Rodmoor (38 page)

Perhaps it had been all the while like this, the girl thought. Perhaps it was just this habitual intercourse with the Invisible which rendered her so entirely a votary of moonlight and of shadows, and so
unsympathetic
towards the sunshine and towards all genial normal expressions of natural humanity.

Nance had the sensation—when at last, with Linda at her side, she returned dreamily to the village—of having encountered some creature from a world
different
 
from ours, a world of grey vapours and shadowy margins, a world where the wraiths of the unborn meet the ghosts of the dead, a world where the “might-
have-been
” and the “never-to-be-again” weep together by the shores of Lethe.

The little party which assembled presently round a table in the bow-window of the Rodmoor confectioner’s proved a cheerful and happy one. The day was
Saturday
, so that the street was full of a quiet stir of people preparing to leave their shops and begin the weekly holiday. There was a vague feeling of delicate sadness, dreamy yet not unhappy, in the air, as though the year itself were pausing for a moment in its onward march towards the frosts of winter and gathering for the last time all its children, all its fading leaves and piled-up fruits and drooping flowers, into a hushed
maternal
embrace, an embrace of silent and everlasting farewell.

The sun shone gently and tenderly from a sky of a faint, sad, far-off blue—the sort of blue which, in the earlier and more reserved of Florentine painters, may be seen in the robes of Our Lady caught up to heaven out of a grave of lilies.

The sea was calm and motionless, its hardly stirring waves clearer and more translucent in their green depths than when blown upon by impatient winds or touched by shameless and glaring light.

A soft opalescent haze lay upon the houses,
turning
their gables, their chimneys, their porches, and their roofs, into a pearl-dim mystery of vague illusive forms; forms that might have arisen out of the “
perilous
sea” itself, on some “beachéd margent” woven of the stuff of dreams.

The queer old-fashioned ornaments of the room where the friends ate their meal took to themselves, as Nance in her dreamy emotion drew them into the circle of her thoughts, a singular and symbolic power. They seemed suggestive, these quaint things, of all that world of little casually accumulated mementoes and memories with which our troubled and turbulent humanity strews its path and fills the places of its passionate
sojourning
. Mother-of-pearl shells, faded antimacassars, china dogs, fruit under glass-cases, old faded
photographs
of long-since dead people, illuminated texts embroidered in bright wool, tarnished christening mugs of children that were now old women, portraits of celebrities from days when Victoria herself was in her cradle, all the sweet impossible bric-a-brac of a
tea-parlour
in a village shop surrounded them as they sat there, and thrilled at least two of their hearts—for Linda’s mood was as receptive and as sensitive as Nance’s—with an indescribable sense of the pathos of human life.

It was of “life”—in general terms—that Dr. Haughty was speaking, as the two young girls gave themselves up to the influence of the hour and played lightly with their food.

“It’s all nonsense,” the doctor cried, “this
confounded
perpetual pessimism! Why can’t these
people
read Rabelais and Montaigne, and drink noble wine out of great casks? Why can’t they choose from among the company of their friends gay and honest wenches and sport with them under pleasant trees? Why can’t they get married to comfortable and comely girls and regale themselves in cool and well-appointed kitchens?”

He helped himself as he spoke to another slice of salmon and sprinkled salt upon a plateful of tomatoes and lettuce.

“Whose pessimism are you talking about, Fingal?” inquired Nance, playing up to his humour.

“Don’t get it only for me,” Mr. Traherne cried, addressing the demure and freckled damsel who waited on them. “I’m asking for a glass of ale, Doctor. They can send out for it. But I don’t want it
unless
—”

The Doctor’s eyes shone across the table at him like soft lamps of sound antique wisdom. “Burton’s,” he exclaimed emphatically. “None of friend Renshaw’s stuff! Burton’s! And let it be that old dark
mahogany
-coloured liquor we drank once under the
elm-trees
at Ashbourne.”

The waitress regarded him with a coquettish smile. She laboured under the perpetual illusion that every word the Doctor uttered was some elaborate and
recondite
gallantry directed towards herself.

The conversation ran on in lively spasmodic
waywardness
. It was not long before the ale appeared, of the very body and colour suggested by the Doctor’s memories. Nance refused to touch it.

“Have some ginger-pop, instead, then,” murmured Fingal, pouring the brown ale into a china jug
decorated
with painted pansies. “Linda would like some of that, I know.”

The priest held out his glass in the direction of the jug.

