quite understand,” he went on, “all that there is between her and me.
We touch one another _in the depths_, there’s no doubt about that, and
our boat takes us where there are no soundings, none at least that I’ve
ever made! We touch one another where that noise--oh, damn the wind! I
don’t mean the wind!--is absolutely still. Have _you_ ever reached a
point when you’ve got that noise out of your ears? No--you know very
well you haven’t! You were born hearing it--just as I was--and you’ll
die hearing it. But with her, just because she’s so afraid, so madly
afraid--do you understand?--I _have_ reached that point. I reached it
the other night when we were together. Yes! You may smile--you little
devil--but it’s quite true. She put it clear out of my head just as if
she’d driven the tide back!”
He stared at the cloud of faint blue smoke that floated up round his
sister’s white face and then he met her eyes again.
“Bah!” he flung out angrily. “What absurd nonsense it all is! We’ve
been living too long in this place, we Renshaws, that’s what’s the
matter with us! We ought to sell the confounded house and clear out
altogether! I will too, when mother dies. Yes, I will--brewery or no
brewery--and go off with Tassar to one of his foreign places. I’ll sell
the whole thing, the land and the business! It’s begun to get on my
nerves. It _must_ have got on my nerves, mustn’t it, when that simple
_break, break, break_, as mother’s absurd poem says of this damned sea,
sounds to me like the beating heart of something, of something whose
heart ought to be _stopped_ from beating!”
His voice which had risen to a loud pitch of excitement died away in a
sort of apologetic murmur.
“Sorry,” he muttered, “only don’t look at me like that, you girl.
There, clear off and sit further away! It’s that look of yours that
makes me talk in this silly fashion. God help us! I don’t blame that
foreign fellow for getting queer in his head. You’ve got something in
those eyes of yours, Philippa, that no living girl ought to be allowed
to have! Bah! You’ve made me talk like an absolute fool.”
Instead of moving away as she had been bidden, Philippa touched her
brother with a light caress. Never had she looked so entirely a
creature of the old perverse civilizations as she looked at that moment.
“Mother thinks you’re going to marry that girl,” she whispered, “but I
know better than that, and I’m always right in these things, am I not,
Brand darling?”
He fell back under her touch and the shadowy lines of his face
contracted. He presented the appearance of something withered and
crumpled. Her mocking smile still divided her curved lips, curved in
the subtle, archaic way as in the marbles of ancient Greece. Whatever
may have been the secret of her power over him, it manifested itself
now in the form of a spiritual cruelty which he found very difficult to
bear. He made a movement that was almost an appeal.
“Say I’m right, say I’m always right in these things!” she persisted.
But at that moment a diversion occurred, caused by the sudden entrance
of a large bat. The creature uttered a weird querulous cry, like the
cry of a newborn babe and went wheeling over their heads in desperate
rapid circles, beating against the book-case and the picture frames.
Presently, attracted by the light, it swooped down upon the flame of
the candle and in a moment had extinguished it, plunging the room into
complete darkness.
Philippa, with a low taunting laugh, ran across the room and wrapped
herself in one of the window curtains.
“Open the door and drive it out,” she cried. “Drive it out, I say! Are
you afraid of a thing like that?”
But Brand seemed either to have sunk into a kind of trance or to be too
absorbed in his thoughts to make any movement. He remained reclining in
his chair, silent and motionless.
The girl cautiously withdrew from her shelter and, fumbling about for
matches, at last found a box and struck a light. The bat flew past her
as she did so and whirled away into the night. She lit several candles
and held one of them close to her brother’s face. Thus illuminated,
Brand’s sinister countenance had the look of a mediæval wood-carving.
He might have been the protagonist of one of those old fantastic prints
representing Doctor Faustus after some hopeless struggle with his
master-slave.
“Take it away, you! Let me alone. I’ve talked too much to you already.
This is a hot night, eh? A hot night and the kind that sets a person
thinking. Bah! I’ve thought too much. It’s thinking that causes all
the devilries in the world. Thinking, and hearing hearts beating, that
ought to be stopped!”
