Part 6

He drew back a little, the same subtle and ambiguous smile on his lips. “No promises, Miss Rachel,” he said, “no promises! I never promise any one anything. But we shall see; we shall see. There’s plenty of time. I’m keeping my eye on Philippa; you may be sure of that.”

He held out his hand as he spoke to the agitated woman. She took it in both of her own and quick as a flash raised it to her lips.

“I knew I should meet you, Mr. Renshaw,” she said, turning away from him, “and you see it has happened! I won’t ask why you didn’t come to me before. I haven’t asked _that_ yet--have I?--and I won’t ever ask it. We’ve met at last; that’s the great thing. That’s the only thing. Now we’ll see what’ll come of it all.”

They separated, and Brand proceeded to cross the Bridge. He had hardly done so when he heard her voice calling upon him to stop. He turned impatiently.

“When you were a little boy, Mr. Renshaw,”--her words came in panting gasps--“you said once, down by the sea, that Rachel was the only person in the world who really loved you. Your mother heard you say it and looked--you know how she looks! You used always to call me ‘Cousin’ then. Far back, they say, the Renshaws and the Doorms _were_ cousins. But you didn’t know that. It was just your childish fancy. ‘Cousin Rachel,’ you said once--just like that--‘come and take me away from them.’”

Brand acquiesced in all this with an air of strained politeness. But his face changed when he heard her final words. “Listen,” she said, “I’ve talked to Linda about you. She’s got the idea of you in her mind.”

At the very moment when this encounter at the New Bridge ended--which was about six in the afternoon--Nance Herrick was walking with a beating heart to a promised assignation with Sorio. This was to take place at the southern corner of a little withy-bed situated about half a mile from Dyke House in the direction of Mundham. It was Nance’s own wish that her lover--if he could still be called so--should meet her here rather than in the house. She had discovered the spot herself and had grown fond of it. Sheltered from the wind by the clump of low-growing willows, and cut off by the line of the banked-up tow-path from the melancholy horizon of fens, the girl had got into the habit of taking refuge here as if from the pursuit of vague inimical presences. In the immediate neighbourhood of the withy-bed were several corn fields, the beginning of a long strip of arable land which divided the river from the marshes as far as Mundham.

The particular spot where she hoped to find Sorio awaiting her was a low grassy bank overshadowed by alders as well as willows, and bordered by a field of well-grown barley, a field which, though still green, showed already to an experienced eye the kind of grain which a month or so of not too malicious weather would ripen and turn to gold. Already amid the blades of the young corn could be seen the stalks and leaves of newly grown poppies, and mingled with these, also at their early stage of growth, small, indistinguishable plants that would later show themselves as corn-flowers and succory.

The neighbourhood of this barley field, with its friendly look and homely weeds, promising a revel of reassuring colour as the summer advanced, had come to be, to the agitated and troubled girl, a sort of symbol of hope. It was the one place in Rodmoor--for the Doorm garden shared the gloomy influences of the Doorm house--where she could feel something like her old enjoyment in the natural growths of the soil. Here, in the freshly sprouting corn and the friendly weeds that it protected, was the strong, unconquerable pressure of earth-life, refusing to be repressed, refusing to be thwarted, by the malign powers of wind and water.

Here, on the bank she had chosen as her retreat, little childish plants she knew by name--such as pimpernel and milkwort--were already in flower and from the alders and willows above her head sweet and consolatory odours, free from the tang of marsh mist or brackish stream, brought memories of old country excursions into places far removed from fen or sea.

She had never yet revealed this sanctuary of hers to Sorio and it was with throbbing pulses and quickened step that she approached it now, longing to associate its security with her master-feeling, and yet fearful lest, by finding her lover unkind or estranged, the place should lose its magic forever. She had dressed herself with care that afternoon, putting on--though the weather was hardly warm enough to make such airy attire quite suitable--a white print frock, covered with tiny roses. Several times in front of the mirror she had smoothed down her dress and unloosened and tied back again her shining masses of hair. She held her hat in her hand now, as she approached the spot, for he had told her once in London that he liked her better when she was bareheaded.