“A thousand deep-sea devils—pardon me, Nance, dear!—carry off these pessimists,” went on the
Doctor
, filling up the clergyman’s glass and his own with
ritualistic solemnity while the little maid, the victim of an irrepressible laughing-fit, retired to fetch
ginger-beer
. “Let us remember how the great Voltaire served God and defended all honest people. Here’s to Voltaire’s memory and a fig for these neurotic scribblers who haven’t the gall to put out their tongues!” He raised his glass to his lips, his eyes shining with
humorous
enjoyment.

“What scribblers are you talking about?” inquired Nance, peeling a golden apple and glancing at the misty roofs through the window at her side.

“All of these twopenny-halfpenny moderns,” cried the Doctor, “who haven’t the gall in their stomachs to take the world by the scruff of its neck and lash out. A fig for them! Our poor dear Adrian, when he gets cured, will write something—you mark my words—that’ll make ’em stir themselves and sit up!”

“But Adrian is pessimistic too, isn’t he?” said Nance, looking wistfully at the speaker.

“Nonsense!” cried the Doctor. “Adrian has more Attic salt in him than you women guess. I believe,
myself
, that this book of his will be worthy to be put beside the ‘Thoughts ‘of Pascal. Have you ever seen Pascal’s face? He isn’t as good-looking as Adrian but he has the same intellectual fury.”

“What’s your opinion, Fingal,” remarked Mr.
Traherne
, peering anxiously into the pansied jug, “about the art of making life endurable?”

Dr. Raughty surveyed him with a placid and equable smile. “Courage and gaiety,” he said, “are the only recipe, and I don’t mind sprinkling these, in spite of our modern philosophers, with a little milk of human kindness.”

The priest nodded over what was left of his ale.
“De fructu operum tuorum, Domine, satiabitur terra: ut educas panem de terra, et vinum laetificet cor hominis; ut exhilaret faciem in oleo, et panis cor hominis
confirmet
,” he muttered, stretching out his long legs under the table and tilting back his chair.

“What the devil does all that mean?” asked the Doctor a little peevishly. “Can’t you praise God in simple English? Nance and I couldn’t catch a word except ‘wine’ and ‘bread’ and ‘oil.’”

Mr. Traherne looked unspeakably ashamed. “I’m sorry, Nance,” he murmured, sitting up very straight and pulling himself together. “It was out of place. It was rude. I’m not sure that it wasn’t profane. I’m sorry, Fingal!”

“It’s a beautiful afternoon,” said Nance, keeping her eyes on the little street, whose very pavements reflected the soft opalescent light which was spreading itself over Rodmoor.

“Ah!” cried Dr. Raughty, “we left
that
out in our summary of the compensations of life.
You
left that out, too, Hamish, from your ‘fructu’ and ‘panem’ and ‘vinum’ and the rest. But, after all, that is what we come back to in the end. The sky, the earth, the sea,—the great cool spaces of night—the sun, like a huge splendid god; the moon, like a sweet passionate nun; and the admirable stars, like gems in some great world-peacock’s tail—yes, my darlings, we come back to these in the end!”

He rose from his seat and with shining eyes surveyed his guests.

“By the body of Mistress Bacbuc,” he cried, in a loud voice, “we do wrong to sit here any longer! Let’s
go down to the sands and cool our heads. Here,
Maggie
! Madge! Marjorie! Where the deuce has that girl gone? There she is! Get me the bill, will you, and bring me a finger-bowl.”

Mr. Traherne laid his hand gently on the doctor’s arm. “I’m afraid we’ve been behaving badly, Fingal,” he whispered. “We’ve been drinking ale and
forgetting
our good manners. Do I look all right? I mean, do I look as if I’d been drinking mahogany-coloured Burton? Do I look as usual?”

The doctor surveyed him with grave intentness. “You look,” he said at last,” “something between Friar John and Bishop Berkeley. “He gave him a
little
push.” Go and talk to the girls while I buy them chocolates.”

Having paid the bill, he occupied himself in selecting with delicate nicety a little box of sweet-meats for each of his friends, choosing one for Nance with a picture of Leda and the Swan upon it and one for Linda with a portrait of the Empress Josephine.

As he leant over the counter, his eyes gleamed with a soft benignant ecstasy and he rallied the shop-woman about some heart-shaped confectionary adorned with blue ribbons.

Before Mr. Traherne rejoined them Nance had time to whisper to Linda, “They’re both a little excited, dear, but we needn’t notice it. They’ll be themselves in a moment. Men are all so babyish.”

Linda smiled faintly at this and nodded her head. She looked a little sad and a little pale.

