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 the
se 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.
“I’ve asked the man to put up the horse here for the afternoon,” she said, “so that we shall have time to collect the things we want. They’ll send for our trunks to-morrow.”
Linda’s relief at hearing this news was pathetic to see.
“Oh, you darling—you darling!” she cried, “I might have known you’d save me. I might have known it! Oh, Nance dear, it was horrid of me to say those things to you yesterday. I’ll be good now and do whatever you tell me. As long as I’m not far away from him—not too far—I won’t see him, or speak to him, or write to him! How sweet of Mr. Traherne to let me play the organ! And he’ll pay me, too, you say? So that I shall be helping you and not only be a burden?
Oh, my dear, what happiness, what happiness!”
Nance left her and descended to the kitchen to help Miss Doorm prepare their midday meal. The two women, as they busied themselves at their task, avoided any reference to the issue between them, and Nance wondered if the man from the Admiral’s Head, who now sat watching their preparations and speculating whether they intended to give him beer as well as meat, had intimated to Rachel the object of his delayed departure. When the meal was ready, Linda was summoned to share it and the thirsty ostler, sipping lemonade with a wry countenance, at a side table, was given the privilege of hearing how three feminine persons, their heads full of agitation and antipathy, could talk and laugh and eat as if everything in the wide world was smooth, safe, harmless and uninteresting.
When the meal was over Nance and Linda once more retired to their room and busied themselves with selecting from their modest possessions such articles as they considered it advisable to take with them. The rest they carefully packed away in their two leather trunks—trunks which bore the initials “N. H.” and “L. H.” and still had glued to their sides railway labels with the word “Swanage” upon them, reminiscent of their last seaside excursion with their father.
The afternoon slipped rapidly away and still the threatened storm hung suspended, the rain coming and going in fitful gusts of wind and the clouds racing along the sky. By six o’clock it became so dark that Nance was compelled to light candles. Their packing had been interrupted by eager low-voiced consultation as to how they would arrange their days when these were, for the first time in their lives, completely at their own disposal. No further reference had been made between them, either to Adrian or to Mr. Renshaw. The candles, flickering in the gusty wind, threw intermittent spots of light upon the girls’ figures as they stooped over their work or bent forward, on their knees, whispering and laughing. Not since either of them had arrived in Rodmoor had they been quite so happy. The relief at escaping from Dyke House lifted the atmosphere about them so materially that while they spoke of their lodging in the High Street and of the virtues of Mrs. Raps, Nance began to feel that Adrian would, after all, soon grow weary of Philippa and Linda began to dream that, in spite of all appearances, Brand’s attitude towards her was worthy of a man of honour.
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