John Powys: After My Fashion

Catharine was like wax in his hands during the rest of that day. She let him help her pack her things; she let him convey her to the station and place her by his side in the compartment, without a word.

He wondered, as he saw her lean sideways against the edge of the window, whether she wasn’t half-asleep, whether indeed she hadn’t swallowed some sort of drug. Once, however, when by a sudden movement forward he obtained a glimpse of her face he knew that she was only too completely in possession of her faculties. It was clear to him then that it was the blow to her heart which had deprived her body of all muscular resistance.

It was about nine o’clock in the evening when Richard and Catharine mounted the steps of the Charlton Street house.

Richard left the girl leaning helplessly against the wall of the passage, as if she were an umbrella or a stick that he had been carrying and, quickly turning the handle of the door, he entered the room.

The place was dark except for the light of a lamp in the street opposite. Nelly’s gone to bed , he thought. But I must wake her, as Catharine’s here . He could not help experiencing a certain cowardly relief at the girl’s presence, as it was an obvious raft of escape from immediate explanations. He struck a match and lit the gas. Then he went back into the passage. Leading in Catharine by the hand he placed her in that same big armchair where he had first made her acquaintance.

The girl looked at him out of hollow miserable eyes and murmured Nelly’s name.

‘Hush! my dear!’ he whispered. ‘It’s all right. I’ll wake her now and she’ll look after you.’

He opened the door of the bedroom and went in. The bed was unoccupied, and the empty room, left in perfect order, mocked him with its neatness as if with a leer of derisive contempt.

He went up to the dressing-table, entirely bare now of Nelly’s brush and comb and bottle of eau-de-cologne.

In the place of these things was a letter addressed to himself in Nelly’s girlish hand.

He returned to the living-room where Catharine was sitting exactly where he had left her, her eyes fixed in vacancy.

Standing under the gas burner he opened the note and read it. It ran as follows: ‘If you only hadn’t lied to me it would have been different. Why did you do it, Richard? How could you do it? I should have thought — but what’s the use of saying any more? If neither for my sake nor the child’s you can’t give up your pleasures, it’s no use pretending that you care for us. By the time you read this I shall be on the sea. Robert is sailing on the same ship. He will take me to Mrs Shotover’s. He wants me to divorce you, but I shall never do that. He is very angry with you and unhappy. I think I am myself too sad about everything to be angry ever again. Goodbye Richard. When you get tired of this person, as I know you will very soon, you will be sorry you forced me to leave you. I have to think of my child and I couldn’t endure it any more. You will never be able to understand what a woman feels. Perhaps it isn’t your fault altogether. I am afraid I must ask you to send me a little money, at regular intervals? I shall be happier when I see the Downs. Don’t be afraid I shall do anything rash. I feel only too clear-headed. It is the Village Laundry, not Ebstein’s, who come for our washing now. Goodbye. I am all right. The voyage won’t hurt me.’

The letter was signed ‘Nelly’ and there was a postscript to it containing one sentence: ‘Please keep in touch with Catharine, for the girl has no friends.’

Richard carefully folded up this letter and put it in his pocket. Then he took it out of his pocket and read it again very slowly. Then he carried it to the chimneypiece and placed it under a book.

He noticed casually as he did this that the elemental sprites, who accompany every human disaster with their satiric commentary, had arranged that the book under which he placed it should be the Vita Nuova . Well did he recall the romantic nonsense he had written for Nelly on the flyleaf of that book. But it served very well as a letter weight just then to keep that particular letter from blowing away!

He walked up and down the room several times trying to visualize Nelly on the ship. He felt no jealousy of Canyot at that moment. He felt only relief that his wife was not alone. But how he longed for her; for her voice, her look, her silent reproaches even! He had never longed so much for the presence of any human being.

At last he stopped in front of Catharine. What was to be done with the stricken girl?

‘Nelly has gone away,’ he said. ‘I’ve treated her badly and she’s gone away. She’s sailed for England.’

Catharine stared at him with a puzzled uncomprehending look. ‘Nelly’s left you?’ she murmured.

‘Yes — devil that I am! She’s treated me as I deserve and has gone off.’

‘Not alone?’

‘No, Robert Canyot’s with her.’

The absence of anything in his tone except self-abasement seemed to rouse Catharine’s pity.

‘Poor Richard!’ she murmured and stretched out one of her long arms towards him. That naïve gesture of sympathy from one so cruelly hit herself was too much for Richard’s self-control. He found himself on his knees by the side of the girl’s chair struggling with violent sobs that shook his whole frame. Still tearless herself Catharine smoothed his hair caressingly with her fingers. An onlooker would have been made aware at that moment of what an immense fund of passionate human feeling lay beneath that queer Greenwich Village smock-frock, coloured like a Matisse painting.

He rose to his feet in a little while, relieved by his outburst. One of the cynical demons that were always ready to whisper unpardonable things in his ear commented with sardonic interest on the fact that somewhere within his consciousness there was an actual throb of self-congratulation that he was still able to shed tears.

The question now presented itself vividly to his mind: what was to be done with Catharine?

The girl had crossed her knees and clasped her hands round them, and now sat staring blankly in front of her.

It struck his inner consciousness how queer a thing it was, this pathology of wounded love! How it seemed to be something impersonal, like a madness that fell upon a person out of the air, quite independently of the value or worth or nature of the object for which it vexed itself.

He looked at his watch. It was already past ten. ‘Shall I see you back to your flat?’ he said, touching the girl’s hand.

The idea of her room in Thirty-fifth Street, full of little objects associated with her friendship for Ivan, brought such a woebegone expression into Catharine’s face that he wished he had not suggested such a thing. But what else was to be done? He hesitated for a moment, looking helplessly round the apartment. Then he said, ‘All right. The best thing you can do is to stay right here, where you are. You shall sleep in Nelly’s room and I’ll pull my own bed into this room. Nobody will be any the wiser. And after all what does it matter? We’re both past fussing about things of that sort!’

She seemed relieved at his suggestion; and he got a grim satisfaction from the thought of that postscript in Nelly’s letter — Look after Catharine. She has no friends .

Having settled this matter he proceeded to drag the second of the two beds into the sitting room. Then he lit the gas under the stove so as to make them both some tea. He was touched by finding that Nelly had stocked their small cupboard with more provisions than he had ever seen there before.

He managed with difficulty to persuade the unhappy girl to swallow some oatmeal biscuits and a raw egg made palatable by the last drops of his brandy flask. These things and a cup of milkless tea formed their melancholy supper.