He pushed her aside and rose, stretching himself and yawning.
“What’s the time? What? Only ten o’clock? How early mother must have
gone to bed! This is the kind of night in which people kill their
mothers. Yes, they do, Philippa. You needn’t peer at me like that! And
they do it when their mothers have daughters that look like you--just
like you at this very moment.”
He leaned against the back of a chair and watched her as she stood
negligently by the mantelpiece, her arm extended along its marble
surface.
“Why does mother always say these things to you about my marrying?” he
continued in a broken thick voice. “You lead her on to think of these
things and then when she comes out with them you bring them to me, to
make me angry with her. Tell me this, Philippa, why do you hate mother
so? Why did you have that look in your face just now when I talked of
killing her? What--would--you--Hang it all, girl, stop staring and
smiling at me like that or it’ll be you I’ll kill! Oh, Heaven above,
help us! This hot night will send us all into Bedlam!”
He suddenly stopped and began intently listening, his eyes on his
sister’s face. “Did you hear that?” he whispered huskily. “She’s
walking up and down the passage--walking in her slippers, that’s
why you can hardly hear her. Hush! Listen! She’ll go presently into
father’s room. She always does that in the end. What do you think she
does there, Philippa? Rummages about, I suppose, and opens and shuts
drawers and changes the pictures! What people we are! God--what people
we are! I suppose the sound of her doing all that irritates you till
your brain nearly bursts. It’s a strange thing, isn’t it, this family
life! Human beings like us weren’t meant to be stuck in a hole together
like wasps in a bottle. Listen! Do you hear that? She’s doing something
to his window now. A lot he cares, six feet under the clay! But it
shows how he holds her still, doesn’t it?” He made a gesture in the
direction of his father’s picture upon which the candle-light shone
clearly now, animating its heavy features.
“Do you know,” he continued solemnly, looking closely at his sister
again, “I believe one of these nights, when she walks up and down
like that, in her soft slippers, you’ll go straight up and kill her
yourself. Yes, I believe you listen like this every night till you
could put your fingers in your ears and scream.”
He moved across the room and, approaching his sister, shook her roughly
by the arm. Some psychic change in the atmosphere about them seemed to
have completely altered their relations.
“Confess--confess--you girl!” he muttered harshly. “Confess now--when
you go rushing off like that into the park it isn’t to see that foreign
fellow at all? It isn’t even to lie, as I know you love to do, touching
the stalks of the poison funguses with the tip of your tongue under the
oak trunks? It’s to escape from hearing her, that’s what it is! Confess
now. It’s to escape from hearing her!”
He suddenly relaxed his grasp and stood erect, listening intently. The
sweet heavy scent of magnolia petals floated in through the window and
somewhere--far off among the trees--a screech-owl uttered a broken
wail, followed by the flapping of wings. The clock in the hall outside
began striking the hour. Before each stroke a ponderous metallic
vibration trembled through the silent house.
“It’s only ten now,” he said. “The clock in here is fast.”
As he spoke there was a loud ring at the entrance door. The brother
and sister stared blankly at one another and then Philippa gave a
low unnatural laugh. “We might be criminals,” she whispered. They
instinctively assumed more easy and less dramatic positions and waited
in silence, while from the distant servants’ quarters some one came
to answer the summons. They heard the door opened and the sound of
suppressed voices in the hall. There was a moment’s pause, during which
Philippa looked mockingly and enquiringly at Brand.
“It’s our dear priest,” she whispered, “and some one else, too.”
“Surely the fool’s not going to try--” began Brand.
“Mr. Traherne and Dr. Raughty!” announced the servant, opening the
library door and holding it open while the visitors entered.
The clergyman advanced first. He shook hands with Brand and bowed with
old-fashioned courtesy to Philippa. Dr. Raughty, following him, shook
hands with Philippa and nodded nervously at her brother. The two men
sank into the seats offered them and accepted an invitation to smoke.
Brand moved to a side table and mixed for them, with an air of resigned
politeness, cool and appropriate drinks. He drank nothing himself,
however, but his sister, with a mocking apology to Mr. Traherne, lit
herself a cigarette.
