outburst of blind protest trembling on his tongue. At that moment there
was a low knock at the outer door. Baltazar jumped to his feet. “That
must be Raughty,” he cried. “I begged him to come round to-night. I so
longed for you to meet him.” He hastened out and admitted the visitor
with a cordial welcome. After a momentary pause and a good deal of
shuffling--for Dr. Raughty was careful to wear not only an overcoat but
also goloshes and even gaiters when the weather was inclement--the two
men entered the room and Stork began an elaborate introduction.
“Dr. Fingal Raughty,” he said, “Mr. Adrian--” but to his astonishment
Sorio intervened, “The Doctor and I have already become quite well
acquainted,” he remarked, shaking the visitor vigorously by the
hand. “I’m afraid I wasn’t as polite as I ought to have been on that
occasion,” he went on, speaking in an unnaturally loud voice and with a
forced laugh, “but the Doctor will forgive me. The Doctor I’m sure will
make allowances.”
Dr. Raughty gave him a quick glance, at once friendly and ironical,
and then he turned to Stork. “Mother Lorman’s dead,” he remarked with
a little sigh, “dead at last. She was ninety-seven and had thirty
grandchildren. She gurgled in her throat at the last with a noise like
a nightingale when its voice breaks in June. I prefer deaths of this
kind to any other, but they’re all pitiful.”
“Nance tells me you were present at old Doorm’s death, Doctor,” said
Adrian while their host moved off to the kitchen to secure glasses and
refreshment.
The Doctor nodded. “I measured that fellow’s skull,” he remarked
gravely. “It was asymmetrical and very curiously so. The interesting
thing is that there exists in this part of the coast a definite
tradition of malformed skulls. They recur in nearly all the old
families. Brand Renshaw is a splendid example. _His_ skull ought to be
given to a museum. It is beautiful, quite beautiful, in the anterior
lobes.”
Baltazar returned carrying a tray. The eyes of Dr. Raughty gleamed
with a mellow warmth. “Nutmeg,” he remarked, approaching the tray and
touching every object upon it lightly and reverently. “Nutmeg, lemon,
hot water, gin--_and_ brandy! It’s an admirable choice and profoundly
adapted to the occasion. May I put the hot water on the hob until we’re
ready for it?”
While Baltazar once more withdrew from the scene, Dr. Raughty remarked,
gravely and irritably, to Sorio that it was a mistake to substitute
brandy for rum. “He does it because he can’t get the best rum, but it’s
a ridiculous thing to do. _Any_ rum is better than no rum when it’s a
question of punch-making. Are you with me in this, Mr. Sorio?”
Adrian expressed such complete and emphatic agreement that for the
moment the Doctor seemed almost embarrassed.
On Baltazar’s return to the room, however, he hazarded another
suggestion. “What about having the kettle itself brought in here?”
Stork looked at him without speaking and placed on the table a small
plate of macaroons. The Doctor glanced whimsically at Sorio and,
helping himself from the little plate, muttered in a low voice after he
had nibbled the edge of a biscuit, “Yes, these seem perfectly up to par
to-day.”
The three men had scarcely settled themselves down in their respective
chairs around the fire than Adrian began speaking hurriedly and
nervously.
“I have an extraordinary feeling,” he said, “that this evening is full
of fatal significance. I suppose it’s nothing to either of you, but
it seems to me as though this damned _shish, shish, shish, shish_ of
the sea were nearer and louder than usual. Doctor, you don’t mind my
talking freely to you? I like you, though I was rude to you the other
day--but that’s nothing--” he waved his hand, “that’s what any fool
might fall into who didn’t know you. I feel I know you now. That word
about the rum--forgive me, Tassar!--and the kettle--yes, particularly
about the kettle--hit me to the heart. I love you, Doctor Raughty. I
announce to you that my feeling at this moment amounts to love--yes,
actually to love!
“But that’s not what I wanted to say.” He thrust his hands deep into
his pockets, stretched his legs straight out, let his chin sink upon
his chest and glared at them with sombre excitement. “I feel to-night,”
he went on, “as though some great event were portending. No, no! What
am I saying? Not an event. Event isn’t the word. Event’s a silly
expression, isn’t it, Doctor,--isn’t it--dear, noble-looking man? For
you do look noble, you know, Doctor, as you drink that punch--though to
say the truth your nose isn’t quite straight as I see it from here, and
there are funny blotches on your face. No, not there. _There!_ Don’t
you see them, Tassar? Blotches--curious purply blotches.”
While this outburst proceeded Mr. Stork fidgeted uneasily in his chair.
