Part 2

The rich, antique flavour of the words blent well enough as far as she was concerned with the homely houses and taverns of that dilapidated quarter. The night was full of an indescribable balm, felt through the most familiar sounds and sights, and, after all, there was always something mellow and pagan and free about the streets of London. It was the security, the friendly solidity, of the immense city which more than anything just then seemed to harmonise with this classical mood in her wonderful foreigner and she wished he would quote more Latin as they went along, side by side, past the lighted fruit stalls.

The overhanging shadow of Adrian’s premonitions, or whatever they were, about Rodmoor, and her own anxieties about Rachel Doorm and Linda withdrew themselves into the remotest background of the girl’s mind as she gave herself to her happiness in this favoured hour. It was in a quiet voice, after that, that he resumed his story. The sound, he said, of one of the Borough clocks striking the hour of ten brought a pause to his agitated pacing.

He stretched himself, he told her, when he heard the clock, stretched his arms out at full length, with that delicious shivering sensation which accompanies the near fulfilment of deferred hope. Then he chuckled to himself, from sheer childish ecstasy, and made goblinish faces.

Nance could not help noticing as he told her all this, how quaintly he reproduced in his exaggerated way the precise gestures he had indulged in. “Per Bacco! I had only three pounds left,” he said, and as he shrugged his shoulders and glowered at her under a flickering lamp from eyes sunken deep in his heavy face, she realised of what it was he had been all this while vaguely reminding her--of nothing less, in fact, than one of those saturnine portrait-busts of the Roman decadence, at which as a child she used to stare, half-frightened and half-attracted, in the great Museum.

The first thing he did, he told her, when the sound of the clock brought him to his senses, was to empty his pockets on the top of the chest-of-drawers which was, except for the bed and a couple of rickety chairs, the only article of furniture in the room. An errant penny, rolling aside from the rest, tinkled against the edge of his washing basin. “Not three pounds!” he muttered and leered at himself in his wretched looking glass.

It was precisely at that moment that the sound of voices struck his ears, proceeding from the adjoining room.

“I had spent half the night,” he whispered, drawing his companion closer to his side as a couple of tipsy youths pushed roughly by them, “lying awake listening. I felt a queer kind of shame, yes, shame, as I realised how near I was to you. You know I knew nothing of you then, absolutely nothing except that you went to work every day and lived with some sort of elderly person and a younger sister. It was this ignorance about you, child, that made my situation so exciting. I waited breathlessly, literally petrified, in the middle of the room.”

Nance at this point felt herself compelled to utter a little cry of protest.

“You ought to have made some kind of noise,” she said, “to let us know you were listening.”

But he waved aside her objection, and continued: “I remained petrified in the centre of the room, feeling as though the persons I listened to might at any moment stop their conversation and listen, in their turn, to the frantic beating of my heart. I heard your voice. I knew it in a moment to be yours--it had the round, full sweetness”--his arm was about her now--“of your darling figure. ‘Good-bye!’ you called out and there came the sound of a door opening upon the passage, ‘Good-bye! I’m off. Meet me to-night if you like. Yes, soon after six. Good-bye! Look after each other.’

“The door shut and I heard you running down the stairs. I felt as though that ‘Meet me to-night’ had been addressed to myself. I crossed over to the window and watched you thread your way through the crowd in the direction of the Bridge. I knew you were late. I hoped you would not be scolded for it by some shrewish or brutal employer. I wished I had had the courage to go out on the landing and see you off. Why is one always so paralysed when these chances offer themselves? I might easily have taken a fellow-lodger’s privilege and bidden you good morning. Then I found myself wondering whether you had any inkling that I had been sleeping so near you that night. Had you, you darling, had you any such instinct?”

Nance shook her head, nor could he see the expression of her eyes in the quiet darkened square, across which they were then moving. They came upon a wooden bench, under some iron railings, and he made her sit down while he completed his tale. The spot was unfrequented at that hour, and above their heads--as they leaned back, sighing tranquilly, and he took possession of her hand--the branch of a stunted beech-tree stretched itself out, hushed and still, enjoying some secret dream of its own amid the balmy perfumes of the amorous night.

