began rolling up the sleeve of her summer frock. Nance was sufficiently
young to be pleased at his admiration and sufficiently experienced not
to be shocked at his audacity. She let him turn the sleeve quite far
back and smiled sadly to herself as she saw how admirably its freshly
starched material showed off the delicacy and softness of the arm thus
displayed. She was not even surprised or annoyed when she found that
the Doctor, having touched several times with the tips of his fingers
the curve of her elbow, possessed himself of her hand and tenderly
retained it. She continued to look wistfully and dreamily out of the
window, her lips smiling but her heart weary, thinking once more what
an ironic and bitter commentary it was on the little ways of the world
that amorousness of this sort--gentle and delicate though it might
be--was all that was offered her in place of what she was losing.
“You ought to be running barefooted and full of excellent joy,” the
voice of Dr. Raughty murmured, “along the sands to-day. You ought to be
paddling in the sea with your skirts pinned round your waist! Why don’t
you let me take you down there?”
She shook her head, turning her face towards him and releasing her
fingers.
“I must get back now,” she remarked, looking him straight in the eyes,
“so please give me my things.”
He meekly obeyed her and she put on her hat and gloves. As they were
going downstairs, she in front of him, Nance had a remote consciousness
that Dr. Raughty murmured something in which she caught Adrian’s name.
She let this pass, however, and gave him her hand gratefully as he
opened the door for her.
“Mayn’t I even see you home?” he asked.
Once more she shook her head. She felt that her nerves, just then, had
had enough of playful tenderness.
“Good-bye!” she cried, leaving him on his threshold.
She cast a wistful glance at Baltazar’s cottage as she crossed the
green.
“Oh, Adrian, Adrian,” she moaned, “I’d sooner be beaten by you than
loved by all the rest of the world!”
It was with a slow and heavy step that Dr. Raughty ascended his
little staircase after he had watched her disappear. Entering his
room he approached the pile of books left beside her chair and began
transporting them, one by one, to their places in the shelves.
“A sweet creature,” he murmured to himself as he did this, “a sweet
creature! May ten thousand cartloads of hornified devils carry that
damned Sorio into the pit of Hell!”
X
LOW TIDE
Nance was so absorbed, for several days after this, in making her
final arrangements with the dressmaker and getting into touch with
the work required of her that she was able to keep her nerves in
quite reasonable control. She met Sorio more than once during this
time and was more successful than she had dared to hope in the effort
of suppressing her jealous passion. Her feelings did not remain, she
admitted that to herself sadly enough, on the sublime platonic level
indicated by Mr. Traherne, but as long as she made no overt reference
to Philippa nor allowed her intercourse with her friend to be poisoned
by her wounded pride, she felt she had not departed far from the
priest’s high doctrine.
It was from Sorio himself, however, that she learned at last of a new
and alarming turn of events, calculated to upset all her plans. This
was nothing less than that her fatal presentiment in the churchyard
had fulfilled itself and that Brand and Linda were secretly meeting.
Sorio seemed surprised at the tragic way she received this news and she
was equally indignant at his equanimity over it. The thing that made
it worse to her was her deep-rooted suspicion that Rachel Doorm was
implicated. Adrian laughed when she spoke of this.
“What did you expect?” he said. “Your charming friend’s an old crony
of the Renshaws and nothing would please her better than to see Linda
in trouble. She probably arranges their meetings for them. She has the
look of a person who’d do that.”
They were walking together along the Mundham road when this
conversation took place. It was then about three o’clock and Nance
remembered with a sudden sinking of her heart how cheerfully both of
her companions had encouraged her to make this particular excursion.
She was to walk with Sorio to Mundham and return late in the evening by
train.
“I shall go back,” she cried, standing still and looking at him with
wild eyes. “This is too horrible! They must have plotted for me to be
out of the way. How could Linda do it? But she’s no more idea than a
little bird in the hedge what danger she’s in.”
Sorio shrugged his shoulders.
“You can’t go back now,” he protested. “We’re more than two miles away
from the bridge. Besides, what’s the use? You can’t do anything. You
can’t stop it.”
Nance looked at him with flashing eyes.
“I don’t understand what you mean, Adrian. She’s in danger. Linda’s in
danger. Of course I shall go. I’m not afraid of Brand.”
