her by the strength of his arms. To hear him address her thus by
the name of her rival was such misery to Nance that she was hardly
conscious of the physical distress caused by his violence. It was still
worse when, relaxing the force of his grasp, he began to fondle and
caress her, stroking her face with his fingers and kissing her cheeks.
“Phil, my love, my darling!” he kept repeating, “please tell
me--please, please tell me, what it is I’ve forgotten!”
Nance suffered at that moment the extreme limit of what she was capable
of enduring. She dreaded every moment that Philippa herself would come
in. She dreaded the reappearance of the servants, perhaps with more
assistance, ready to separate them and carry Adrian away from her. To
feel his caresses and to know that in his wild thoughts they were not
meant for her at all--that was more, surely more, than God could have
intended her to suffer!
Suddenly she had an inspiration. “Is it Baptiste that you’ve forgotten?”
The word had an electrical effect upon him. He threw her off his lap
and leapt to his feet.
“Yes,” he cried savagely and wildly, the train of his thoughts
completely altered, “you’re all keeping him away from me! That’s what’s
at the bottom of it! You’ve hidden Nance from me and given me this
woman who looks like her but who can’t smile and laugh like my Nance,
to deceive me and betray me! I know you--you staring, white-faced,
frightened thing! _You_ don’t deceive me! _You_ don’t fool Adrian. I
know you. _You_ are not my Nance.”
She had staggered away, a few paces from him, when he first threw her
off, and now, with a heart-rending effort, she tried to smooth the
misery out of her face and to smile at him in her normal, natural way.
But the effort was a ghastly mockery. It was little wonder, seeing her
there, so lamentably trying to smile into his eyes, that he cried out
savagely: “That’s not my Nance’s smile. That’s the smile of a cunning
mask! You’ve hidden her away from me. Curse you all--you’ve hidden her
away from me--and Baptiste, too! Where is my Baptiste--you staring
white thing? Where is my Baptiste, you woman with a twisted mouth?”
He rushed fiercely towards her and seized her by the throat. “Tell
me what you’ve done with him,” he cried, shaking her to and fro, and
tightening his grasp upon her neck. “Tell me, you devil! Tell me, or
I’ll kill you.”
Nance’s brain clouded and darkened. Her senses grew confused and misty.
“He’s going to strangle me,” she thought, “and I don’t care! This pain
won’t last long, and it will be death from _his_ hand.”
All at once, however, in a sudden flash of blinding clearness,
she realized what this moment meant. If she let him murder her,
passively, unresistingly, what would become of him when she was dead?
Simultaneously with this thought something seemed to rise up, strong
and clear, from the depths of her being, something powerful and
fearless, ready to wrestle with fate to the very end.
“He shan’t kill me!” she thought. “I’ll live to save us both.” Tearing
frantically at his hands, she struggled backwards towards the open
door, dragging him with her. In his mad blood-lust he was horribly,
murderously strong; but this new life-impulse, springing from some
supernatural level in the girl’s being, proved still stronger. With one
tremendous wrench at his wrists she flung him from her; flung him away
with such violence that he slipped and fell to the ground.
In a moment she had rushed through the doorway and closed and locked
the heavy door behind her. Even at the very second she achieved this
and staggered faint and weak against the wall, what seemed to her
rapidly clouding senses a large concourse of noisy people carrying
flickering lights, swept about her. As they came upon her she sank to
the floor, her last impression being that of the great dark eyes of
Philippa Renshaw illuminated by an emotion which was beyond her power
of deciphering, an emotion in which her mind lost itself, as she tried
to understand it, in a deep impenetrable mist, that changed to absolute
darkness as she fainted away.
XXV
BALTAZAR STORK
The morning of the twenty-ninth of October crept slowly and greyly
through the windows of the sisters’ room. Linda had done her best to
forget her own trouble and to offer what she could of consolation and
hope to Nance. It was nearly three o’clock before the unhappy girl
found forgetfulness in sleep, and now with the first gleam of light she
was awake again.