“May I go on?” he enquired, looking tenderly at her.

In her heart Nance longed to cry, “No! No! No more of these tiresome memories! Make love to me! Make love to me!” but she only pressed his fingers gently and remained silent.

“I took up a book,” he went on, “from the heap on the floor and drawing one of those miserable chairs to the window, I opened it at random. It happened to be that mad lovely thing of Remy de Gourmont. I forgot whether you said you had got as far as French poetry in that collection of yours that Miss Doorm is so suspicious of. It was, in fact, ‘Le livre des Litanies,’ and shall I tell you the passage I read? I was too excited to gather its meaning all at once, and then such a curious thing happened to me! But I will say the lines to you, child, and you will understand better.”

Nance could only press his hand again, but her heart sank with an unaccountable foreboding.

“It was the Litany of the Rose,” he said, and his voice floated out into the embalmed stillness with the same ominous treachery in its tone, so the poor girl fancied, as the ambiguous words he chanted.

“_Rose au regard saphique, plus pâle que les lys, rose au regard saphique, offre-nous le parfum de ton illusoire virginité, fleur hypocrite, fleur de silence._”

The strange invocation died away on the air, and a singular oppression, heavy as if with some undesired spiritual presence, weighed upon them both. Sorio did not speak for some minutes, and when he did so there was an uneasy vibration in his voice.

“As soon as I had read those lines, there came over me one of the most curious experiences I have ever had. I seemed to see, yes, you may smile,”--Nance was far from smiling--“but it is actually true--I seemed to see a living human figure outline itself against the wall of my room. To the end of my days I shall never forget it! It was a human form, Nance, but it was unlike all human forms I’ve ever beheld--unless it be one of those weird drawings, you know? of Aubrey Beardsley. It was neither the form of a boy nor of a girl, and yet it had the nature of both. It gazed at me with a fixed sorrowful stare, and I felt--was not that a strange experience--that I had known it before, somewhere, far off, and long ago. It was the very embodiment of tragic supplication, and yet, in the look it fixed on me, there was a cold, merciless mockery.

“It was the kind of form, Nance, that one can imagine wandering in vain helplessness down all the years of human history, seeking amid the dreams of all the great, perverse artists of the world for the incarnation it has been denied by the will of God.” He paused again, and an imperceptible breath of hot balmy air stirred the young leaves of the beech branch above them.

“Ah!” he whispered, “I know what I thought of then. I thought of that ‘Secret Rose Garden’ where the timid boy-girl thing--you know the picture I mean, Nance?--is led forth by some wanton lamp bearer between rose branches that are less soft than her defenceless sides.”

Once more he was silent and the hot wind, rising a little, uttered a perceptible murmur in the leaves above their heads.

“But what was more startling to me, Nance,” he went on, “even than the figure I saw (and it only stayed a moment before disappearing) was the fact that at the very second it vanished, I heard, spoken quite distinctly, in the room next to mine, the word ‘Rodmoor.’

“I threw down the ‘Book of Litanies’ and once more stood breathlessly listening. I caught the word again, uttered in a tone that struck me as having something curiously threatening about it. It was your Miss Doorm, Nance. No wonder she and I instinctively hated each other when we met. She must have known that I had heard this interesting conversation. Your sister’s voice--and you must think about that, Nance, you must think about that--sounded like the voice of a little girl that has been punished--yes, punished into frightened submissiveness.

“Miss Doorm was evidently talking to her about this Rodmoor scheme. ‘It’s what I’ve waited for, for years and years,’ I heard her say. ‘Every Spring that came round I hoped he would die, and he didn’t. It seemed that he wouldn’t--just to spite me, just to keep me out of my own. But now he’s gone--the old man--gone with all his wickedness upon him, and my place returns to me--my own place. It’s mine, I tell you, mine! mine! mine!’ It was extraordinary, Nance, the tone in which she said these things. Then she went on to speak of you. ‘I can free her now,’ she said, ‘I can free her at last. Aren’t you glad I can free her? Aren’t you glad?’

