John Powys - Rodmoor

“How’s the rat?” she began, throwing a teasing and provocative smile upon the priest’s perturbed counteance.

“Out there,” he replied, emptying his glass at one gulp.

“What? In your coat pocket on such a night as this?”

Mr. Traherne put down his glass and inserted his huge workman’s fingers into the bosom of his cassock.

“Nothing under this but a shirt,” he said. “Cassocks have no pockets.”

“Haven’t they?” laughed Brand. “They have something then where you can put money. That is, unless you parsons are like kangaroos and have some natural little orifice in which to hide the offerings of the faithful.”

“Is he happy always in your pocket?” enquired Philippa.

“Do you want me to see?” replied the priest, rising with a movement that almost upset the table. “I’ll bring him in and I’ll make him go scimble-scamble all about the room.”

The tone in which he uttered these words said, as plainly as words could say, “You’re a pretty, silly, flirtatious piece of femininity! You only talk about my rat for the sake of fooling me. You don’t really care whether he’s happy in my pocket or not. It’s only out of consideration for your silly nerves that I don’t play with him now. And if you tease me an inch more I will, and make him run up your petticoats, too!”

“Sit down again, Traherne,” said Brand, “and let me fill up your glass. We’ll all visit the rat presently and find him some supper. Just at present I’m anxious to know how things are in the village. I haven’t been down that way for weeks.”

This was a direct challenge to the priest to come, without further delay, to the matter of his visit. Hamish Traherne accepted it.

“We came really,” he said, “to see you , Renshaw. A little later, perhaps before we go, we must have our conversation. We hardly expected to have the pleasure of finding Miss Philippa sitting up so late.”

Dr. Raughty, who all this while had been watching with the most intense delight the beauty of the girl’s white skin and scarlet lips and the indescribable charm of her sinuous figure, now broke in impetuously.

“But it can wait! It can wait! Oh, please don’t go to bed yet, Miss Renshaw. Look, your cigarette’s out! Throw it away and try one of these. They’re French, they’re the yellow packets, I know you like them. They’re what you smoked once when we were on the river — when you caught that great perch.”

Philippa, who had risen to her feet at Traherne’s somewhat brusque remark, came at once to the Doctor’s side.

“Oh, the perch,” she cried, “yes, I should think I do remember! You insisted on killing it at once so that it shouldn’t jump back into the water. You put your thumb into its mouth and bent back its head. Oh, yes! That yellow packet brings it all back to me. I can smell the sticky dough we tried to catch dace with afterwards and I can see the look of your hands all smeared with blood and silver scales. Oh, that was a lovely day, Doctor! Do you remember how you twisted those things, bryony leaves they were, round my head when the others had gone? Do you remember how you said you’d like to treat me as you treated the perch? Do you remember how you ran after a dragon-fly or something?”

She stopped breathlessly and, balancing herself on the arm of the Doctor’s chair, blew a great cloud of smoke over his head, filling the room in a moment with the pungent odour of French tobacco.

Both Traherne and Brand regarded her with astonishment. She seemed to have transformed herself and to have become a completely different person. Her eyes shone with childish gaiety and when she laughed, as she did a moment afterwards at some sally of the Doctor’s, there was a ring of unforced, spontaneous merriment in the sound such as her brother had not heard for many years. She continued to bend over Dr. Raughty’s chair, covering them both in a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, and the two of them soon became absorbed in some intricate discussion concerning, as far as the others could make out, the question of the best bait to be used for pike.

The priest took the opportunity of delivering himself of what was on his mind.

“I’m afraid, Renshaw,” he said, “you’ve gone your own way in that matter of Linda Herrick. No! Don’t deny it. You may not have seen her as often as before our last conversation, but you’ve seen her. She’s confessed as much to me herself. Now look here, Renshaw, you and I have known one another for some good few years. How long is it, man? Fifteen, twenty? It can’t be less. Long enough, anyway, for me to have earned the right to speak quite plainly and I tell you this, you must stop the whole business!”

