John Powys - Ducdame

“I presume the story doesn’t reveal what happened to Nancy?” said Rook with sombre sarcasm.

“Oh, yes, it does! She married a respectable market gardener. Her husband’s potatoes were the best anywhere round here.”

“Well, Mother, I’ve got to do endless things before lunch, so I must make a start. I have to run over to the Drools’ to see if there’s any change.”

Mrs. Ashover sighed. A chilly wave of lonesomeness suddenly swept over her. She would miss Corporal Dick seriously.

“There won’t be any change but the last,” she said.

Rook nodded. “I’m afraid so,” he murmured.

Mrs. Ashover gathered herself together for one more effort. She rose from her chair, holding the whole bundle of knitting in one of her hands.

“Cousin Ann thinks that if you ever did see your way to marry it would be no more than right to provide very liberally for Miss Page.”

Rook looked at her with surprise. This was the first time she had shown the least inclination to recognize Netta’s existence.

“I’ve been wanting to say something to you, Rook,” she went on.

His eyes widened and his lips parted. Could it actually be that his mother was prepared to give up the struggle?

“It’s this, Rook. I want you to know that I’m ready to make any sacrifice of comfort or income for the sake of seeing you happily settled. I would even be ready, if your wife didn’t like my society, to leave the house altogether!”

These words went through Rook like a spear. From a long-suppressed well of feeling in him there arose a blind flood of tenderness for this little woman standing there before him fumbling with her magenta-coloured wools.

“Leave the house, Mother?” he muttered. “Why, you’d die in a week anywhere else than here!”

The tone of his voice broke down some obstinate inhibition in her, too. She moved a step toward him and a moment afterward he was holding her in his arms. It was the son rather than the mother who lost control just then. There was so much upon his mind. He was beset by so many complications.

She, too, as they clung together, almost yielded to an instinct which had not by any means been the dominant one of her life. Like so many women who exhaust what maternal feeling they possess upon lover or husband, her attitude to her children had fallen far short of anything resembling passion. She had never, for instance, manifested the least preference for one son over the other; nor had she ever felt any regrets at lacking a daughter.

Thus it was only natural that when Rook’s emotion had subsided and he walked away to the fireplace his mother’s habitual feeling toward him as the head of her house rather than as the child of her womb recovered its normal sway.

Following this return to her integral self it was also inevitable that with a woman’s unscrupulousness she should make an instinctive attempt to exploit Rook’s emotion to her own purpose.

“Don’t you realize what all this means to me?” she cried, as soon as he turned a calm face toward her. “Don’t you realize, Rook, that it’s worse than death to me to think of you and Lexie being the last of our people? Will you never understand that I keep thinking day and night about this awful thing? Oh, Rook, my son, my son, don’t be hard and blind! Give me what I ask of you, Rook! Give me a daughter whose children will be mine as well as yours; whose children will be your father’s and his father’s, and will save us all from dying from the earth!”

Rook was stirred more than she knew by this well-timed appeal, but he, too, began to feel a reaction from his momentary collapse. An obscure indignation in him rose up against this exploitation of his emotion. He spoke quite calmly now and even sternly.

“You mustn’t say such things to me, Mother.”

She lifted her eyebrows, shook her head sadly, and resumed her seat.

“Give me my knitting, Rook, please. And you’d better start now on your various engagements. I like a quiet morning and we’ve had a good talk.”

He obeyed her in silence, but just as he had his hand on the handle of the door he suddenly turned round.

“Don’t you love me at all, Mother, apart from the family? Don’t you care whether I am happy or unhappy? Is the family so much to you that your son is nothing?”

She looked him straight in the eyes from where she sat, bolt upright, in her Chippendale chair. She removed her fingers from the magenta-coloured woolwork and let them slide along the chair arms till they clasped the two rounded ends tightly and fiercely, so that her knuckles showed white and sharp in the firelight.

“I have cared for you,” she cried, “since you first walked and talked; but I would have seen you dead in your cradle if I could have had another son, a different son. You make me wish you’d never been born, Rook!”

He stared at her in sombre amazement. His whole world, his whole life illusion, heaved and rocked about his ears.

“Mother!” he blurted out.

The tone of that cry did for just the flicker of a second arrest the hardening of her heart, because it was the exact repetition of the tone of his indignant bewilderment when she had struck him as a child. But the accumulated tide of her anger rolled over the impression as a wave might drown a submerged rock.

“If only Lexie had been the sound one!” she wailed. “If only Lexie had been the sound one!”

Rook shrugged his shoulders, laughed a husky, miserable laugh, and left her as she was, staring desperately into the emptiness of the impossible.

Descending the stairs with a hopeless weight on his heart he found his cousin and Netta standing in the hall, the former holding a letter in her hand, the torn unstamped envelope of which lay on the ground.

“Oh, Rook, listen to this!” cried Lady Ann. “Nell invites us all to dine at Toll-Pike. She says Lexie has asked them, too, to drop in later and she says that William himself was anxious that Netta should come with us!”

Rook turned brusquely round. “Do you want to go?” he enquired harshly, addressing Netta.

“It’s just as you and Cousin Ann like,” replied the girl meekly.

“Very well,” he said. “But I won’t have Hastings patronizing you with any of his confounded priestliness! Ann, you’ll see to that, eh? I won’t have Netta insulted by that chap’s condescension. If he doesn’t treat her exactly as he treats you, she shan’t enter his house!”

A cold chill went through Netta’s heart at these clumsy words. She looked down nervously at the envelope lying on the ground and longed to stoop and pick it up, so as to hide her face from them both.

Cousin Ann gave a quick protesting glance. “Of course,” she said, “he’ll behave as he ought to behave, since he’s invited us. You don’t intend to come yourself, then?”

He shook his head. “No. You’ll find me at Lexie’s. I’m going to the village now and I’ll tell him. We haven’t had a meal together for much too long.”

“Where are you going now, Rook?” enquired Netta, making an obvious effort to speak lightly and casually.

“I?” replied Rook shortly. “I’m going first to the village and then over to Drools’. One of us must see Uncle Dick to-day.”

What had been in her mind was the thought of having him to herself, for some little time anyhow, that last day of such an eventful year; but she let it pass humbly enough.

“I only thought you’d have to lunch somewhere, Rook. Wouldn’t it be easier to come back here and then go to Antiger Lane afterward?”

“I don’t want to come back here,” he retorted sharply. “I must have a walk to-day.”

“You’re not very polite, Rook,” said Cousin Ann. “I expect that what you’ve really got in your mind is a jug of Mrs. Drool’s ale. I expect he intends to lunch better than any of us. Don’t you think so, Netta?”