“I confess it made me at that moment almost indignant with your sister that she should need such pressing on such a subject. Her voice, however, when she murmured some kind of an answer, appeared, as I have said, quite obsequious in its humility.

“‘O my precious, my precious!’ the woman cried again, evidently apostrophising you, ‘you’ve worked for me, and saved for me, and now I can return it--I can return it!’ There was a few minutes’ silence then, and I moved,” Sorio continued, “quite close to the wall so as to catch if I could your sister’s whispers.

“Miss Doorm soon began once more and I liked her tone still less. ‘Why don’t you speak? Why do you sit silent and sulky like that? Aren’t you glad she’ll be free of all this burden--of all this miserable drudgery? Aren’t you glad for her? She kept you here like a Duchess, you with your music lessons! A lot of money you’ll ever earn with your music! And now it’s my turn. She shall be a lady in my house, a lady!’”

Nance’s head hung low down over her knees as she listened to all this and the hand that her lover still retained grew colder and colder.

“I remember her next words,” Sorio went on, “particularly well because a lovely fragrance of lilacs came suddenly into the window from a cart in the street and I thought how to my dying day I should associate that scent with this first morning under your roof.

“‘You say you don’t like the sea?’ Miss Doorm went on, ‘and you actually suppose that your not liking the sea will stop my freeing her! No! No! You’ll have the sea, my beauty, at Rodmoor--the sea and the wind. No more dilly-dallying among the pretty shop windows and the nice young music students. The Wind and the Sea! Those are the things that are waiting for you at Rodmoor--at Rodmoor, in my house, where she will be a lady at last!’

“You see, Nance,” Adrian observed, letting her hand go and preparing to light a cigarette, “Miss Doorm’s idea seems to be that you will receive quite a social lift from your move to her precious Rodmoor. She evidently holds the view that no lady has ever earned her living with her own hands. Does she propose to keep a horde of servants in this small house, I wonder, and stalk about among them, grim and majestic, in a black silk gown?

“I must confess I feel at this moment a certain understanding of your sister’s reluctance to plunge into this ‘milieu.’ I can see that house--oh, so clearly!--surrounded by a dark back-water and swept by horribly cold winds. I’m sure I don’t know, Nance, what kind of neighbours you’re going to have on the Doorm estate. Probably half the old hags of East Anglia will troop in upon you, like descendants of the Valkyries. And the North Sea! You realise, my dear, I suppose, what the North Sea is? I don’t blame little Linda for shivering at the thought of it.”

For the first time since she had known him Nance’s voice betrayed irritation. “Don’t tease me, Adrian. I can’t stand it to-night. You don’t know what all this means to Rachel.”

Adrian smiled. “Your dear Rachel,” he said, “seems to have got you both fairly well under her thumb.”

“She was my mother’s best friend!” the girl burst out. “I should never forgive myself if I made her unhappy!”

“There seems more chance, as I see it now,” observed Sorio, “that Miss Doorm will make Linda unhappy. I think I may take it that Linda’s mother wasn’t much of a favourite of hers? Isn’t that so, my dear?”

“We must be getting home now,” the girl remarked, rising from the bench. But Sorio remained seated, coolly puffing wreaths of cigarette smoke into the aromatic night.

“There’s not the slightest need to get cross with me,” he said gently, giving the sleeve of her coat a little deprecatory caress.

“As a matter of fact, when I heard that woman scold Linda for not wanting to set you free I felt, in a most odd and subtle manner, curiously anxious to scold her, too; I quite longed to overcome and override her absurd reluctance. I even felt a strange excitement in the thought of walking with her along the edge of this water, and in the face of this wind. O! I became Miss Doorm’s accomplice, Nance! You may be perfectly happy. I made up my mind that very moment that I would write at once to Baltazar and accept his invitation. Indeed I did write to him, the minute I could hear no more talking. I was too excited to write much. I just wrote: ‘Amico mio:--I will come to you very soon,’ and when I’d finished the letter I went straight out and posted it. I believe I heard Linda crying as I went downstairs, but, as I tell you, Nance, I had become quite an accomplice of Miss Doorm! It seemed to me outrageous that the selfish silliness of a child like that should interfere with your emancipation. Besides I liked the thought of walking with her by the shore of this sea and calming her curious fear.”

