The Parson (Peter Owen Modern Classic) (5 page)

But the interior of the house was less romantic, merely gloomy and dark, with the peculiar petrified gloom of houses that have known better days, where people live in the past. The cold rooms seemed damp, and gave the impression of being arranged as they had been twenty or more years before. The furniture was massive, dark and heavy, the pictures hung darkly and obscurely upon the walls, between military trophies, banners, helmets, sabres; the rust on the steel looked like bloodstains, the dusty, bedraggled plumes on the helmets suggested that the curse had come home to roost.

In this dismal atmosphere the lunch wasn’t very successful, though Rejane was charming as usual. And the old lady did her best, ingenuously, childishly chattering about people and things the visitor had never heard of; until she forgot, and sat staring blankly, out of those queer psychic eyes that seemed to see only ghosts. Then, with a guilty glance at Oswald, she would start up again, scattering her inconsequent sentences into a gulf of incomprehension thousands of miles across.

They were an odd trio of women sitting at lunch, around the correct, handsome young man. The dreamy-eyed mother seemed scarcely present, despite her spasms of conversation. And he was there only for Rejane. His sister, tall, flushed, with an air of suppressed resentment, made frequent trips to the kitchen, hardly saying a word.

The elegant, worldly Rejane sat through the meal in her amused casual fashion, finding it all rather boring, rather an imposition. Why should she, who must never be bored, put up with these absurd people? Oswald should have known better than to bring her here.

She was thankful when the meal was over at last, and they could go, leaving the house with almost indecent haste. Once she was alone in the car with him, her habitual good humour returning, she could smile at the memory of those cold, disastrous rooms.

Although to the man they were simply ‘home’, a background he wouldn’t have dreamed of criticizing on his own account, so familiar he never really looked at them, he had seen that they were not for her. He at once proposed that in future they should meet at the hotel; a far better arrangement from his point of view, its great advantage being that he’d have her to himself, instead of having to share her with his mother and sister. Thank goodness for the fast car, and the freedom it gave him.

3

W
HILE
Rejane’s interlude progressed to her satisfaction, Oswald found it less satisfactory, in spite of spending whole days alone with her, in the providentially fine weather, exploring the moors. Many of the wild beauty spots were remote, and could be reached only on foot, or by riding the rough-coated, sure-footed ponies that roamed the district, belonging to no one, or to any landowner who took the trouble to claim and train them.

The young cavalryman of course had always ridden himself, and was delighted to find Rejane equally at home on horseback. His naïve optimism took it as a sign that they were meant for each other. With extreme care he chose her a good-looking, dark-brown pony, with long, creamy mane and tail, which they called Coffee. And every morning they would set off with a picnic lunch, riding up to the moors.

The young man was at his best there, confident and at home, as if the whole wild landscape were his demesne, to which he welcomed her as an honoured guest, bestowing its freedom upon her, and making himself responsible for her safety and happiness; always attentive, devoted, surrounding her with his watchfulness, ready to avert any contretemps before it could occur. If her pony stumbled, slipped on the shelving rock-face, or went too near one of the treacherous patches of bog, he was always there, with his unobtrusive helpfulness and constant, undemanding devotion. She marvelled at his capacity for unselfish and loving service; and much more, at his lack of interest in her income.

She found this one of the most puzzling things about him. No one, in her whole life, had allowed her to forget, as he did, how rich she was – her wealth had always been an important factor in her relations with others. She was so used to the sincere respect people had for her money that she could hardly believe in Oswald’s indifference, and, when finally she became convinced, she despised him slightly for being so unmercenary. A little store of contempt was accumulating somewhere in her. Yet she really was almost touched by his insistence on being responsible for such small expenses as they incurred together, which he considered his masculine privilege. It made a pleasant change for her, used as she was to keeping a sharply suspicious eye on her acquaintances, when it came to paying.

But Oswald, in his simplicity, never knew why, after he’d bought her some trifle, she would suddenly give him one of her most ravishing smiles. She had a certain pure, wistful smile, very young, tender and almost virginal, that he could have worshipped. It was, of course, totally misleading.

For him the whole affair was deadly serious, the great romance of his life, for which he’d been waiting and keeping himself, all the more poignant because of the time factor. He wanted to marry her before he rejoined his regiment, and, in the first rapture, actually believed she might consent – she was always so friendly and natural with him; obviously she must like him. But she would never let him propose, implying that marriage was out of the question.

When at last he persisted, and would be put off no longer, she wore her little-girl expression gone wan and sad, whispering that there had been a marriage, which had ended in some unmentionable catastrophe. Her voice shook, and her face, which was always pale, appeared to grow whiter. He saw that she was trembling, and his heart contracted in love and pity. How could he, after this, hurt her by suggesting that they should marry? She had silenced him most effectively, and, it seemed, for good.

She gave him no further confidences; and for a while he was satisfied with knowing that the husband had been somehow eliminated. But he’d told her his whole life story – it was short enough, heaven knows – and, when it dawned on him that, but for the one fact, he knew literally nothing about her, he became vaguely troubled. Could it be that she didn’t trust him, or what?

As the days passed, each one a relentless step on the road to parting, tension was growing in him. His rosy dream of a hurried marriage had given place to the more modest aim of getting her consent to a definite engagement before he sailed. But what could he do, now the whole subject was banned?

The very existence of the ban seemed to prove that he didn’t love her enough. Yet he adored her, absolutely. Though all his adoration couldn’t bring him any closer to her – in fact, she actually seemed to be getting further away.