She had left her parasol behind, too, and as she hastened along the narrow path from the river to the withy-bed, she nervously switched the green stalks by her side with a dead stick she had unconsciously picked up.

Her print dress hung straight and tight over her softly moulded figure and her limbs, as she walked, swayed with a free and girlish grace.

Passionately, intently, she scanned the familiar outlines of the spot, hoping and yet fearing to see him. Not yet--not yet! Nothing visible yet, but the low-lying little copse and the stretch of arable land around it. She drew near. She was already within a few paces of the place. Nothing! He was not there--he had failed her!

She drew a deep breath and stood motionless, the dead stick fallen from her hand and her gloveless fingers clasping and unclasping one another mechanically.

“Oh, Adrian! Adrian!” she moaned. “You don’t care any more--not any more.”

Suddenly she heard a swish of leafy branches and a crackle of broken twigs. He was there, after all.

“Adrian!” she cried. “Is that you, Adrian?”

There was more rustling and swishing, and then with a discordant laugh he burst out from the undergrowth.

“You frightened me,” she said, looking at him with quivering lips. “Why did you hide away like that, Adrian?”

He went straight up to her, seized her fiercely in his arms and covered her mouth, her throat and neck with hot, furious kisses. This was not what Nance’s heart craved. She longed to sob out her suppressed feelings on his shoulder. She longed to be petted and caressed, gently, quietly, and with soft endearing words.

Instead of which, it seemed to her that he was seeking, as he embraced her body and clung to her flesh with his lips, to escape from his own thoughts, to suppress _her_ thoughts, to sweep them both away--away from all rational consciousness--on the brutal impulse of mere animal passion.

Her tears which were on the point of flowing, in a tide of heart-easing abandonment, were driven inwards by his violence, and in her grey eyes, if he had cared to look, he would have seen a frightened appeal--pitiful and troubled--like the wild glance of a deer harried by dogs.

His violence brought its own reaction at last and, letting her go, he flung himself panting upon the ground. She stood above him for a while, flushed and silent, smoothing down her hair with her hands and looking into his face with a puzzled frown.

“Sit down,” he gasped. “Why do you stare at me like that?”

Obediently she placed herself by his side, tucked her skirt around her ankles and let her hands fall on her lap.

“Adrian,” she said, glancing shyly at him. “Why did you kiss me like that, just now?”

He propped himself up and gazed gloomily across the barley field. “Why--did--I--kiss you?” he muttered, as if speaking in a dream.

“Yes--why, like that, just then,” she went on. “It wasn’t like you and me at all. You were rough, Adrian. You weren’t yourself. Oh, my dear, my dear! I don’t believe you care for me half as you used to!”

He beat his fists irritably on the ground and an almost vindictive look came into his eyes.

“That’s the way!” he flung out, “that’s the way I knew you’d take it. You girls want to be loved but you must be loved just thus and so. A touch too near, a word too far--and you’re all up in arms.”

Nance felt as though an ice-cold wedge had been thrust between her breasts.

“Adrian,” she cried, “how can you treat me in this way? How can you say these things to me? Have I ever stopped you kissing me? Have I ever been unresponsive to you?”

He looked away from her and began pulling up a patch of moss by its roots. “What are you annoyed about, then?” he muttered.

She sighed bitterly. Then with a strong effort to give her voice a natural tone. “I didn’t feel as though you were kissing me at all just now. I was simply a girl in your arms--any girl! It was a shame, Adrian. It hurt me. Surely, dear,”--her voice grew gentle and pleading--“you _must_ know what I mean.”

“I don’t know in the least what you mean,” he cried. “It’s some silly, absurd scruple some one’s been putting in your head. I can’t always make love to you as if we were two children, can I--two babes in the wood?”