She glanced across the wide expanse of fens. On the southern side of
the road, as she looked back, the park trees of Oakguard stood out
against the sky and nearer, on the northern side, the gables of Dyke
House itself rose above the bank of the river.
“Oh, my dear, my dear,” she cried distractedly, “I must get back to
them! I must! I must! Look--there’s our house! You can see its roof!
There’s some way--surely--without going right back to the bridge? There
_must_ be some way.”
She dragged him to the side of the road. A deep black ditch, bordered
by reeds, intersected the meadow and beyond this was the Loon. A small
wooden enclosure, isolated and forlorn, lay just inside the field and
from within its barrier an enormous drab-coloured sow surveyed them
disconsolately, uttering a lamentable squeal and resting its front feet
upon the lower bar of its prison, while its great, many-nippled belly
swung under it, plain to their view. Their presence as they stood in a
low gap of the hedge tantalized the sow and it uttered more and more
discordant sounds. It was like an angry impersonation of fecundity,
mocking Nance’s agitation.
“Nothing short of wading up to your waist,” said Sorio, surveying the
scene, “would get you across that ditch, and nothing short of swimming
would get you over the river.”
Angry tears came into Nance’s eyes. “I would do it,” she gasped, “I
would do it if I were a man.”
Sorio made a humorous grimace and nodded in the direction of the sow.
“What’s your opinion about it--eh, my beauty?”
At that moment there came the sound of a trotting horse.
“Here’s something,” he added, “that may help you if you’re bent on
going.”
They returned to the road and the vehicle soon approached, showing
itself, as it came near, to be the little pony-cart of Dr. Raughty.
The Doctor proved, as may be imagined, more than willing to give Nance
a lift. She declared she was tired but wouldn’t ask him to take her
further than the village.
“I’ll take you wherever you wish,” said Fingal Raughty, giving a
nervous little cough and scrambling down to help her in.
“Ah! I forgot! Excuse me one minute. Hold the pony, please. I promised
to get some water-mint for Mrs. Sodderly.”
He ran hurriedly into the field and Nance, sitting in the cart, looked
helplessly at Sorio who, making a gesture as if all the world had gone
mad, proceeded to stroke the pony’s forehead. They waited patiently
and the Doctor let them wait. They could see him through the gap in
the hedge running hither and thither and every now and then stooping
down and fumbling in the grass. He seemed entirely oblivious of their
discomfort.
“This water-mint business,” muttered Sorio, “is worse than the
shrew-mouse hunt. I suppose he collects groundsel and feverfew for all
the old women in Rodmoor.”
Nance soon reached the limit of her patience. “Dr. Raughty!” she cried,
and then in feminine desperation, “Fingal! Fingal!” she shouted.
The Doctor came hurrying back at that and to Sorio’s astonishment it
appeared he had secured his desired plants. As he clambered up into the
little cart a delicious aromatic fragrance diffused itself around Nance.
“I’ve found them all right,” he said. “They’re under my hat. Sorry I’ve
only got room for one of you. Get on, Elizabeth!”
They drove off, Sorio making a final, Pilate-like gesture of complete
irresponsibility.
“A noble creature--that sow,” the Doctor observed, glancing nervously
at his companion, “a noble, beautiful animal! I expect it likes to
feed on watermelons as well as any one. Did you observe its eye? Like
a small yellow daisy! A beautiful eye, but with something wicked in
it--didn’t you think so?--something menacing and malicious.”
Nance compelled herself to smile at this sally but her hands itched to
snatch the whip and hasten the pony’s speed. They arrived at last at
the New Bridge and Nance wondered whether the Doctor would be really
amenable to her wishes or whether he would press her to visit his study
again. But he drove on without a word, over the Loon, and westward
again on the further side of it straight in the direction of Dyke House.
As they drew near the place Nance’s heart began to beat furiously and
she cast about in her mind for some excuse to prevent her companion
taking her any further. He seemed to read her thoughts for, with almost
supernatural tact, he drew up when they were within a few hundred yards
of the garden gate.
“I won’t come in if you don’t mind,” he said. “I have several patients
to see before supper and I want to take Mrs. Sodderly her water-mint.”
Nance jumped quickly out of the cart and thanked him profusely.
