John Powys - Rodmoor

His harsh voice died away on the air and for a little while there was no sound in that garden except the twitter of birds, the hum of insects, and the murmur of the sea. Then she moved, raised herself from the ground and rubbed her face with her hands.

“Thank you, Hamish,” she said.

He got up from his knees and she rose too and they walked slowly together up and down the little grass plot. His harsh voice, harsher than ever when its pitch was modulated, rose and fell monotonously in the sunny air.

“I don’t say to you, Nance, that you shouldn’t expect the worst. I think we always should expect that and prepare to meet it. What I say is that in the very power of the love you feel there is a strength capable of sustaining you through your whole life, whatever happens. And it is out of this very strength — a strength stronger than all the world, my dear — than all the world! — that you’ll be able to give your Adrian what he needs. He needs your love, little one, not your jealousy, nor your self-pity, nor your anger. God knows how much he needs it! And if you sink down into your heart and draw upon that and wait for him and pray for him and endure for him you will see how, in the end, he’ll come back to you! No — I won’t even say that. For in this world he may never realize whose devotion is sustaining him. I’ll say, whether he comes back or not, you’ll have been his only true love and he’ll know it, child, in this world or another, he’ll know you for what you are!”

The sweet, impossible doctrine, older than the centuries, older than Plato, of the supremacy of spiritual passion had never — certainly not in that monastic garden — found a more eloquent apologist. As she listened to his words and her glance lingered upon a certain deeply blue border of larkspurs, which, as they paced up and down mingled with the impression he made upon her, Nance felt that a crisis had indeed arrived in her life — had arrived and gone — the effect of which could never, whatever happened, altogether disappear. She was still unutterably sad. Her new mood brought no superficial comfort. But her sadness had nothing in it now of bitterness or desperation. She entered, at any rate for that hour, into the company of those who resolutely put life’s sweetness away from them and find in the accepted pressure of its sharp sword-point a pride which is its own reward.

This mood of hers still lasted on, when, some hours later, she found herself in the main street of the little town, staring with a half-humorous smile at the reflection of herself in the bow-window of the pastry-cook’s. She had just emerged from the shop adjoining this one, a place where she had definitely committed herself to accept the post of “forewoman” in the superintendence of half a dozen young girls who worked in the leisurely establishment of Miss Pontifex, “the only official dress-maker,” as the advertisement announced, “on that side of Mundham.”

She felt unspeakably relieved at having made this plunge. She had begun to weary of idleness — idleness rendered more bitter by the misery of her relations with Sorio — and the independence guaranteed by the eighteen shillings a week which Miss Pontifex was to pay her seemed like an oasis of solid assurance in a desert of ambiguities. She cared nothing for social prestige. In that sense she was a true daughter of her father, the most “democratic” officer in the British Navy. What gave her a profound satisfaction in the midst of her unhappiness was the thought that now, without leaving Rodmoor, she could, if Rachel’s jealousy or whatever it was, became intolerable, secure some small, separate lodging for herself and her sister.

Linda even, now her organ-playing had advanced so far, might possibly be able to earn something. There were perhaps churches in Mundham willing to pay for such assistance if the difficulty of getting over there on Sundays when the trains were few, could in some way be surmounted. At any rate, she felt, she had made a move in the right direction. For the present, living at Dyke House, she would be able to save every penny Miss Pontifex gave her, and the sense of even this relative independence would strengthen her hand and afford her a sort of vantage-ground whatever happened in the future.

She was still standing in front of the confectioner’s window when she heard a well-known voice behind her and, turning quickly round, found herself face to face with Fingal Raughty. The Doctor looked at her with tender solicitude.

“Feeling the heat?” he said, retaining her fingers in his own and stroking them as one might stroke the petals of a rare orchid.

She smiled affectionately into his eyes and thought how strange an irony it was that every one, except the person she cared most for, should treat her thus considerately.

“Come,” the Doctor said, “now I’ve got you I’m not going to let you go. You must see my rooms! You promised you would, you know.”

She hadn’t the heart to refuse him and together they walked up the street till they came to the tiny red-brick house which the Doctor shared with the family of a Mundham bank-clerk. He opened the door and led her upstairs.

“All this floor is mine,” he explained. “There’s where I see my patients, and here,” he led her into the room looking out on the street, “here’s my study.”

Nance was for the moment inclined to smile at the use of the word “study” as applied to any room in Rodmoor High Street, but when she looked round at walls literally lined with books and at tables and chairs covered with books, some of them obviously rare and valuable, she felt she had not quite done justice to the Doctor’s taste. He fluttered round her now with a hundred delicate attentions, made her remove her hat and gloves and finally placed her in a large comfortable armchair close to the open window. He pulled one of the green blinds down a little way to soften the stream of sunshine and, rushing to his book-case, snatched at a large thin volume which stood with others of the same kind on the lowest shelf. This he dusted carefully with his sleeve and laid gently upon her lap.

“I think you’ll like it,” he murmured. “It’s of no value as an edition, but it’s in his best style. I suppose Miss Doorm has all the old masters up at Dyke House bound in morocco and vellum? Or has she only county histories and maps?”

While his visitor turned over the pages of the work in question, her golden head bent low and her lips smiling, the doctor began piling up more books, one on the top of another, at her side.

“Apuleius! — he’s a strange old fellow, not without interest, but you know him, of course? Petronius Arbiter! you had better not read the text but the illustrations may amuse you. William Blake! There are some drawings here which have a certain resemblance to — to one or two people we know! Bewick! Oh, you’ll enjoy this, if you don’t know it. I’ve got the other volume, too. You mustn’t look at all the vignettes but some of them will please you.”

“But — Fingal—” the girl protested, lifting her head from Pope’s Rape of the Lock illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley—“what are you going to do? I feel as if you were preparing me for a voyage. I’d sooner talk to you than look at any books.”

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he said, throwing at her a nervous and rather harassed look, “I must wash my hands.”

He hurried precipitously from the room and Nance, lifting her eyebrows and shrugging her shoulders, returned to the “Rape of the Lock.”

The doctor’s bathroom was situated, it appeared, in the immediate vicinity of the study. Nance was conscious of the turning of what sounded like innumerable taps and of a rush of mighty waters.

“Is the dear man going to have a bath?” she said to herself, glancing at the clock on the chimney-piece. If her conjecture was right, Dr. Raughty took a long while getting ready for his singularly timed ablution for she heard him running backwards and forwards in the bathroom like a mouse in a cage. She uttered a little sigh and, laying the “Rape of the Lock” on the top of “Bewick,” looked wearily out of the window, her thoughts returning to Sorio and the event of the preceding evening.