passed through her body and her lips turned white. Nance released her
hold and rose to her feet. The child’s head fell back upon the ground
and her eyes closed. Nance watched her with fearful apprehension. Had
she hurt her heart in their struggle? Was she dying? But the girl did
not even lose consciousness. She remained perfectly still for several
minutes and then, opening her eyes, threw upon her sister a look of
tragic reproach.
“You’ve won,” she whispered faintly. “You’re too strong for me. But
I’ll never forgive you for this--never--never--never!”
Once more she closed her eyes and lay still. Nance, kneeling by her
side, tried to take one of her hands but the girl drew it away.
“Yes, you’ve won,” she repeated, fixing upon her sister’s face a look
of helpless hatred. “And shall I tell you why you’ve done this? Shall
I tell you why you’ve stopped my going to him?” she went on, in a low
exhausted voice. “You’ve done it because you’re jealous of me, because
you can’t make Adrian love you as you want, because Adrian’s got so
fond of Philippa! You can’t bear the idea of Brand loving me as he
does--so much more than Adrian loves you!”
Nance stared at her aghast. “Oh, Linda, my little Linda!” she
whispered, “how can you say these terrible things? My only thought, all
the time, is for you.”
Linda struggled feebly to her feet, refusing her sister’s help.
“I can walk,” she said, and then, with a bitterness that seemed to
poison the air between them, “you needn’t be afraid of my escaping from
you. He wouldn’t like me now, you’ve hurt me and made me ugly.”
Nance picked up her bundle of mud-stained clothes. The smell of the
river which still clung to them gave her a sense of nausea.
“Come,” she said, “we’ll follow the park wall.”
They moved off slowly together without further speech and never did
any hour, in either of their lives, pass more miserably. As they
came within sight of Oakguard, Linda looked so white and exhausted
that Nance was on the point of taking her boldly in and begging Mrs.
Renshaw’s help, but somehow the thought of meeting Philippa just at
that moment was more than she was able to endure, and they dragged on
towards the village.
Emerging from the park gates and coming upon the entrance to the green,
Nance became aware that it would be out of the question to make Linda
walk any further and, after a second’s hesitation, she led her across
the grass and under the sycamores to Baltazar’s cottage.
The door was opened by Mr. Stork himself. He started back in
astonishment at the sight of their two figures pale and shivering in
the wind. He led them into his sitting-room and at once proceeded to
light the fire. He wrapped warm rugs round them both and made them
some tea. All this he did without asking them any questions, treating
the whole affair as if it were a thing of quite natural occurrence.
The warmth of the fire and the pleasant taste of the epicure’s tea
restored Nance, at any rate, to some degree of comfort. She explained
that they had walked too far and that she had tried to cross the river
to get help for her sister. Linda said hardly anything but gazed
despairingly at the picture of the Ambassador’s secretary. The young
Venetian seemed to answer her look and Baltazar, always avid of these
occult sympathies, watched this spiritual encounter with sly amusement.
He had wrapped an especially brilliant oriental rug round the younger
girl and the contrast between its rich colours and the fragile beauty
of the face above them struck him very pleasantly.
In his heart he shrewdly guessed that some trouble connected with
Brand was at the bottom of this and the suspicion that she had been
interfering with her sister’s love affair did not diminish the
prejudice he had already begun to cherish against Nance. Stork was
constitutionally immune from susceptibility to feminine charm and the
natural little jests and gaieties with which the poor girl tried to
“carry off” a sufficiently embarrassing situation only irritated him
the more.
“Why must they always play their tricks and be pretty and witty?” he
thought. “Except when one wants to make love to them they ought to sit
still.” And with a malicious desire to annoy Nance he began making
much of Linda, persuading her to lie down on the sofa and wrapping an
exquisite cashmere shawl round her feet.
To test the truth of his surmise as to the cause of their predicament,
he unexpectedly brought in Brand’s name.
“Our friend Adrian,” he remarked, “refuses to allow that Mr. Renshaw’s
a handsome man. What do you ladies think about that?”
His device met with instant success. Linda turned crimson and Nance
made a gesture as if to stop him.
“Ha! Ha!” he laughed to himself, “so that’s how the wind blows. Our
little sister must be allowed no kind of fun, though we ourselves may
flirt with the whole village.”
He continued to pay innumerable attentions to Linda. Professing that
he wished to tell her fortune he drew his chair to her side and began
a long rigamarole about heart lines and life lines and dark men and
fair men. Nance simply moved closer to the fire while this went on and
warmed her hands at its blaze.