He threw away his cigarette and, rising to his feet, drew the girl’s arm within his own and led her homewards.

The beech-tree, as if relieved by their departure, gave itself up with more delicious abandonment than ever to the embraces of the warm Spring night. They had not far to go now, and Nance only spoke once before they arrived at their door in the London Bridge Road.

“Had that figure you saw,” she asked in a low constrained voice, “the same look Linda has--now that you know what she is like?”

“Linda?” he answered, “Oh, no, my dear, no, no! That one had nothing to do with Linda. But I think,” he added, after a pause, “it had something to do with Rodmoor.”

II

DYKE HOUSE

Nance Herrick stood at her window in the Doorm dwelling the morning after their arrival thinking desperately of what she had done. The window, open at the top, let in a breath of chilly, salt-tasting wind which stirred the fair loose hair upon her forehead and cooled her throat and shoulders. At the sound of her sister’s voice she closed the window, cast one swift, troubled look at the river flowing so formidably near, and moved across to Linda’s side. Drowsy and warm after her deep sleep, the younger girl stretched out her long, youthful arms from the bed and clasped them round Nance’s neck.

“Are you glad,” she whispered, “are you glad, after all, that I made you come? I couldn’t have borne to be selfish, dear. I should have had no peace. No!--,” she interrupted an ejaculation from Nance, “--it wasn’t anything to do with Rachel. It wasn’t, Nancy darling, it really and truly wasn’t! I’m going to be perfectly good now. I’m going to be so good that you’ll hardly know me. Shall I tell you what I’m going to do? I’m going to learn the organ. Rachel says there’s a beautiful one in the church here, and Mr. Traherne--he’s the clergyman, you know--plays upon it himself. I’m going to persuade him to teach me. O! I shall be perfectly happy!”

Nance extricated herself from the young girl’s arms and, stepping back into the middle of the room, stood contemplating her in silence. The two sisters, thus contrasted, in the hard white light of that fen-land morning, would have charmed the super-subtle sense of some late Venetian painter. Nance herself, without being able precisely to define her feeling, felt that the mere physical difference between them was symbolic of something dangerously fatal in their conjunction. Her sister was not an opposite type. She too was fair--she too was tall and flexible--she too was emphatically feminine in her build--she even had eyes of the same vague grey colour. And yet, as Nance looked at her now, at her flushed excited cheeks, her light brown curls, her passionate neurotic attitude, and became at the same time conscious of her own cold pure limbs, white marble-like skin and heavily-hanging shining hair, she felt that they were so essentially different, even in their likeness, that the souls in their two bodies could never easily comprehend one another nor arrive at any point of real instinctive understanding.

Something of the same thought must have troubled Linda too at that moment, for as they fixed their eyes on each other’s faces there fell between them that sort of devastating silence which indicates the struggle of two human spirits, seeking in vain to break the eternal barrier in whose isolating power lies all the tragedy and all the interest of life.

Suddenly Nance moved to the window and threw it wide open.

“Listen!” she said.

The younger sister made a quick apprehensive movement and clasped her hands tightly together. Her eyes grew wide and her breast rose and fell.

“Listen!” Nance repeated.

A low, deep-drawn murmur, reiterated, and again reiterated, in menacing monotony, filled the room.

“The sea!” cried both sisters together.

Nance shivered, closed the window and sank down on a chair. With lowered eyes she remained for some seconds absorbed and abstracted. When she lifted her head she saw that her sister was watching her and that there was a look on her face such as she had never seen there before. It was a look she was destined to be unable to thrust from her memory, but no effort of hers could have described it then or afterwards. Making an effort of will which required all the strength of her soul, Nance rose to her feet and spoke solemnly and deliberately.

