John Powys - Rodmoor

They were both at that moment like persons under the power of some sort of drug. Their eyes were wild and bright and when they spoke their voices had an unnatural solemnity. In the absoluteness of the magnetic current which swept them together, they could do nothing, it seemed, but take all that happened to them for granted — take all — all — as if it could not be otherwise, as if it were unthinkable otherwise.

When they reached the place where the tide turned and the tremulous line of spindrift glimmered in the dying sunlight, the girl stopped at last. Her lips and cheeks were pale as the foam itself. She tried to tear her fingers from his grasp. Her feet, sinking in the wet sand, were splashed by the inflowing water.

“They told me you were afraid,” he muttered, and his voice sounded to them both as if it came from far away, “but I didn’t believe it. I thought it was some little girl’s nonsense. But I see now they were right. You are afraid.”

He rose to his full height, drawing into his lungs with a breath of ecstasy the sharp salt wind that blew across the water’s surface.

“But out of your fear we’ll make a bond between us,” he went on, raising his voice, “a bond which none of them shall be able to break!”

He suddenly bent down and, scooping with his fingers in the water, lifted towards her a handful of sea-foam that gleamed ghostly white as he held it.

“There, child,” he cried, “you can’t escape from me now!”

As he spoke he flung, with a wild laugh, straight across her face, the foam-bubbles which he had caught. She started back with a little gasp, but recovering herself instantly lifted the hand which held her own and pressed it against her forehead. They stood for a moment, after this, staring at one another, with a hushed, dazed, bewildered stare, as though they felt the very wind of the wing of fate pass over their heads.

Brand broke the spell with a laugh. “I’ve christened you now,” he said, “so I can call you what I like. Come up here, Linda, my little one, and let’s talk of all this.”

Hand in hand they moved away from the sea’s edge and crouched down in the shadow of the sand-dunes. The rose-coloured light died out along the line of foam and the mass of the waters in front of them darkened steadily, as if obscured by the over-hovering of some colossal bird. Far off, on the edge of the horizon, a single fragment of drifting cloud took the shape of a bloody hand with outstretched forefinger but even that soon faded as the sun, sinking into the fens behind them, gave up the struggle with darkness.

With the passing of the light from the sea’s surface, all that was left of the wind sank also into absolute immobility. An immense liberating silence intensified, rather than interrupted by the monotonous splash of the waves, seemed to stream forth from some planetary reservoir and overflow the world.

Not a sea-gull screamed, not a sound came from the harbour, not a plover cried from the marshes, not a step, not a voice, not a whisper, approached their solitude or disturbed their strange communion.

Linda sat with her head sunk low upon her breast and her hands clasped upon her knees. Brand, beside her, caressed her whole figure with an intense gaze of concentrated possession.

Neither of them spoke a word, but one of the man’s heavy hands lay upon hers like a leaden weight bruising a fragile plant.

What he seemed attempting to achieve in that conspiring hour was some kind of magnetizing of the girl’s senses so that the first movement of overt passion should come from her rather than from himself. In this it would seem he was not unsuccessful, for after two or three scarce audible sighs her body trembled a little and leant towards his and a low whisper uttered in a tone quite unlike her ordinary one, tore itself from her lips, as if against her volition.

“What are you doing to me?” she murmured.

While the invisible destinies were thus inaugurating their projected work upon Brand and Linda, Nance and Mrs. Renshaw issued forth from the churchyard.

“If only life were clearer,” the girl was thinking, “it would be endurable. It’s this uncertainty in everything — this dreadful uncertainty — which I can’t bear!”

“That was a beautiful psalm we had just now,” said Mrs. Renshaw, in her gentle penetrating voice as, after some minutes’ silent walking they emerged upon the bridge across the Loon. Nance looked down over the parapet and in her depressed fancy she saw the drowned figure of herself, drifting, face upward, upon the flowing water.

“Yes,” she replied mechanically, “the psalms are always beautiful.”

“I don’t believe,” the lady went on, glancing at her with eyes so hollow and sorrowful that it seemed as though the twilight of a world even sadder than the one they looked upon emanated from them, “I don’t believe I understand that little sister of yours. She’s very highly strung — she’s very nervous. She requires a great deal of care. To tell the truth, I don’t consider my son Brand at all a good companion for her. I wish they’d waited and not gone off like that. He doesn’t always remember what a sensitive thing the heart of a young girl is.”

They had now reached the southern side of the Loon and were on the main road between Rodmoor and Mundham. A few paces further brought them to the first houses of the village. Something in the helpless, apologetic, deprecatory way with which, just then, Mrs. Renshaw greeted an old woman who passed them, had a strangely irritating effect upon Nance’s nerves.

“I don’t see why young people should be considered more than any one else!” she burst out. “It’s a purely conventional idea. We all have our troubles, and what I think is the older you get the more difficult life becomes.”

Mrs. Renshaw’s face assumed a mask of weary obstinacy and she walked more slowly, her head bent forward a little and her feet dragging.

“Women have to learn what duty means,” she said, “and the sooner they learn it the better. Those among us who are privileged to make one good man happy have the best that life can give. It’s natural to be restless till you have this. But we must try to overcome our restlessness. We must ask for help.”

She was silent. Her white face drooped and bowed itself, while her tired fingers relaxed their hold on her skirt which trailed in the dust of the road. Her profile, as Nance glanced sideways at it, had a look of hopeless and helpless passivity.

The girl withdrew into herself, irritated and yet remorseful. She felt an obscure longing to be of some service to this unhappy one; yet as she watched her, thus bowed and impenetrable, she felt shut out and excluded.

Before they reached the centre of the village — for Nance felt unwilling to leave Mrs. Renshaw until she had seen her safe within her park gates — they suddenly came upon Baltazar Stork returning from his daily excursion to Mundham.

He was as elegantly dressed as usual and in one hand carried a little black bag, in the other a bunch of peonies. Nance, to her surprise, caught upon her companion’s face a look of extraordinary illumination as the man advanced towards them. In recalling the look afterwards, she found herself thinking of the word “vivacity” in regard to it.

“Oh, I’m always the same,” Mr. Stork replied to the elder lady’s greeting. “I grow more annoyingly the same every day. I say the same things, think the same thoughts and meet the same people. It’s — lovely!”

“I’m glad you ended like that,” observed Nance, laughing. It was one of her peculiarities to laugh — a little foolishly — when she was embarrassed and though she had encountered Sorio’s friend once or twice before, she felt for some reason or other ill at ease with him.