“You’re looking dreadfully white,” he remarked, as he bade her
good-bye. “Oh, wait a moment, I must give you a few of these.”
He carefully removed his hat and once more the aromatic odour spread
itself on the air.
“There!” he said, handing her two or three damp-rooted stems with
purplish-green leaves. She took them mechanically and was still holding
them in her hands when she arrived with pale lips and drawn, white
face, at the entrance to the Doorm dwelling.
All was quiet in the garden and not a sound of any living thing issued
from the house. With miserable uncertainty she advanced to the door,
catching sight, as she did so, of her own garden tools left lying on
the weedy border and some newly planted and now sadly drooping verbenas
fading by their side. She blamed herself even at that moment for
having, in her excitement at going to meet Sorio, forgotten to water
these things. She resolved--at the back of her mind--that she would
pull up every weed in the place before she had done with it.
Never before had she realized the peculiar desolation of Dyke House.
With its closed windows and smokeless chimneys it looked as if it might
have been deserted for a hundred years. She entered and standing in the
empty hall listened intently. Not a sound! Except for a remote ticking
and the buzzing of a blue bottle fly in the parlour windows, all was
hushed as the inside of a tomb. There came over her as she stood there
an indescribable sense of loneliness. She felt as though all the
inhabitants of the earth had been annihilated and she only left--she
and the brainless ticking of clocks in forsaken houses.
She ran hurriedly up the staircase and entered the room she shared
with Linda. The child’s neatly made little bed with the embroidered
night-dress cover lying on the pillow, struck her with a passion of
maternal feeling.
“My darling! My darling!” she cried aloud. “It’s all my fault! It’s all
my fault!”
She moved to the window and looked out. In a moment her hands clasped
tightly the wooden sash and she leaned forward with motionless
intensity. The uninterrupted expanse of that level landscape lent
itself to her quick vision. She made out, clearly and instantaneously,
a situation that set her trembling from head to foot. In one rapid
moment she took it in and in another moment she was prepared for swift
action.
Moored on the further side of the river was a small boat and in the
boat, sitting with his forehead bowed upon his hands, was Brand
Renshaw. His head was bare and the afternoon sun shining upon it made
it look red as blood. On the further side of the Mundham road--the very
road she had so recently traversed--she could see the figure of a girl,
unmistakably her sister--advancing quickly and furtively towards the
shelter of a thin line of pine trees, the most western extremity of the
Oakguard woods. The man in the boat could see nothing of this. Even if
he rose to his feet he could see nothing. The river bank was too high.
For the same reason the girl crossing the fields could see nothing of
the man in the boat. Nance alone, from her position at the window, was
in complete command of both of them. She drew back a little into the
room lest by chance Brand should look up and catch sight of her. What
a fortunate thing she had entered so quietly! They were taking every
precaution, these two! The man was evidently intending to remain where
he was till the girl was well concealed among the trees. Rachel Doorm,
it seemed, had taken herself off to leave them to their own devices
but it was clear that Brand preferred an assignation in his own park
to risking an entrance to Dyke House in the absence of its mistress.
For that, at any rate, Nance was devoutly thankful. Watching Linda’s
movements until she saw her disappear beneath the pines, Nance hurried
down the stairs and out into the garden. She realized clearly what she
had to do. She had to make her way to her sister before Brand got wind
she was there at all.
She knew enough of the Renshaw family to know that if she were to call
out to him across the river he would simply laugh at her. On the other
hand if he got the least idea she were so near he would anticipate
events and hasten off at once to Linda.
But how on earth could she herself reach the girl? The Loon flowed
mercilessly between them. One thing she had not failed to remark as she
looked at Brand in his little sea boat and that was that the tide was
now running very low. Sorio had been either mistaken or treacherous
when he assured her it was at its height. It must have been falling
even then.
She let herself noiselessly out of the gate and stood for a moment
contemplating the river bank. No, Brand could not possibly see her.
Without further hesitation she left the path and moved cautiously,
ankle-deep in grass, to where the Loon made a sharp turn to the left.
She had a momentary panic as she crawled on hands and knees up the
embankment. No, even here, as long as she did not stand upright, she
was invisible from the boat. Descending on the further side she slipped
down to the brink of the river. The Loon was low indeed. Only a narrow
strip of rapidly moving water flowed in the centre of the channel. On
either side, glittering in the sun, sloped slimy banks of mud.
