survived the loss of the earth’s atmosphere it would soon be reaching a point from which, if sounds had sight, the other side of the moon would be visible!