Rodmoor (13 page)

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 fire-place 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.

N
ANCE 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?”

The priest sighed heavily and screwed his face into a hundred grotesque wrinkles.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said. “It’s what I dread
doing
more than anything on earth, for, to tell you the honest truth, I’m a thorough coward in these things. But I’ll talk to him. I knew you were going to ask me to do that. I knew it directly you came here. I said to myself as soon as I saw you, ‘Hamish, my friend, you’ve got to face that man again,’ but I’ll do it, Nance. I’ll do it. Perhaps not to-day. Yes, I’ll do it to-day. He’ll be up at Oakguard this evening. I’ll go after supper. It’ll be precious little supper I’ll eat, Nance, but I’ll see him, I’ll see him!”

Nance showed her gratitude by giving him her hand and looking tenderly into his eyes. It was Mr.
Traherne
who first broke the spell and unclasped their
fingers
.

“You’re a good girl, my dear,” he muttered, “a good girl,” and he led her gently to the door.