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Authors: Sylvia Townsend Warner
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“Here is Caspar Rathbone,” she said at last, standing before the smouldering peat-fire which seemed to be identical with the fire she had noticed on Mr. Gulliver’s hearth six months ago. She had done her errand, now she could say good-bye, drive back to the Half Moon, fall exhausted into the strange uncomfortable bed. It was all something done by rote, done before and quite unreal. As she looked back from the waggonette, and saw that Caspar had already been swallowed up by the Trebennick Academy, the sense of doom and pre-destination which had, all the journey long, rested so leaden upon her sharpened suddenly into the thought:
The child will die there. I shall never see him again
. But this a moment after she drove out as sentiment; and she knew also that, even without this expunging explanation, she could not, for the life of her, have turned back then to rescue him, or to make any attempt to turn destiny aside, so deeply had this hallucination of puppetry and rote enforced itself upon her.
Shivering and stupefied, she sat alone in the dining-parlour of the Half Moon Inn, unable to eat the food set down before her. “I believe I am going to be ill,” she said to herself; and rousing, she ordered a glass of hot brandy-and-water. It was cold before she remembered to drink it; and having drunk it she sat on, staring at a glass picture of Britannia, and a bunch of dying foxgloves in a white jug, sat until a tap on the door aroused her as though with a thunder-clap, and the landlady came in, awkward and timid, to say that it was past midnight, and would the lady be sitting up much longer.
Almost the next thing that she knew was another tap, which roused her to morning, and the recollection that of the day’s two eastward trains from St. Austell she was catching the earlier. The boxlike waggonette was waiting for her, it had spent the night at Trebennick also, the same ravelled foxgloves awaited her along the hilly winding roads. But yesterday’s cloud had evaporated. With renewed delight she smelt the exciting soulless air, and watched the shaggy contours of the hills. She was in Cornwall, unknown, and without responsibilities. Her body rejoiced and grew impatient, chafing at the joggling waggonette; and telling the man he should spare his horse she alighted, and walked up a hill. The rough road underfoot delighted her, the dust flew up like an incense, the light of morning seemed spilled on the lonely country for her alone. At St. Austell she paid off the man, and saw her dressing-case put in the office. She would travel by the later train. It would harm neither man-flesh nor horse-flesh to make two journeys to the station. Thence she went on to a tobacconist, and bought some cheroots. She had four hours to spend, four hours in which her soul could be at liberty.
Any road would do, and the road she chose took her out of the town, and past a slated farmhouse under a group of sycamores, and over a suddenly humped stone bridge. The stream was small, brilliant and swift-running; she left the road and followed it through the steep small fields towards a dome of rough moorland. Here, scrambling over the last stone wall, she sat down in the sun, settled herself against an outcrop of granite, and lay basking, stripping bracken fronds between her fingers, and listening to the chatter of the brook. Its waters were exquisitely cold and sweet. She drank, at first from her hand, then, stretching herself along the warm turf, from the stream itself, where the water arched, glassy and smooth, over a rock. It ran so strongly that at the first essay she plunged her mouth too deeply into the flow, and spattered her face and hair. She was hungry now, and glad of the parcel of sandwiches put up by the Half Moon Inn. Then she took out a cheroot, lit it, and began to smoke. It was not such a good cheroot as those she had stolen, long ago, from Papa’s cabinet. But it was passable, and had this advantage over the others, that
“Here is Caspar Rathbone,” she said at last, standing before the smouldering peat-fire which seemed to be identical with the fire she had noticed on Mr. Gulliver’s hearth six months ago. She had done her errand, now she could say good-bye, drive back to the Half Moon, fall exhausted into the strange uncomfortable bed. It was all something done by rote, done before and quite unreal. As she looked back from the waggonette, and saw that Caspar had already been swallowed up by the Trebennick Academy, the sense of doom and pre-destination which had, all the journey long, rested so leaden upon her sharpened suddenly into the thought:
The child will die there. I shall never see him again
. But this a moment after she drove out as sentiment; and she knew also that, even without this expunging explanation, she could not, for the life of her, have turned back then to rescue him, or to make any attempt to turn destiny aside, so deeply had this hallucination of puppetry and rote enforced itself upon her.
Shivering and stupefied, she sat alone in the dining-parlour of the Half Moon Inn, unable to eat the food set down before her. “I believe I am going to be ill,” she said to herself; and rousing, she ordered a glass of hot brandy-and-water. It was cold before she remembered to drink it; and having drunk it she sat on, staring at a glass picture of Britannia, and a bunch of dying foxgloves in a white jug, sat until a tap on the door aroused her as though with a thunder-clap, and the landlady came in, awkward and timid, to say that it was past midnight, and would the lady be sitting up much longer.
Almost the next thing that she knew was another tap, which roused her to morning, and the recollection that of the day’s two eastward trains from St. Austell she was catching the earlier. The boxlike waggonette was waiting for her, it had spent the night at Trebennick also, the same ravelled foxgloves awaited her along the hilly winding roads. But yesterday’s cloud had evaporated. With renewed delight she smelt the exciting soulless air, and watched the shaggy contours of the hills. She was in Cornwall, unknown, and without responsibilities. Her body rejoiced and grew impatient, chafing at the joggling waggonette; and telling the man he should spare his horse she alighted, and walked up a hill. The rough road underfoot delighted her, the dust flew up like an incense, the light of morning seemed spilled on the lonely country for her alone. At St. Austell she paid off the man, and saw her dressing-case put in the office. She would travel by the later train. It would harm neither man-flesh nor horse-flesh to make two journeys to the station. Thence she went on to a tobacconist, and bought some cheroots. She had four hours to spend, four hours in which her soul could be at liberty.
Any road would do, and the road she chose took her out of the town, and past a slated farmhouse under a group of sycamores, and over a suddenly humped stone bridge. The stream was small, brilliant and swift-running; she left the road and followed it through the steep small fields towards a dome of rough moorland. Here, scrambling over the last stone wall, she sat down in the sun, settled herself against an outcrop of granite, and lay basking, stripping bracken fronds between her fingers, and listening to the chatter of the brook. Its waters were exquisitely cold and sweet. She drank, at first from her hand, then, stretching herself along the warm turf, from the stream itself, where the water arched, glassy and smooth, over a rock. It ran so strongly that at the first essay she plunged her mouth too deeply into the flow, and spattered her face and hair. She was hungry now, and glad of the parcel of sandwiches put up by the Half Moon Inn. Then she took out a cheroot, lit it, and began to smoke. It was not such a good cheroot as those she had stolen, long ago, from Papa’s cabinet. But it was passable, and had this advantage over the others, that
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