John Powys - Ducdame

The spot seemed in some especial sense the accumulated retort of the human race to all the elements of chaos. Rook felt, as he loitered in it, as though the absence from his own days of the sort of patient diurnal labour which for generations had made all this possible was the central cause of his discontent.

He passed out at last into the orchard; and from the orchard into the open uplands. The slope of Battlefield as he made his way between gorse and bracken was sweet with the invisible scent of thyme. It was difficult not to tread upon tufts of euphrasia and milkwort; and when he reached the top of the hill the hot, windless suction of the noon’s leonine mouth had filled the air so full with the odour of pine bark and turpentine and fir needles that he felt as if the trouble of human thoughts were a kind of foreign intrusion, an ill-mannered and irrelevant guest, amid the largesse of all this earth life.

Instead of exhausting him, the heat of that hour of the day seemed to put a sort of magnetic fever into his blood. He ran down the slope of Dorsal, sweating from every pore, but with an almost fierce exuberance of energy. Reaching Antiger Lane he turned to the right, away from the Drools’ cottage, and began striding up the road at a great pace, swinging his stick as he walked. He soon passed the place where Ann had confessed to him just four months ago that she was with child, but even the sight of the hedge and bank and gate and trees at that particular point did not destroy the careless aplomb of his mood.

By degrees the nature of the scenery on the side of the lane facing the Antiger Woods changed its character. The hillside diminished to a gentle upward incline and by the time he arrived at a point parallel with the village of Ashover this slope became a field of ripe wheat.

What wind there was — an almost imperceptible breath from the east — reached his senses across this cornfield; and the smell of the ripe ears, like a quintessential airy diffusion of the bread of life itself, passed into his veins and increased the heathen exuberance of his blood. For the first time since he had seen that white swan’s neck curving so provocatively at Comber’s End, Rook immersed himself in the great undertide of the world’s sensual life. All sorts of passing impressions, selected at random out of the things he had seen that day, conspired together to push him on into this fatal humour. The blue lobelia was there, the yellow wasps were there, the rusty nails in the scraps of cloth against the hot brick wall were there, the tonic fragrance of the fir trees; and now this sense of the bounty of the gods in the “living bread” of the generations!

There came over him the old mysterious classic acceptance of life upon the earth, of birth and death, of pleasure and sorrow, of love and the loss of love; and he had the feeling that whatever might be the issue of all these things for him, it was enough that they had been just as they had been. The horror that is never very far away, the loathing and the sick mad dread, seemed to fall off from his thoughts like scum from a boat’s prow.

That immense noon heat, large and indolent and yellow pelted, like a great planetary lion, had licked up with its burning tongue all the poison and putridity.

He was immensely surprised, as he turned a corner of the lane, to encounter the redoubtable Mr. Twiney seated luxuriously in his familiar cart while his long-necked mare cropped the grass by the hedge.

Rook had no sooner caught sight of Mr. Twiney’s face than he knew that something had ruffled the man’s equanimity. The blue smoke from his pipe ascended in a thin spiral wisp and wavered among the thick sycamore leaves above his head as if it had been the tail of some dreamy feline ghost; but Mr. Twiney’s tone did not correspond with the placidity of the smoke.

“Heigh! And what be Squire Ash’ver doing, then, this peevish-hot day? Ain’t it enough to make man and beast sweat their selves into rain pipes; and grow as slippy as eels in pond mud?”

“It certainly is pretty hot, Twiney,” said Rook, wiping his forehead. “How does your wife stand this kind of weather?”

Mr. Twiney sat erect at this and eyed him with a defensive and suspicious eye.

“Me old woman be snappish in winter, prickish in ploughing time, and all heads-and-tails in harvest. But come summer, same as us has now, and she be sweet as oil of Lebanon. I wish other folks were as well-spoken as my old woman be.”

Rook undid the buttons of his waistcoat and tugged at his flannel shirt so as to let the air touch his skin.

“Who is it you’re waiting for?” he enquired.

The owner of the mare gave the back of his grazing animal a gentle flick with his whip.

“Them sting flies be poisonous bad for horseflesh,” he remarked meditatively. “What they do feed on when there ain’t no horses where they do bide passes me comprehension.”

“Twiney, who are you waiting for?” Rook repeated in a more abrupt tone.

The man looked at him rather dubiously. “I suppose I ain’t giving away no lady’s secrets nor no gentleman’s either, when I tell ’ee, Squire, that ’tis thee own brother that I’ve a-brought here, long wi’ Missy Hastings from Toll-Pike.”

“Oh, naturally — quite right — very nice. I’m so glad.” These meaningless syllables fell from Rook’s lips as if they had been over-ripe apples detaching themselves from a motionless bough on a windless night.

The man in the cart watched him closely, but the indolent and casual expression on Mr. Twiney’s freckled face made him appear as one who while observing everything observed nothing.

“They be gone to Titty’s Ring, Squire,” he said pensively. “’Twere only a few minutes agone that they set out. I saw the tail o’n vanishing into wood by yon hedge gap. Don’t ’ee be worritted, Squire! Master Lexie walked as upright as if he’d never had an illness in’s life. I said to ’un, ‘Don’t ’ee kill yourself with exercise, Master Lexie!’ and Missy Hastings she laughed in me face like a green yaffle. ‘Let ’un lean on thee arm, as if thee was man and he were woman!’ I said. And Mr. Lexie he answered me short and brusk-like, same as if I’d said somethink indecent. It doesn’t do to speak to quiet men as your brother have spoke to me just now, Squire. All village do know he hasn’t long to live. And maybe that’s what makes ’un cranky. And we must be considerate with a nice gentleman, as he be. But I bain’t one for brusky speeches, whether from the gentry or from me own wife. I likes to be bespoke soft and easy, Squire Ash’ver, as well as any man in England.”

“I’m sure my brother meant no harm. And I’m sure Mrs. Hastings didn’t mean to laugh in your face, Twiney. I can’t imagine either of them doing such a thing. Well! Good-day to you! If I happen to meet them I’ll tell them that you’re still waiting.”

He began to move off, but Mr. Twiney’s indignation was not yet appeased.

“I think you ought to know it, Squire, though I’m not the one to tell you. But they do say down village that Mr. Lexie and Missy Hastings be up to no good in these goings on. I’ve a-driven them two into every lane and every cattle drive round these parts. I think it’s only due to ’ee, Mr. Ash’ver, seeing as you’re Squire and such-like, to let ’ee know how the wind be blowing!”

“All right, Twiney; I’m much obliged to you, Twiney; but you mustn’t listen to the village gossip, you know. Good-day to you!” And with unctuous discretion on his tongue but black anger in his heart he strode down the lane.

So this was why he had been seeing so little of Lexie during the last fortnight! The rogue had stolen a march on him and had been up to serious mischief with that romantic little idiot! He found it impossible to see the thing in a reasonable or magnanimous light. A few weeks ago he would have shrugged his shoulders and washed his hands of the matter. Nell belonged to Hastings; not to him. She had never really belonged to him! Why was it, then, that he felt so maliciously angry with both her and his brother? He refused to attempt to analyze what he felt. He just gave himself up to a blind irrational grievance; to a sense of having been betrayed by his brother and fooled by the girl.