John Powys - Ducdame

They looked straight into each other’s faces; and one of those moods that do not often fall upon human beings, unless brought about by the magic of sex, passed over both of them and blended with the noble and spacious purlieus of those manorial woods, with the deep blue of the water, with the brick towers and gray slate roofs of Comber’s End.

They moved on then; and after walking round a bed of reeds, from which a moor hen and its half-grown family splashed out into the open pond raising a thousand iridescent ripples, they came to a pause by a low ornamental wall decorated at intervals by brick pilasters the capitals of which were covered with the white droppings of innumerable swallows who made them starting points for their flights over the lake.

The two Ashovers sat down upon the sun-warmed coping of this low wall, a pleasant relic of the times when the Lords of Comber’s End were the feudal enemies of their own family. It gave Lexie, who was something of an antiquary in these historic matters, quite a complacent thrill to be able to remind Rook how long ago it was that the last of these hereditary foes had died childless. “It would have given him a shrewd slap in the eye,” he grossly chuckled, “if he could have looked forward a couple of hundred years and seen us sitting here in ease and satisfaction.”

Rook sighed. “Perhaps not,” he said. “He may even be at this very moment anticipating the blow that’s going to finish us off. How do we know that Ann’s child won’t turn out a girl? If it does, that’ll end it! Comber’s End and Ashover’s End — there’ll be nothing to choose between’ em.”

“Why do you say ‘that’ll end it’?” protested the other. “It looks to me as if my sister-in-law were good for more than one fling of this sort.”

Rook was silent. Why had he said just that? The words had seemed to come from him with the smooth and suave fatality of speech which makes it difficult for poets to say “earth” without saying “green” and “sky” without saying “blue.”

“Somehow,” he contented himself with replying, “I can’t imagine Ann not having a son for her first child.”

He smiled at that moment to himself; for he thought how Lexie would have jumped out of his skin if he had answered him by saying that he had himself, that very morning, seen with his own eyes the boy that was to be born!

“By the way,” he enquired casually, “do you know if there are any young people at the farm here now?”

Lexie looked at him significantly and quickly. “I’ve a good reason to know,” he said; “but I was going to keep it from you for a bit longer. As a matter of fact, there’s a very handsome youth there and a charming young girl. I know it because I had a companion with me when I drove out here this morning.”

It was Rook’s turn to show signs of agitation.

“What’s this?” he flung out. “You don’t mean to say—”

Lexie interrupted him. “It’s Nell,” he cried hurriedly. “Don’t get annoyed with me, Rook! I met her quite by chance and begged Twiney to stop and pick her up. She was setting out to see this youth and his sister on some parochial affair of Hastings’s. Hastings puts lots of things of that kind off on her.”

“Where is she now?” The words broke from the elder man with an impatience and eagerness that surprised himself.

“I don’t know where she is now,” answered Lexie. “I told her we’d call at the house and take her home late in the afternoon. I meant to keep it as a surprise for you, so, for God’s sake, don’t look so sick!”

Rook “sleeked over,” as the poet says, his agitated expression; and picking up a loose piece of masonry from the wall beside him flung it into the water. The missile caused an enormous circle of ripples which enlarged and enlarged under their eyes.

“Do you remember how we used to play ducks and drakes in this pond?” he said. “I can’t remember now where we got the stones.”

“Under the house, over there,” said the other. “You used to send me off to get them while you went on reading your book!”

Once more, deep down underneath the immediate agitation of Nell’s presence between them, the old familiar thrill of their intimate association ran through Rook’s soul. He watched the ripples that he had made in the water go on extending and extending toward the centre of the lake. “When Lexie and I are together,” he thought, “it’s as if a new personality were created that throws a glamour over the tiniest little thing that happens.”

“Do you believe,” he said aloud, “that there’s any chance — any shadow of a shadow of a chance — that you and I will meet again after we’re dead?”

Lexie’s answer to this was not lacking in either emphasis or assurance.

“Not the faintest,” he said with a smile. “While either of us is alive the other will, in a sense, go on living. But when we’re both dead, we’re both dead. Do you realize what to be dead actually means, brother Rook? I sometimes have the feeling that in that matter I have more imagination than you!”

When he turned to see the effect of his words upon his companion he saw Rook’s gaze intently fixed on something on the lake which was obscured from his own sight by a tuft of reeds. But a moment later he, too, saw it — the form of an incredibly proud and majestic swan, paddling slowly toward them.

The bird was so beautiful that the vision of it passed beyond the point where either of them could share the feelings it excited with the other. It seemed to bring with it an overpowering sense of awe; for both the Ashovers regarded its advance in spellbound silence. It was as if it were floating on some mysterious inner lake that was, so to speak, the platonic idea, or the ethereal essence, of the actual lake which they were contemplating. It might have been swimming on an estuary that had suddenly projected itself into our terrestrial spaces from a purer level of existence, some tributary of the Eternal and the Undying, that flowed in for one ineffable second of time, converting the watery element it mingled with into its own ethereal substance.

The spell of its approach was broken as soon as the bird itself realized that the Ashover brothers were not two motionless tree-trunks, but alien and disturbing invaders. It swung round with a proud curve of its great neck and an eddy of the blue water about its white feathers, and sheered off toward the centre of the pond.

Rook and Lexie regarded its departure with concentrated interest; but now that the magical moment had passed they were able to note the almost humorous effect of the swan’s attempts to retain his impassive dignity, to show appropriate indignation, and at the same time to put a good clear space of deep lake water between himself and the onlookers.

“Susannah and the Elders!” murmured Lexie with a chuckle. “But aren’t they provocative and tantalizing? I wish we could hide ourselves in the reeds and see it making love to Leda. What a shame Nell isn’t here!”

“It’s its neck that’s so arresting,” said Rook. “That sense of incalculable power mixed with serpentine beauty!”

“I don’t know about that,” remarked Lexie, “but I would give a great deal to see Nell caressing it.”

A heathen and classic wantonness descended upon both men. They began to feel an irritable desire to separate from each other and find, each for himself, a companion as beautiful and capricious as that proud bird.

“I don’t see why we should wait till the end of the afternoon,” said Lexie, “before getting hold of Nell. What do you feel about going straight up to the house now?”

“All right,” Rook agreed. “Only you know what that means? It means we’re bound to quarrel! Won’t you admit now that this whole business is a mad obsession? Here we sit, you and I, in the very acme of our precious day; everything enchanting round us, everything doubly delicious because we’re together; and the mere sight of that bird’s neck sets us off on the old wretched will-o’-the-wisp hunt, ‘over bog, over briar,’ though we know perfectly well that the whole thing’s an illusion!”