Nance’s mouth quivered at this and she stretched out her arm towards him and then, letting it drop, fumbled with her fingers at a blade of grass. A curious line, rarely visible on her face, wrinkled her forehead and twitched a little as if it had been a nerve beneath the skin. This line had a pathos in it beyond a mere frown. It would have been well if the Italian had recalled, as he saw it, certain ancient tragic masks of his native country, but it is one of life’s persistent ironies that the tokens of monumental sorrow, which serve so nobly the purposes of art, should only excite peevish irritation when seen near at hand. Sorio did not miss that line of suffering but instead of softening him it increased his bitterness.

“You’re really not angry about my kissing you,” he said. “That’s what all you women do--you pitch upon something quite different and revenge yourself with it, when all the time you’re thinking about--God knows what!--some mad grievance of your own that has no connection with what you say!”

She leapt up at this, as if bitten by an adder and looked at him with flashing eyes.

“Adrian! You’ve no right--I’ve never given you the right--to speak to me so. Come! We’d better go back to the house. I wish--oh, how I wish--I’d never asked you to meet me here.”

She stooped to pick up her hat. “I liked it so here,” she added with a wistful catch in her voice, “but it’s all spoilt now.” Sorio did not move. He looked at her gravely.

“You’re a little fool, Nance,” he said, “absolutely a little fool. But you look extraordinarily lovely at this moment, now you’re in a fury. Come here, child, come back and sit down and let’s talk sensibly. There are other things and much more important things in the world than our ridiculous quarrels.”

The tone of his voice had its effect upon her but she did not yield at once.

“I think perhaps to-day,” she murmured, “it would be better to go back.” She continued to stand in front of him, swaying a little--an unconscious trick of hers--and smiling sadly.

“Come and sit down,” he repeated in a low voice. She obeyed him, for it was what her heart ached for, and clinging tightly to him she let her suppressed emotions have full vent. With her head pressed awkwardly against his coat she sobbed freely and without restraint.

Sorio gently buttoned up the fastening of one of her long sleeves which had come unloosed. He did this gravely and without a change of expression. That peculiar and tragic pathos which emanates from a girl’s forgetfulness of her personal appearance did not apparently cross his consciousness. Nance, as she leant against him, had a pitiable and even a grotesque air. One of her legs was thrust out from beneath her skirt. Sorio noticed that her brown shoes were a little worn and did not consort well with her white stockings. It momentarily crossed his mind that he had fancied Nancy’s ankles to be slenderer than it seemed they were.

Her sobs died away at last in long shuddering gasps which shook her whole frame. Sorio kept stroking her head, but his eyes were fixed on the distant river bank along which a heavily labouring horse was tugging at a rope. Every now and then his face contracted a little as if he were in physical pain. This was due to the fact that from the girl’s weight pressing against his knee he began to suffer from cramp. Though her sobs had died down, Nance still seemed unwilling to stir.

With one of her hands she made a tremulous movement in search of his, and he answered it by tightly gripping her fingers. While he held her thus his gaze wandered from the horse on the tow-path and fixed itself upon a large and beautifully spotted fly that was moving slowly and tentatively up a green stalk. With its long antennæ extended in front of it the fly felt its way, every now and then opening and shutting its gauzy wings.

Sorio hated the horse, hated the fly and hated himself. As for the girl who leant so heavily upon him, he felt nothing for her just then but a dull, inert patience and a kind of objective pity such as one might feel for a wounded animal. One deep, far-drawn channel of strength and hope remained open in the remote depths of his mind--associated with his inmost identity and with what in the fortress of his soul he loved to call his “secret”--and far off, at the end of this vista, visualized through clouds of complicated memories--was the image of his boy, his boy left in America, from whom, unknown even to Nance, he received letters week by week, letters that were the only thing, so it seemed to him at this moment, which gave sweetness to his life.

He had sought, in giving full scope to his attraction to Nance, to cover up and smooth over certain jagged, bleeding edges in his outraged mind, and in this, even now, as he returned the pressure of her soft fingers, he recognized that he had been successful.

It was, he knew well, only the appearance of this _other one_--this insidious “rose au regard saphique”--this furtive child of marsh and sea--who had spoilt his delight in Nance--Nance had not changed, nor indeed had he, himself. It was only the discovery of Philippa, the revelation of Philippa, which had altered everything.