Horrified by this admission, he tried to ask her what was wrong; only to find himself inexplicably tongue-tied, unable to speak about personal matters. He couldn’t understand it. She’d always seemed the easiest person to talk to, formerly he’d poured out all his inmost thoughts to her. Why should constraint now have fallen upon him?

It began to seem as if, after all, there could be no real intimacy between them. Yet, when he rode at her side, she was unchanged, charming and friendly as always, apparently quite happy to be alone with him all day on the moor. Only when he tried to put his troubled thoughts into words she seemed to float away from him, out of his reach.

Of course he took all the blame himself; it must be his fault that, though he would gladly have died for her, he couldn’t cross the space which divided them. Some of the suppressed inferiority he’d felt in the army came back to him: his secret fear that his comrades would look down on him – quick, clever, complex people, with all the latest ideas – because he came from this small out-of-the-way country, where life was slow and old-fashioned. Now, with Rejane, it was all far worse.

She tolerated him, out of her kindness of heart. But how dull and stupid he must appear, how provincial, compared with her brilliant friends. No wonder she was impatient with him at times. She’d lately developed a trick, when he looked at her in his dumb bewilderment, imploring her to be kind, of returning the look out of eyes so flatly uncommunicative and disconnected that he felt rebuffed – pushed still further away.

A sort of panic came over him at the thought of the days flying past, bringing them closer to parting. Very soon she would vanish out of his life. But she was everything to him – he couldn’t exist without her. Yet, now that the fatal date was in sight, he gave up even trying to approach her, afraid of that blank, repulsing look, and of losing the little intimacy there was between them. At the same time, he despised himself for this defeatist attitude in so all-important a matter. He seemed to have admitted failure in advance, which was contrary to all his instincts and training.

None of this, however, affected Rejane, since outwardly his conduct never varied. If his gentle courtesy sometimes seemed slightly strained, she didn’t have to notice – she could ignore it.

*

She was enjoying herself too much to bother about him. Though deviating somewhat from the original plan, her interlude was being a great success. None of her other pretence-lives had been in the least like this healthy outdoor existence, devoted to nature. In her present simple, active life, she was really enjoying the freedom denied her as a young girl by the conventions of her upbringing.

She had always loved riding, the feeling of being above the crowd that came from being on horseback: and she rode well, casual, graceful and at ease, as in everything. As happened with all her mounts, there was at first a bit of a struggle with Coffee, the pony resenting her absolute domination, which deprived it of some animal independence other masters would not have taken away. But, once it submitted, it became almost slavishly devoted, and would follow and come at her call. Pleased by the triumph of her will, she grew as fond of Coffee as she was ever likely to be of any living creature – considerably fonder of it than she was of Oswald.

She rather disliked human beings, really. In the midst of her usual social existence and her love affairs, she remained alone, fundamentally. But she liked to have Oswald in the background, as long as he didn’t obtrude on her. His selfless devotion made him an ideal companion. She knew she was perfectly safe while he was about, and needn’t worry about anything – least of all about him. Though she couldn’t help feeling somewhat contemptuous, because he treated her with such exquisite gentleness, delicacy, and did the very things she wanted him to do. That little store of contempt she had for him was increasing all the time.

When she thought about him at all, she was still curious. She wondered intermittently what had become of his military assurance: why did he, these days, seem almost obliterated, in spite of his splendid body? His deep-blue eyes now had such a melancholy look, even when he was smiling, that she could hardly fail to be conscious of it.

But she soon forgot about him, absorbed as she was in her own pretending. She had a new vision of herself, which included the pony, seeing herself as some sort of wild moorland being, dark hair flying loose, streaming out in the wind like Coffee’s weirdly coloured mane and tail, a kind of centaur, careering about the moor, flinging her head back rather as Coffee did, shaking her cloud of dark, dew-spangled hair, half identified with the animal, and half goddess.

This picture had superseded the prehumans and their spells. Gradually they’d been deposed, Oswald’s importance declining with theirs, since he was linked with them. Once, she had listened with rapt attention to the curious lilting voice, quite unlike his ordinary voice and perfectly unselfconscious, in which he recited the old stories; seeing him as one of those heroes of whom he spoke, with something of the stem beauty of a young magician in his eyes. The soft singing voice, not really his voice at all, had seemed to reach her uncannily, like a supernatural echo, over the centuries. But now, with her interlude drawing to a close, the supernatural was losing ground – very soon, this whole northern picture would fade out and be forgotten.

There were reminders all the time from her own world. The lover kept imploring her to return. And other letters arrived with the stamps of many different countries, from people who called themselves friends, and, unlike Oswald, couldn’t resist the attraction of all that money. They had to keep in contact with it, so they wrote, asking about her plans for the winter, and where she was hiding herself all this time. These communications had their effect, though she continued to drift on from day to day, making no move but waiting for the imperative impulse to come to her, as she knew it would, when this particular pretence-life had run its course – it always happened so.

In the meantime, with darkness falling earlier and earlier, to get through the long evenings at The Hope Deferred was becoming something of a problem. Along the coast was a picturesque town, half seaport, half holiday resort, to which Oswald sometimes drove her to dine and dance. But these occasions were not very successful, except in depriving him of the last shreds of moorland magic. His appeal was purely an outdoor one. In a crowded room full of dressed-up people, he might have been any fair, handsome young officer home on leave.

Dancing with him, she noticed his unblemished skin, which, at close quarters, had almost the rosiness of a baby’s under the tan. And that slightly sinister witch-look came on her face, her lovely large lustrous eyes gleaming with a jeering malice. So this was her magician – this rosy, healthy young man! There was nothing even unusual about him, apart from an odd, chanting voice, and a touch of strangeness, which she now saw as a mere manifestation of northern outlandishness, no longer at all attractive.