The worst she could have anticipated was what had happened. Adrian
had been taken away--not recognizing any one--to that very Asylum
at Mundham which they had glanced at together with such ominous
forebodings. She herself--what else could she do?--had been forced to
sign her name to the official document which, before midnight fell upon
Oakguard, made legal his removal.
She had signed it--she shuddered now to think of her feelings at that
moment--below the name of Brand, who as a magistrate was officially
compelled to take the initiative in the repulsive business. Dr.
Raughty and Mr. Traherne, who had both been summoned to the house, had
signed that dreadful paper, too. Nance’s first impression on regaining
consciousness was that of the Doctor’s form bending anxiously over her.
She remembered how queer his face looked in the shadowy candle-light
and how gently he had stroked the back of her hand when she unclosed
her eyes, and what relief his expression had shown when she whispered
his name.
It was the Doctor who had driven her home at last, when the appalling
business was over and the people had come, with a motor car from
Mundham, and carried Adrian away. She had learnt from him that Brand’s
injuries were in no way serious and were likely to leave no lasting
hurt, beyond a deep scar on the forehead. His arms were bruised and
injured, Fingal told her, but neither of them was actually broken.
Hamish Traherne had gone with the Mundham people to the Asylum and
would spend the night there. He had promised Nance to come and see her
before noon and tell her everything.
She gathered also from Fingal that Philippa, showing unusual
promptitude and tact, had succeeded in keeping Mrs. Renshaw away, both
from the closed door of the chapel and from the bedside of Brand, until
the latter had recovered consciousness.
Nance, as her mind went over and over every detail of that hideous
evening, could not help thanking God that Adrian had at least been
spared the tragic burden of blood-guiltiness. As far as the law of the
land was concerned, he had only to recover his sanity and regain his
normal senses, to make his liberation easy and natural. There had been
no suggestion in the paper she had signed--and she had been especially
on the look-out for that--with regard to _criminal_ lunacy.
She sat up in bed and looked at her sister. Linda was sleeping as
peacefully as a child. The cold morning light gave her face a curious
pallor. Her long brown lashes lay motionless upon her cheeks, and from
her gently parted lips her breath came evenly and calmly.
Nance recalled the strange interview she had had with Brand before
Adrian flung himself between them. It was strange! Do what she could,
she could not feel towards that man anything but a deep unspeakable
pity. Had he magnetized her--her too--she wondered--with that
mysterious force in him, that force at once terrible and tender, which
so many women had found fatal? No--no! That, of course, was ridiculous.
That was unthinkable. Her heart was Adrian’s and Adrian’s alone. But
why, then, was it that she found herself not only pardoning him what
he had done but actually--in some inexplicable way--condoning it and
understanding it? Was she, too, losing her wits? Was she, too,--under
the influence of this disastrous place--forfeiting all sense of moral
proportion?
The man had seduced her sister, and had refused--_that_ remained
quite clearly as the prevailing impression of that wild interview
with him--definitely and obstinately to marry her, and yet, here was
she, her sister’s only protector in the world, softening in her heart
towards him and thinking of him with a sort of sentimental pity! Truly
the minds of mortal men and women contained mysteries past finding out!
She lay back once more upon her pillows and let the hours of the
morning flow over her head like softly murmuring waves. There is often,
especially in a country town, something soothing and refreshing beyond
words in the opening of an autumn day. In winter the light does not
arrive till the stir and noise and traffic of the streets has already,
so to speak, established itself. In summer the earlier hours are so
long and bright, that by the time the first movements of humanity
begin, the day has already been ravished of its pristine freshness
and grown jaded and garish. Early mornings in spring have a magical
and thrilling charm, but the very exuberance of joyous life then, the
clamorous excitement of birds and animals, the feverish uneasiness
and restlessness of human children, make it difficult to lie awake in
perfect receptivity, drinking in every sound and letting oneself be
rocked and lulled upon a languid tide of half-conscious dreaming.
Upon such a tide, however, Nance now lay, in spite of everything, and
let the vague murmurs and the familiar sounds flow over her, in soft
reiteration. That she should be able to lie like this, listening to the
rattle of the milkman’s cans and the crying of the sea-gulls and the
voices of newly-awakened bargemen higher up the river, and the lowing
of cattle from the marshes and the chirping of sparrows on the roof,
when all the while her lover was moaning, in horrible unconsciousness,
within those unspeakable walls, was itself, as she contemplated it in
cold blood, an atrocious trick of all-subverting Nature!
