John Powys - Ducdame

But she did none of these things. She forced into her countenance that world-old smile, full of the bitter wisdom of centuries, the smile of Sarah, the smile of Mary, the smile wherewith the sons of men have been at once mocked and protected by the daughters of men since the beginning of the world.

“Good-bye, then,” he murmured‚ something within him surging up in one last wild desire that she should implore him, that she should conjure him to stay with her. “Good-bye, then, Netta dear. Don’t forget to ring for tea as soon as you are ready. See you again soon!”

The door opened, shut upon him‚ and he was gone.

A minute or two later she heard the sound of wheels upon gravel. He was gone; and she had done what she had taken upon herself to do. He was gone thinking of her like that, like the figure he had seen seated by the window when he first entered the room!

She did not move a muscle now. In exactly the position wherein he had left her, there she remained; but her mind, empty of every other thought, kept hovering round one particular thing: kept wishing that he had kissed her at the very last, just before he had gone, so that her heart could have given him, her cheek against his, its own secret, unrecognized, desperate farewell.

Rook had forgotten that one of the ways to Tollminster was by that very Antiger Lane where he had left his cousin. He remembered it just in time; just at the moment when Mr. Twiney’s gig reduced itself to a walking pace to ascend the long tree-shaded hill known as Friday’s Dip.

Halfway up this hill they came to a lane that left the road at right angles. An old signpost, lichen-covered and weather-stained, pointed a long exhausted arm toward this lane, bearing the single word “Gorm.”

Rook clapped his hand on the driver’s wrist.

“Go the Antiger way, will you, Mr. Twiney?”

“’Tis a deal longer round, Squire‚” replied the man. “And there be bad ruts on thik little road. The best way is the nat’ral way as you might ’spress it.” And he indicated with his whip the long straight ascent before them.

Rook’s next speech was perhaps as much of a surprise to himself as it was to Mr. Twiney.

“I have to pick up Lady Ann,” he said, “at Drool’s. We have an engagement together at Tollminster.”

“Right you be, Squire!” returned the man cheerfully. “I reckon me wold horse can wamble on through more dirt than any dirt these folks have a-known. These roads be nothink to what I’ve a-seed down Stourbridge way. Illigant carriage drives they be, to them parts!’

He turned his mare in the desired direction as he spoke; and Rook, watching the gleaming celandines in the ditch as they jogged along, found himself repeating the word upon the signpost as if it were an incantation.

“What kind of a village is Gorm?” he inquired casually. “I’ve seen that signpost ever since I was a child, but I can’t remember ever having seen any place corresponding to it. I know the hamlets so well, too, between here and Tollminster.”

“’Tain’t a village at all, Squire,” answered his companion. “’Tis writ on thik signpost and that’s all I do mind. Gippoo Cooper, same as your Dad were smitten wi’‚ did used to say down to Black Pig that ’un were a girt devil’s name, writ on thik board for to guide boggles and ghosties. I’ve always been a bit scared-like, in dirty weather, when I’ve a-seed thik sign; and me mare, too, stopped in’s tracks one terrible wet night and turned ’un’s head right round to I, same as a living Christian might, as much as to say, poor dumb beasty, ‘This place bain’t a place for neither thee nor me, mister!’”

The warm golden afternoon light had deepened to a rich amber tint, falling upon hedge and copse and meadow, by the time they approached Drool’s cottage.

Rook was reminded of that mysterious glow, seeming to come from all quarters of the horizon at once, such as forms the background to the delicate Tuscan leafiness in many an Old Master’s picture. The very cuckoo-flowers in the damp margins of the fields had that curious allegorical look which all fresh spring growths sometimes assume, as if they were painted in the illuminated edges of old breviaries.

Twiney pulled up in front of the little garden, where not so many hours before the cousins had separated, and Rook hurried up to the door. He knocked sharply with the handle of his stick and waited impatiently for an answer.

As he waited the impression came over him, as impressions do on such occasions — our reasoning faculties not having altogether destroyed our intuitions — of something or another being seriously amiss. Made up of an accumulation of many converging little signs — silences where there would naturally be sounds; sounds where there would naturally be silence — there gathers suddenly upon the human heart at such moments a burden of prophetic misgiving.

He opened the door and entered the little entrance hall. As he did so he became aware of two simultaneous sounds, both of them sinister and disturbing. The louder of the two sounds was the high-pitched monotone of the idiot Binnory; and the words uttered by the lad, as Rook listened in breathless amazement, were more extraordinary than the sound itself.

“I do see ’ee! Binnory do see the fine lady what’s been brought low! Loowhee! Loowhee! Loowhee! I do see through crack and chink! I do see through hole and cranny! I do see ’ee! Binnory do see ’ee. The fine lady, on the high horse, what our Squire have tumbled and towzled! ’Ee be left, all draggled and scanted, like a fine girt mallard with’s wing shot off. And Squire be gone to London town and he’ll never come back; never no more at all! And Binnory do see ’ee and do hear ’ee! You mid drive Binnory away but a’ll come back. And you mid live now where Uncle Dick did live; and you mid tell Binnory stories and stories, like what Uncle Dick did tell. Loowhee! Loowhee! Binnory knows all that do befall in earth and in sky!”

The second sound that reached Rook’s ears, simultaneously with the idiot’s babble, was the low persistent crying of a girl in abandoned misery. Could that be his cousin? Could that faint pitiful whimper come from the heart of Lady Ann?

He waited to hear no more but rushed up the little staircase.

He found Binnory clinging to a hole in the wall, which he had evidently made for himself and through which he was peering into the room. Rook was too concerned now to bother about the boy; without even knocking at the door he burst straight in.

Lady Ann was lying with her face on the pillow, having exhausted herself to such a point that her crying was scarcely audible.

“ My dear! What’s the matter? For God’s sake, what’s the matter?” And Rook knelt by the bed and pulled the girl over toward him.

“Send him away, Rook! He’s there still! Send him away, Rook, or I shall go mad!’ And her voice began to rise to something like a scream.

Rook got upon his feet, rushed out into the passage, caught up the idiot under his arm and carrying him downstairs as if he were a bundle of hay, put him out of the front door and locked it from inside.

Then he went into Mrs. Drool’s part of the house and locked the other door, too. There was no sign of the gamekeeper or his wife anywhere about the place.

When he returned to the room upstairs he was amazed at the change in Cousin Ann. It was just as if Binnory had really cast a spell over her, and that the moment he was disposed of she came entirely back to her normal self.

She had already got up from the bed and was smoothing out her ruffled hair at Uncle Dick’s looking glass. When he entered she turned round to him, smiling; and Rook had his second lesson that day as to the variable nature of women’s smiles.