on either side of it which ended in the bridge across the Loon. Before
they reached the bridge, however, he swerved to the left and helped her
over a low wooden railing. From this point, by following a rough track
along the edge of one of the water meadows it was possible to reach the
sand-dunes without entering the village.
“Not to the sea,” pleaded Linda, holding back when she perceived the
direction of their steps.
“Yes, to the sea!” he cried, pulling her forward with merciless
determination. She made no further resistance. She did not even protest
when, arrived at the end of their path, he lifted her bodily over the
gate that barred their way. She let him help her across the heavily
sinking sand, covered with pallid, coarse grass which yielded to every
step they took. She let him, when at last they reached the summit of
the dunes and saw the sea spread out before them, retain the hand she
had given him and lead her down, hardly holding back at all now, to the
very edge of the water.
They were both at that moment like persons under the power of some sort
of drug. Their eyes were wild and bright and when they spoke their
voices had an unnatural solemnity. In the absoluteness of the magnetic
current which swept them together, they could do nothing, it seemed,
but take all that happened to them for granted--take all--all--as if it
could not be otherwise, as if it were _unthinkable_ otherwise.
When they reached the place where the tide turned and the tremulous
line of spindrift glimmered in the dying sunlight, the girl stopped at
last. Her lips and cheeks were pale as the foam itself. She tried to
tear her fingers from his grasp. Her feet, sinking in the wet sand,
were splashed by the inflowing water.
“They told me you were afraid,” he muttered, and his voice sounded to
them both as if it came from far away, “but I didn’t believe it. I
thought it was some little girl’s nonsense. But I see now they were
right. You _are_ afraid.”
He rose to his full height, drawing into his lungs with a breath of
ecstasy the sharp salt wind that blew across the water’s surface.
“But out of your fear we’ll make a bond between us,” he went on,
raising his voice, “a bond which none of them shall be able to break!”
He suddenly bent down and, scooping with his fingers in the water,
lifted towards her a handful of sea-foam that gleamed ghostly white as
he held it.
“There, child,” he cried, “you can’t escape from me now!”
As he spoke he flung, with a wild laugh, straight across her face, the
foam-bubbles which he had caught. She started back with a little gasp,
but recovering herself instantly lifted the hand which held her own
and pressed it against her forehead. They stood for a moment, after
this, staring at one another, with a hushed, dazed, bewildered stare,
as though they felt the very wind of the wing of fate pass over their
heads.
Brand broke the spell with a laugh. “I’ve christened you now,” he said,
“so I can call you what I like. Come up here, Linda, my little one, and
let’s talk of all this.”
Hand in hand they moved away from the sea’s edge and crouched down in
the shadow of the sand-dunes. The rose-coloured light died out along
the line of foam and the mass of the waters in front of them darkened
steadily, as if obscured by the over-hovering of some colossal bird.
Far off, on the edge of the horizon, a single fragment of drifting
cloud took the shape of a bloody hand with outstretched forefinger but
even that soon faded as the sun, sinking into the fens behind them,
gave up the struggle with darkness.
With the passing of the light from the sea’s surface, all that was left
of the wind sank also into absolute immobility. An immense liberating
silence intensified, rather than interrupted by the monotonous splash
of the waves, seemed to stream forth from some planetary reservoir and
overflow the world.
Not a sea-gull screamed, not a sound came from the harbour, not a
plover cried from the marshes, not a step, not a voice, not a whisper,
approached their solitude or disturbed their strange communion.
Linda sat with her head sunk low upon her breast and her hands clasped
upon her knees. Brand, beside her, caressed her whole figure with an
intense gaze of concentrated possession.
Neither of them spoke a word, but one of the man’s heavy hands lay upon
hers like a leaden weight bruising a fragile plant.
What he seemed attempting to achieve in that conspiring hour was some
kind of magnetizing of the girl’s senses so that the first movement of
overt passion should come from her rather than from himself. In this
it would seem he was not unsuccessful, for after two or three scarce
audible sighs her body trembled a little and leant towards his and
a low whisper uttered in a tone quite unlike her ordinary one, tore
itself from her lips, as if against her volition.
“What are you doing to me?” she murmured.
While the invisible destinies were thus inaugurating their projected
work upon Brand and Linda, Nance and Mrs. Renshaw issued forth from the
churchyard.