She looked at the misty sunlight, soft and mellow, which now began to
invade the room, and she marvelled at herself in a sort of bewildered
shame that she should not, at this crisis in her life, _be able to feel
more_. Was it that her experiences of the day before had so harrowed
her soul that she had no power of reaction left? Or was it--and upon
this thought she tried to fix her mind as the true explanation--that
the great underlying restorative forces were already dimly but
powerfully exerting themselves on behalf of Adrian, and on behalf of
her sister and herself?
She articulated the words “restorative forces” in the depths of her
mind, giving her thought this palpable definition; but as she did so
she was only too conscious of the presence of a mocking spirit there,
whose finger pointed derisively at the words as soon as she had imaged
them. Restorative forces? Were there such things in the world at all?
Was it not much more likely that what she felt at this moment was
nothing more than that sort of desperate calm which comes, with a kind
of numbing inertia, upon human beings, when they have been wrought upon
to the limit of their endurance? Was it not indeed rather a sign of
her helplessness, a sign that she had come now to the end of all her
powers, and could do no more than just stretch out her arms upon the
tide and lie back upon the dark waters, letting them bear her whither
they pleased--was it not rather a token of this, than of any inkling of
possible help at hand?
It was at that moment that amid the various sounds which reached her
ear, there came the clear joyous whistling of some boy apprentice,
occupied in removing the shutters from one of the shop-windows in
the street. The boy was whistling, casually and clumsily enough, but
still with a beautiful intonation, certain familiar strophes from the
Marseillaise. The great revolutionary tune echoed clear and strong over
the drowsy cobble-stones, between the narrow patient walls, and down
away towards the quiet harbour.
It was incredible the effect which this simple accident had upon the
mind of the girl. In one moment she had flung to the winds all thought
of submission to destiny--all idea of “lying back” upon fate. No
longer did she dream vaguely and helplessly of “restorative forces,”
somewhere, somehow, remotely active in her favour. The old, brave,
defiant, youthful spirit in her, the spirit of her father’s child,
leapt up, strong and vigorous in her heart and brain. No--no! Never
would she yield. Never would she submit. “_Allons, enfants!_” She would
fight to the end.
And then, all in a moment, she remembered Baptiste. Of course! That
was the thing to be done. Fool that she was not to have thought of it
before! She must send a cabled message to Adrian’s son. It was towards
Baptiste that his spirit was continually turning. It must be Baptiste
who should restore him to health!
It was not much after six o’clock when that boy’s whistling reached
her, but between then and the first moment of the opening of the post
office, her mind was in a whirl of hopeful thoughts.
As she stood waiting at the little stuccoed entrance for the door
to open, and watched with an almost humorous interest the nervous
expectancy of the most drooping, pallid, unhealthy and unfortunately
complexioned youth she had ever set eyes upon, she felt full of
strength and courage. Adrian had been ill before and had recovered. He
would recover now! She herself would bring him the news of Baptiste’s
coming. The mere news of it would help him.
There was a little garden just visible through some iron railings by
the side of the post office and above these railings and drooping
towards them so that it almost rested upon their spikes, was a fading
sunflower. The flower was so wilted and tattered that Nance had no
scruple about stretching her hand towards it and trying to pluck it
from its stem. She did this half-mechanically, full of her new hope, as
a child on its way to catch minnows in a freshly discovered brook might
pluck a handful of clover.
The sickly-looking youth--Nance couldn’t help longing to cover his face
with zinc-ointment; why did one _always_ meet people with dreadful
complexions in country post offices?--observing her efforts, extended
_his_ hand also, and together they pulled at the radiant derelict,
until they broke it off. When she held it in her hands, Nance felt a
little ashamed and sorry, for the tall mutilated stem stood up so stark
and raw with drops of white frothy sap oozing from it. She could not
help remembering how it was one of Adrian’s innocent superstitions to
be reluctant to pick flowers. However, it was done now. But what should
she do with this great globular orb of brown seeds with the scanty
yellow petals, like weary taper-flames, surrounding its circumference?
