John Powys - Rodmoor

The parlour door was wide open. She entered the room. A handful of dead flowers — wild flowers of some kind but they were too withered to be distinguishable — hung dry and sapless over the edge of a vase of rank-smelling water. Otherwise the table was bare and the room in order. She came out again and went into the kitchen. Here the presence of more homely and unsentimental objects relieved a little the tension of her nerves. But the place was absolutely empty — save for an imprisoned tortoise-shell butterfly that was beating itself languidly, as if it had done the same thing for days, against the pane.

Mindful of Sorio’s habit and with even the faint ghost of a smile, she opened the window and set the thing free. It was a relief to smell the river-smell that came in as she did this. She moved out of the kitchen and once more stood breathless, listening intently in the silent hall-way. It was growing rapidly darker; she longed to rush from the place and return to Sorio but some indescribable power, stronger than her own will, retained her. Suddenly she uttered a little involuntary cry. Struck by a light gust of wind, the front door which she had left open, swung slowly towards her and closed with a vibrating shock. She ran to the back and opened the door which led to the yard. Here she was genuinely relieved to catch the sound of a sleepy rustling in the little wood-shed and to see through its dusty window a white blur of feathers. There were fowls alive anyway about Dyke House. That, at least, was some satisfaction. Propping the door open by means of an iron scraper she returned to the hall-way and looked apprehensively at the staircase. Dared she ascend to the rooms above? Dared she enter Rachel Doorm’s bedroom? She moved to the foot of the stair-case and laid her hand upon the balustrade. A dim flicker of waning light came in through the door she had propped open and fell upon the heavy chairs which stood in the hall and upon a fantastic picture representing the eruption of Vesuvius. The old-fashioned colouring of this print was now darkened, but she could see the outlines of the mountain and its rolling smoke. Once again she listened. Not a sound! She took a few steps up the stairs and paused. Then a few more and paused again. Then with her hands tightly clenched and a cold shivering sensation making her feel sick and dizzy, she ran up the remainder and stood weak and exhausted, leaning against the pillar of the balustrade and gazing with startled eyes at a half-open door.

It is extraordinary the power of the dead over the living! Philippa knew that in that room, behind that door, was the thing that had once called itself a woman and had talked and laughed and eaten and drunk with other women. When Rachel Doorm was about the age she herself had now reached and she was a little child, she could remember how she had built sand-castles for her by the sea-shore and sang to her old Rodmoor songs about drowned sailors and sea-kings and lost children. And now she knew — as surely as if her hand was laid upon her cold forehead — that behind that door, probably in some ghastly attitude of eternal listening, the corpse of all that, of all those memories and many more that she knew nothing of, was waiting to be found, to be found and have her eyes shut and her jaw bandaged — and be prepared for her coffin. The girl gripped tight hold of the balustrade. The terror that took possession of her then was not that Rachel Doorm should be dead — dead and so close to her, but that she should not be dead!

At that moment, could she have brought herself to push that door wide open and pass in, it would have been much more awful, much more shocking, to find Rachel Doorm alive and see her rise to meet her and hear her speak! After all, what did it matter if the body of the woman was twisted and contorted in some frightful manner — or standing perhaps — Rachel Doorm was just the one to die standing! — or if her face were staring up from the floor? What did it matter, supposing she did go straight in and feel about in the darkness and perhaps lay her hand upon the dead woman’s mouth? What did it matter even if she did see her hanging, in the faint light of the window, from a hook above the curtain with her head bent queerly to one side and a lock of her hair falling loose? None of these things mattered. None of them prevented her going straight into that room! What did prevent her and what sent her fleeing down the stairs and out of the house with a sudden scream of intolerable terror was the fact that at that moment, quite definitely, there came the sound of breathing from the room she was looking at. A simple thing, a natural thing, for an old woman to retire to her bedroom early and to lie, perhaps with all her clothes on, upon her bed, to rest for a while before undressing. A simple and a natural thing! But the fact remains as has just been stated, when the sound of breathing came from that room Philippa screamed and ran panic-stricken out into the night. She hardly stopped running, indeed, till she reached the willow copse and found Sorio where she had left him. He did not resist now when breathlessly she implored him to accompany her back to the house. They walked hurriedly there together, Adrian in spite of a certain apprehension smiling in the darkness at his companion’s certainty that Rachel Doorm was dead and her equal certainty that she had heard her breathing.

“But I understand your feeling, Phil,” he said. “I understand it perfectly. I used to have the same sensation at night in a certain great garden in the Campagna — the fear of meeting the boy I used to play with before I expected to meet him! I used to call out to him and beg him to answer me so as to make sure.”

Philippa refused to enter the house again and waited for him outside by the garden gate. He was long in coming, so long that she was seized with the strangest thoughts. But he came at last, carrying a lantern in his hand.

“You’re right, Phil,” he said, “the gods have taken her. She’s stone-dead. And what’s more, she’s been dead a long time, several weeks, I should think.”

“But the breathing, Adrian, the breathing? I heard it distinctly.”

Sorio put down his lantern and leant against the gate. In spite of his calm demeanor she could see that he also had experienced something over and above the finding of Rachel’s body.

“Yes,” he said, “and you were right about that, too. Guess, child, what it was!”

And as he spoke he put his hand against the front of his coat which was tightly buttoned up. Philippa was immediately conscious of the same stertorous noise that she had heard in the room of death.

“An animal!” she cried.

“An owl,” he answered, “a young owl. It must have fallen from a nest in the roof. I won’t show it to you now, as it might escape and a cat might get it. I’m going to try and rear it if Tassar will let me. Baptiste will be so amused when he finds me with a pet owl! He has quite a mania for things like that. He can make the birds in the park come to him by whistling. Well! I suppose what we must do now is to get back to Rodmoor as quick as we can and report this business to the police. She must have been dead a week or more! I’m afraid this will be a great shock to Nance.”

“How did you find her?” enquired the girl as they walked along the road towards the New Bridge.

“Don’t ask me, Phil — don’t ask me,” he replied, “She’s out of her troubles anyway and had an owl to look after her.”

“Should I have been—” began his companion.

“Don’t ask me, girl!” he reiterated. “I tell you it’s all past and over. Rachel Doorm will be buried in the Rodmoor churchyard and I shall have her owl. An old woman stops breathing and an owl begins breathing. It’s all natural enough.”