“If only life were clearer,” the girl was thinking, “it would be
endurable. It’s this uncertainty in everything--this dreadful
uncertainty--which I can’t bear!”
“That was a beautiful psalm we had just now,” said Mrs. Renshaw, in
her gentle penetrating voice as, after some minutes’ silent walking
they emerged upon the bridge across the Loon. Nance looked down over
the parapet and in her depressed fancy she saw the drowned figure of
herself, drifting, face upward, upon the flowing water.
“Yes,” she replied mechanically, “the psalms are always beautiful.”
“I don’t believe,” the lady went on, glancing at her with eyes so
hollow and sorrowful that it seemed as though the twilight of a world
even sadder than the one they looked upon emanated from them, “I don’t
believe I understand that little sister of yours. She’s very highly
strung--she’s very nervous. She requires a great deal of care. To tell
the truth, I don’t consider my son Brand at all a good companion for
her. I wish they’d waited and not gone off like that. He doesn’t always
remember what a sensitive thing the heart of a young girl is.”
They had now reached the southern side of the Loon and were on the main
road between Rodmoor and Mundham. A few paces further brought them to
the first houses of the village. Something in the helpless, apologetic,
deprecatory way with which, just then, Mrs. Renshaw greeted an old
woman who passed them, had a strangely irritating effect upon Nance’s
nerves.
“I don’t see why young people should be considered more than any one
else!” she burst out. “It’s a purely conventional idea. We all have our
troubles, and what I think is the older you get the more difficult life
becomes.”
Mrs. Renshaw’s face assumed a mask of weary obstinacy and she walked
more slowly, her head bent forward a little and her feet dragging.
“Women have to learn what duty means,” she said, “and the sooner they
learn it the better. Those among us who are privileged to make one good
man happy have the best that life can give. It’s natural to be restless
till you have this. But we must try to overcome our restlessness. We
must ask for help.”
She was silent. Her white face drooped and bowed itself, while her
tired fingers relaxed their hold on her skirt which trailed in the dust
of the road. Her profile, as Nance glanced sideways at it, had a look
of hopeless and helpless passivity.
The girl withdrew into herself, irritated and yet remorseful. She felt
an obscure longing to be of some service to this unhappy one; yet as
she watched her, thus bowed and impenetrable, she felt shut out and
excluded.
Before they reached the centre of the village--for Nance felt unwilling
to leave Mrs. Renshaw until she had seen her safe within her park
gates--they suddenly came upon Baltazar Stork returning from his daily
excursion to Mundham.
He was as elegantly dressed as usual and in one hand carried a little
black bag, in the other a bunch of peonies. Nance, to her surprise,
caught upon her companion’s face a look of extraordinary illumination
as the man advanced towards them. In recalling the look afterwards, she
found herself thinking of the word “vivacity” in regard to it.
“Oh, I’m always the same,” Mr. Stork replied to the elder lady’s
greeting. “I grow more annoyingly the same every day. I say the same
things, think the same thoughts and meet the same people. It’s--lovely!”
“I’m glad you ended like that,” observed Nance, laughing. It was
one of her peculiarities to laugh--a little foolishly--when she was
embarrassed and though she had encountered Sorio’s friend once or twice
before, she felt for some reason or other ill at ease with him.
With exquisite deliberation Mr. Stork placed the black bag upon the
ground and selecting two of the freshest blooms from his gorgeous
bunch, handed one by the light of a little shop window to each of the
women.
“How is your friend?” enquired Mrs. Renshaw with a touch of irony in
her tone. “This young lady has not seen him to-day.”
At that moment Nance realized that she hated this melancholy being whom
a chance encounter with her husband’s son seemed to throw into such
malicious spirits. She felt that everything Mrs. Renshaw was destined
to say from now till they separated, would be designed to humiliate and
annoy her. This may have been a fantastic illusion, but she acted upon
it with resolute abruptness.
“Good-bye,” she exclaimed, turning to her companion, “I’ll leave
you in Mr. Stork’s care. I promised Rachel not to be late to-night.
Good-bye--and thank you,” she bowed to the young man and held up the
peony, “for this.”
“She’s jealous,” remarked Baltazar as he led Mrs. Renshaw across the
green under the darkening sycamores. “She is abominably jealous!
