John Powys: After My Fashion

His pulses were beating with a good deal more excitement than he had anticipated as he approached the lodge gates of Mrs Shotover’s drive. But he felt confident of the result of his interview with his wife.

The flawless beauty of the day seemed an invincible omen of success; and he had in his notebook eight hundred and fifty dollars!

He rang the bell of the front door at precisely half past two o’clock — the hour of all hours when he deemed it most impossible for Mrs Shotover to be in a state of visibility.

He asked, in a purposely low voice, whether he might see Mrs Storm at once and he repeated his name in a whisper. The servant was apparently a stranger for she gave no particular sign of surprise and, ushering him straight into the well-known drawing room, closed the door discreetly behind her. Richard walked up and down in excited perturbation. His mind called up the image of Nelly. He thought of her child, and how it would be born before April was over, or at any rate in the beginning of May — exactly a year since he had first arrived in Sussex.

It would be wonderful to have a child of his own! If it were a girl he could call it after his mother; and if it were a boy, after his father. He was sure Nelly would be willing to leave the name in his hands! He supposed Canyot would have to be its godfather and Mrs Shotover its godmother. About those little matters he could afford to be generous!

How slow she was in coming! Had that confounded maid forgotten to announce him? Perhaps she too was resting, and they were reluctant to disturb her. Well! he could wait. She would probably be up and about before the lady of the house showed herself. He surveyed the teasing knickknacks and the incredible frippery of that early-Victorian shrine. Why was it that young English women in evening dress photographed so badly? He supposed they ought to be ‘snapshotted’ on the hunting field or in walking costume. They seemed to be all chin and forehead and shoulders and elbows when adorned for civilized intercourse!

Suddenly the door opened. He sprang forward with a cry of recognition on his lips, only to step back in cold dismay at the entrance of Mrs Shotover. The lady closed the door behind her and bowed stiffly.

‘I can’t think what your purpose can be,’ she began, uttering the words very much as some pompous statesman of her youth might have addressed a recalcitrant delegacy, ‘in forcing yourself into my house. You don’t suppose for a moment, do you, that I can permit you to agitate my dear Eleanor by silly dramatic scenes? She has done with you, sir! Let me make that quite plain: she has done with you and your ill-bred vulgar behaviour.’

‘But Mrs Shotover—’

‘I won’t argue with you. It is bad for me to get angry directly after lunch. Fortunately I had lunch late today because of that idiot of a vet, making such mistakes with Bobby, else I shouldn’t have been able to tell you what I think of you.’

‘I don’t want to argue with you, Mrs Shotover. I want to see Nelly. I want to explain to Nelly that—’

‘It’s no use, my good man. I can see what you’re after. You’re after money. You’re trying to blackmail us. But let me tell you at once that though I have made your wife my heir and left her everything, it’s all tied up so that you cannot touch a penny of it! So there! The best thing you can do is to clear right off, before I am compelled to ring for Thomas.’ And the lady with a grand toss of her head opened the door for him, making a vague movement with her hands as if she were about to drive off an intrusive fowl from a precious flowerbed.

Richard stepped out into the hall; but instead of meekly picking up his hat from the hall table he made a sudden bolt up the polished stairs and, arriving at the top where all the bedrooms were, called in loud violent tones the name of his wife.

One of the doors promptly opened and Nelly appeared. She had evidently just removed her dress, for she wore a long soft bedroom gown and her hair was loose about her shoulders.

She turned very white when she saw her husband and leaned against the side of the doorway uttering his name in a tremulous voice as if she had seen a ghost.

He rushed up to her and was about to embrace her when Mrs Shotover who had closely pursued him pushed her way in between them.

The old lady dragged the girl back into her room and held her tightly there with her thin arms, muttering all the while, ‘The rascal! the bandit! the highwayman! the scoundrel! I’ll have the law on him! Why doesn’t Emma come? Where is Thomas?’

Richard, following them into the room, made a desperate appeal to Nelly. ‘Send the woman away, sweetheart! Send her away! I must and will talk to you!’

Making a brave effort to gather up all her mental and physical energy, Nelly extricated herself from Mrs Shotover’s clutches; turning sternly upon her, she said in a tone that the old lady seemed to recognize as not to be controverted, ‘I must see him alone. You must leave us alone, please. You needn’t be afraid. He is my husband. It will not be for long. Go now, dear, and leave us by ourselves.’

Like some eighteenth-century caricature of a defeated Juno, obedient to the commands of an irresistible daughter of Jove, the indignant old woman retreated, muttering vague threats. Nelly closed the door and turned the key in the lock. But she astonished Richard by waving him back when he tried to take her in his arms.

‘My darling! my sweetheart!’ he cried, making a second attempt to embrace her. Again she drew away from him and, wrapping herself closely in her dressing gown, clutched at it as if it had been protecting armour, her hands against her breast.

‘Nelly!’ he whispered with an intensity in his voice that betrayed an emotion which she had never noted in him before.

She looked straight into his eyes. ‘Have you given up that woman?’ she said, repeating the words as if in the presence of some formidable tribunal. ‘Do you promise me that never, under any circumstances, you’ll see her again?’

Richard murmured the word ‘yes’ and added hoarsely, ‘I will never see her again without your consent.’

As soon as those words had been uttered Nelly’s face changed and her whole body seemed to relax and unbend, as if relieved from an unbearable load.

She turned whiter still and, taking her hand away from his, clasped her fingers tightly together while her mouth also compressed itself into an almost hard expression.

‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘You needn’t look so scared, my dearest one, it’s all over now and thank God there are no complications!’

She bit her underlip; her eyebrows twitched; her fingers clasped one another so violently that they became white as her face.

If one of his demons had whispered into his ear some huge palpable lie at that juncture and had compelled him to utter it, the situation might still have been saved for both of them. But by a cruel irony in things the good in him — if such an instinct for confession was good — drove him so fast that no demon’s help arrived.

‘You know you told me to look after Catharine?’ he said.

A tiny little red spot appeared on both her cheeks, but she only answered by a barely perceptible nod.

‘Well, I did take care of her.’ He gave a little uneasy laugh. ‘And she took care of me. In fact we lived together in Charlton Street right up to the end. She slept in your room and I slept in the sitting room. We were always good — like two monks — and I left her much happier when I came away.

‘Elise Angel is teaching her to dance; and I’ve no wish to see her again, any more than I want to see—’

The figure upon the bed sat up absolutely erect, like a lovely image of judgement. Her eyes were blazing with anger. She tried twice to speak, the indignation within her strangling the words. Then at last in a low cold frozen tone, ‘I can’t stand it. This is the end. I must ask you to go away at once please. You can write to me and I will answer your letters. But this is the end of everything between us. I can’t live with you any more, Richard. Will you go quickly, please? No! No! Don’t touch me! I can’t bear it. I suppose you don’t want to drive me insane, do you? No! No! I must ask you to go at once. Now — quickly! Before they come to answer this!’