Her face was flushed now and through her parted lips the breath came
heavily, in excited gasps.
“Linda--little Linda!” she murmured, “it’s my fault--all my fault!”
With one nervous look at the river she sank down on the sun-baked mud
and took off her shoes and stockings. Then, thrusting the stockings
inside the shoes and tying the laces of these latter together, she
pulled up her skirts and secured them round her waist. As she did this
she peered apprehensively round her. But she was quite alone and with
another shuddering glance at the tide she picked up her shoes and began
advancing into the slippery mud. She staggered a little at first and
her feet sank deep into the slime but as soon as she was actually in
the water she walked more easily, feeling a surer footing. The Loon
swirled by her, sending a chill of cold through her bare white limbs.
The water was soon high above her knees and she was hardly a quarter of
the way across! Her heart beat miserably now and the flush died from
her cheeks. It came across her mind like an ice-cold hand upon her
throat, how dreadful it would be to be swept off her feet and carried
down that tide--down to the Rodmoor harbour and out to sea--dead and
tangled in weeds--with wide-open staring eyes and the water pouring in
and out of her mouth. Nothing short of her desperate maternal instinct,
intensified to frenzy by the thought that she was responsible for
Linda’s danger, could have impelled her to press on. The tide was up to
her waist now and all her clothes were drenched but still she had not
reached the middle of the current.
It was when, taking a step further, she sank as deep as her arm-pits,
that she wavered in earnest and a terrible temptation took her to turn
and give it up.
“Perhaps, after all,” she thought, “Brand has no evil intentions.
Perhaps--who can tell?--he is genuinely in love with her.”
But even as she hesitated, looking with white face up and down the
swirling stream, she knew that this reasoning was treacherous. She had
heard nothing but evil of Brand’s ways with women ever since she came
to Rodmoor. And why should he treat her sister better than the rest?
Suddenly, without any effort of her own, she seemed to visualize with
extraordinary clearness a certain look with which, long ago, when she
was quite a child, Linda had appealed to her for protection. A passion
of maternal remorse made her heart suddenly strong and she plunged
recklessly forward. For one moment she lost her footing and in the
struggle to recover herself the tide swept over her shoulders. But that
was the worst. After that she waded steadily forward till she reached
the further side.
Dripping from head to foot she pulled on her shoes, wrung as much of
the water as she could out of her drenched skirts and shook them down
over her knees. Then she scrambled up the bank, glanced round to make
certain she was still unseen and set off through the fields. She could
not help smiling to herself when she reached the Mundham high-road
and fled quickly across it to think how amazed Sorio would have been
had he seen her just then! But neither Sorio nor any one else was in
sight and leaving behind her the trail of wet shoes in the hot road
dust, she ran, more rapidly than ever, towards the group of ancient and
dark-stemmed pines, into the shadow of which she had seen her sister
vanish.
XI
THE SISTERS
Linda was so astounded that she could hardly repress a scream when,
as she sat with her back against a tree on a carpet of pine-needles,
Nance suddenly appeared before her breathless with running. It was some
moments before the elder girl could recover her speech. She seized her
sister by the shoulders and held her at arms’ length, looking wildly
into her face and panting as she struggled to find words. “I waded,”
she gasped, “across the Loon--to get to you. Oh, Linda! Oh, Linda!”
A deep flush appeared in the younger sister’s cheeks and spread itself
over her neck. She gazed at Nance with great terrified eyes.
“Across the river--” she began, and let the words die away on her lips
as she realized what this meant.
“But you’re wet through--wet through!” she cried. “Here! You must wear
something of mine.”
With trembling fingers she loosened her own dress, hurriedly slipped
out of her skirt, flung it aside and began to fumble at Nance’s
garments. With little cries of horror as she found how completely
drenched her sister was, she pulled her into the deeper shadow of the
trees and forced her to take off everything.
“How beautiful you look, my dear,” she cried, searching as a child
might have done for any excuse to delay the impending judgment. Nance,
even in the reaction from her anxiety, could not be quite indifferent
to the naïveté of this appeal and she found herself actually laughing
presently as with her arms stretched high above her head and her
fingers clinging to a resinous pine branch, she let her sister chafe
her body back to warmth.
