John Powys - Rodmoor

“There’s no book,” he said, when he had finished, “which so recovers my spirits as this one. Cervantes is the noblest soul of them all and the bravest. He’s the only author who never gives up his humility before God or his pride before the Universe. He’s the author for me! He’s the author for us poor priests!”

Mr. Traherne lit a cigarette and looked at Nance through its smoke with a grotesque scowl of infinite reassurance.

“Cheer up, little one!” he said, “the spirit of the great Cervantes is not dead in the world. God has not deserted us. Nothing can hurt us while we hold to Christ and defy the Devil!”

Nance smiled at him. The conviction with which he spoke was like a cup of refreshing water to her in a dry desert.

“Mr. Traherne,” she began, but he interrupted her with a wave of his arm.

“My name’s Hamish,” he said.

“Hamish, then,” she went on, smiling at the ghoulish countenance before her, round which the cigarette smoke ascended like incense about the head of an idol, “I’ve more to tell you than I can say. So you must listen and be very good to me!”

He settled himself in his deep horse-hair chair with one leg over the other and his ancient, deplorably-stained cassock over both. And she poured forth the full history of her troubles, omitting nothing — except one or two of Linda’s cruel speeches. When she had completed her tale she surveyed him anxiously. One terrible fear made her heart beat — the fear lest he should tell her she must carry Linda back to London. He seemed to read her thoughts in her eyes. “One thing,” he began, “is quite clear. You must both of you leave Dyke House. Don’t look so scared, child. I don’t mean you must leave Rodmoor. You can’t kidnap your sister by force and nothing short of force would get her, in her present mood, to go away with you. But I think — I think, “he added,” we could persuade her to leave Miss Doorm.”

He straightened out his legs, puckered his forehead and pouted his thick lips .

“Have a strawberry,” he said suddenly, reaching with his hand for a plate lying amid a litter of books and papers, and stretching it out towards her. “Oh, there are ashes on it. I’m sorry! But the fruit’s all right. There! keep it by you — on the floor — anywhere — and help yourself!”

He once more subsided into his chair and frowned thoughtfully. Nance, with a smile of infinite relief — for had he not said that to leave Rodmoor was impossible? — kept the plate on her lap and began eating the fruit. She longed to blow the ashes away but fear of hurting his feelings restrained her. She brushed each strawberry surreptitiously with the tips of her fingers before lifting it to her mouth.

“You’re not cold, are you?” he said suddenly, “because I could light a fire.”

Nance looked at the tiny grate filled with a heap of bracken-leaves and wondered how this would be achieved.

“Oh, no!” she said, smiling again. “I’m perfectly warm.”

“Then, if you don’t mind,” he added, making the most alarming grimace, “pull your skirt down. I can see your ankles.”

Nance hurriedly drew up her feet and tucked them under her. “All right now?” she asked, with a faint flush.

“Sorry, my dear,” said Hamish Traherne, “but you must remember I’m a lonely monk and ankles as pretty as yours disturb my mind.” He glared at her so humorously and benevolently that Nance could not be angry with him. There was something so boyish in his candour that it would have seemed inhuman to take offence.

“I believe I could think better if I had Ricoletto,” he cried a moment later, jumping up and leaving the room. Nance took the opportunity of blowing every trace of cigarette-ash from her strawberry plate into the fender. She had hardly done this and demurely tucked herself up again in her chair when Mr. Traherne re-entered the room carrying in his hands a large white rat.

“Beautiful, isn’t he?” he remarked, offering the animal for the girl to stroke. “I love him. He inspires me with all my sermons. He pities the human race, don’t you, Ricoletto? And doesn’t hate a living thing except cats. He has a seraphic temper and no wish to marry. Ankles are nothing to him — are they, Ricoletto? — but he likes potatoes.”

As he spoke the priest brushed aside a heap of papers and laid bare the half-gnawed skin of one of these vegetables.

“Come, darling!” he said, reseating himself in his chair and placing rat and potato-skin together upon his shoulder, “enjoy yourself and give me wisdom to defeat the wiles of all the devils. Devils are cats, Ricoletto darling, great, fluffy, purring cats with eyes as big as saucers.”

Nance quietly went on eating strawberries and thinking to herself how strange it was that with every conceivable anxiety tugging at her heart she could feel such a sense of peace.

“He’s a papistical rat,” remarked Mr. Traherne, “he likes incense.”

Once more he relapsed into profound thought and Ricoletto’s movements made the only sound in the room.

“What you want, my child,” he began at last, while the girl put her plate down on the table and hung upon his words, “is lodgings for yourself and Linda in the village. I know an excellent woman who’d take you in — quite close to Miss Pontifex and not far from our dear Raughty. In fact, she’s the woman who cleans Fingal’s rooms. So that’s all in her favour! Fingal has a genius for getting nice people about him. You like Fingal, Nance, eh? But I know you do, and I know,” and the priest made the most outrageous grimace, “I know he adores you . You’re perfectly safe, let me tell you, with Fingal, my dear; however, he may tease you. He’s a hopeless heathen but he has a heart of gold.”

Nance nodded complete assent to the priest’s words. She smiled, however, to herself to think what a little way this “safety” he spoke of would go if by chance her heart were not so entirely preoccupied. She couldn’t resist the thought of how pathetically like children all these admirable men were, both in their frailties and in their struggles against their frailties. Her sense of peace and security grew upon her, and with this — for she was human — a delicate feeling of feminine power. Mr. Traherne continued—

“Yes, you must take lodgings in the village. Eighteen shillings a week — that was what that Pontifex woman promised you, wasn’t it? — won’t be over much for two of you. But it’ll keep you alive. Wait, though, wait! I don’t see why Linda shouldn’t play for us, up here, on Sundays. I’m always having to go round begging for some one. Often I have to be organist myself as well as priest. Yes — let her try — let her try! It’ll help me to keep an eye on her. It’ll be a distraction for her. Yes, let her try! I could give her a little for doing it — not what she ought to have, of course, but a little, enough to make her feel she was helping you in your housekeeping. Yes,” he clapped his hands together so violently that Ricoletto scrambled up against his collar and clung there with his paws. “Yes, that’s what we’ll do, my dear. We’ll turn your sister into a regular organist. Music’s the best charm in the world to drive away devils, isn’t it, Ricoletto? Better even than white rats.”

Nance looked at him with immense gratitude and, completely forgetting his instructions, altered her position to what it had been before. Mr. Traherne rose and, turning his back to her, drummed with his fingers on the mantelpiece while Ricoletto struggled desperately to retain his balance.

A queer thought came suddenly into Nance’s head and she asked the priest why it was that there were so many unmarried men in Rodmoor. He swung round at that and gave her a most goblinish look, rubbing the rat’s nose as he did so, against his cheek.