The Parson (Peter Owen Modern Classic) Page 4

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  WHILE 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.

  When her own world called to her suddenly, as she’d known it would, loud and clear, she was astounded by her surroundings, looking about as if she’d just woken out of a long sleep. She’d been existing all this time in a tranced euphoria of exercise and fresh air. Now, abruptly, she was awake again, in her proper self, eager to get away from the barbarous north. Her spirit seemed to have gone on ahead already to her own luxurious sphere; exasperating that she had to stay behind, with her body.

  She wanted to charter a plane on the spot. As this was impossible, and, hearing that a cruising liner was due at the little port in a day or so, she hurriedly booked a passage and sent a cable to her lover to say she was coming back.

  But she didn’t tell Oswald until they were out on the moor, having lunch in the sun, which was still almost hot at noon. They sat in a sheltered hollow, a shallow bowl surrounded by sunken rocks against which they could lean. While they ate their hard-boiled eggs and drank coffee out of a thermos, the two ponies, tethered nearby, contentedly nosed and nibbled the fine, feathery, fading grass, the same colour as Coffee’s tail. Rejane waited till the meal was over and Oswald was collecting the scraps of eggshell and paper, as he always did, before telling him about her arrangements. She saw the young man start violently, as if she had struck him. He dropped his hands, which fell and hung loosely at his sides, while he stood rigid and silent, his face twisted as if in pain.

  What on earth was the matter with him? He’d known all along that they would have to part soon. Gazing at him, watching him stare past her with unseeing eyes, Rejane was slightly irritated by this excessive reaction.

  To Oswald, who had for some time been in a state of suppressed nervous tension, her announcement came as the final blow. His dream vanished abruptly. Suddenly all his old unpleasant feelings came back – the loneliness and the grievance and the being left out. Now everything was going to be just the same as before. The great love he’d identified with his dream-radiance had failed him. Rejane had failed him. He had adored her. And she’d just made his love ridiculous. He couldn’t have explained what he meant by this – his ideas were all confused. He knew only that he felt badly let down.

  A devastating sadness overwhelmed him, made more unbearable by his surroundings. That he should have to suffer like this, here, on his beloved moor, struck him as a horrid refinement of torture. How far away already seemed the first happy days when he had displayed its beauties ... far away and belonging to a time already dead. It now seemed to him that those early days of happiness had led inevitably to his present sorrow; which would in its turn bring him to a still darker state.

  *

  Rejane was growing increasingly impatient with his silence and gloom. She was sorry now she’d told him she was going. She’d done so only because it seemed unkind to spring her departure on him at the last moment, which confirmed her conviction that kindness was usually a mistake. She should simply have packed up and gone, without giving him any warning.

  Now, if she wasn’t careful, he would insist on making a tragedy out of his own feelings, which would spoil everything for her. She couldn’t stand other people’s emotions, and had no intention of putting up with the gloom Oswald was radiating, like a cold fog. Her interlude had been such a success so far that she was determined it shouldn’t end in his stupid depression – she must get him out of it somehow ... Suddenly standing up, she went to him, and, with a gesture surprisingly spontaneous and natural, took his limp hand in hers, thinking as she did so what a good actress she would have made.

  The unexpectedness of this broke through the isolating walls of his misery. So thoroughly was he convinced that she was out of reach, physically most of all, that astonishment overcame all his other feelings. Incredulously he looked down at her slim, by no means incapable, hand, holding his own. Her face was hidden, she stood beside him as if hiding behind her dark hair, whispering shyly, in her little-girl voice, words he could barely catch. He mustn’t rush her ... she hadn’t forbidden him to hope ... seemed to be what she was saying.

  Without stopping to consider whether he was justified in taking her seriously, he at once clutched at this unreliable straw she had thrown him. Perhaps, when he came home next time ...?

  She didn’t answer immediately; and, a faint doubt creeping into his mind, he imploringly asked, ‘May I kiss you – just this once?’ – surely he could believe her if she said yes. ‘Do you mind?’

  She did mind, in that part of her that always had to remain inviolable and aloof, in perpetual opposition to the other urge that made her deliberately go on attracting men, taking new lovers. But, seeing that it was necessary, she murmured consent, hiding behind her hair, keeping up the pretence of shyness, and consoling herself with the thought that, long before the army disgorged him again, she would have forgotten his existence. Already he seemed a little unreal, almost a dream figure, so soon to be left behind, with his world, for ever. It was like being kissed by a ghost.

  The kiss, which Oswald h
ad hoped would confirm his trust, affected him in a way as disturbing as it was unexpected. In the midst of his reverence, he was seized by a passionate impulse; immediately afterwards experiencing a sort of revulsion, reminded of those hated dancing partners of the past. At the same time, an outrageous, though not apparently unfamiliar, thought slid, snakelike, through his head. Some part of him seemed to know already that Rejane despised his restraint and that, if he’d made love to her weeks ago, she would have surrendered – that indeed she’d expected this. But he’d never admitted to knowing it consciously, and would not admit it now, telling himself that the idea was not in accordance with the facts. She’d always kept aloof from him, distant and virginal – it was monstrous to think of her as being like those over-sexed women out East who had tried to seduce him. And yet that strange revulsion he’d felt as he kissed her ...

  Appalled and confused, he refused to think any further, but stooped to finish his interrupted task.

  Since he still remained silent and preoccupied, Rejane looked around for a new distraction. Her eyes fell on the ponies, placidly waiting near; and, in another of her inspired flashes, she asked what would become of Coffee after she’d gone.

  She couldn’t have chosen a better diversion, for the man was as fond of horses as he was experienced with them. But, before he had time to answer, a dramatic picture appeared in her imagination, and she announced that Coffee must be set free to return to the moors.

  This time she could congratulate herself on having got him out of his black mood, so that her interlude could continue peacefully to its conclusion, for his interest was really aroused.