John Powys - Rodmoor

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.

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 his 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.”