“I must ask him to fetch us a trap from the Inn,” she thought. “I wish
Adrian would come. I wonder if he will, before we go.”
Partly by reason of the fact that he had himself arranged her drapery
and partly because of a touch of something in the child’s face which
reminded him of certain pictures of Pintericchio, Baltazar began to
feel tenderer towards Linda than he had done for years towards any
feminine creature. This amused him immensely and he gave the tenuous
emotion full rein. But it irritated him that he couldn’t really vex his
little protégé’s sister.
“I expect,” he said, replacing Linda’s white fingers upon the scarlet
rug, “I expect, Miss Herrick, you’re beginning to feel the effects of
our peculiar society. Yes, that’s my Venetian boy, Flambard”--this
was addressed to Linda--“isn’t he delicious? Wouldn’t you like to
have him for a lover?--for Rodmoor is a rather curious place. It’s a
disintegrating place, you know, a place where one loses one’s identity
and forgets the rules. Of course it suits _me_ admirably because I
never consider rules, but you--I should think--must find it somewhat
disturbing? Fingal maintains there’s a definite physiological cause for
the way people behave here. For we all behave very badly, you know,
Miss Herrick. He says it’s the effect of the North Sea. He says all
the old families that live by the North Sea get queer in time,--take
to drink, I mean, or something of that sort. It’s an interesting idea,
isn’t it? But I suppose that sort of thing doesn’t appeal to you? You
take--what do you call it?--a more serious view of life.”
Nance turned round towards him wearily.
“If Adrian doesn’t come in a minute or two,” she thought, “I shall ask
him to get a trap for us, or I shall go to Dr. Raughty.”
“It’s an odd thing,” Baltazar continued, lighting a cigarette and
walking up and down the room, “how quickly I know whether people are
serious or not. It must be something in their faces. Linda, now”--he
looked caressingly at the figure on the sofa--“is obviously never
serious. She’s like me. I saw that in her hand. She’s destined to go
through life as I do, playing on the surface like a dragon-fly on a
pond.”
The young girl answered his look with a soft but rather puzzled smile,
and once more he sat down by her side and renewed his fortune-telling.
His fingers, as he held her hand, looked almost as slender as her own
and his face, as Nance saw it in profile, had a subtle delicacy of
outline that made her think of Philippa. There was, to the mind of the
elder girl, a refined inhumanity about every gesture he made and every
word he spoke which filled her with aversion. The contours of his face
were exquisitely moulded and his round small head covered with tight
fair curls was supported on a neck as soft and white as a woman’s; but
his eyes, coloured like some glaucous sea plant, were to the girl’s
thinking extraordinarily sinister. She could not help a swift mental
comparison between Baltazar’s attitude as he leaned over Linda and that
of Dr. Raughty when, on various occasions, that honest man had made
playful love to herself. It was hard to define the difference but, as
she watched Baltazar she came to the conclusion that there was a soul
of genuine affectionateness in the doctor’s amorous advances which made
them harmless as compared with this other’s.
Linda, however, was evidently very pleased and flattered. She lay with
her head thrown back and a smile of languid contentment. She did not
even make an attempt to draw away her hand when the fortune-telling
was over. Nance resolved that she would wait five minutes more by
their host’s elegant French time-piece and then, if Adrian had not
come, she would make Mr. Stork fetch them a conveyance. It came over
her that there was something morbid and subtly unnatural about the way
Baltazar was treating Linda and yet she could not put her finger upon
what was wrong. She felt, however, by a profound instinct, an instinct
which she could not analyse, that nothing that Brand Renshaw could
possibly do--even were he the unscrupulous seducer she suspected him
of being--could be as dangerous for the peace of her sister’s mind
as what she was now undergoing. With Brand there was quite simply a
strong magnetic attraction, formidable and overpowering, and that was
all, but she trembled to think what elements of complicated morbidity
Baltazar’s overtures were capable of arousing.
“Look,” he said presently, “Flambard’s watching us! I believe he’s
jealous of me because of you, or of you because of me. I don’t believe
he’s ever seen any one so near being his rival as you are! I think
you must have something in you that he understands. Perhaps you’re a
re-incarnation of one of his Venetians! Don’t you think, Miss Herrick,”
and he turned urbanely to Nance, “she’s got something that suggests
Venice in her as she lies there--with that smile?”