The lanky youth looked at her and smiled shyly. She met his eyes,
and observing his embarrassment, obviously tinged with unconcealed
admiration, she smiled back at him, a sweet friendly smile of humorous
camaraderie.
Apparently this was the first time in his life that a really beautiful
girl had ever smiled at him, for he blushed a deep purple-red all over
his face.
“I think, ma’am,” he stammered nervously, “I know who you are. I’ve
seen you with Mr. Stork.”
Nance’s face clouded. She regarded it as a bad omen to hear this name
mentioned. Her old mysterious terror of her friend’s friend rose
powerfully upon her. In some vague obscure way, she felt conscious
of his intimate association with all the forces in the world most
inimical to her and to her future.
Observing her look and a little bewildered by it, the youth rambled
helplessly on. “Mr. Stork has been a very good friend to me,” he
murmured. “He got me my job at Mr. Walpole’s--Walpole the saddler,
Miss. I should have had to have left mother if it hadn’t been for him.”
With a sudden impulse of girlish mischief, Nance placed in the boy’s
hand the great faded flower she was holding. “Put it into your
button-hole,” she said.
At that moment the door opened, and forgetting the boy, the sunflower,
and the ambiguous Mr. Stork, she hurried into the building, full of her
daring enterprise.
Her action seemed to remove from the youth’s thoughts whatever motive
he may have had in waiting for the opening of the office. Perhaps this
goddess-like apparition rendered commonplace and absurd some quaint
pictorial communication, smudgy and blotched, which now remained
unstamped in his coat-pocket. At any rate he slunk away, with long,
furtive, slouching strides, carrying the flower she had given him as
reverently as a religious-minded acolyte might carry a sacred vessel.
Meanwhile, Nance sent off her message, laying down on the counter
her half-sovereign with a docility that thrilled the young woman who
officiated there with awe and importance.
“Baptiste Sorio, fifteen West Eleventh Street, New York City,” the
message ran, “come at once; your father in serious mental trouble”; and
she signed it with her own name and address, and paid five shillings
more to secure an immediate reply.
Then, leaving the post office, she returned slowly and thoughtfully
to her lodging. The usual stir and movement of the beginning of the
day’s work filled the little street when she approached her room. Nance
could not help thinking how strange and curious it was that the stream
of life should thus go rolling forward with its eternal repetition of
little familiar usages, in spite of the desperation of this or the
other cruel personal drama.
Adrian might be moaning for his son in that Mundham house. Linda might
be fearing and dreading the results of her obsession. Philippa might
be tossing forth her elfish laugh upon the wind among the oak-trees.
She herself might be “lying back upon fate” or struggling to wrestle
with fate. What mattered any of these things to the people who sold and
bought and laughed and quarrelled and laboured and made love, as the
powers set in motion a new day, and the brisk puppets of a human town
began their diurnal dance?
It was not till late in the afternoon that Nance received an answer
to her message. She was alone when she opened it, Linda having gone
as usual, under her earnest persuasion, to practise in the church.
The message was brief and satisfactory: “Sailing to-morrow _Altrunia_
Liverpool six days boat Baptiste.”
So he would really be here--here in Rodmoor--in seven or eight days.
This was news for Adrian, if he had the power left to understand
anything! She folded the paper carefully and placed it in her purse.
Mr. Traherne had come to her about noon, bringing news that, on the
whole, was entirely reassuring. It seemed that Sorio had done little
else than sleep since his first entrance into the place; and both the
doctors there regarded this as the best possible sign.
Hamish explained to her that there were three degrees of
insanity--mania, melancholia, and dementia--and, from what he could
learn from his conversations with the doctors, this heavy access
of drowsiness ruled out of Adrian’s case the worst symptom of both
these latter possibilities. What they called “mania,” he explained to
her, was something quite curable and with nearly all the chances in
favour of recovery. It was really--he told her he had gathered from
them--“only a question of time.”
