Rodmoor (39 page)

Just the faintest tremor of doubt troubled her, the thought that it was towards Nance—towards her rival—that the tide was bearing them; but let come what might come, that hour at least was hers! Not all the world could take that hour from her—and the future? What did the future matter?

As to the brain-sick man himself, who lay at the girl’s feet, it were long and hard to tell all the strange dim visions that flowed through his head. He took
Philippa
’s hand in his own and kissed it tenderly but, had the girl known, his thoughts were not of her. They were not even of his son; of the son for whom he had so passionately longed. They were not of any human being. They circled constantly—these thoughts—round a strange vague image, an image moulded of white mists and white vapours and the reflection of white stars in dark waters.

This image, of a shape dim and vast and elemental, seemed to flow upwards from land and sea, and stretch forth towards infinite space. It was an image of
something
beyond human expression, of something beyond earth-loves and earth-hatreds, beyond life and also
beyond
death. It was the image of Nothingness; and yet in this Nothingness there was a relief, an escape, a refuge, a beyond-hope, which made all the ways of
humanity
seem indifferent, all its gods childish, all its dreams vain, and yet offered a large cool draught of “deep and liquid rest” the taste of which set the soul completely free.

Many hours passed thus over their heads, as the tide carried them down towards Rodmoor, round the great
sweeping curves made by the Loon, through the
stubble-fields
and the marshes.

It was, at last, the striking of the side of the barge against one of the arches of the New Bridge, which roused the prostrate man from the trance into which he had fallen.

As soon as they had emerged on the further side of the arch, he leapt to his feet. Bending forward
towards
Philippa, he pointed with an outstretched arm towards the shadowy houses of Rodmoor which, with here and there a faint light in some high window, could now be discerned through the darkness.

“I smell the sea!” he cried. “I smell the sea! Drift on, Phil, my little one, drift on to the harbour! I must leave you now. We shall meet by the sea, my girl—by the sea in the old way—but I can’t wait now. I must be alone, alone, alone!

Waving his hand wildly with a gesture of farewell, he clutched at a clump of reeds and sprang out upon the bank. Philippa, letting the barge float on as it pleased, followed him with all the speed she could.

He had secured a considerable start of her, however, and it was all she could do to keep him in sight in the darkness.

He ran first towards the church, but when he reached the path which deviated towards the sand-dunes, he turned sharply eastward. He ran wildly, desperately, with no thought in his whole being but the feeling that he must reach the sea and be alone.

He felt at that moment as though the whole of
humanity
—loathsome, cancerous, suffocating humanity—were pursuing him with outstretched hands.

Once, as he was mid-way between the church path
and the dunes, he turned his head, and catching sight of Philippa’s figure following him, he plunged forward in a fury of panic.

As he crossed the dunes, at this savage pace,
something
seemed to break in his brain or in his heart. He spat out a mouthful of sweet-tasting blood, and, falling on his knees, fumbled in the loose sand, as if searching for some lost object.

Staggering once more to his feet, and seeing that his pursuer was near, he stumbled wildly down the slope of the dunes and tottered across the sand to the water’s edge.

He was there at last—safe from everything—safe from love and hatred and madness and pity—safe from unspeakable imaginations;—safe from
himself
!

The long dark line of waves broke calmly and
indifferently
at his feet, and away—away into the eternal night—stretched the vast expanse of the sea, dim, vague, full of inexpressible, infinite reassurance.

He raised both his arms into the air. For one brief miraculous moment his brain became clear and an
ecstatic
feeling of triumph and unconquerable joy swept through him.

“Baptiste!” he shouted in a shrill vibrating voice, “Baptiste!”

His cry went reverberating over the water. He turned and tried to struggle back. A rush of blood once more filled his mouth. His head grew dizzy.

“Tell Nance that I—that I—” His words died into a choking murmur and he fell heavily on his face on the sand.

He was dead when she reached him. She lifted him
gently till he lay on his back and then pressing her hand to his heart, she knew that it was the end.

She sank beside him, bowing her forehead till it touched the ground, and clinging to his neck. After a minute or two she rose, and taking his hand in her own she sat staring into the darkness, with wide-open
tearless
eyes.

She was “alone with her dead” and nothing
mattered
any more now.

She remained motionless for several long moments, while over her head something that resembled eternity seemed to pass by, on beautiful, terrible, beating wings.

Then she rose up upon her feet.

“She shall never have him!” she murmured. “She shall never have him!”

She tore from her waist a strongly-woven
embroidered
cord, the long tassels of which hung down at her side. She dragged the dead man to the very edge of the water. With an incredible effort, she raised him up till he leant, limp and heavy, against her own body.

Then, supporting him with difficulty, and with
difficulty
keeping herself from sinking under his weight, she twisted the cord round them both, and tied it in a secure knot. Holding him thus before her, with his chin resting on her shoulder, she staggered forward into the water.

It was not easy to advance, and her heart seemed on the point of breaking with the strain. But the savage thought that she was taking him away from Nance—from Nance and from every one—to
possess
him herself forever, gave her a supernatural strength.

It seemed as though the demon of madness, which
had passed from Adrian at the last, and left him free, had entered into her.

If that was indeed the case, it is more than likely that when she fell at last—fell backwards under his weight beneath the waves—it was rather with a mad ecstasy of abandonment that she drank the choking water, than with any hopeless struggle to escape the end she had willed.

Bound tightly together, both by the girl’s clinging arms and by the cord she had fastened round them, the North Sea as it drew back in the outflowing of its tide, carried their bodies forth into the darkness.

Far from land it carried them—under the misty unseeing sky—far from misery and madness, and when the dawn came trembling at last over the restless
expanse
of water, it found only the white sea-horses and the white sea-birds. Those two had sunk together; out of reach of humanity, out of reach of Rodmoor.

THE END

John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) was born in Derbyshire, brought up in the West Country (the Somerset–Dorset border area was to have a lasting influence on him), went to Cambridge University and then became a teacher and lecturer mainly in the USA where he lived for about thirty years. On returning to the UK, after a short spell in Dorset, he settled in Wales in 1935 where he lived for the rest of his long life. In addition to his
Autobiography
his masterpieces are considered to be
Wolf Solent, Glastonbury Romance, Weymouth Sands
and
Porius
. But his lesser, or less well-known, works shouldn’t be overlooked, they spring from the same weird, mystical, brilliant and obsessive imagination.