Rodmoor (34 page)

A light, burning behind heavy curtains, in one of the lower mullioned windows, enabled them to mount the steps. As she rang the bell, a second peal of thunder, but this time farther off, was followed by a vivid flash of lightning, throwing into relief the wide spaces of the park and the scattered groups of monumental oak trees. For some queer psychic reason,
inexplicable
to any material analysis, Nance at that
moment
saw clearly before her mind’s eye, a little church almanac, which Linda had pinned up above their dressing-table, and on this almanac she saw the date—the twenty-eighth of October—printed in Roman
figures
.

To the servant who opened the door Nance gave their names, and asked whether they could see Mr. Renshaw.
“
Mr
. Renshaw,” she added emphatically, “and please tell him it’s an urgent and important matter.”

The man admitted them courteously and asked them to seat themselves in the entrance hall while he went to look for his master. He returned after a short time and ushered them into the library, where a moment later Brand joined them.

During their moment of waiting, both in the hall and in the room, Sorio had remained taciturn and inert, sunk in a fit of melancholy brooding, his chin propped on the handle of his stick. He had refused to allow the servant to take out of his hands either his stick or his hat, and he still held them both, doggedly and gloomily, as he sat by Nance’s side opposite the carved
fireplace
.

When Brand entered they both rose, but he motioned them to remain seated, and drawing up a chair for
himself
close by the side of the hearth, looked gravely and intently into their faces.

At that moment another rolling vibration of thunder reached them, but this time it seemed to come from very far away, perhaps from several miles out to sea.

Brand’s opening words were accompanied by a fierce lashing of rain against the window, and a spluttering, hissing noise, as several heavy drops fell through the old-fashioned chimney upon the burning logs.

“I think I can guess,” he said, “why you two have come to me. I am glad you have come, especially you, Miss Herrick, as it simplifies things a great deal. It has become necessary that you and I should have an explanation. I owe it to myself as well as to you. Bah! What nonsense I’m talking. It isn’t a case of ‘owing.’ It isn’t a case of ‘explaining.’ I can see
that clearly enough”—he laughed a genial boyish laugh—“in your two faces! It’s a case of our own deciding, with all the issues of the future clearly in mind, what will be really best for your sister’s
happiness
.”

“She has not sent—” began Nance hurriedly.

“What you’ve got to understand—you
Renshaw
—” muttered Adrian, in a strange hoarse voice, clenching and unclenching his fingers.

Brand interrupted them both. “Pardon me,” he cried, “you do not wish, I suppose, either of you, to cause any serious shock to my mother? It’s absurd of her, of course, and old-fashioned, and all that sort of thing; but it would actually
kill
her—” he lose as he spoke and uttered the words clearly and firmly. “It would actually
kill
her to get any hint of what we’re discussing now. So, if you’ve no objection, we’ll
continue
this discussion in the work-shop.” He moved towards the door.

Sorio followed him with a rapid stride. “You must understand, Renshaw—” he began.

“If it’ll hurt your mother so,” cried Nance
hurriedly
, “what must Linda be suffering? You didn’t think of this, Mr. Renshaw, when you—”

Brand swung round on his heel. “You shall say all this to me, all that you wish to say—everything, do you hear, everything! Only it must and
shall
be where she cannot overhear us. Wait till we’re alone. We shall be alone in the work-shop.”

“If this ‘work-shop’ of yours,” muttered Sorio savagely, seizing him by the arm, “turns out to be one of your English tricks, you’d better—”

“Silence, you fool!” whispered the other. “Can’t
you stop him, Miss Herrick? It’ll be pure murder if my mother hears this!” 

Nance came quickly between them. “Lead on, Mr. Renshaw,” she said. “We’ll follow you.”

He led them across the hall and down a long dimly lit passage. At the end of this there was a heavily panelled door. Brand took a key from his pocket and after some ineffectual attempts turned the lock and stood aside to let them enter. He closed the door
behind
them, leaving the key on the outside. The “
workshop
” Brand had spoken of turned out to be nothing more or less than the old private chapel of Oakguard, disassociated, however, for centuries from any
religious
use.