“How’s the rat?” she began, throwing a teasing and provocative smile
upon the priest’s perturbed countenance.
“Out there,” he replied, emptying his glass at one gulp.
“What? In your coat pocket on such a night as this?”
Mr. Traherne put down his glass and inserted his huge workman’s fingers
into the bosom of his cassock.
“Nothing under this but a shirt,” he said. “Cassocks have no pockets.”
“Haven’t they?” laughed Brand. “They have something then where you can
put money. That is, unless you parsons are like kangaroos and have some
natural little orifice in which to hide the offerings of the faithful.”
“Is he happy always in your pocket?” enquired Philippa.
“Do you want me to see?” replied the priest, rising with a movement
that almost upset the table. “I’ll bring him in and I’ll make him go
scimble-scamble all about the room.”
The tone in which he uttered these words said, as plainly as words
could say, “You’re a pretty, silly, flirtatious piece of femininity!
You only talk about my rat for the sake of fooling me. You don’t
really care whether he’s happy in my pocket or not. It’s only out of
consideration for your silly nerves that I don’t play with him now.
And if you tease me an inch more I will, and make him run up your
petticoats, too!”
“Sit down again, Traherne,” said Brand, “and let me fill up your glass.
We’ll all visit the rat presently and find him some supper. Just at
present I’m anxious to know how things are in the village. I haven’t
been down that way for weeks.”
This was a direct challenge to the priest to come, without further
delay, to the matter of his visit. Hamish Traherne accepted it.
“We came really,” he said, “to see _you_, Renshaw. A little later,
perhaps before we go, we must have our conversation. We hardly expected
to have the pleasure of finding Miss Philippa sitting up so late.”
Dr. Raughty, who all this while had been watching with the most intense
delight the beauty of the girl’s white skin and scarlet lips and the
indescribable charm of her sinuous figure, now broke in impetuously.
“But it can wait! It can wait! Oh, please don’t go to bed yet, Miss
Renshaw. Look, your cigarette’s out! Throw it away and try one of
these. They’re French, they’re the yellow packets, I know you like
them. They’re what you smoked once when we were on the river--when you
caught that great perch.”
Philippa, who had risen to her feet at Traherne’s somewhat brusque
remark, came at once to the Doctor’s side.
“Oh, the perch,” she cried, “yes, I should think I do remember! You
insisted on killing it at once so that it shouldn’t jump back into
the water. You put your thumb into its mouth and bent back its head.
Oh, yes! That yellow packet brings it all back to me. I can smell the
sticky dough we tried to catch dace with afterwards and I can see the
look of your hands all smeared with blood and silver scales. Oh, that
was a lovely day, Doctor! Do you remember how you twisted those things,
bryony leaves they were, round my head when the others had gone? Do you
remember how you said you’d like to treat me as you treated the perch?
Do you remember how you ran after a dragon-fly or something?”
She stopped breathlessly and, balancing herself on the arm of the
Doctor’s chair, blew a great cloud of smoke over his head, filling the
room in a moment with the pungent odour of French tobacco.
Both Traherne and Brand regarded her with astonishment. She seemed to
have transformed herself and to have become a completely different
person. Her eyes shone with childish gaiety and when she laughed, as
she did a moment afterwards at some sally of the Doctor’s, there was
a ring of unforced, spontaneous merriment in the sound such as her
brother had not heard for many years. She continued to bend over Dr.
Raughty’s chair, covering them both in a thick cloud of cigarette
smoke, and the two of them soon became absorbed in some intricate
discussion concerning, as far as the others could make out, the
question of the best bait to be used for pike.
The priest took the opportunity of delivering himself of what was on
his mind.
“I’m afraid, Renshaw,” he said, “you’ve gone your own way in that
matter of Linda Herrick. No! Don’t deny it. You may not have seen her
as often as before our last conversation, but you’ve seen her. She’s
confessed as much to me herself. Now look here, Renshaw, you and I
have known one another for some good few years. How long is it, man?