Dr. Haughty soon appeared. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go down to the sea”; and in a low dreamy voice he murmured the following ditty:

Linda caught at Nance’s sleeve. “I think I’ll let you go without me,” she whispered. “I feel rather tired.”

Nance looked anxiously into her eyes. “I’d come back with you,” she murmured, “but it would hurt their feelings. You’d better lie down a little. I’ll be back soon.” Then, in a lower whisper, “They did it to cheer us up. They’re dear, absurd people. Take care of yourself, darling.”

Linda stood for a while after she had bidden them all good-bye and watched them move down the street. In the misty sunshine there was something very gentle and appealing about Nance’s girlish figure as she walked between the two men. They both seemed
talking
to her at the same time and, as they talked, they watched her face with affectionate and tender
admiration
.

“She treats them like children,” said Linda to
herself
. “That’s why they’re all so fond of her.”

She walked slowly back up the street; but instead of entering her house, she drifted languidly across the green and made her way towards the park gates.

She felt very lonely, just then—lonely and full of a heart-aching longing. If only she could catch one glimpse, just one, of the man who was so dear to her—of the man who was the father of her child.

She thought of Adrian’s recovery and she thought vaguely and wistfully of the coming of Baptiste. “I hope he will like us,” she said to herself. “I hope he will like us both.”

Hardly knowing what she did, she passed in through the gates and began moving up the avenue. All the tragic and passionate emotions associated with this place came over her like a rushing wave. She stopped and hesitated. Then with a pitiful effort to control her feelings, she turned and began retracing her steps.

Suddenly she stopped again, her heart beating wildly. Yes, there were footsteps approaching her from the direction of Oakguard. She looked around. Brand Renshaw himself was behind her, standing at a curve of the avenue, bareheaded, under an enormous pine. The horizontal sunlight piercing the foliage in front of him shone red on the trunk of the great tree and red on the man’s blood-coloured head.

She started towards him with a little gasping cry, like an animal that, after long wandering, catches sight of its hiding-place.

The man had stopped because he had seen her, and now when he saw her approaching him a convulsive tremor ran through his powerful frame. For one
second
he made a movement as if to meet her; but then, raising his long arms with a gesture as if at once
embracing
her and taking leave of her, he plunged into the shadows of the trees and was lost to view.

The girl stood where he had left her—stood as if turned to stone—for several long minutes, while over her head the misty sky looked down through the branches, and from the open spaces of the park came the harsh cry of sea-gulls flying towards the coast.

Then, with drooping head and dazed expressionless eyes, she walked slowly back, the way she had come.

A
FTER her encounter with Nance, Mrs.
Renshaw
, returning to Oakguard, informed both Philippa and Brand of the improvement in the condition of Adrian Sorio.

Philippa received the news quietly enough, conscious that the eyes of her brother were upon her; but as soon as she could get away, which was not till the
afternoon
was well advanced, she slipped off hastily and
directed
her steps, by a short cut through the park, to the Rodmoor railway-station. She had one fixed idea now in her mind—the idea of seeing Adrian and
talking
with him before any interview was allowed to the others.

She knew that her name and her prestige as the sister of the largest local landowner, would win her at any rate respectful consideration for anything she asked—and everything beyond that she left recklessly in the hands of fate.

Baltazar’s death had affected her more than she would herself have supposed possible. She had felt during these last days a sort of malignant envy of her mother, whose attitude towards her friend’s loss was so strange and abnormal.

Philippa, with her scarlet lips, her classic flesh, her Circean feverishness, suffered from her close
association
with this exultant mourner, as some heathen boy
robbed of his companion might have suffered from
contact
with a Christian visionary, for whom death was “far better.”

At this moment, however, as she hurried towards the station, it was not of Baltazar, it was of Adrian, and Adrian only, that she thought.

She dismissed the fact of Baptiste’s expected arrival with bitter contempt. Let the boy go to Nance if he pleased! After all, it was to herself—much more
intimately
than to Nance—that Adrian had confided his passionate idealization of his son and his savage craving for him.

Yes, it was to her he had confided this, and it was to her always, and never to Nance, that he spoke of his book and of his secret thoughts. Her
mind
was what Adrian wanted—her mind, her spirit, her imagination. These were things that Nance, with all her feminine ways, was never able to give him.

Why couldn’t she tear him from her now and from all these people?

Let these others be afraid of his madness. He was not mad to her. If he were, why then, she too, she who loved him and understood him, was mad!

From the long sloping spaces of the park, as she hurried on, she could see at intervals, through the misty sun-bathed trees, the mouth of the harbour, with its masts and shipping, and, beyond that, the sea itself.