The priest had been careful to inquire as to the possibility of Nance
being allowed to visit her betrothed; but neither of the doctors seemed
to regard this, at any rate for the present, as at all desirable. He
cordially congratulated her, however, on having sent for Sorio’s son.
“Whatever happens,” he said, “it’s right and natural that _he_ should
be here with you.”
While Nance was thus engaged in “wrestling with fate,” a very different
mental drama was being enacted behind the closed windows of Baltazar’s
cottage.
Mr. Stork had not been permitted even to fall asleep before rumours
reached him that some startling event had occurred at Oakguard. Long
before midnight, by the simple method of dropping in at the bar of
the Admiral’s Head, he had picked up sufficient information to make
him decide against seeing any one that night. They had taken Sorio
away, and Mr. Renshaw had escaped from a prolonged struggle with the
demented man with the penalty of only a few bruises. Thus, with various
imaginative interpolations which he discounted as soon as he heard
them, Baltazar got from the gossips of the tavern a fair account of
what had occurred.
There was, indeed, so much excitement in Rodmoor over the event that,
for the first time in the memory of the oldest inhabitants, the
Admiral’s Head remained open two whole hours after legal closing time.
This was in part explained by the fact that the two representatives of
the law in the little town had been summoned to Oakguard to be ready
for any emergency.
It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon. Baltazar had found
himself with little appetite for either breakfast or lunch, and at this
moment, as he sat staring at a fireplace full of nothing but burnt out
ashes, his eyes had such dark lines below them that one might have
assumed that sleep as well as food had lost its savour for him in the
last twelve hours. By his side on a little table stood an untasted
glass of brandy, and at his feet in the fender lay innumerable, but in
many cases only half-smoked, cigarettes.
The impression which was now upon him was that of being one of
two human creatures left alive, those two alone, after some
world-destroying plague. He had the feeling that he had only to go
out into the street to come upon endless dead bodies strewn about, in
fantastic and horrible attitudes of death, and in various stages of
dissolution. It was his Adriano who alone was left alive. But he had
done something to him--so that he could only hear his voice without
being able to reach him.
“I must end this,” he said aloud; and then again, as if addressing
another person, “We must put an end to this, mustn’t we, Tassar?”
He rose to his feet and surveyed himself in one of his numerous
beautifully framed mirrors. He passed his slender fingers through his
fair curls and peered into his own eyes, opening the lids wide and
wrinkling his forehead. He smiled at himself then--a long strange
wanton smile--and turned away, shrugging his shoulders.
Then he moved straight up to the picture of the Venetian Secretary and
snapped his fingers at it. “You wait, you smirking ‘imp of fame’; you
wait a little! We’ll show you that you’re not so deep or so subtle
after all. You wait, Flambard, my boy, you wait a while; and we’ll show
you plots and counter-plots!”
Then without a word he went upstairs to his bathroom. “By Jove!” he
muttered to himself, “I begin to think Fingal’s right. The only place
in this Christian world where one can possess one’s soul in peace is
a tiled bathroom--only the tiles must be perfectly white,” he added,
after a pause.
He made an elaborate and careful toilet, brushing his hair with
exhaustive assiduity, and perfuming his hands and face. He dressed
himself in spotlessly clean linen and put on a suit that had never been
worn before. Even the shoes which he chose were elegant and new. He
took several minutes deciding what tie to wear and finally selected one
of a pale mauve colour. Then, with one final long and wistful glance
at himself, he kissed the tips of his fingers at his own image, and
stepped lightly down the stairs.
He paused for a moment in the little hall-way to select a cane from
the stick rack. He took an ebony one at last, with an engraved silver
knob bearing his own initials. There was something ghastly about the
deliberation with which he did all this, but it was ghastliness wasted
upon polished furniture and decrepit flies--unless every human house
conceals invisible watchers. He hesitated a little between a Panama hat
and one of some light-coloured cloth material, but finally selected the
former, toying carefully with its flexible rim before placing it upon
his head, and even when it was there giving it some final touches.
The absolute loneliness of the little house, broken only by an
occasional voice from the tavern door, became, during his last moments
there, a sort of passive accomplice to some nameless ritual. At length
he opened the door and let himself out.