Ducdame (12 page)

The lad obeyed her without demur. He glanced reverently at the sleeping form, touched his forehead mechanically, as he had been taught to do when addressing the gentry, and slipped quietly down the stairs.

The cousins were left alone with the sleeping man. Rook got up and walked over to the window.

“Shall I open it a little?” he asked. The
soi-disant
trained nurse nodded.

He pulled the sash down.

The night outside was windless and hushed as a vast mausoleum, but before he pulled up the window again they both heard in the stillness the soft shuffling muted thud—snow upon snow—where some bowed-down branch was eased of its clinging load.

“It’ll begin again before morning,” said Rook, turning toward the girl. “Perhaps we shall be completely snowed up here! I hope the Drools have plenty more of that ale in the house.”

He spoke casually and lightly to conceal his growing agitation. Vaguely in his mind he associated the great darkened mass of frozen cloud-stuff that covered the earth with the inevitableness of the fate that was gathering about him.

“I’ll just run down to see that the boy’s all right,” said Cousin Ann, yielding to a little nervous shiver, “and then I’ll go straight to bed. Good-night, Cousin.” She made a slight movement toward him, and then, drawing herself up, lifted her half-extended hand to her own hair and adjusted its braids.

“Good-night, my dear,” murmured Rook brusquely, emptying the last drop of ale into his glass and swallowing it at a gulp.

She closed the door. He heard her go downstairs and enter the front kitchen. He waited, listening intently, his knuckles pressed upon the table. Why should the ticking of the clock be echoed so ridiculously by the irrepressible beating of his heart?

He heard the shutting of the kitchen door and her quick rush up the stairs. Then her own door was shut; and the house was as silent as Antiger Great Knoll.

An overpowering restlessness came upon him. He glanced round the Corporal’s room, at the gilded clock on the
mantelpiece
, at the lithograph of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, at the old man’s Sunday clothes hanging on wooden pegs, at the
mother-of-pearl shells on the little mahogany table, at the shiny horsehair armchair, at the spotted china dogs that glowered at each other from red-tasselled brackets. Finally he could stand it no more. “I’ll have a breath of air,” he said to himself. “A breath of air, Uncle Dick,” he repeated aloud, apostrophizing the form on the bed.

“I hope she won’t think I’m running away,” he thought as he descended the creaking stairs. “But, no! She’s a sensible girl and a man ought to cool his head after all that ale!”

The gamekeeper’s backyard was no longer isolated from the surrounding planetary spaces. No mere fragmentary instalment of the inter-stellar darkness had lodged itself there. The whole weight of the great Opposite of Light, the whole volume of light’s negation and antithesis, bore down upon him out of aërial infinitude. The superincumbent ocean of blackness, swallowing up all form, all colour, all past, all future, was indeed enough to drown fathom-deep every scruple left in his human brain.

He found himself recalling, as he stood there in the trodden snow, a particularly outrageous oracle of his brother Lexie, most mischievously germane to the matter in hand. He was on the point of turning to go in when a faint night wind, touching his face as it journeyed from nowhere to nowhere, seduced him into making a few further steps over the
vegetable
stumps and clumps of Mr. Drool’s garden.

Peering through that blind opacity he could just make out the vague line of the garden hedge. The Antiger Woods were entirely invisible. The elm trees by the side of the lane showed themselves as vague pillars of darkness within the dome of darkness. It struck his mind as a strange thing, that, though all distinctions were blotted out, he still was conscious of the snow at his feet as being something white, rather than black or gray. Did human beings inherit some queer colour sense, quite apart from the vision of the eye; a
tactile
sense, perhaps; derived from some remote animal or even vegetable atavism?

Ah! Ah! what was that? …

A most uncanny sound, blood-curdling and shocking, came suddenly to his ears from the invisible heart of the
snow-bound
hills. He smiled to himself when it was repeated, for he was sceptical enough not to be startled a second time by any nocturnal terror.

He stood still, listening. The second time, however, proved to be the last time. Only once again until the hour of his death did Rook Ashover hear that sound; nor did he ever come to any rational conclusion as to that sound’s origin.

Often and often after that night it was his destiny to wonder what that thing was. It was louder and more
appalling
than the cry of any wild creature. When Rook tried to describe it to Lexie he emphasized the fact that it seemed to come to him through some heavy, remote intervening substance. The nearest description he seemed able to give of it was that it suggested the united exultation of a host of people buried underground.

The occurrence might have altered the course of events that night—for all his inhuman callousness—if it had not been that his wanderings through Mr. Drool’s garden had brought him to that side of the house from which he could see his cousin’s window.