Though sufficiently accustomed to Sorio’s eccentricities and well
aware of his medical friend’s profound pathological interest in all
rare types, there was something so outrageous about this particular
tirade that it offended what was a very dominant instinct in him, his
sense, namely, of social decency and good breeding. Possibly in a
measure because of the “bar sinister” over his own origin, but much
more because of the nicety of his æsthetic taste, anything approaching
a social fiasco or _faux pas_ always annoyed him excessively.
Fortunately, however, on this occasion nothing could have surpassed the
sweetness with which Adrian’s wild phrases were received by the person
addressed.
“One would think you’d drunk half the punch already, Sorio,” Baltazar
murmured at last. “What’s come over you to-night? I don’t think I’ve
ever known you quite like this.”
“Remind me to tell you something, Mr. Sorio, when you’ve finished what
you have to say,” remarked Dr. Raughty.
“Listen, you two!” Adrian began again, sitting erect, his hands on the
arms of his chair. “There’s a reason for this feeling of mine that
there’s something fatal on the wind to-night. There’s a reason for it.”
“Tell us as near as you can,” said Dr. Raughty, “what exactly it is
that you’re talking about.”
Adrian fixed upon him a gloomy, puzzled frown.
“Do you suppose,” he said slowly, “that it’s for nothing that we three
are together here in hearing of that--”
Baltazar interrupted him. “Don’t say ‘shish, shish, shish’ again,
my dear. Your particular way of imitating the Great Deep gives me no
pleasure.”
“What I meant was,” Sorio raised his voice, “it’s a strange thing that
we three should be sitting together now like this when two months ago I
was in prison in New York.”
Baltazar made a little deprecatory gesture, while the Doctor leaned
forward with grave interest.
“But that’s nothing,” Sorio went on, “that’s a trifle. Baltazar
knows all about that. The thing I want you two to recognise is that
something’s on the wind,--that something’s on the point of happening.
Do you feel like that--or don’t you?”
There was a long and rather oppressive silence, broken only by the
continuous murmur which in every house in Rodmoor was the background of
all conversation.
“What I was going to say a moment ago,” remarked the Doctor at last,
“was that in this place it’s necessary to protect oneself from _that_.”
He jerked his thumb towards the window. “Our friend Tassar does it by
the help of Flambard over there.” He indicated the Venetian. “I do it
by the help of my medicine-chest. Hamish Traherne does it by saying
his prayers. What I should like to know is how _you_,” he stretched a
warning finger in the direction of Sorio, “propose to do it.”
Baltazar at this point jumped up from his seat.
“Oh, shut up, Fingal,” he cried peevishly. “You’ll make Adrian
unendurable. I’m perfectly sick of hearing references to this absurd
salt-water. Other people have to live in coast towns besides ourselves.
Why can’t you let the thing take its proper position? Why can’t you
take it for granted? The whole subject gets on my nerves. It bores
me, I tell you, it bores me to tears. For Heaven’s sake, let’s talk
of something else--of any damned thing. You both make me thoroughly
wretched with your sea whispers. It’s as bad as having to spend an
evening at Oakguard alone with Aunt Helen and Philippa.”
His peevishness had an instantaneous effect upon Sorio who pushed him
affectionately back into his chair and handed him his glass. “So sorry,
Tassar,” he said. “I won’t do it again. I _was_ beginning to feel a
little odd to-night. One can’t go through the experience of cerebral
dementia--doesn’t that sound right, Doctor?--without some little
trifling after-effects. Come, let’s be sensible and talk of things that
are really important. It’s not an occasion to be missed, is it, Tassar,
having the Doctor here and punch made with brandy instead of rum, on
the table? What interests me so much just now,” he placed himself in
front of the fireplace and sighed heavily, “is what a person’s to do
who hasn’t got a penny and is unfit for every sort of occupation. What
do you advise, Doctor? And by the way, why have you eaten up all the
macaroons while I was talking?”
This remark really did seem a little to embarrass the person indicated,
but Sorio continued without waiting for a reply.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right, Tassar. It’s a mistake to be sensitive
to the attraction of young girls. But it’s difficult--isn’t it,
Doctor?--not to be. They’re so maddeningly delicious, aren’t they,
when you come to think of it? It’s something about the way their heads
turn--the line from the throat, you know--and about the way they
speak--something pathetic, something--what shall I call it?--helpless.
It quite disarms a person. It’s more than pathetic, it’s tragic.”
