John Powys - Rodmoor

“I thought you and Linda’s mother were friends, too,” observed Brand, looking with a certain dreamy absorption up the straight white road that led to the Doorm house. The mental fantasies the man had woven round the name he now uttered for the first time in his life had so vivid a meaning for him that he let pass unnoticed the spasm of vindictiveness that convulsed his companion’s face.

Rachel Doorm folded her arms across her lean bosom and flung back her head.

“Ellie was afraid of me, Mr. Renshaw,” she pronounced huskily, and then, looking at him sharply: “Yes,” she said, “Mrs. Herrick and I were excellent friends, and so are Linda and I. She’s a soft, nervous, impressionable little thing — our dear Linda — and very pretty, too, in her own way — don’t you think so, Mr. Renshaw?”

It was the man’s turn now to suffer a change of countenance. “Pretty?” he laughed. “I’m sure I don’t know. I’ve never seen her!”

Rachel clasped her hands tightly on the lap of her black dress and fixed her eyes upon him. “You’d like to see her, wouldn’t you?” she murmured eagerly. He answered her look, and a long, indescribable passage of unspoken thoughts flickered, wavered and took shape between them.

“I’ve seen Nance — in the distance — with my mother,” he remarked, letting his glance wander to the opposite parapet and away beyond it where the swallows were skimming, “but I’ve never yet spoken to either of the girls. I keep to myself a good deal, as every one about here knows, Miss Rachel.”

Rachel Doorm rose abruptly to her feet with such unexpected suddenness that the man started as if from a blow.

“Your sister,” she jerked out with concentrated vehemence, “is doing my Nance a deadly injury. She’s given her heart — sweet darling — absolutely and without stint to that foreigner down there.” She waved her hand towards the village. “And if Miss Renshaw doesn’t let him go, there’ll be a tragedy.”

Brand looked at her searchingly, his lips trembling with a smile of complicated significance.

“Do make her let him go!” the woman repeated, advancing as if she were ready to clasp his hand; “you can if you like. You always could. If she takes him away, my darling’s heart will be broken. Mr. Renshaw — please — for the sake of old days, for the sake of old friends, do this for me, and make her give him up!”

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!