The languorous glance of secret triumph which Linda at that moment
threw upon her sister was more than Nance could endure.
“Do you mind getting us a trap of some sort at the Admiral’s Head?” she
said brusquely, rising from her seat.
Baltazar assented at once with courteous and even effusive politeness
and left the room. As soon as he was gone, Nance moved to Linda’s side.
“Little one,” she said, with trembling lips, “I seem not to know you
to-day. You’re not my Linda at all.”
The child’s face stiffened spasmodically and her whole expression
hardened. She fixed her gaze on the ambiguous Flambard and made no
answer.
“Linda, darling--I’m only thinking all the time of you,” pleaded Nance,
putting out her hand.
A gleam of positive hatred illuminated the child’s eyes. She suddenly
snatched at the proffered hand and surveyed it vindictively.
“I can see where I bit you just now. I’m glad I did!” she cried, and
once more she set herself to stare at Flambard.
Nance went over to the fireplace and sat down. But something seemed to
impel Linda to strike her again.
“You thought you were going to have every one in Rodmoor to yourself,
didn’t you?” she said. “You thought you’d have Adrian and Dr. Raughty
and Mr. Traherne and everybody. You never thought any one would begin
liking me!”
Nance looked at her in sheer terrified astonishment. Certainly the
influence of Baltazar was making itself felt.
“You brought me here,” Linda went on. “I didn’t want to come and _you
knew I didn’t_. Now--as _he_ says, we must make the best of it.”
The phrase “and you knew I didn’t” went through Nance’s heart like a
poisoned dagger. Yes, she had known! She had tried to put the thing far
from her--to throw the responsibility for it upon her reluctance to
hurt Rachel. But she had known. And now her punishment was beginning.
She bowed her head upon her hands and covered her face.
“You came,” the girl’s voice went on, “because you hated leaving
Adrian. But Adrian doesn’t want you any more now. He wants Philippa. Do
you know, Nance, I believe he’d marry Philippa, if he could--if Brand
would let him!”
The hands that hid Nance’s face trembled. She longed to run away
and sob her heart out. She had thought she was at the bottom of all
possible misery. She had never expected this. Linda, as if drawing
inspiration for the suffering she inflicted, continued to look Flambard
in the eyes.
“Brand told me Philippa meets Adrian every night in the park. He said
he spied on them once and found them kissing each other. He said they
were leaning against one of the oak trees and Adrian bent her head back
against the trunk and kissed her like that. He showed me just how he
did it. And he made me laugh like anything afterwards by something else
he said. But I don’t think I’ll tell you that--unless you want to hear
very much--Do you want to hear?”
Nance, at this moment, lifted up her head. She had a look in her eyes
that nothing except the inexhaustible pitilessness of a woman thwarted
in her passion could have endured without being melted.
“Are you trying to kill me, Linda?” she murmured.
Her sister gave her one quick glance and looked away again at Flambard.
She remained silent after that, while the French clock ticked out the
seconds with a jocular malignity.
The wind, rising steadily, swept large drops of rain against the window
and the noise of the waves which it brought with it sounded louder and
clearer than before as if the sea itself had advanced several leagues
across the land since first they entered the house.
XII
HAMISH TRAHERNE
Nance said nothing to Rachel Doorm on the night they returned, driven
home by the landlord of the Admiral’s Head. What Rachel feared, or
what she imagined, as the sisters entered the house in their thin
attire carrying the bundle of drenched clothes, it was impossible to
surmise. She occupied herself with lighting a fire in their room and
while they undressed she brought them up their supper with her own
hands. It was a wretched night for both of the sisters and few were the
words exchanged between them as they ate their meal. Once in bed and
the light extinguished, it was Nance, in spite of all, who fell asleep
first. “The pangs of despised love” have not the same corrosive poison
as the sting of passion embittered by rancour.
Nance was up early and took her breakfast alone. She felt an
irresistible need to see Mr. Traherne. She arrived at the priest’s
house almost as early as she had done on a former occasion, only
this time, the day being overcast and the wind high, he received her
within-doors. She found him reading “Don Quixote” and, without giving
her time to speak, he made her listen to the gentle and magnanimous
story of the poor knight’s death.
“There’s no book,” he said, when he had finished, “which so recovers
my spirits as this one. Cervantes is the noblest soul of them all and
the bravest. He’s the only author who never gives up his humility
before God or his pride before the Universe. He’s the author for me!