Nance glanced up at the carved ceiling, supported on foliated corbels. The windows, high up from the ground, were filled with Gothic tracery, but in place of biblical scenes their diamonded panes showed the
armorial
insignia of generations of ancient Renshaws. There was a raised space at the east end, where, in
former
times, the altar stood, but now, in place of an altar, a carpenter’s table occupied the central position,
covered
with a litter of laths and wood-chippings. The middle portion of the chapel was bare and empty, but several low cane chairs stood round this space, like seats round a toy coliseum.

Brand indicated these chairs to his visitors, but neither Nance nor Sorio seemed inclined to avail
themselves
of the opportunity to rest. They all three, therefore, stood together, on the dark polished oak floor.

On first entering the chapel, Brand had lit one of a long row of tapers that stood in wooden candlesticks
along the edge of what resembled choir stalls. Now, leaving his companions, he proceeded very deliberately to set light to the whole line of these. The place thus illuminated had a look strangely weird and confused.

Certain broken flower-pots on the ground, and one or two rusty gardening implements, combined with the presence of the wicker-chairs to produce the impression of some sort of “Petit Trianon,” or manorial
summer-house
, into which all manner of nondescript rubbish had in process of long years come to drift.

The coats-of-arms in the windows above, as the tapers flung their light upon them, had an air almost “collegiate,” as if the chamber were some ancient
dining
-hall of a monastic order. The carpenter’s table upon the raised dais, with some dimly coloured
Italianated
picture behind it, inserted in the panelling, gave Nance a most odd sensation. Where had she seen an effect of that kind before? In a picture—or in reality?

But the girl had no heart to analyse her emotions. There was too much at stake. The rain, pattering heavily on the roof of the building, seemed to remind her of her task. She faced Brand resolutely as he strolled back towards them across the polished floor.

“Linda has told me everything,” she said. “She is going to have a child, and you, Mr. Renshaw, are the father of it.”

Sorio made an inarticulate exclamation and
approached
Brand threateningly. But the latter,
disregarding
him, continued to look Nance straight in the face.

“Miss Herrick,” he said quietly, “you are a sensible woman and not one, I think, liable to hysteric
sentimentalism
.
I want to discuss this thing quite freely and openly with you, but I would greatly prefer it if your husband—I beg your pardon—if Mr. Sorio would let us talk without interrupting. I haven’t got unlimited time. My mother and sister will be both waiting dinner for me and sending people to find me, perhaps even coming themselves. So it’s obviously in the interests of all of us—particularly of Linda—that we should not waste time in any mock heroics.”

Nance turned quickly to her betrothed. “You’ll hear all we say, Adrian, but if it makes things easier, perhaps—”

Without a word, in mute obedience to her sad smile, Sorio left their side, and drawing back, seated himself in one of the wicker chairs, hugging his heavy stick between his knees.

The rain continued falling without intermission upon the leaden roof, and from a pipe above one of the windows they could hear a great jet of water splashing down outside the wall.

Brand spoke in a low hurried tone, without
embarrassment
and without any sort of shame. “Yes, Miss Herrick, what she says is quite true. But now come down to the facts, without any of this moral
vituperation
, which only clouds the issues. You have, no doubt, come here with the idea of asking me to marry Linda. No! Don’t interrupt me. Let me finish. But I want to ask you this—how do you know that if I marry Linda, she’ll be
really
any happier than she is to-day? Suppose I were to say to you that I would marry her—marry her to-morrow—would
that
, when you come to think it over in cold blood, really make you happy in your mind about her future?

“Come, Miss Herrick! Put aside for a moment your natural anger against me. Grant what you please as to my being a dangerous character and a bad man, does that make me a suitable husband for your sister? Your instinct is a common instinct—the natural first instinct of any protector of an injured girl, but is it one that will stand the light of quiet and
reasonable
second thoughts?