There was her white figure standing in full candlelight against the small square panes!

Had she also heard the sound? Rook never knew. To her—for some subconscious reason—he always kept complete silence upon that mystery.

Whether she was even aware that he had gone out he never knew, any more than he knew whether the gamekeeper and his wife were conscious or unconscious of his nocturnal movements.

He did not stand there for long. He could see her turn
away from the window and blow out her candle, and that single natural gesture, more than all the other forces that were combining against him, stiffened the nerves of his resolution.

Back to the door and up the creaking steps, and once more he was in Corporal Dick’s room!

The old man had apparently slept without any change of position.

Rook rapidly undressed, and putting on his overcoat as a dressing gown, lit a cigarette at the fire, using a torn letter from his pocket to transport the necessary flame.

He smiled to himself to see how his hand shook as he did this.

With hurried indrawing breaths he smoked about half of the cigarette, leaning against the mantelpiece. Then, throwing the rest of it on the coals, he moved to the door and went out into the passage.

As he left the room he heard the old man muttering in his sleep. He waited breathlessly for a moment, his hand on the door-knob.

“Die out? Never—never—I’ll shoot the bitch like a rabbit first!”

The words were followed by an inarticulate moan and that again by dead silence. Rook left the Corporal’s door open and moved silently across the landing.

Without knocking he turned the handle of the door
opposite
. It opened easily, and entering with a beating heart he left it ajar behind him.

The old man at least deserved that much consideration from the head of the family he had done so much to keep alive upon the earth!

I
T WAS the morning of the last day of the year.
Characteristic
of so many winter days in Dorset the weather was neither warm nor cold nor wet nor dry. It was
Laodicean
weather, born, like the English Prayer Book, of a genius for compromise. If such weather had had a human soul, it would have been condemned by Dante as being “neither for God nor for His enemies”!

The sun was not sufficiently strong to throw a single shadow or to illumine a single blade of grass; and yet one could see its form up there behind filmy vapours, faint, wistful, like a pallid, age-worn coin, weak as the eye of a dying lion, at which any mongrel cur may bark.

After a breakfast with Netta and his cousin as neutral and colourless as was the sky outside, Rook was buttoning up his gaiters in the kitchen, his foot on a chair, when Pandie approached him with a look of gloating
importance
. No archaic herald carrying solemn messages from one monarch to another could have displayed, more unctuous gravity than did this exile “from the banks of the Tone” in conveying to Rook the news that he was wanted by his mother.

As soon as his back was turned Pandie hurried to the elbow of Martha Vabbin and began eagerly speaking.

“Twasn’t what the missus spoke aloud that made I know ’twere going to be bad for Squire; ’twere what Missus keepit locked up in her own besom. Missus be terrible sore about this fancy party for year’s end what Master Lexie have prejicted for all o’n. She do want Squire to stay with she, decent and quiet-like, and not go hobby-horsing to brother’s
where there be no one to put cork in bottle save Gammer Bellamy, thik old trot!”

Martha Vabbin turned a large impassive face toward her excited colleague.

“Thee and me won’t have nothink to complain of, woman, if folks be down village. Missus won’t want more than her usual; and us can have Martin Pod up-along, same as us did five years agone, when them all was in London; only please God ’a won’t have his rheumatics on him, the poor crotchety man!”

Pandie was unimpressed by the prospect of entertaining the cantankerous sexton. She retained her dramatic manner.

“Did ’ee see how much of thik brandy someone have drunk these last days? If someone do drink to-night like what she’s a been drinking lately, up there by her lone self, Squire’ll have to carry her home piggy-back, same as old Squire carried Nancy Cooper home the night of the eclipse.”

Martha Vabbin tossed a bowlful of peeled potatoes into a pot of clean water and resettled the lid of another pot out of which came a fragrant steam.

“I can’t see who’s to object to a body having a nip between meals, even if she
be
living with a gentleman. Since
Christmas
, when she came in here and laid, side of my plate, that pearl and pansy brooch, I’ve ’a had a Christian forbearance for the poor sinner. What you wants to be, Pandie, is more ’vangelical, same as I. Fornication ain’t the only thorn in the blessed Lord’s flesh. This speaking evil of them that’s soft as lambs be a terrible sharp prick for the dear Immanuel; which is to say ‘God with us.’”

Pandie turned away and moved irritably toward the pantry. She knew too well what to expect when Mrs. Vabbin’s voice assumed a certain pious tone, redolent of prayer meetings. “
I
won’t be the one to give that Pod anythink to drink,” she said to herself. “He do make Martha as high-falutin as ’isself.”