Ah! the sea was the thing that had mingled their souls! The sea was the accomplice of their love!

Yes, he was hers—hers in the heights and the depths—and none of them should tear him from her!

All the whimpering human crowd of them, with their paltry pieties and vulgar prudence—how she would
love to strike them down and pass over them—over their upturned staring faces—until he and she were together!

Through the dreamy air, with its floating
gossamer-seeds
and faint smell of dead leaves, came to her, as she ran on, over the uneven ground, past rabbit-holes and bracken and clumps of furze, the far distant murmur of the waves on the sands. Yes! The sea was what had joined them; and, as long as that sound was in her ears, no power on earth could hold them apart!

She reached the station just in time. It was five minutes to five and the train left at the hour. Philippa secured a first-class ticket for herself and sank down exhausted in the empty compartment.

How long that five minutes seemed!

She was full of a fierce jealous dread lest any of Nance’s friends might be going that very evening to visit the patient.

She listened to the conversation of two lads on the platform near her carriage window. They were
speaking
of a great bonfire which was to be prepared that day, on the southern side of the harbour, to be set alight the following evening, in honour of the historic Fifth of November. In the tension of her nerves Philippa found herself repeating the quaint lines of the old refrain, associated in her mind with many childish memories.

And the question flashed through her mind as to what would have happened by the time that great spire of smoke and flame—she recalled the look of it so well!—rose up and drifted across the water. Would it be the welcoming signal to bring Baptiste to Rodmoor—to Rodmoor and to Adrian?

Two minutes more! She watched the hand upon the station-clock. It was slowly crossing the diminishing strip of white which separated it from the figure of the hour. Oh, these cruel signs, with their murderous moving fingers! Why must Love and Hope and
Despair
depend upon little patches of vanishing white,
between
black marks?

Off at last! And she made a little gasping noise in her throat as if she had swallowed that strip of white.

An hour later, as the November darkness was
closing
in, she passed through the iron gates into the Asylum garden. As she moved in, a small group of inmates of the Asylum, accompanied by a nurse, emerged from a secluded path. It was shadowy and obscure under those heavy trees, but led by the childish curiosity of the demented, these unfortunate persons, instead of obeying their attendant’s command, drifted waveringly towards her.

A movement took place among them like that
described
by Dante in his Inferno as occurring when some single soul, out of a procession of lost spirits, recognizes in the dubious twilight, a living figure from the upper air.

For the moment Philippa wondered if Adrian was among them, but if he was he was given no opportunity to approach her, for the alert guardian of these
people
,
like some Virgilian watcher of ghostly shadows upon the infernal stream, shepherded them away, across the darkened lawn, towards the corner of the building.

The Renshaw name acted like magic when she reached the house. Yes, Mr. Sorio was much better;
practically
quite himself again, and there was no reason at all why Miss Renshaw should not have an interview with him. A letter had, indeed, only that very
afternoon
been posted to Miss Herrick, asking her to come up to the place the following day.

Philippa inquired whether her interview with the
patient
might take the form of a little walk with him,
before
the hour of their evening meal. This request
produced
a momentary hesitation on the part of the
official
to whom she made it, but ultimately—for, after all, Miss Renshaw was the sister of the magistrate who had procured the unhappy man’s admission into the place—that too was granted her, on condition that she returned in half-an-hour’s time, and did not take her companion into the streets of the town. Having granted her request the Asylum doctor left her in the waiting-room, while he went to fetch her friend.

Philippa sank down upon a plush-covered chair and looked around her. What a horrible room it was! The shabby furniture, covered with gloomy drapery, had an air of sombre complicity with all the tragedies that darkened human life. It was like a room only entered when some one was dead or dying. It was like the ante-room to a cemetery. Everything in it drooped, and seemed anxious to efface itself, as if ashamed to witness the indecent exposures of outraged human thoughts.

They brought Sorio at last, and the man’s sunken
eyes gleamed with a light of indescribable pleasure when his hand met Philippa’s and clutched it with trembling eagerness.

They went out of the room together and moved down the long passage that led to the entrance of the place. As she walked by his side, Philippa experienced the queer sensation of having him as her partner in some diabolic
danse-macabre
, performed to the
mingled
tune of all the wild “songs of madness” created since the beginning of the world.

She couldn’t help noticing that the groups of
people
they passed on their way had an air quite different from persons in a hospital or even in a prison. They made her think—these miserable ones—of some
horrible
school for grown-up people; such a school as those who have been ill-used in childhood see sometimes in their dreams.