The Doctor looked at him meditatively. “I think there’s a poem of
Goethe’s which would bear that out,” he remarked, “if I’m not mistaken
it was written after he visited Sicily--yes, after that storm at sea,
you remember, when the story of Christ’s walking on the waves came into
his mind.”
Sorio wrinkled up his eyes and peered at the speaker with a sort of
humorous malignity.
“Doctor,” he said, “pardon my telling you, but you’ve still got some
crumbs on your moustache.”
“The one word,” put in their host, while Dr. Raughty moved very hastily
away from the table and surveyed himself with a whimsical puckering of
all the lines in his face, at one of Stork’s numerous mirrors, “the one
word that I shall henceforth refuse to have pronounced in my house is
the word ‘sea.’ I’m surprised to hear that Goethe--a man of classical
taste--ever refers to such Gothic abominations.”
“Ah!” cried Sorio, “the great Goethe! The sly old curmudgeon Goethe! He
knew how to deal with these little velvet paws!”
Dr. Raughty, reseating himself, drummed absent-mindedly with his
fingers upon the empty macaroon plate. Then with a soft and pensive
sigh he produced his tobacco pouch, and filling his pipe, struck a
match.
“Doctor,” murmured Sorio, his rebellious lips curved into a sardonic
smile and his eyes screwed up till they looked as sinister as those
of his namesake, Hadrian, “why do you move your head backwards and
forwards like that, when you light your pipe?”
“Don’t answer him, Fingal,” expostulated Baltazar, “he’s behaving
badly now. He’s ‘showing off’ as they say of children.”
“I’m not showing off,” cried Sorio loudly, “I’m asking the Doctor a
perfectly polite question. It’s very interesting the way he lights his
pipe. There’s more in it than appears. There’s a great deal in it. It’s
a secret of the Doctor’s; probably a pantheistic one.”
“What on earth do you mean by a ‘pantheistic’ one? How, under Heaven,
can the way Fingal holds a match be termed ‘pantheistic’?” protested
Stork irritably. “You’re really going a little too far, Adriano mio.”
“Not at all, not at all,” argued Sorio, stretching out his long, lean
arms and grasping the back of a chair. “The Doctor can deny it or not,
as he pleases, but what I say is perfectly true. He gets a cosmic
ecstasy from moving his head up and down like that. He feels as if he
were the centre of the universe when he does it.”
The Doctor looked sideways and then upon the ground. Sorio’s rudeness
evidently disconcerted him.
“I think,” he said, rising from his chair and putting down his glass,
“I must be going now. I’ve an early call to make to-morrow morning.”
Baltazar cast a reproachful look at Adrian and rose too. They went into
the hall together and the same shufflings and heavy breathings came
to the ears of the listener as on Raughty’s arrival. The Doctor was
putting on his goloshes and gaiters.
Adrian went out to see him off and, as if to make up for his bad
behaviour, walked with him across the green, to his house in the main
street. They parted at last, the best of good friends, but Sorio found
Baltazar seriously provoked when he returned.
“Why did you treat him like that?” the latter persisted. “You’ve got no
grudge against him, have you? It was just your silly fashion of getting
even with things in general, eh? Your nice little habit of venting your
bad temper on the most harmless person within reach?”
Sorio stared blankly at his friend. It was unusual for Mr. Stork to
express himself so strongly.
“I’m sorry, my dear, very sorry,” muttered the accused man, looking
remorsefully at the Doctor’s empty glass and plate.
“You may well be,” rejoined the other. “The one thing I can’t stand is
this sort of social lapse. It’s unpardonable--unpardonable! Besides,
it’s childish. Hit out by all means when there’s reason for it or
you’re dealing with some scurvy dog who needs suppressing but to make
a sensitive person like Fingal uncomfortable, out of a pure spirit of
bullying--it’s damnable!”
“I’m sorry, Tassar,” repeated the other meekly. “I can’t think why I
did it. He’s certainly a charming person. I’ll make up to him, my dear.
I’ll be gentle as a lamb when I see him next.”
Baltazar smiled and made a humorous and hopeless gesture with his
hands. “We shall see,” he said, “we shall see.”
He locked the door and lit a couple of candles with ritualistic
deliberation. “Turn out the lamp, amico mio, and let us sleep on
all this. The best way of choosing between two loves is to say one’s
prayers and go to bed. These things decide themselves in dreams.”
“In dreams,” repeated the other, submissively following him upstairs,
“in dreams. But I wish I knew why the Doctor’s ankles look so thick
when he sits down. He must wear extraordinary under-clothes.”