“I am, let us say, a selfish and unscrupulous man who has seduced a young girl. Very well! You want to punish me for my ill-conduct, and how do you go about it? By giving up your sister into my hands! By giving up to me—a cruel and unscrupulous wretch, at your own showing—the one thing you love best in the world! Is that a punishment such as I
deserve
? In one moment you take away all my remorse, for no one remains remorseful
after
he has been
punished
. And you give my victim up—bound hand and foot—into my hands.

“Linda may love me enough to be glad to marry me, quite apart from the question of her good fame. But will you, who probably know me better than Linda, feel happy at leaving her in my hands? Your idea may be that I should marry her and then let her go. But suppose I wouldn’t consent to let her go? And
suppose
she wouldn’t consent to leave me?

“There we are—tied together for life—and she as the weaker of the two the one to suffer for the ill-fated bargain!
That
will not have been a punishment for me, Nance Herrick, nor will it have been a
compensation
for her. It will simply have worked out as a temporary boredom to one of us, and as miserable wretchedness to the other!

“Is that what you wish to bring about by this
interference
on her behalf? It’s absurd to pretend that you think of me as a mere hot-headed amorist, desperately in love with Linda, as she is with me, and that, by marrying us, you are smoothing out her path and
settling
her down happily for the rest of her life. You think of me as a cold-blooded selfish sensualist, and to punish me for being what I am, you propose to put Linda’s entire happiness absolutely in my hands!

“Of course, I speak to you like this knowing that, whatever your feelings are, you have the instincts of a lady. A different type of woman from yourself would consider merely the worldly aspect of the matter and the advantage to your sister of becoming mistress of Oakguard.
That
, I know, does not enter, for one
moment
, into your thoughts, any more than it enters into hers. I am not ironical in saying this. I am not
insulting
you. I am speaking simply the truth.

“Forgive me, Miss Herrick! Even to mention such a thing is unworthy of either of us. I am, as you quite justly realize—and probably more than you realize—what the world calls unscrupulous. But no one has ever accused me of truckling to public opinion or social position. I care nothing for those things, any more than you do or Linda does. As far as those things go I would marry her to-morrow. My mother, as you doubtless know, hopes that I
shall
marry her—wishes and prays for it. My mother has never given a thought, and never will give a thought, to the opinion of the world. It isn’t in her nature, as no doubt you quite realize. We Renshaws have always gone our own way, and done what we pleased. My father did—Philippa does; and I do.

“Come, Miss Herrick! Try for a moment to put your anger against me out of the question. Suppose you did induce me to marry Linda, and Linda to marry me, does that mean that you make me change my
nature
? We Renshaws never change and
I
never shall, you may be perfectly sure of that! I
couldn’t
even if I wanted to. My blood, my race, my father’s instincts in me, go too deep. We’re an evil tribe, Nance
Herrick
, an evil tribe, and especially are we evil in our
relations
with women. Some families are like that, you know! It’s a sort of tradition with them. And it is so with us. It may be some dark old strain of Viking blood, the blood of the race that burnt the monasteries in the days of Æthelred the Unready! On the other hand it may be some unaccountable twist in our brains, due—as Fingal says—to—oh! to God knows what!

“Let it go! It doesn’t matter what it is; and I daresay you think me a grotesque hypocrite for
bringing
such a matter into it at all. Well! Let it go! There’s really no need to drag in Æthelred the Unready! What you and I have to do, Miss Herrick, is, seriously and quietly, without passion or violence, to discuss what’s best for your sister’s happiness. Put my punishment out of your mind for the present—that can come later. Your friend Mr. Sorio will be only too pleased to deal with that! The point for us to consider, for us who both love your sister, is, what will really be happiest for her in the long run—and I can assure you that no woman who ever lived could be happy long tied hand and foot to a Renshaw.

“Look at my mother! Does she suggest a person who has had a happy life? I tell you she would give all she has ever enjoyed here—every stick and stone
of Oakguard—never to have set eyes on my father—never to have given birth to Philippa or to me! We Renshaws may have our good qualities—God knows what they are—but we may have them. But one thing is certain. We are worse than the very devil for any woman who to live with us! It’s in our blood, I tell you. We can’t help it. We’re made to drive women mad—to drive them into their graves!”