Fifteen, twenty? It can’t be less. Long enough, anyway, for me to have
earned the right to speak quite plainly and I tell you this, you must
stop the whole business!”
His voice sank as he spoke to a formidable whisper. Brand glanced round
at the others but apparently they were quite preoccupied. Mr. Traherne
continued.
“The whole business, Renshaw! After this you must leave that child
absolutely alone. If you don’t--if you insist on going on seeing her--I
shall take strong measures with you. I shall--but I needn’t say any
more! I think you can make a pretty shrewd guess what I shall do.”
Brand received this solemn ultimatum in a way calculated to cause the
agitated man who addressed it to him a shock of complete bewilderment.
He yawned carelessly and stretched out his long arms.
“As you please, Hamish,” he said, “I’m perfectly ready not to see her.
In fact, I probably shouldn’t have seen her in any case. To tell you
the truth, I’ve got a bit sick of the whole thing. These young girls
are silly little feather-weights at best. It’s first one mood and then
another! You can’t be sure of them for two hours at a stretch. So it’s
all right, Hamish Traherne! I won’t interfere with her. You can make a
nun of her if you like--or whatever else you fancy. All I beg of you
is, don’t go round talking about me to your parishioners. Don’t talk
about me to Raughty! I don’t want my affairs discussed by any one--not
even by my friends. All right, my boy--you needn’t look at me like
that. You’ve known me, as you say, long enough to know what I am. So
there you are! You’ve had your answer and you’ve got my word. I don’t
mind even your calling it ‘the word of a gentleman’ as you did the
other night. You can call it what you like. I’m not going to see Linda
for a reason quite personal and private but if you like to make it a
favour to yourself that I don’t--well! throw that in, too!”
Hamish Traherne thrust his hand into his cassock thinking, for the
moment, that it was his well-worn ulster and that he would feel the
familiar form of Ricoletto.
It may be noted from this futile and unconscious gesture, how much
hangs in this world upon insignificant threads. Had the priest’s
fingers touched at that moment the silky coat of his little friend
he would have derived sufficient courage to ask his formidable host
point-blank whether, in leaving Linda in this way, he left her as
innocent and unharmed as when he crossed her path at the beginning.
Not having Ricoletto with him, however, and his fingers encountering
nothing but his own woolen shirt, he lacked the inspiration to carry
the matter to this conclusion. Thus, upon the trifling accident of a
tame rodent having been left outside a library or, if you will, upon an
eccentric parson having no pocket, depended the whole future of Linda
Herrick. For, had he put that question and had Brand confessed the
truth, the priest would undoubtedly, under every threat in his power,
have commanded him to marry her and it is possible, considering the
mood the man was in at that moment and considering also the nature of
the threat held over him, he would have bowed to the inevitable and
undertaken to do it.
The intricate and baffling complications of human life found further
illustration in the very nature of this mysterious threat hinted at so
darkly by Mr. Traherne. It was in reality--and Brand knew well that it
was--nothing more or less than the making clear to Mrs. Renshaw beyond
all question or doubt, of the actual character of the son she tried
so conscientiously to idealize. For some basic and profound reason,
inherent in his inmost nature, it was horrible to Brand to think of his
mother knowing him. She might suspect and _she might know that he knew
she suspected_, but to have the thing laid quite bare between them
would be to send a rending and shattering crack through the unconscious
hypocrisy of twenty years. For certain natures any drastic cleavage
of slowly built-up moral relations is worse than death. Brand would
have felt less remorse in being the cause of his mother’s death than
of being the cause of her knowing him as he really was. The matter of
Linda being thus settled between the two men, if the understanding
so reached could be regarded as settling it, they both turned round,
anxious for some distraction, to the quarter of the room where their
friends had been conversing. But Philippa and the Doctor were no longer
with them. Brand looked whimsically at the priest who, shrugging his
shoulders, poured himself out a third glass from the decanter on the
table. They then moved to the window which reached almost to the
ground. Stepping over its low ledge, they passed out upon the terrace.
They were at once aware of a change in the atmospheric conditions.