They seemed to loiter and gather and peer and
mutter
, as if, “with bated breath and whispering
humbleness
,” they were listening to something that was going on behind closed doors. Philippa got the impression of a horrible atmosphere of
guilt
hanging over the place, as if some dark and awful retribution were being undergone there, for crimes committed against the
natural
instincts of humanity.

A lean, emaciated old woman came shuffling past them, with elongated neck and outstretched arms. “I’m a camel! I’m a camel! I’m a camel!” Philippa heard her mutter.

Suddenly Adrian laid his hand on her arm. “They let me have my owl in here, Phil,” he said. “We mustn’t go far to-night or it’ll get hungry. It has its supper off my plate. I never told you how I found it,
did I? It was pecking at her eyes, you know. Yes, at her eyes! But that’s nothing, is it? She had been dead for weeks, and owls are scavengers, and corpses are carrion!”

They crossed the garden with quick steps.

“How good the air is to-night!” cried Philippa’s companion, throwing back his head and snuffing the leaf-scented darkness.

They were let out through the iron gates and
turning
instinctively south-wards, they wandered slowly down to the river—the girl’s hand resting on the man’s arm.

They passed, on their way, the blackened wall of a disused factory. A blurred and feeble street-lamp threw a flickering light upon this wall. Pasted upon its surface was a staring and coloured advertisement of some insurance company, representing a phoenix surrounded by flames.

Philippa thought at once of the bonfire which was being prepared for the ensuing evening. Would Adrian’s boy really arrive in so short a time? And would Adrian himself, like that grotesque bird, so
imperturbable
in the midst of its funeral pyre, rise to new life after all this misery? Let it be her—oh, great heavenly powers!—let it be her and not Nance, nor Baptiste, nor any other, who should save him and heal him!

Still looking at the picture on the wall, she repeated to her companion a favourite verse of Mrs. Renshaw’s which she had learnt as a child.

The rich dirge-like music of these Shakespearian rhymes—placed so quaintly under their strange title of “Threnos,” at the end of the familiar volume—had a soothing influence upon them both at that moment.

It seemed to Philippa as if, by her utterance of them, they both came to share some sad sweet obsequies over the body of something that was neither human nor
inhuman
, something remote, strange, ineffable, that lay between them, and was of them and yet not of them, like the spirit-corpse of an unborn child.

They reached the bank of the river. The waters of the Loon were high and, through the darkness, a
murmur
as if composed of a hundred vague whispering voices blending together, rose to their ears from its dark surface.

They moved down close to the river’s edge. A small barge, with its long guiding-pole lying across it, lay moored to the bank. Without a moment’s delay—as if the thing had been prepared in advance to receive him—Adrian jumped into the barge and seized the pole.

“Come!” he said quietly.

She was too reckless and indifferent to everything now, to care greatly what they did; so without a word of protest, or any attempt to turn his purpose, she leapt in after him and settling herself in the stern, seized the heavy wooden rudder.

The tide was running sea-ward, fast and strong, and the barge, pushed vigorously by Adrian’s pole away from the bank, swept forward into the darkness.

Adrian, standing firmly on his feet, continued to hold the pole, his figure looming out of obscurity, tall and commanding.

The tide soon swept them beyond the last houses of the town and out into the open fens.

The night was very still and quite free from wind but a thin veil of mist concealed the stars.

Adrian, letting the pole sink down on the deck of the barge, moved forward to where she sat holding the rudder, and stretched himself out at her feet.

“Will they follow us?” he whispered in a dreamy indifferent voice.

“No, no!” the girl answered. “They’ll never think of this. They’ll wait for us and when we don’t come back, they’ll search the town and the roads. Let’s go on as we are, dearest. What does it matter? What does anything matter?”

She lay back and ran her fingers gently and dreamily over his forehead.

Swiftly and silently the barge swept on, and willows, poplars, weirs, dam-gates, tall reeds and ruined
rushthatched
hovels, passed them by, like figures woven out of unreal shadows.

The water gurgled against the sides of the barge and whispered mournfully against the banks, and, as they advanced, the mystery of the night and the
brooding
silence of the fens received them in a mystic
embrace
.

A strange deep happiness gradually surged up in Philippa’s heart. She was with the man she loved; she was with the darkness she loved, and the river she loved. The Loon carried them forward, the pitiful friendly Loon, the Loon which had flowed by the
dwelling
 
of her race for so many ages; the Loon which had given Baltazar the peace he craved.