She was in a furious temper--I saw it myself--when Adrian took her
sister out the other day and now she’s wild because he’s friendly with
Philippa. Oh, these girls, these girls!”
An amused smile flickered for a moment across the lady’s face but she
suppressed it instantly. She sighed heavily. “You are all too much
for me,” she said, “too much for me. I’m getting old, Tassar. God be
merciful! This world is not an easy place to live in.”
She walked by his side after this in heavy silence till they reached
the entrance of the park.
VIII
SUN AND SEA
As the days began to grow warmer and in the more sheltered gardens the
first roses appeared, Nance was not the only one who showed signs of
uneasiness over Adrian Sorio’s disturbed state of mind.
Baltazar was frequently at a loss to know where, in the long twilights,
his friend wandered. Over and over again, after June commenced,
the poor epicure was doomed to take his supper in solitude and sit
companionless through the evening in the grassy enclosure at the back
of his house.
As the longest day approached and the heavily scented hawthorn tree
which was the chief ornament of his small garden had scattered nearly
all its red blossoms, Stork’s uneasiness reached such a pitch that he
protested vigorously to the wanderer, using violent expressions and,
while not precisely accusing him of ingratitude, making it quite plain
that this was neither the mood nor the treatment he expected from so
old a friend.
Sorio received this outburst meekly enough--indeed he professed himself
entirely penitent and ready to amend his ways--but as the days went on,
instead of any improvement in the matter, things became rapidly worse
and worse.
Baltazar could learn nothing definitely of what he did when he
disappeared but the impression gradually emphasized itself that he
spent these lonely hours in immense, solitary walks along the edge of
the sea. He returned sometimes like a man absolutely exhausted and on
these occasions his friend could not help observing that his shoes were
full of sand and his face scorched.
One especially hot afternoon, when Stork had returned from Mundham by
the midday train in the hope of finding Adrian ready to stroll with him
under the trees in the park, there occurred quite a bitter and violent
scene between them when the latter insisted, as soon as their meal was
over, on setting off alone.
“Go to the devil!” Adrian finally flung back at his entertainer
when--his accustomed urbanity quite broken down--the aggrieved Baltazar
gave vent to the suppressed irritation of many days. “Go to the devil!”
the unconscionable man repeated, putting down his hat over his head and
striding across the green.
Once clear of the little town, he let his speed subside into a more
ordinary pace and, crossing the bridge over the Loon, made his way
to the sea shore. The blazing sunshine, pouring down from a sky that
contained no trace of a cloud, seemed to have secured the power
that day of reducing even the ocean itself to a kind of magnetised
stupor. The waters rolled in, over the sparkling sands, with a long,
somnolent, oily ripple that spent itself and drew back without so much
as a flicker or flake of foam. The sea-gulls floated languidly on the
unruffled tide, or quarrelled with little, short, petulant screams
over the banks of bleached pungent-smelling seaweed where swarms of
scavenging flies shared with them their noonday fretfulness.
On the wide expanse of the sea itself there lay a kind of glittering
haze, thin and metallic, as if hammered out of some marine substance
less resistant but not less dazzling than copper or gold. This was in
the mid-distance, so to speak, of the great plain of water. In the
remote distance the almost savage glitter diminished and a dull livid
glare took its place, streaked in certain parts of the horizon by heavy
bars of silvery mist where the sea touched the sky. The broad reaches
of hard sand smouldered and flickered under the sun’s blaze and little
vibrating heat waves danced like shapeless demons over the summit of
the higher dunes.
Turning his face northward, Sorio began walking slowly now and with
occasional glances at the dunes, along the level sand by the sea’s
edge. He reached in this way a spot nearly two miles from Rodmoor where
for leagues and leagues in either direction no sign of human life was
visible.
He was alone with the sun and the sea, the sun that was dominating the
water and the water that was dominating the land.
He stood still and waited, his heart beating, his pulses feverish, his
deep-sunken eyes full of a passionate, expectant light. He had not
long to wait. Stepping down slowly from the grass-covered dunes, past
a deserted fisherman’s hut which had become their familiar rendezvous,
came the desired figure. She walked deliberately, slowly, with a
movement that, as Sorio hastened to meet her, had something almost
defiant in its dramatic reserve.