The master of the house found his mother in a state of unusual tension. She had had a series of agitating
interviews
with Cousin Ann since the affair of the shooting and she had found the younger woman mysteriously reserved and unsympathetic.

“So I’m to be left alone to-night, Rook, it seems,” she began, without rising from her armchair or lifting her eyes from her knitting.

The son did not risk a rebuff by attempting to kiss her. He shut the door and stood with his back to the fire, glancing round at the warm intimacies of the room.

“I don’t see why Lexie should have a lonely New Year any more than you, Mother,” he said slowly. “It’s your own attitude you must blame and nobody else’s.”

The old lady sighed. “I don’t blame anybody,” she said querulously. “I’m past blaming anybody. I thought when you brought that woman here that things could not be worse. But they
are
worse. How you can find it in you to go on like this is beyond my comprehension. I only hope your dear father is protected from knowing what I’ve gone through. That’s what puzzles me most of all, Rook; that you can bear to think of him looking down at us at this moment and seeing——”

“Stop, for God’s sake, Mother; stop!”

She did stop and with trembling fingers unravelled several inches of her work.

“When you talk like that about my father ‘looking down at us’ it makes me feel absolutely sick! Aren’t you ashamed of such plebeian sentimentality? It makes me feel as if Cousin Ann were right when she says that there’s a streak of common blood in you, Mother. How
can
you say things like that? ‘Looking down at us!’ It’s a disgusting phrase; worthy of a nonconformist minister; worthy of Martin Pod!”

The old lady met his angry look quite fearlessly, though
there was more unravelling of woollen threads in her
black-silk
lap.

Then the corners of her eyes and mouth began to wrinkle, and a smile that might have been called mischievous flickered across her face.

“Never mind about your father, then,” she said. “You’re a true Ashover, Rook, whatever Cousin Ann thinks of
me!
Come here, you troublesome boy, and give your old mother a kiss.”

He went across to her and bent down.

“That’s better,” she said as he returned to the hearth. “Oh, Rook, Rook, if you could only once see things as they are. But there! I don’t believe you men live in the same world as we do. I believe you all move about in some crazy unreality of your own fancy. Sometimes I wonder if you’re not all a little bit mad! I teased you just now about your father. But, oh, dear! your father was just the same. Listen, Rook! Have I ever told you about his affair with Nancy Cooper the gipsy? No? But of course you’ve heard of it. You men always hear of those things. It’s probably been tavern gossip for years and years! It was a New Year’s night when he broke with her; found her in the arms of a tramp or something and never spoke to her again. He was easily shocked, was my poor dear John. And when once a thing was over, it
was
over!”

“I presume the story doesn’t reveal what happened to Nancy?” said Rook with sombre sarcasm.

“Oh, yes, it does! She married a respectable market gardener. Her husband’s potatoes were the best anywhere round here.”

“Well, Mother, I’ve got to do endless things before lunch, so I must make a start. I have to run over to the Drools’ to see if there’s any change.”

Mrs. Ashover sighed. A chilly wave of lonesomeness suddenly swept over her. She would miss Corporal Dick seriously.

“There won’t be any change but the last,” she said.

Rook nodded. “I’m afraid so,” he murmured.

Mrs. Ashover gathered herself together for one more effort. She rose from her chair, holding the whole bundle of knitting in one of her hands.

“Cousin Ann thinks that if you ever
did
see your way to marry it would be no more than right to provide very liberally for Miss Page.”

Rook looked at her with surprise. This was the first time she had shown the least inclination to recognize Netta’s existence.

“I’ve been wanting to say something to you, Rook,” she went on.

His eyes widened and his lips parted. Could it actually be that his mother was prepared to give up the struggle?

“It’s this, Rook. I want you to know that I’m ready to make any sacrifice of comfort or income for the sake of seeing you happily settled. I would even be ready, if your wife didn’t like my society, to leave the house altogether!”

These words went through Rook like a spear. From a long-suppressed well of feeling in him there arose a blind flood of tenderness for this little woman standing there before him fumbling with her magenta-coloured wools.

“Leave the house, Mother?” he muttered. “Why, you’d die in a week anywhere else than here!”

The tone of his voice broke down some obstinate inhibition in her, too. She moved a step toward him and a moment afterward he was holding her in his arms. It was the son rather than the mother who lost control just then. There was so much upon his mind. He was beset by so many complications.

She, too, as they clung together, almost yielded to an
instinct
which had not by any means been the dominant one of her life. Like so many women who exhaust what maternal feeling they possess upon lover or husband, her attitude to
her children had fallen far short of anything resembling passion. She had never, for instance, manifested the least preference for one son over the other; nor had she ever felt any regrets at lacking a daughter.