His voice sank as he spoke to a formidable whisper. Brand glanced round at the others but apparently they were quite preoccupied. Mr. Traherne continued.

“The whole business, Renshaw! After this you must leave that child absolutely alone. If you don’t — if you insist on going on seeing her — I shall take strong measures with you. I shall — but I needn’t say any more! I think you can make a pretty shrewd guess what I shall do.”

Brand received this solemn ultimatum in a way calculated to cause the agitated man who addressed it to him a shock of complete bewilderment. He yawned carelessly and stretched out his long arms.

“As you please, Hamish,” he said, “I’m perfectly ready not to see her. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have seen her in any case. To tell you the truth, I’ve got a bit sick of the whole thing. These young girls are silly little feather-weights at best. It’s first one mood and then another! You can’t be sure of them for two hours at a stretch. So it’s all right, Hamish Traherne! I won’t interfere with her. You can make a nun of her if you like — or whatever else you fancy. All I beg of you is, don’t go round talking about me to your parishioners. Don’t talk about me to Raughty! I don’t want my affairs discussed by any one — not even by my friends. All right, my boy — you needn’t look at me like that. You’ve known me, as you say, long enough to know what I am. So there you are! You’ve had your answer and you’ve got my word. I don’t mind even your calling it ‘the word of a gentleman ‘as you did the other night. You can call it what you like. I’m not going to see Linda for a reason quite personal and private but if you like to make it a favour to yourself that I don’t — well! throw that in, too!”

Hamish Traherne thrust his hand into his cassock thinking, for the moment, that it was his well-worn ulster and that he would feel the familiar form of Ricoletto.

It may be noted from this futile and unconscious gesture, how much hangs in this world upon insignificant threads. Had the priest’s fingers touched at that moment the silky coat of his little friend he would have derived sufficient courage to ask his formidable host point-blank whether, in leaving Linda in this way, he left her as innocent and unharmed as when he crossed her path at the beginning. Not having Ricoletto with him, however, and his fingers encountering nothing but his own woolen shirt, he lacked the inspiration to carry the matter to this conclusion. Thus, upon the trifling accident of a tame rodent having been left outside a library or, if you will, upon an eccentric parson having no pocket, depended the whole future of Linda Herrick. For, had he put that question and had Brand confessed the truth, the priest would undoubtedly, under every threat in his power, have commanded him to marry her and it is possible, considering the mood the man was in at that moment and considering also the nature of the threat held over him, he would have bowed to the inevitable and undertaken to do it.

The intricate and baffling complications of human life found further illustration in the very nature of this mysterious threat hinted at so darkly by Mr. Traherne. It was in reality — and Brand knew well that it was — nothing more or less than the making clear to Mrs. Renshaw beyond all question or doubt, of the actual character of the son she tried so conscientiously to idealize. For some basic and profound reason, inherent in his inmost nature, it was horrible to Brand to think of his mother knowing him. She might suspect and she might know that he knew she suspected, but to have the thing laid quite bare between them would be to send a rending and shattering crack through the unconscious hypocrisy of twenty years. For certain natures any drastic cleavage of slowly built-up moral relations is worse than death. Brand would have felt less remorse in being the cause of his mother’s death than of being the cause of her knowing him as he really was. The matter of Linda being thus settled between the two men, if the understanding so reached could be regarded as settling it, they both turned round, anxious for some distraction, to the quarter of the room where their friends had been conversing. But Philippa and the Doctor were no longer with them. Brand looked whimsically at the priest who, shrugging his shoulders, poured himself out a third glass from the decanter on the table. They then moved to the window which reached almost to the ground. Stepping over its low ledge, they passed out upon the terrace. They were at once aware of a change in the atmospheric conditions. The veil of mist had entirely been swept away from the sky. The vast expanse twinkled with bright stars and, far down among the trees, they could discern the cresent form of the new moon.