They greeted one another with a certain awkwardness. Neither held out a
hand--neither smiled. It might have been a meeting of two conspirators
fearful of betrayal. It was only after they had walked in silence,
side by side and still northwards for several minutes, that Sorio
began speaking, but his words broke from him then with a tempestuous
vehemence.
“None of these people here know me,” he cried, “not one of them. They
take me for a dawdler, an idler, an idiotic fool. Well! That’s nothing.
Nance doesn’t know me. She doesn’t care to know me. She--she _loves_!
As if love were what I wanted--as if love were enough!”
He was silent and the girl looked at him curiously, waiting for him to
say more.
“They’d be a bit surprised, wouldn’t they,” he burst out, “if they
knew about the manuscripts _he_”--he uttered this last word with
concentrated reverence,--“is guarding for me over there? _He_
understands me, Phil, and not a living person except him. Listen,
Phil! Since I’ve known you I’ve been able to breathe--just able to
breathe--in this damned England. Before that--God! I shudder to
think of it--I was dumb, strangled, suffocated, paralyzed, dead.
Even now--even with you, Phil,--I’m still fumbling and groping after
it--after what I have to say to the world, after my secret, my idea!
“It hurts me, my idea. You know that feeling, Phil. But I’m getting it
into order--into shape. Look here!”
He pulled out of his pocket a small thick notebook closely written,
blurred with erasures and insertions, stained with salt-water.
“That’s what I’ve done since I’ve known you--in this last month--and
it’s better than anything I’ve written before. It’s clearer. It hits
the mark more crushingly. Phil, listen to me! I _know_ I’ve got it in
me to give to the world something it’s never dreamed of--something with
a real madness of truth in it--something with a bite that gets to the
very bone of things. I know I’ve got that in me.”
He stooped down and picked up a stranded jelly-fish that lay--a mass of
quivering, helpless iridescence--in the scorching sun. He stepped into
the water till it was over his shoes and flung the thing far out into
the oily sea. It sank at once to the bottom, leaving a small circle of
ripples.
“Go on, go on!” cried the girl, looking at him with eyes that darkened
and grew more insatiable as she felt his soul stir and quiver and strip
itself before her.
“Go on! Tell me more about Nance.”
“I _have_ told you,” he muttered, “I’ve told you everything.
She’s good and faithful and kind. She gives me love--oh, endless
love!--but that’s not what I want. She no more understands me than _I_
understand--eternity! Little Linda reads me better.”
“Tell me about Linda,” murmured the girl.
Sorio threw a wild glance around them. “It’s her fear that taught her
what she knew--what she guessed. Fear reads deep and far. Fear breaks
through many barriers. But she’s changed now since she’s been with
Brand. She’s become like the rest.”
“Oh, Brand--!” Philippa shrugged her shoulders. “So _he’s_ come into
it? Well, let them go. Tell me more about Nance. Does she cling to you
and make a fuss? Does she try the game of tears?”
Sorio looked at her sharply. A vague suspicion invaded the depths of
his heart. They walked along in silence for several minutes. The power
of the sun seemed to increase. A mass of seaweed, floating below
the water, caused in one place an amber-coloured shadow to break the
monotony of the glittering surface.
“Does your son believe in you--as I do?” she asked gently.
As soon as the words had crossed her lips she knew they were the very
last she ought to have uttered. The man withdrew into himself with
a rigid tightening of every nerve. No one--certainly not Nance--had
ever dared to touch this subject. Once to Nance, in London, and twice
recently to his present companion, had he referred to Baptiste but this
direct question about the boy was too much; it outraged something in
him which was beyond articulation. The shock given him was so intense
and the reaction upon his feelings so vivid that, hardly conscious of
what he did, he thrust his hand into his pocket and clutched tightly
with his fingers the book containing his work, as though to protect
it from aggression. As he thus stood there before her, stiff and
speechless, she could only console herself by the fact that he avoided
her eyes.
Her mind moved rapidly. She must invent, at all costs, some relief to
this tension. She had trusted her magnetism too far.
“Adriano,” she said, imitating with feminine instinct Baltazar’s
caressing intonation, “I want to bathe. We’re out of sight of every
one. We know each other well enough now. Shall we--together?”
He met her eyes now. There was a subtile appeal in their depths which
drew him to her and troubled his senses. He nodded and uttered an
embarrassed laugh. “Why not?” he answered.