VI
BRIDGE-HEAD AND WITHY-BED
Philippa Renshaw’s light-spoken words about Linda recurred more than
once to the mind of the master of Oakguard as April gave place to May
and May itself began to slip by. The wet fields and stunted woods of
Rodmoor seemed at that time to be making a conscious and almost human
effort to throw off the repressive influence of the sea and to respond
to the kindlier weather. The grasses began to grow high and feathery
by the road-side, and in the water-meadows, buttercups superseded
marigolds.
As he went to and fro between his house and his office in Mundham,
Brand--though he made as yet no attempt to see her--became more and
more preoccupied with the _idea_ of the young girl. That terror of the
sea in the little unknown touched, as his sister well knew it would,
something strangely deep-rooted in his nature. His ancestors had lived
so long in this place that there had come to exist between the man’s
inmost being and the voracious tides which year by year devoured the
land he owned, an obstinate reciprocity of mood and feeling. That a
young and fragile intruder should have this morbid fear of the very
element which half-consciously he assimilated to himself, gave him
a subtle and sullen exultation. The thing promised to become a sort
of perverted link between them, and he pleased himself by fancying,
even while, in fear of disillusionment, he kept putting off their
encounter, that the girl herself could not be quite free of some sort
of premonition of what awaited her.
Thus it happened that Philippa Renshaw’s stroke in her own defence
worked precisely as she had anticipated. Brooding, in his slow
tenacious way, as the weeks went by, upon this singular projection of
his imagination, he let his sister do what she chose, feeling assured
that in her pride of race, she would not seriously commit herself with
a nameless foreigner, and promising himself to end the business with a
drastic hand as soon as it suited him to do so.
It was about the middle of May when an event took place which gave the
affair a decisive and fatal impulse. This was a chance encounter, upon
the bridge crossing the Loon, between Brand and Rachel Doorm. He would
have passed her even then without recognition, but she stopped him and
held out her hand.
“Don’t you remember me, Mr. Renshaw?” she said.
He removed his hat, displaying his closely cropped reddish head with
its abnormal upward slope, and regarded her smilingly.
“You’ve changed, Miss Rachel,” he remarked, “but your voice is the
same. They told me you were here. I knew we should meet sooner or
later.”
“Put on your hat, Mr. Renshaw,” she said, seating herself on a little
stone bench below the parapet and making room for him at her side. “I
knew, too, that we should meet. It’s a long time from those days--isn’t
it?--a long time, and a dark one for some of us. Do you remember when
you were a child, how you asked me once why they called this place the
New Bridge, when it’s obviously so very old? Do you remember that, Mr.
Renshaw?”
He looked at her curiously, screwing up his eyes and wrinkling his
forehead. “My mother told me you’d come back,” he muttered. “She was
always fond of you. She used to hope--well, you know what I mean.”
“That I’d marry Captain Herrick?” Miss Doorm threw in. “Don’t be afraid
to say it. The dead can’t hear us and except the dead, there’s none who
cares. Yes, she hoped that, and schemed for it, too, dear soul. But
it was not to be, Mr. Renshaw. Ellie Story was prettier. Ellie Story
was cleverer. And so it happened. The bitter thing was that he swore
an oath to Mary before she died, swore it on the head of my darling
Nance, that if he did ever marry again, I should be the one. Mary died
thinking that certain. Anything else would have hurt her to the heart.
I know that well enough; for she and I, Mr. Renshaw, as your mother
could tell you, were more than sisters.”
“I thought you and Linda’s mother were friends, too,” observed Brand,
looking with a certain dreamy absorption up the straight white road
that led to the Doorm house. The mental fantasies the man had woven
round the name he now uttered for the first time in his life had
so vivid a meaning for him that he let pass unnoticed the spasm of
vindictiveness that convulsed his companion’s face.
Rachel Doorm folded her arms across her lean bosom and flung back her
head.
“Ellie was _afraid_ of me, Mr. Renshaw,” she pronounced huskily, and
then, looking at him sharply: “Yes,” she said, “Mrs. Herrick and I
were excellent friends, and so are Linda and I. She’s a soft, nervous,
impressionable little thing--our dear Linda--and very pretty, too, in
her own way--don’t you think so, Mr. Renshaw?”
It was the man’s turn now to suffer a change of countenance. “Pretty?”
he laughed. “I’m sure I don’t know. I’ve never seen her!”
Rachel clasped her hands tightly on the lap of her black dress and
fixed her eyes upon him. “You’d like to see her, wouldn’t you?” she
murmured eagerly. He answered her look, and a long, indescribable
passage of unspoken thoughts flickered, wavered and took shape between
them.