Thus it was only natural that when Rook’s emotion had subsided and he walked away to the fireplace his mother’s habitual feeling toward him as the head of her house rather than as the child of her womb recovered its normal sway.

Following this return to her integral self it was also
inevitable
that with a woman’s unscrupulousness she should make an instinctive attempt to exploit Rook’s emotion to her own purpose.

“Don’t you realize what all this means to me?” she cried, as soon as he turned a calm face toward her. “Don’t you realize, Rook, that it’s worse than death to me to think of you and Lexie being the last of our people? Will you never understand that I keep thinking day and night about this awful thing? Oh, Rook, my son, my son, don’t be hard and blind! Give me what I ask of you, Rook! Give me a daughter whose children will be mine as well as yours; whose children will be your father’s and
his
father’s, and will save us all from dying from the earth!”

Rook was stirred more than she knew by this well-timed appeal, but he, too, began to feel a reaction from his
momentary
collapse. An obscure indignation in him rose up against this exploitation of his emotion. He spoke quite calmly now and even sternly.

“You mustn’t say such things to me, Mother.”

She lifted her eyebrows, shook her head sadly, and
resumed
her
seat.

“Give me my knitting, Rook, please. And you’d better start now on your various engagements. I like a quiet morning and we’ve had a good talk.”

He obeyed her in silence, but just as he had his hand on the handle of the door he suddenly turned round.

“Don’t you love me at all, Mother, apart from the family? Don’t you care whether I am happy or unhappy? Is the family so much to you that your son is nothing?”

She looked him straight in the eyes from where she sat, bolt upright, in her Chippendale chair. She removed her fingers from the magenta-coloured woolwork and let them slide along the chair arms till they clasped the two rounded ends tightly and fiercely, so that her knuckles showed white and sharp in the firelight.

“I have cared for you,” she cried, “since you first walked and talked; but I would have seen you dead in your cradle if I could have had another son, a different son. You make me wish you’d never been born, Rook!”

He stared at her in sombre amazement. His whole world, his whole life illusion, heaved and rocked about his ears.

“Mother!” he blurted out.

The tone of that cry did for just the flicker of a second arrest the hardening of her heart, because it was the exact repetition of the tone of his indignant bewilderment when she had struck him as a child. But the accumulated tide of her anger rolled over the impression as a wave might drown a submerged rock.

“If only Lexie had been the sound one!” she wailed. “If only Lexie had been the sound one!”

Rook shrugged his shoulders, laughed a husky, miserable laugh, and left her as she was, staring desperately into the emptiness of the impossible.

Descending the stairs with a hopeless weight on his heart he found his cousin and Netta standing in the hall, the former holding a letter in her hand, the torn unstamped envelope of which lay on the ground.

“Oh, Rook, listen to this!” cried Lady Ann. “Nell
invites
us all to dine at Toll-Pike. She says Lexie has asked them, too, to drop in later and she says that William himself was anxious that Netta should come with us!”

Rook turned brusquely round. “Do
you
want to go?” he enquired harshly, addressing Netta.

“It’s just as you and Cousin Ann like,” replied the girl meekly.

“Very well,” he said. “But I won’t have Hastings
patronizing
you with any of his confounded priestliness! Ann, you’ll see to that, eh? I won’t have Netta insulted by that chap’s condescension. If he doesn’t treat her exactly as he treats you, she shan’t enter his house!”

A cold chill went through Netta’s heart at these clumsy words. She looked down nervously at the envelope lying on the ground and longed to stoop and pick it up, so as to hide her face from them both.

Cousin Ann gave a quick protesting glance. “Of course,” she said, “he’ll behave as he ought to behave, since he’s invited us. You don’t intend to come yourself, then?”

He shook his head. “No. You’ll find me at Lexie’s. I’m going to the village now and I’ll tell him. We haven’t had a meal together for much too long.”

“Where are you going now, Rook?” enquired Netta, making an obvious effort to speak lightly and casually.

“I?” replied Rook shortly. “I’m going first to the village and then over to Drools’. One of us
must
see Uncle Dick to-day.”

What had been in her mind was the thought of having him to herself, for some little time anyhow, that last day of such an eventful year; but she let it pass humbly enough.

“I only thought you’d have to lunch somewhere, Rook. Wouldn’t it be easier to come back here and then go to
Antiger
Lane afterward?”

“I don’t
want
to come back here,” he retorted sharply. “I must have a walk to-day.”