Rodmoor (12 page)

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.

L
INDA 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 Pinturicchio, 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.