With his fingers entangled in the shining hair, beneath his hand, he found himself cursing the day he had ever come to Rodmoor. And yet--as far as his “secret” went--that “fleur hypocrite” of the salt-marshes came nearer, nearer than mortal soul except Baptiste--to understanding the heart of his mystery. The sun sinking behind them, had for some while now thrown long dark shadows across the field at their feet.

The flies which hovered over the girl’s prostrate form were no longer radiantly illuminated and from the vague distances in every direction came those fitful sounds of the closing day--murmurs and whispers and subtle breathings, sweet and yet profoundly sad, which indicate the ebb of the life-impulse and approach of twilight.

The girl moved at last, and lifting up a tear-stained face, looked timidly and shyly into his eyes. She appeared at that moment so submissive, so pitiful, and so entirely dependent on him that Sorio would have been hardly human if he had not thrown his arms reassuringly round her neck and kissed her wet flushed cheek.

They rose together from the ground and both laughed merrily to see how stained and crumpled her newly starched frock had become.

“I’ll meet you here again--to-morrow if you like,” he said gently. She smiled but did not answer. Simple-hearted though she was, she was enough of a woman to know well that her victory, if it could be called victory, over his morose mood was a mere temporary matter. The future of their love seemed to her more than ever dubious and uncertain, and it was with a chilled heart, in spite of her gallant attempts to make their return pleasant to them both, that she re-entered the forlorn garden of Dyke House and waved good-bye to him from the door.

VII

VESPERS

Nance continued to resort to her withy-bed, in spite of the spoiling of its charm, but she did not again ask Sorio to meet her there. She met him still, however,--sometimes in Rachel’s desolate garden which seemed inspired by some occult influence antipathetic to every softening touch, and sometimes--and these latter encounters were the happier ones--in the little graveyard of Mr. Traherne’s church. She found him affectionate enough in these ambiguous days and even tender, but she was constantly aware of a barrier between them which nothing she could say or do seemed able to surmount.

Her anxiety with regard to the relations between Rachel and Linda did not grow less as days went on. Sometimes the two seemed perfectly happy and Nance accused herself of having a morbid imagination, but then again something would occur--some quite slight and unimportant thing--which threw her back upon all her old misgivings.

Once she was certain she heard Linda crying in the night and uttering Rachel’s name but the young girl, when roused from her sleep, only laughed gaily and vowed she had no recollection of anything she had dreamed.

As things thus went on and there seemed no outlet from the difficulties that surrounded her, Nance began making serious enquiries as to the possibility of finding work in the neighbourhood. She read the advertisements in the local papers and even answered some of them but the weeks slipped by and nothing tangible seemed to emerge.

Her greatest consolation at this time was a friendship she struck up with Hamish Traherne, the curate-in-charge of Rodmoor upon whose organ in the forlorn little Norman church, Linda was now daily practising.

Dr. Raughty, too, when she chanced to meet him, proved a soothing distraction. The man’s evident admiration for her gratified her vanity, while her tender and playful way of expressing it put a healing ointment upon her wounded pride.

One late afternoon when the sun at last seemed to have got some degree of hold upon that sea-blighted country, she found herself seated with Mr. Traherne on a bench adjoining the churchyard, waiting there in part for the service--for Hamish was a rigorous ritualist in these things and rang his bell twice a day with devoted patience--and in part for the purpose of meeting Mrs. Renshaw, who, as she knew, came regularly to church, morning and evening.

Linda was playing inside the little stone edifice and the sound of her music came out to them as they talked, pleasantly softened by the intervening walls. Mr. Traherne’s own dwelling, a battered, time-worn fragment of monastic masonry, clumsily adapted to modern use, lay behind them, its unpretentious garden passing by such imperceptible degrees into the sacred enclosure that the blossoms raised, in defiance of the winds that swept the marshes, in the priest’s flower-beds, shed their petals upon the more recently dug of his parishioners’ graves.

