John Powys - Rodmoor

Her face was flushed now and through her parted lips the breath came heavily, in excited gasps.

“Linda — little Linda!” she murmured, “it’s my fault — all my fault!”

With one nervous look at the river she sank down on the sun-baked mud and took off her shoes and stockings. Then, thrusting the stockings inside the shoes and tying the laces of these latter together, she pulled up her skirts and secured them round her waist. As she did this she peered apprehensively round her. But she was quite alone and with another shuddering glance at the tide she picked up her shoes and began advancing into the slippery mud. She staggered a little at first and her feet sank deep into the slime but as soon as she was actually in the water she walked more easily, feeling a surer footing. The Loon swirled by her, sending a chill of cold through her bare white limbs. The water was soon high above her knees and she was hardly a quarter of the way across! Her heart beat miserably now and the flush died from her cheeks. It came across her mind like an ice-cold hand upon her throat, how dreadful it would be to be swept off her feet and carried down that tide — down to the Rodmoor harbour and out to sea — dead and tangled in weeds — with wide-open staring eyes and the water pouring in and out of her mouth. Nothing short of her desperate maternal instinct, intensified to frenzy by the thought that she was responsible for Linda’s danger, could have impelled her to press on. The tide was up to her waist now and all her clothes were drenched but still she had not reached the middle of the current.

It was when, taking a step further, she sank as deep as her arm-pits, that she wavered in earnest and a terrible temptation took her to turn and give it up.

“Perhaps, after all,” she thought, “Brand has no evil intentions. Perhaps — who can tell? — he is genuinely in love with her.”

But even as she hesitated, looking with white face up and down the swirling stream, she knew that this reasoning was treacherous. She had heard nothing but evil of Brand’s ways with women ever since she came to Rodmoor. And why should he treat her sister better than the rest?

Suddenly, without any effort of her own, she seemed to visualize with extraordinary clearness a certain look with which, long ago, when she was quite a child, Linda had appealed to her for protection. A passion of maternal remorse made her heart suddenly strong and she plunged recklessly forward. For one moment she lost her footing and in the struggle to recover herself the tide swept over her shoulders. But that was the worst. After that she waded steadily forward till she reached the further side.

Dripping from head to foot she pulled on her shoes, wrung as much of the water as she could out of her drenched skirts and shook them down over her knees. Then she scrambled up the bank, glanced round to make certain she was still unseen and set off through the fields. She could not help smiling to herself when she reached the Mundham high-road and fled quickly across it to think how amazed Sorio would have been had he seen her just then! But neither Sorio nor any one else was in sight and leaving behind her the trail of wet shoes in the hot road dust, she ran, more rapidly than ever, towards the group of ancient and dark-stemmed pines, into the shadow of which she had seen her sister vanish.

LINDA was so astounded that she could hardly repress a scream when, as she sat with her back against a tree on a carpet of pine-needles, Nance suddenly appeared before her breathless with running. It was some moments before the elder girl could recover her speech. She seized her sister by the shoulders and held her at arms’ length, looking wildly into her face and panting as she struggled to find words. “I waded,” she gasped, “across the Loon — to get to you. Oh, Linda! Oh, Linda!”

A deep flush appeared in the younger sister’s cheeks and spread itself over her neck. She gazed at Nance with great terrified eyes.

“Across the river—” she began, and let the words die away on her lips as she realized what this meant.

“But you’re wet through — wet through!” she cried. “Here! You must wear something of mine.”

With trembling fingers she loosened her own dress, hurriedly slipped out of her skirt, flung it aside and began to fumble at Nance’s garments. With little cries of horror as she found how completely drenched her sister was, she pulled her into the deeper shadow of the trees and forced her to take off everything.

“How beautiful you look, my dear,” she cried, searching as a child might have done for any excuse to delay the impending judgment. Nance, even in the reaction from her anxiety, could not be quite indifferent to the naïveté of this appeal and she found herself actually laughing presently as with her arms stretched high above her head and her fingers clinging to a resinous pine branch, she let her sister chafe her body back to warmth.

“Look! I’ll finish you off with ferns!” cried the younger girl, and plucking a handful of new-grown bracken she began rubbing her vigorously with its sweet-scented fronds.

“Oh, you do look lovely!” she cried once more, surveying her from head to foot. “ Do let me take down your hair! You’d look like — oh, I don’t know what!”

“I wish Adrian could see you,” she added. This last remark was a most unlucky blunder on Linda’s part. It had two unfortunate effects. It brought back to Nance’s mind her own deep-rooted trouble and it restored all her recent dread as to her sister’s destiny.

“Give me something to put on,” she said sharply. “We must be getting away from here.”

Linda promptly stripped herself of yet more garments and after a friendly contest as to which of them should wear the dry skirt they were ready to emerge from their hiding-place. Nance fancied that all her difficulties for that day were over. She was never more mistaken.

They had advanced about half a mile towards the park, keeping tacitly within the shadow of the pines when suddenly Linda, who was carrying her sister’s wet clothes, dropped the bundle with a quick cry and stood, stone-still, gazing across the fields. Nance looked in the direction of her gaze and understood in a moment what was the matter. There, walking hastily towards the spot they had recently quitted — was the figure of a man.

Evidently this was the appointed hour and Brand was keeping his tryst. Nance seized her sister’s hand and pulled her back into the shadow. Linda’s eyes had grown large and bright. She struggled to release herself.

“What are you doing, Nance?” she cried. “Let me go! Don’t you see he wants me?”

The elder sister’s grasp tightened.

“My dear, my dear,” she pleaded, “this is madness! Linda, Linda, my darling, listen to me. I can’t let you go on with this. You’ve no idea what it means. You’ve no idea what sort of a man that is.”

The young girl only struggled the more violently to free herself. She was like a thing possessed. Her eyes glittered and her lips trembled. A deep red spot appeared on each of her cheeks.

“Linda, child! My own Linda!” cried Nance, desperately snatching at the girl’s other wrist and leaning back, panting against the trunk of a pine.

“What has come to you? I don’t know you like this. I can’t, I can’t let you go.”

“He wants me,” the girl repeated, still making frantic efforts to release herself. “I tell you he wants me! He’ll hate me if I don’t go to him.”

Her fragile arms seemed endowed with supernatural strength. She wrenched one wrist free and tore desperately at the hand that held the other.

“Linda! Linda!” her sister wailed, “are you out of your mind?”