He’s the author for us poor priests!”
Mr. Traherne lit a cigarette and looked at Nance through its smoke with
a grotesque scowl of infinite reassurance.
“Cheer up, little one!” he said, “the spirit of the great Cervantes is
not dead in the world. God has not deserted us. Nothing can hurt us
while we hold to Christ and defy the Devil!”
Nance smiled at him. The conviction with which he spoke was like a cup
of refreshing water to her in a dry desert.
“Mr. Traherne,” she began, but he interrupted her with a wave of his
arm.
“My name’s Hamish,” he said.
“Hamish, then,” she went on, smiling at the ghoulish countenance before
her, round which the cigarette smoke ascended like incense about the
head of an idol, “I’ve more to tell you than I can say. So you must
listen and be very good to me!”
He settled himself in his deep horse-hair chair with one leg over the
other and his ancient, deplorably-stained cassock over both. And she
poured forth the full history of her troubles, omitting nothing--except
one or two of Linda’s cruel speeches. When she had completed her tale
she surveyed him anxiously. One terrible fear made her heart beat--the
fear lest he should tell her she must carry Linda back to London. He
seemed to read her thoughts in her eyes. “One thing,” he began, “is
quite clear. You must both of you leave Dyke House. Don’t look so
scared, child. I don’t mean you must leave Rodmoor. You can’t kidnap
your sister by force and nothing short of force would get her, in her
present mood, to go away with you. But I think--I think,” he added, “we
could persuade her to leave Miss Doorm.”
He straightened out his legs, puckered his forehead and pouted his
thick lips.
“Have a strawberry,” he said suddenly, reaching with his hand for a
plate lying amid a litter of books and papers, and stretching it out
towards her. “Oh, there are ashes on it. I’m sorry! But the fruit’s
all right. There! keep it by you--on the floor--anywhere--and help
yourself!”
He once more subsided into his chair and frowned thoughtfully. Nance,
with a smile of infinite relief--for had he not said that to leave
Rodmoor was impossible?--kept the plate on her lap and began eating
the fruit. She longed to blow the ashes away but fear of hurting his
feelings restrained her. She brushed each strawberry surreptitiously
with the tips of her fingers before lifting it to her mouth.
“You’re not cold, are you?” he said suddenly, “because I _could_ light
a fire.”
Nance looked at the tiny grate filled with a heap of bracken-leaves and
wondered how this would be achieved.
“Oh, no!” she said, smiling again. “I’m perfectly warm.”
“Then, if you don’t mind,” he added, making the most alarming grimace,
“pull your skirt down. I can see your ankles.”
Nance hurriedly drew up her feet and tucked them under her. “All right
now?” she asked, with a faint flush.
“Sorry, my dear,” said Hamish Traherne, “but you must remember I’m a
lonely monk and ankles as pretty as yours disturb my mind.” He glared
at her so humorously and benevolently that Nance could not be angry
with him. There was something so boyish in his candour that it would
have seemed inhuman to take offence.
“I believe I could think better if I had Ricoletto,” he cried a moment
later, jumping up and leaving the room. Nance took the opportunity of
blowing every trace of cigarette-ash from her strawberry plate into the
fender. She had hardly done this and demurely tucked herself up again
in her chair when Mr. Traherne re-entered the room carrying in his
hands a large white rat.
“Beautiful, isn’t he?” he remarked, offering the animal for the girl
to stroke. “I love him. He inspires me with all my sermons. He pities
the human race, don’t you, Ricoletto? And doesn’t hate a living thing
except cats. He has a seraphic temper and no wish to marry. Ankles are
nothing to him--are they, Ricoletto?--but he likes potatoes.”
As he spoke the priest brushed aside a heap of papers and laid bare the
half-gnawed skin of one of these vegetables.
“Come, darling!” he said, reseating himself in his chair and placing
rat and potato-skin together upon his shoulder, “enjoy yourself and
give me wisdom to defeat the wiles of all the devils. Devils are cats,
Ricoletto darling, great, fluffy, purring cats with eyes as big as
saucers.”
Nance quietly went on eating strawberries and thinking to herself how
strange it was that with every conceivable anxiety tugging at her
heart she could feel such a sense of peace.
“He’s a papistical rat,” remarked Mr. Traherne, “he likes incense.”
Once more he relapsed into profound thought and Ricoletto’s movements
made the only sound in the room.