It may have been the extreme ugliness of Rodmoor’s curate-in-charge that drew Nance so closely to him. Mr. Traherne was certainly in bodily appearance the least prepossessing person she had ever beheld. He resembled nothing so much as an over-driven and excessively patient horse, his long, receding chin, knobbed bulbous nose, and corrugated forehead not even being relieved by any particular quality in his small, deeply-set colourless eyes--eyes which lacked everything such as commonly redeems an otherwise insignificant face and which stared out of his head upon the world with a fixed expression of mild and dumb protest.

Whether it was his ugliness, or something indefinable in him that found no physical or even vocal expression--for his voice was harsh and husky--the girl herself would have been puzzled to say, but whatever it was, it drew her and held her and she experienced curious relief in talking with him.

This particular afternoon she had permitted herself to go further than usual in these relieving confidences and had treated the poor man as if he were actually and in very truth her father-confessor.

“I’ve had no luck so far,” she said, speaking of her attempts to get work, “but I think I shall have before long. I’m right, am I not, in _that_ at any rate? Whatever happens, it’s better Linda and I should be independent.”

The priest nodded vigorously and clasped his bony hands over his knees.

“I wish,” he said, “that I knew Mr. Sorio as I know you. When I know people I like them, and as a rule--” he opened his large twisted mouth and smiled humorously at her--“as a rule they like me.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand what I said just now,” cried Nance anxiously. “I didn’t mean that Adrian doesn’t like you. I know he likes you very much. It’s that he’s afraid of your influence, of your religion, of your goodness. He’s afraid of you. That’s what it is.”

“Of course we know,” said Hamish Traherne, prodding the ground with his oak stick and tucking his long cassock round his legs, “of course we know that it’s really Mr. Sorio who ought to find work. He ought to find it soon, too, and as soon as he’s got it he ought to marry you! That’s how I would see this affair settled.” He smiled at her with humorous benignity.

Nance frowned a little. “I don’t like it when you talk like that,” she remarked, “it makes me feel as though I’d done wrong in saying anything about it. It makes me feel as though I had been disloyal to Adrian.”

For so ugly and clumsy a man, there was a pathetic gentleness in the way he laid his hand, at that, upon his companion’s arm. “The disloyalty,” he said in a low voice, “would have been _not_ to have spoken to me. Who else can help our friend? Who else is anxious to help him?”

“I know, I know,” she cried, “you’re as sweet to me as you can be. You’re my most faithful friend. It’s only that I feel--sometimes--as though Adrian wouldn’t like it for me to talk about him at all--to any one. But that’s silly, isn’t it? And besides I must, mustn’t I? Otherwise there’d be no way of helping him.”

“I’ll find a way,” muttered the priest. “You needn’t mention his name again. We’ll take him for granted in future, little one, and we’ll both work together in his interests.”

“If he could only be made to understand,” the girl went on, looking helplessly across the vast tract of fens, “what his real feelings are! I believe he loves me at the bottom of his heart. I know I can help him as no one else can. But how to make him understand that?”

They were interrupted at this point by the appearance of Mrs. Renshaw who, standing in the path leading to the church door, looked at them hesitatingly as if wondering whether she ought to approach them or not.

They rose at once and crossed the grass to meet her. At the same time Linda, emerging from the building, greeted them with excited ardour.

“I’ve done so well to-day, Mr. Traherne,” she cried, “you’d be astonished. I can manage those pedals perfectly now, and the stops too. Oh, it’s lovely! It’s lovely! I feel I’m going really to be a player.”

They all shook hands with Mrs. Renshaw, and then, while the priest went in to ring his bell, the three women strolled together to the low stone parapet built as a protection against floods, which separated the churchyard from the marshes.

Tiny, delicate mosses grew on this wall, interspersed with small pale-flowered weeds. On its further side was a wide tract of boggy ground, full of deep amber-coloured pools and clumps of rushes and terminated, some half mile away, by a raised dyke. There was a pleasant humming of insects in the air, and although a procession of large white clouds kept crossing the low, horizontal sun, and throwing their cold shadows over the landscape, the general aspect of the place was more friendly and less desolate than usual.