“Look! I’ll finish you off with ferns!” cried the younger girl,
and plucking a handful of new-grown bracken she began rubbing her
vigorously with its sweet-scented fronds.
“Oh, you do look lovely!” she cried once more, surveying her from head
to foot. “_Do_ let me take down your hair! You’d look like--oh, I don’t
know what!”
“I wish Adrian could see you,” she added. This last remark was a most
unlucky blunder on Linda’s part. It had two unfortunate effects.
It brought back to Nance’s mind her own deep-rooted trouble and it
restored all her recent dread as to her sister’s destiny.
“Give me something to put on,” she said sharply. “We must be getting
away from here.”
Linda promptly stripped herself of yet more garments and after a
friendly contest as to which of them should wear the dry skirt they
were ready to emerge from their hiding-place. Nance fancied that all
her difficulties for that day were over. She was never more mistaken.
They had advanced about half a mile towards the park, keeping tacitly
within the shadow of the pines when suddenly Linda, who was carrying
her sister’s wet clothes, dropped the bundle with a quick cry and
stood, stone-still, gazing across the fields. Nance looked in the
direction of her gaze and understood in a moment what was the matter.
There, walking hastily towards the spot they had recently quitted--was
the figure of a man.
Evidently this was the appointed hour and Brand was keeping his tryst.
Nance seized her sister’s hand and pulled her back into the shadow.
Linda’s eyes had grown large and bright. She struggled to release
herself.
“What are you doing, Nance?” she cried. “Let me go! Don’t you see he
wants me?”
The elder sister’s grasp tightened.
“My dear, my dear,” she pleaded, “this is madness! Linda, Linda, my
darling, listen to me. I can’t let you go on with this. You’ve no idea
what it means. You’ve no idea what sort of a man that is.”
The young girl only struggled the more violently to free herself. She
was like a thing possessed. Her eyes glittered and her lips trembled. A
deep red spot appeared on each of her cheeks.
“Linda, child! My own Linda!” cried Nance, desperately snatching at the
girl’s other wrist and leaning back, panting against the trunk of a
pine.
“What has come to you? I don’t know you like this. I can’t, I can’t let
you go.”
“He wants me,” the girl repeated, still making frantic efforts to
release herself. “I tell you he wants me! He’ll hate me if I don’t go
to him.”
Her fragile arms seemed endowed with supernatural strength. She
wrenched one wrist free and tore desperately at the hand that held the
other.
“Linda! Linda!” her sister wailed, “are you out of your mind?”
The unhappy child actually succeeded at last in freeing herself and
sprang away towards the open. Nance flung herself after her and,
seizing her in her arms, half-dragged her, half-carried her, back to
where the trees grew thick. But even there the struggle continued. The
girl kept gasping out, “He loves me, I tell you! He loves me!” and with
every repetition of this cry she fought fiercely to extricate herself
from the other’s embrace. While this went on the wind, which had been
gusty all the afternoon, began to increase in violence, blowing from
the north and making the branches of the pines creak and mutter over
their heads. A heavy bank of clouds covered the sun and the air grew
colder. Nance felt her strength weakening. Was fate indeed going to
compel her to give up, after all she had endured?
She twined her arms round her sister’s body and the two girls swayed
back and forwards over the dry, sweet-scented pine-needles. Their
scantily-clothed limbs were locked tightly together and, as they
struggled, their breasts heaved and their hearts beat in desperate
reciprocity.
“Let me go! I hate you! I hate you!” gasped Linda, and at that moment,
stumbling over a moss-covered root, they fell together on the ground.
The shock of the fall and the strain of the struggle threw the younger
girl into something like a fit of hysteria. She began screaming and
Nance, fearful lest the sound should reach Brand’s ears, put her hand
over the child’s mouth. The precaution was unnecessary. The wind had
increased now to such a pitch that through the moaning branches and
rustling foliage nothing could be heard outside the limits of the wood.
“I hate you! I hate you!” shrieked Linda, biting in her frenzy at the
hand which was pressed against her mouth. Nance’s nerves had reached
the breaking point.
“Won’t you help me, God?” she cried out.