Chapter V: Part 5

“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.

Suddenly Linda’s violence subsided. Two or three shuddering spasms 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?”

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.

XIII

DEPARTURE

After her talk with Mr. Traherne, Nance went straight to the village and visited the available lodging. She found the place quite reasonably adapted to her wishes and met with a genial, though a somewhat surprised reception from the woman of the house. It was arranged that the sisters should come to her that very evening, their more bulky possessions--and these were not, after all, very extensive--to follow them on the ensuing day, as suited the convenience of the local carrier. It remained for her to secure her sister’s agreement to this sudden change and to announce their departure to Rachel Doorm. The first of these undertakings proved easier than Nance had dared to hope.

During these morning hours Miss Doorm gave Linda hardly a moment of peace. She persecuted her with questions about the events of the preceding day and betrayed such malignant curiosity as to the progress of the love affair with Brand that she reduced the child to a condition bordering upon hysterical prostration. Linda finally took refuge in her own room under the excuse of changing her dress but even here she was not left alone. Lying on her bed, with loosened hair and wide-open, troubled eyes fixed upon the ceiling, she heard Rachel moving uneasily from room to room below like a revengeful ghost disappointed of its prey. The young girl put her fingers in her ears to keep this sound away. As she did so, her glance wandered to the window through which she could discern heavy dark clouds racing across the sky, pursued by a pitiless wind. She watched these clouds from where she lay and her agitated mind increased the strangeness of their ominous storm-blown shapes. Unable at last to endure the sight of them any longer she leapt to her feet and, with her long bare arms, pulled down the blind. To any one seeing her from outside as she did this she must have appeared like a hunted creature trying to shut out the world. Flinging herself upon her bed again she pressed her fingers once more into her ears. In crossing the room she had heard the heavy steps of her enemy ascending the staircase. Conscious of the vibration of these steps, even while she obliterated the sound they made, the young girl sat up and stared at the door. She could see it shake as the woman, trying the handle, found it locked against her.

Nothing is harder than to keep human ears closed by force when the faculty of human attention is strained to the uttermost. It was not long before she dropped her hands and then in a moment her whole soul concentrated itself upon listening. She heard Miss Doorm move away and walk heavily to the end of the passage. Then there was a long pause of deadly silence and then, tramp--tramp--tramp, she was back again.

“I won’t unlock the door! I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!” muttered the girl, and as if to make certain that her body obeyed her will she stretched herself out stiffly and clutched the iron bars above her head. She lay like this for some minutes, her lips parted, her eyes wildly alert and her breast rising and falling under her bodice.

Once more the door shook and she heard her name pronounced in a low clear-toned voice.

“Linda! Linda!” the voice repeated. “Linda! I must talk to you!”

Unable to endure the tension any longer and finding the dimness of the room more trying than the view of the sky, the girl ran to the window and pulled up the blind as hastily as she had pulled it down. She gazed out, pressing her face against the pane. The clouds, darker and more threatening than ever, followed one another across the heavens like a huge herd of monstrous beasts driven by invisible herdsmen. The Loon swirled and eddied between its banks, its waters a pale brownish colour and here and there, floating on its surface, pieces of seaweed drifted. The vast horizon of fens, stretching away towards Mundham, looked almost black under the sky and the tall pines of Oakguard seemed to bow their heads as if at the approach of some unknown menace.

The door continued to be shaken and the voice of Rachel Doorm never ceased its appeal. Linda went back to her bed and sat down upon it, propping her chin on her hands. There is something about the darkening of a house by day, under the weight of a threatened storm, that has more of what is ominous and evil in it than anything that can occur at night. The “demon that walketh by noonday” draws close to us at these times.

“Linda! Linda! Let me in! I want to speak to you,” pleaded the woman. The girl rose to her feet and, rushing to the door, unlocked it quickly. Returning to her bed she threw herself down on her face and remained motionless. Rachel Doorm entered and, seating herself close to Linda’s side, laid her hand upon the girl’s shoulder.

“Why haven’t you got on your frock?” she murmured. “Your arms must be cold as ice. Yes, so they are! Let me help you to dress as I used to in the old days.”