“I’ve seen Nance--in the distance--with my mother,” he remarked,
letting his glance wander to the opposite parapet and away beyond it
where the swallows were skimming, “but I’ve never yet spoken to either
of the girls. I keep to myself a good deal, as every one about here
knows, Miss Rachel.”
Rachel Doorm rose abruptly to her feet with such unexpected suddenness
that the man started as if from a blow.
“Your sister,” she jerked out with concentrated vehemence, “is doing my
Nance a deadly injury. She’s given her heart--sweet darling--absolutely
and without stint to that foreigner down there.” She waved her hand
towards the village. “And if Miss Renshaw doesn’t let him go, there’ll
be a tragedy.”
Brand looked at her searchingly, his lips trembling with a smile of
complicated significance.
“Do make her let him go!” the woman repeated, advancing as if she
were ready to clasp his hand; “you can if you like. You always
could. If she takes him away, my darling’s heart will be broken. Mr.
Renshaw--please--for the sake of old days, for the sake of old friends,
do this for me, and make her give him up!”
He drew back a little, the same subtle and ambiguous smile on his lips.
“No promises, Miss Rachel,” he said, “no promises! I never promise any
one anything. But we shall see; we shall see. There’s plenty of time.
I’m keeping my eye on Philippa; you may be sure of that.”
He held out his hand as he spoke to the agitated woman. She took it in
both of her own and quick as a flash raised it to her lips.
“I knew I should meet you, Mr. Renshaw,” she said, turning away from
him, “and you see it has happened! I won’t ask why you didn’t come to
me before. I haven’t asked _that_ yet--have I?--and I won’t ever ask
it. We’ve met at last; that’s the great thing. That’s the only thing.
Now we’ll see what’ll come of it all.”
They separated, and Brand proceeded to cross the Bridge. He had hardly
done so when he heard her voice calling upon him to stop. He turned
impatiently.
“When you were a little boy, Mr. Renshaw,”--her words came in panting
gasps--“you said once, down by the sea, that Rachel was the only person
in the world who really loved you. Your mother heard you say it and
looked--you know how she looks! You used always to call me ‘Cousin’
then. Far back, they say, the Renshaws and the Doorms _were_ cousins.
But you didn’t know that. It was just your childish fancy. ‘Cousin
Rachel,’ you said once--just like that--‘come and take me away from
them.’”
Brand acquiesced in all this with an air of strained politeness. But
his face changed when he heard her final words. “Listen,” she said,
“I’ve talked to Linda about you. She’s got the idea of you in her mind.”
At the very moment when this encounter at the New Bridge ended--which
was about six in the afternoon--Nance Herrick was walking with a
beating heart to a promised assignation with Sorio. This was to take
place at the southern corner of a little withy-bed situated about half
a mile from Dyke House in the direction of Mundham. It was Nance’s own
wish that her lover--if he could still be called so--should meet her
here rather than in the house. She had discovered the spot herself
and had grown fond of it. Sheltered from the wind by the clump of
low-growing willows, and cut off by the line of the banked-up tow-path
from the melancholy horizon of fens, the girl had got into the habit of
taking refuge here as if from the pursuit of vague inimical presences.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the withy-bed were several corn
fields, the beginning of a long strip of arable land which divided the
river from the marshes as far as Mundham.
The particular spot where she hoped to find Sorio awaiting her was a
low grassy bank overshadowed by alders as well as willows, and bordered
by a field of well-grown barley, a field which, though still green,
showed already to an experienced eye the kind of grain which a month or
so of not too malicious weather would ripen and turn to gold. Already
amid the blades of the young corn could be seen the stalks and leaves
of newly grown poppies, and mingled with these, also at their early
stage of growth, small, indistinguishable plants that would later show
themselves as corn-flowers and succory.
The neighbourhood of this barley field, with its friendly look and
homely weeds, promising a revel of reassuring colour as the summer
advanced, had come to be, to the agitated and troubled girl, a sort
of symbol of hope. It was the one place in Rodmoor--for the Doorm
garden shared the gloomy influences of the Doorm house--where she could
feel something like her old enjoyment in the natural growths of the
soil. Here, in the freshly sprouting corn and the friendly weeds that
it protected, was the strong, unconquerable pressure of earth-life,
refusing to be repressed, refusing to be thwarted, by the malign powers
of wind and water.
Here, on the bank she had chosen as her retreat, little childish
plants she knew by name--such as pimpernel and milkwort--were already
in flower and from the alders and willows above her head sweet and
consolatory odours, free from the tang of marsh mist or brackish
stream, brought memories of old country excursions into places far
removed from fen or sea.