“Very well,” she said quickly, clinching her suggestion before he had
time to revoke his assent, “I’ll just run behind these sand hills and
take off my things. You undress here and get into the water. And swim
out, too, Adrian, with your back to me! I’ll soon join you.”
She left him and he obeyed her mechanically--only looking nervously
round for a moment as he folded his coat containing the precious
manuscript and laid a heavy stone upon it.
He plunged out into the waveless sea with fierce, impetuous strokes.
The water yielded to his violent movements like a lake of quicksilver.
Dazzling threads and flakes and rainbows flashed up, wavered, trembled,
glittered and vanished as he swam forward. With his eyes fixed on the
immense dome of sky above him, where, like the rim of a burnished
shield, it cut down into the horizon, he struck out incessantly,
persistently, seeking, in thus embracing a universe of white light, to
find the escape he craved.
Strange thoughts poured through his brain as he swam on. The most
novel, the most terrific of the points contained in those dithyrambic
notes left behind under the stone surged up before him and, mingling
with them in fierce exultant affection, the image of Baptiste beckoned
to him out of a molten furnace of white light.
Far away behind him at last he heard the voice of his companion.
Whether she intended him to turn he did not know, for her words were
inaudible, but when he did he perceived that she was standing, a slim
white figure, at the water’s edge. He watched her with feelings that
were partly bitter and partly tender.
“Why does she stand there so long?” he muttered to himself. “Why
doesn’t she get in and start swimming?”
As if made aware of his thought by some telepathic instinct the girl at
that moment slipped into the water and began walking slowly forward,
her hands clasped behind her head. When the water reached above her
knees she swung up her hands and with a swift spring of her white body,
disappeared from view. She remained so long invisible that Sorio grew
anxious and took several vigorous strokes towards her. She reappeared
at last, however, and was soon swimming vigorously to meet him.
When they met she insisted on advancing further and so, side by side,
with easy, leisurely movements, they swam out to sea, their eyes on the
far horizon and their breath coming and going in even reciprocity.
“Far enough!” cried Sorio at last, treading water and looking closely
at her.
There was a strange wild light in the girl’s face. “Why go back?”
her look seemed to say--“Why not swim on and on together--until the
waters cover us and all riddles are solved?” There was something in
her expression at that moment--as, between sky and sea, the two gazed
mutely at one another--which seemed to interpret some terrible and
uttermost mystery. It was, however, too rare a moment to endure long,
and they turned their heads landwards.
The return took longer than they had anticipated and the girl was
swimming very slowly and displaying evident signs of exhaustion before
they got near shore. As soon as she could touch the bottom with her
feet she hurried out and staggered, with stiff limbs, across the sands
to where she had left her clothes.
When she came back, dressed and in lively spirits, her unbound hair
shimmering in the sunshine like wet silk, she found him pacing the
sea’s edge with an expression of gloomy resolution.
“I shall have to rewrite every word of these notes,” he said, striking
his hand against his pocket. “I had a new thought just now as I was in
the water and it changes everything.”
She threw herself down on the hot sand and spread out her hair to let
it dry.
“Don’t let’s go yet, Adrian,” she pleaded. “I feel so sleepy and happy.”
He looked at her thoughtfully, hardly catching the drift of her words.
“It changes everything,” he repeated.
“Lie down here,” she murmured softly, letting her gaze meet his with a
wistful entreaty.
He placed himself beside her. “Don’t get hurt by the sun,” he said. She
smiled at that--a long, slow, dreamy smile--and drawing him towards
her with her eyes, “I believe you’re afraid of me to-day, Adrian,” she
whispered.
Her boyish figure, outlined beneath the thin dress she wore, seemed to
breathe a sort of classic voluptuousness as she languidly stretched her
limbs. As she did this, she turned her head sideways, till her chin
rested on her shoulder and a tress of brown hair, wet and clinging,
fell across her slender neck.
A sudden impulse of malice seemed to seize the man who bent over her.
“Your hair isn’t half as long as Nance’s,” he said, turning abruptly
away and hugging his knees with his arms.
The girl drew herself together, at that, like a snake from under a
heavy foot and, propping herself up on her hands, threw a glance upon
him which, had he caught it, might have produced a yet further change
in the book of philosophic notes. Her eyes, for one passing second,
held in them something that was like livid fire reflected through blue
ice.