“Swear to me, Linda, that nothing I could have said or done would have made you agree to stay in London. I told you I was ready to stay, didn’t I, that night I came back with Adrian and found you awake? I begged and begged you to tell me the truth, to tell me whether Rachel was forcing you into going. I offered to leave her for good and all--didn’t I?--if she was unkind to you. It’s only the truth I want--only the truth! We’ll go back--now--to-morrow--the moment you say you wish it. But if you don’t wish it, make me know you don’t! Make me know it--here--in my heart!”

In her emotion, pressing her hand to her side, she swayed with a pathetic, unconscious movement. Linda continued to watch her, the same indescribable look upon her face.

“Will you swear that nothing I could have done would have made you stay? Will you swear that, Linda?”

The younger girl in answer to this appeal, leapt from her bed and rushing up to her sister hugged her tightly in her arms.

“You darling thing!” she cried, “of course I’ll swear it. Nothing--nothing--_nothing_! would have made me stay. Oh, you’ll soon see how happy I can be in Rodmoor--in dear lovely Rodmoor!”

A simultaneous outburst of weeping relieved at that moment the feelings of both of them, and they kissed one another passionately through their falling tears.

In the hush that followed--whether by reason of a change in the wind or simply because their senses had grown more receptive--they both clearly heard through the window that remained closed, the husky, long-drawn beat, reiterative, incessant, menacing, of the waves of the North Sea.

During breakfast and the hours which succeeded that meal, Nance was at once surprised and delighted by the excellent spirits of both Miss Doorm and Linda. They even left her to herself before half the morning was over and went off together, apparently in complete harmony along the banks of the tidal stream.

She herself, loitering in the deserted garden, felt a curious sensation of loneliness and a wonder, not amounting to a sense of discomfort but still remotely disturbing, as to why it was that Adrian had not, as he had promised, appeared to take her out. Acting at last on a sudden impulse, she ran into the house, put on her hat and cloak, and started rapidly down the road leading to the village.

The Spring was certainly not so far advanced in Rodmoor as it was in London. Nance felt as though some alien influence were at work here, reducing to enforced sterility the natural movements of living and growing things. The trees were stunted, the marigolds in the wet ditches pallid and tarnished. The leaves of the poplars, as they shook in the gusty wind, seemed to her like hundreds and hundreds of tiny dead hands--the hands of ghostly babies beseeching whatever power called them forth to give them more life or to return them to the shadows.

Yes, some alien influence was at work, and the Spring was ravished and tarnished even while yet in bud. It was as if by an eternal mandate, registered when this portion of the coast first assumed its form, the seasons had been somehow thwarted and perverted in the processes of their natural order, and the land left, a neutral, sterile, derelict thing, neither quite living nor quite dead, doomed to changeless monotony.

Nance was still some little distance from the village, but she slackened her pace and lingered now, in the hope that at any moment she might see Adrian approaching. She knew from Rachel’s description only very vaguely where Mr. Stork’s cottage was and she was afraid of missing her lover if she went too far.

The road she was following was divided from the river by some level water meadows and she did not feel certain whether the village itself lay on the right or the left of the river mouth. Miss Doorm had spoken of a bridge, but among the roofs and trees which she made out in front of her, she was unable at present to see anything of this.

What she did see was a vast expanse of interminable fen-land stretching away for miles and miles on every side of her, broken against the sky line, towards which she was advancing, by grey houses and grey poplars but otherwise losing itself in misty horizons which seemed infinite in their remoteness. On both sides of the little massed group of roofs and trees and what the girl made out as the masts of boats in the harbour, a long low bank of irregular sand-dunes kept the sea from her view, though the sound of the waves--and Nance fancied it came to her in a more friendly manner now she was closer to it--was insistent and clear.

Across the fens to her left she discerned what was evidently the village church but the building looked so desolate and isolated--alone there in the midst of the marshes--that she found it difficult to conceive the easily-daunted Linda as practising organ music in such a place. She wondered if the grey building she could just obscurely distinguish, leaning against the wall of the church, were the abode of Mr. Traherne. If so, she thought, he must indeed be a man of God to endure that solitude.