The veil of mist had entirely been swept away from the sky. The vast
expanse twinkled with bright stars and, far down among the trees, they
could discern the crescent form of the new moon.
Brand pulled towards him a spray of damask roses and inhaled their
sweetness. Then he turned to his companion and gave him an evil leer.
“The Doctor and Philippa have taken advantage of our absorbing
conversation,” he remarked.
“Nonsense, man, nonsense!” exclaimed the priest. “Raughty’s only
showing her some sort of moth or beetle. Can’t you stop your sneering
for once and look at things humanly and naturally?”
His words found their immediate justification. Turning the corner
of the house they discovered the two escaped ones on their knees by
the edge of the dew-drenched lawn watching the movements of a toad.
The Doctor was gently directing its advance with the stalk of a dead
geranium and Philippa was laughing as merrily as a little girl.
They now realized the cause of the disappearance of the sultriness and
the heat. From over the wide-stretching fens came, with strong steady
breath, the north-west wind. It came with a full deep coolness in it
which the plants and the trees seemed to drink from as out of some
immortal cistern. It brought with it the odour of immense marsh-lands
and fresh inland waters and as it bowed the trees and rustled over the
flower-beds, it seemed to obliterate and drive back all indications of
their nearness to the sea.
Raughty and Philippa rose to their feet at the approach of their
friends.
“Doctor,” said Brand, “what’s the name of that great star over
there--or planet--or whatever it is?”
They all surveyed the portion of the sky he indicated and contemplated
the unknown luminary.
“I wish they’d taught me astronomy instead of Greek verses when I was
at school,” sighed Mr. Traherne.
“It’s Venus, I suppose,” remarked Dr. Raughty. “Isn’t it Venus,
Philippa?”
The girl looked from the men to the sky, and from the sky to the men.
“Well, you _are_ a set of wise fellows,” she cried, “not to know the
star which rules us all! And that’s _not_ Venus, Doctor! Don’t any of
you really know? Brand--you surely do? Well, I’ll tell you then, that’s
Jupiter, that’s the lord-star Jupiter!”
And she burst into a peal of ringing boyish laughter. Brand turned to
the Doctor, who had moved away to cast a final glance at the toad.
“What have you done to her, Fingal?” he called out. “She hasn’t laughed
like that for years.”
The only answer he received to this was an embarrassed cough, but when
they returned to the library and began looking at some of the more
interesting of the volumes in its shelves it was noticed by both Brand
and Mr. Traherne that the Doctor treated the young girl with a frank,
direct, simple and humorous friendliness as if completely oblivious of
her sex.
XX
RAVELSTON GRANGE
The hot weather continued with the intermission of only a few wet and
windy days all through the harvest. One Saturday afternoon Sorio, who
had arranged to take Nance by train to Mundham, loitered with Baltazar
at the head of the High Street waiting the girl’s appearance. She had
told him to meet her there rather than at her lodging because since the
occasion when they took refuge in the cottage it had been agitating to
her to see Linda and Baltazar together. She knew without any question
asked that for several weeks her sister had seen nothing of Brand and
she was extremely unwilling, now that the one danger seemed removed,
that the child should risk falling into another.
Nance herself had lately been seeing more of her friend’s friend than
she liked. It was difficult to avoid this, however, now that they lived
so near, especially as Mr. Stork’s leisure times between his journeys
to Mundham, coincided so exactly with her own hours of freedom from
work at the dressmaker’s. But the more she saw of Baltazar, the more
difficult she found it to tolerate him. With Brand, whenever chance
threw him across her path, she was always able to preserve a dignified
and conventional reserve. She saw that he knew how deep her indignation
on behalf of her sister went and she could not help respecting him for
the tact and discretion with which he accepted her tacit antagonism
and made any embarrassing clash between them easy to avoid. At the
bottom of her heart she had never felt any personal dislike of Brand
Renshaw, nor did that peculiar fear which he seemed to inspire in the
majority of those who knew him affect her in the least. She would have
experienced not the slightest trepidation in confronting him on her
sister’s behalf if circumstances demanded it and meanwhile she only
asked that they should be left in peace.