John Powys - Ducdame

Strange enough were his thoughts!

This lonely wheeled hut in the midst of the darkness seemed to him like a silent ship voyaging through the gulfs of immensity. He visualized the unspeakable deformities behind that curtain, sleeping against the lap of that old woman, like Phorkyads against the knees of Medusa; and it seemed to him as if that invisible group were a fitting enough symbol of all that this whole terrestrial ship carried, in its voyage, through the godless and measureless ether.

He recalled what Betsy had said of that “Cimmery Land” to be revealed by these pariahs in a “girt wold crystal stone”; and he smiled grimly to himself as he thought of how all over the county of Dorset men and women were moving in their dreams through just such an impossible country.

And then he thought of his book and of how during these last spring days he had neglected it; seduced a little, he could not tell why, by a certain quality in his wife he had not noticed before.

And then letting himself go upon the full stream of his misanthropic fancies, he imagined that this caravan, in which he sat, warming himself and smoking, contained all that was left alive in the whole stellar system. He imagined it transported through empty space; through space star-less, planet-less, moon-less; a vast “Cimmery Land” crystal, void of everything except the unconscious spirit of darkness.

And in the gray hollowness of that crystal, which he now saw as the very rondure of eternity, he was obscurely conscious of a projection of himself, of William Hastings; not the William Hastings who was on the verge of discovering the secret of universal death; but a William Hastings who was a little unhappy boy at school, persecuted by his companions and hating all the world, but able to think the whole world away and to sink back, back, far back, into the comfortable arms of the infinite Nothingness!

His last thought, before his pipe fell from his mouth and his head sank back in sleep, was that of the two creatures behind the Paisley shawl. He fancied he saw them emerge from their retreat. He fancied he saw them take each other’s hands and dance a strange and monstrous dance, the dance of the Annihilation of All Life; the dance of That which was destined to take the place of Life; when the Caravan of the Universe touched at last the circumference of its voyage!

THE day that broke over the five human heads — if Betsy Cooper’s “partners” could be called human — domiciled in that fantastic shelter was one of those exceptional spring days that seem created by Nature to protect herself against the too exquisite intensity of her own birth pangs.

It was as if a tenuous film, composed of some aërial stuff more delicate than vapour or cloud, had been drawn like a floating veil between earth and sky.

Every palpable object by roadside or meadow seemed to emerge from a soft enveloping mist that was neither white nor yellow nor purple but resembled rather that mother-of-pearl opalescence which shimmers in the hollowness of certain seashells.

The mental atmosphere in the caravan was, however, as so often happens with our persecuted humanity, in direct and discordant opposition to the tender vaporousness of the relaxed weather outside.

It was an atmosphere of cold and obstinate resolution; disenchanted, joyless, weary, but rigid in its purposes, and defiant of all opposition.

The mood that dominated that small group as they talked over their bread and tea was the mood of Netta Page. So hopeless in its inflexible determination was this mood that it seemed to obsess and preoccupy the girl herself to the complete exclusion of her other normal faculties.

She manifested no more than the very faintest shrinking when, in the process of satisfying the needs of the deformed twins, the Paisley curtain was dragged completely aside.

What she had decided upon was to take the midday train to London and just lose herself in the unsearchable depths of that great sea of tossing humanity.

Contrary to Cousin Ann’s opinion, she had taken no more money when she left Ashover than the coins in her purse; and the appeal she now made to Hastings was that he should purchase her railway ticket for her before they separated.

Hastings refused for a long time even to consider such a thing. What he felt was that whatever may have been the reasons for her unaccountable flight it was incumbent upon him to plead for second thoughts; incumbent upon him to prevent any irrevocable step till Rook had seen her again. He was anxious to hire a conveyance and just take her back to the village, leaving it to herself and Ashover to settle their difficulties when they met. If he had had the least inkling of the fatal visit to Tollminster, it might have given him a clue as to how to act, but the situation being so dark and obscure, all he could think of was just to retard the rush of events.

It was unfortunately true, and he had had to confess this to the obstinate girl, that the bank he dealt with happened to be in Bishop’s Forley, so that if he once agreed to lend her this money all they had to do was to wait till the hour for the building to open. She dragged this out of him by wild talk about pawning her cloak and rings, but he cursed himself for his candour when he found how ardently she jumped at it.

Old Betsy Cooper listened with intense interest to all this talk and hurried off with alacrity to find pencil and paper, when, the discussion concluded at last and Hastings conquered, Netta insisted upon writing a letter for him to take to Rook.

Had the clergyman been more of a man of the world, had he been less hopeless and disenchanted himself, he might have held out against her entreaties. But what could he do? He couldn’t put her by force into a cart bound for Ashover; and to leave her to trail round in desperation through the pawn-shops of this forlorn town seemed more heartless than to accede to her wishes.

A vague idea did for a moment cross his mind that he might leave her imprisoned in Betsy Cooper’s care while he hurried back himself to Ashover; but even so abstracted a disciple of Paracelsus was too well acquainted with the tenacity of women when under the power of a fixed idea to give more than the attention of a second to such a scheme.

Another line of action that flashed through his mind was to send the old woman off to despatch a messenger or a message to Rook, while he himself held Netta by force just where she was. But Netta’s impatience, shut up with him there alone for half a day, in close propinquity to those Deformities, was more than he found himself prepared to face. Had she been a younger girl or a weaker girl, the thing would have been easier. He could have dominated her then by sheer official authority. But how could he dominate a self-possessed, reserved woman, her own mistress, knowing exactly what she wanted, and knowing exactly what she wanted of him?

The end of it was that with Netta’s letter to Rook in his pocket and with all the money he had had on him transferred to Betsy’s pocket, he started off with the girl through that vaporous spring haze on their way to Stockit’s Dorset Bank.

He found no difficulty in drawing out the money from his small savings. The difficulty came when it was a question of giving her something beyond the actual price of the ticket so that she should not find herself penniless when she reached London.

Another woman perhaps would have been unpersuadable over this, too, but as long as the money she made use of was not Rook’s money Netta’s scruples were feeble and easily over-ridden. He had the satisfaction of knowing, before they separated, that what she finally accepted was enough to keep her alive for at least a month after she reached town, and even longer than that if she were very careful. But if she yielded on this point and seemed quite vague and uncertain as to whether the money were a loan or a gift, she became as rigid as adamant when Hastings asked for some address.