Linda drew herself away from her touch and with a convulsive jerk of her body turned over towards the wall.

“It’s a pity you didn’t think over everything,” Miss Doorm went on, “before you began this game with Mr. Renshaw. It’s begun to hurt you now, hasn’t it? Then why don’t you stop? Tell me that, Linda Herrick. Why don’t you stop and refuse to see him any more? What? You won’t answer me? I’ll answer for you then. You don’t stop now, you don’t draw back now, because you can’t! He’s got hold of you. You feel him even now--don’t you--tugging at your heart? Yes, you’re caught, my pretty bird, you’re caught. No more tossing up of your little chin and throwing back your head! No more teasing this one and that with your dainty ways--while you whistle them all down the wind. It’s you--you--that has to come now when some one else calls, and come quickly, too, wherever you may have run! How do you know he doesn’t want you now? How do you know he’s not waiting for you now over there by the pines? Take care, my girl! Mr. Renshaw isn’t a man you can play with, as you played with those boys in London. It’ll be you who’ll do the whining and crying this time. The day’s near when you’ll be on your knees to him begging and begging for what you’ll never get! Did you think that a chit of a child like you, just because you’ve got soft hair and white skin, could keep and hold a man like that?

“Don’t say afterwards that Rachel Doorm hadn’t warned you. I say to you now, give him up, let him go, hide yourself away from him! I say that--but I know very well you won’t do what I say. And you won’t do it because you can’t do it, because he’s got your little heart and your little body and your little soul in the palm of his hand! I can tell you what that means. I know why you press your hands against your breast and turn to the wall. I’ve done that in my time and turned and tossed, long nights, and got no comfort. And you’ll turn and toss, too, and call and call to the darkness and get no answer--just as I got none. Why don’t you leave him now, Linda, before it’s too late? Shall I tell you why you don’t? Because it’s too late already! Because he’s got you for good and all--got you forever and a day--just as some one, no matter who, got Rachel once upon a time!”

Her voice was interrupted by a sudden splashing of rain against the window and the loud moaning gust of a tremendous wind making all the casements of the house rattle.

“Where’s Nance?” cried the young girl, starting up and leaping from the bed. “I want Nance! I want to tell her something!”

At that moment there were voices below and the sound of a vehicle driven to the rear of the house. Miss Doorm left the room and ran down the stairs. Linda flung on the first dress that offered itself and going to the mirror began hastily tying up her hair. She had hardly finished when her sister entered. Nance stood on the threshold for a moment hesitating, and looking anxiously at the other. It was Linda who made the first movement.

“Take me away from here,” she gasped, flinging herself into her sister’s arms and embracing her passionately, “take me away from here!”

Nance returned the embrace with ardour but her thoughts whirled a mad dance through her brain. She had a momentary temptation to reveal at once her new plan and let her sister’s cry have no other answer. But her nobler instinct conquered.

“At once, at once! My darling,” she murmured. “Yes, oh, yes, let’s go at once! I’ve got some money and Mr. Traherne will send me some more. We’ll take the three o’clock train and be safe back in London before night. Oh, my darling, my darling! I’m so glad! We’ll begin a new life together--a new life.”

At the mention of the word “London” Linda’s arms relaxed their hold and her whole body stiffened.

“No,” she gasped, pushing her sister away and pressing her hand to her side, “no, Nance dear, I can’t do it. It would kill me. I should run away from you and come back here if I had to walk the whole way. I won’t see him. I won’t! I won’t! I won’t talk to him--I won’t let him love me--but I can’t go away from here. I can’t go back to London. I should get ill and die. I should want him so much that I should die. No, no, Nance darling, if you dragged me by force to London I should come back the next day somehow or another. I know I should--I feel it _here_--as she said.”

She kept her hand still pressed against her side and gazed into Nance’s face with a look of helpless pleading.

“We can find somewhere to live, you and I, without going far away, somewhere where we shan’t see _her_ any more--can’t we, Nance?”

It was then, and with a clear conscience now, that the elder girl, speaking hurriedly and softly, communicated the preparations she had made and the fact that they were free to leave Dyke House at any moment they chose.