“What you want, my child,” he began at last, while the girl put her
plate down on the table and hung upon his words, “is lodgings for
yourself and Linda in the village. I know an excellent woman who’d take
you in--quite close to Miss Pontifex and not far from our dear Raughty.
In fact, she’s the woman who cleans Fingal’s rooms. So that’s all in
her favour! Fingal has a genius for getting nice people about him. You
like Fingal, Nance, eh? But I know you do, and I know,” and the priest
made the most outrageous grimace, “I know he adores _you_. You’re
perfectly safe, let me tell you, with Fingal, my dear; however, he may
tease you. He’s a hopeless heathen but he has a heart of gold.”
Nance nodded complete assent to the priest’s words. She smiled,
however, to herself to think what a little way this “safety” he spoke
of would go if by chance her heart were not so entirely preoccupied.
She couldn’t resist the thought of how pathetically like children
all these admirable men were, both in their frailties and in their
struggles against their frailties. Her sense of peace and security
grew upon her, and with this--for she was human--a delicate feeling of
feminine power. Mr. Traherne continued--
“Yes, you must take lodgings in the village. Eighteen shillings a
week--that was what that Pontifex woman promised you, wasn’t it?--won’t
be over much for two of you. But it’ll keep you alive. Wait, though,
wait! I don’t see why Linda shouldn’t play for us, up here, on Sundays.
I’m always having to go round begging for some one. Often I have to
be organist myself as well as priest. Yes--let her try--let her try!
It’ll help me to keep an eye on her. It’ll be a distraction for her.
Yes, let her try! I could give her a little for doing it--not what she
ought to have, of course, but a little, enough to make her feel she was
helping you in your housekeeping. Yes,” he clapped his hands together
so violently that Ricoletto scrambled up against his collar and clung
there with his paws. “Yes, that’s what we’ll do, my dear. We’ll turn
your sister into a regular organist. Music’s the best charm in the
world to drive away devils, isn’t it, Ricoletto? Better even than white
rats.”
Nance looked at him with immense gratitude and, completely forgetting
his instructions, altered her position to what it had been before. Mr.
Traherne rose and, turning his back to her, drummed with his fingers
on the mantelpiece while Ricoletto struggled desperately to retain his
balance.
A queer thought came suddenly into Nance’s head and she asked the
priest why it was that there were so many unmarried men in Rodmoor. He
swung round at that and gave her a most goblinish look, rubbing the
rat’s nose as he did so, against his cheek.
“You go far, Nance, you go far with your questions. As a matter of
fact, I’ve sometimes asked myself that very thing. You’re quite right,
you know, perfectly right. It applies to the work-people here as much
as to the gentry. We must see what Fingal Raughty says. He’d laugh at
my explanation.”
“What’s your explanation?” enquired the girl.
“A very simple one,” returned the priest. “It’s the effect of the
sea. If you look at the plants which grow here you’ll understand
better what I mean. But you haven’t seen the plant yet which is most
of all characteristic of Rodmoor. It’ll be out soon and I’ll show it
to you. The yellow horned poppy! When you see that, Nance,--and it’s
the devil’s own flower, I can assure you!--you’ll realize that there’s
something in this place that tends to the abnormal and the perverse.
I don’t say that the devil isn’t active enough everywhere and I don’t
say that all married people are exempt from his attacks. But the fact
remains that the Rodmoor air has something about it, something that
makes it difficult for those who come under its influence to remain
quite simple and natural. We should grow insane ourselves--shouldn’t
we, old rat? shouldn’t we, my white beauty?--if it weren’t that we
had the church to pray in and ‘Don Quixote’ to read! I don’t want
to frighten you, Nance, and I pray earnestly that your Adrian will
shake off, like King Saul, the devil that troubles him. But Rodmoor
isn’t the place to come to unless you have a double share of sound
nerves, or a bottomless fund of natural goodness--like our friend
Fingal Raughty. It’s absurd not to recognize that human beings, like
plants and animals, are subject to all manner of physical influences.
Nature can be terribly malign in her tricks upon us. She can encourage
our tendencies to morbid evil just as she can produce the horned
yellow poppy. The only thing for us to do is to hold fast to a power
completely beyond Nature which can come in from outside, Nance--from
outside!--and change everything.”
While Nance listened to Mr. Traherne’s discourse with a portion of her
mind, another part of it reverted to Linda and as soon as he paused she
broke in.
“Can’t we do anything, anything at all, to stop Mr. Renshaw from seeing
my sister?”