John Powys - Rodmoor

Nance turned round towards him wearily.

“If Adrian doesn’t come in a minute or two,” she thought, “I shall ask him to get a trap for us, or I shall go to Dr. Raughty.”

“It’s an odd thing,” Baltazar continued, lighting a cigarette and walking up and down the room, “how quickly I know whether people are serious or not. It must be something in their faces. Linda, now”—he looked caressingly at the figure on the sofa—“is obviously never serious. She’s like me. I saw that in her hand. She’s destined to go through life as I do, playing on the surface like a dragon-fly on a pond.”

The young girl answered his look with a soft but rather puzzled smile, and once more he sat down by her side and renewed his fortune-telling. His fingers, as he held her hand, looked almost as slender as her own and his face, as Nance saw it in profile, had a subtle delicacy of outline that made her think of Philippa. There was, to the mind of the elder girl, a refined inhumanity about every gesture he made and every word he spoke which filled her with aversion. The contours of his face were exquisitely moulded and his round small head covered with tight fair curls was supported on a neck as soft and white as a woman’s; but his eyes, coloured like some glaucous sea plant, were to the girl’s thinking extraordinarily sinister. She could not help a swift mental comparison between Baltazar’s attitude as he leaned over Linda and that of Dr. Raughty when, on various occasions, that honest man had made playful love to herself. It was hard to define the difference but, as she watched Baltazar she came to the conclusion that there was a soul of genuine affectionateness in the doctor’s amorous advances which made them harmless as compared with this other’s.

Linda, however, was evidently very pleased and flattered. She lay with her head thrown back and a smile of languid contentment. She did not even make an attempt to draw away her hand when the fortune-telling was over. Nance resolved that she would wait five minutes more by their host’s elegant French time-piece and then, if Adrian had not come, she would make Mr. Stork fetch them a conveyance. It came over her that there was something morbid and subtly unnatural about the way Baltazar was treating Linda and yet she could not put her finger upon what was wrong. She felt, however, by a profound instinct, an instinct which she could not analyse, that nothing that Brand Renshaw could possibly do — even were he the unscrupulous seducer she suspected him of being — could be as dangerous for the peace of her sister’s mind as what she was now undergoing. With Brand there was quite simply a strong magnetic attraction, formidable and overpowering, and that was all, but she trembled to think what elements of complicated morbidity Baltazar’s overtures were capable of arousing.

“Look,” he said presently, “Flambard’s watching us! I believe he’s jealous of me because of you, or of you because of me. I don’t believe he’s ever seen any one so near being his rival as you are! I think you must have something in you that he understands. Perhaps you’re a re-incarnation of one of his Venetians! Don’t you think, Miss Herrick,” and he turned urbanely to Nance, “she’s got something that suggests Venice in her as she lies there — with that smile?”

The languorous glance of secret triumph which Linda at that moment threw upon her sister was more than Nance could endure.

“Do you mind getting us a trap of some sort at the Admiral’s Head?” she said brusquely, rising from her seat.

Baltazar assented at once with courteous and even effusive politeness and left the room. As soon as he was gone, Nance moved to Linda’s side.

“Little one,” she said, with trembling lips, “I seem not to know you to-day. You’re not my Linda at all.”

The child’s face stiffened spasmodically and her whole expression hardened. She fixed her gaze on the ambiguous Flambard and made no answer.

“Linda, darling — I’m only thinking all the time of you,” pleaded Nance, putting out her hand.

A gleam of positive hatred illuminated the child’s eyes. She suddenly snatched at the proffered hand and surveyed it vindictively.

“I can see where I bit you just now. I’m glad I did!” she cried, and once more she set herself to stare at Flambard.

Nance went over to the fire-place and sat down. But something seemed to impel Linda to strike her again.

“You thought you were going to have every one in Rodmoor to yourself, didn’t you?” she said. “You thought you’d have Adrian and Dr. Raughty and Mr. Traherne and everybody. You never thought any one would begin liking me!”

Nance looked at her in sheer terrified astonishment. Certainly the influence of Baltazar was making itself felt.

“You brought me here,” Linda went on. “I didn’t want to come and you knew I didn’t . Now — as he says, we must make the best of it.”

The phrase “and you knew I didn’t” went through Nance’s heart like a poisoned dagger. Yes, she had known! She had tried to put the thing far from her — to throw the responsibility for it upon her reluctance to hurt Rachel. But she had known. And now her punishment was beginning. She bowed her head upon her hands and covered her face.

“You came,” the girl’s voice went on, “because you hated leaving Adrian. But Adrian doesn’t want you any more now. He wants Philippa. Do you know, Nance, I believe he’d marry Philippa, if he could — if Brand would let him!”

The hands that hid Nance’s face trembled. She longed to run away and sob her heart out. She had thought she was at the bottom of all possible misery. She had never expected this. Linda, as if drawing inspiration for the suffering she inflicted, continued to look Flambard in the eyes.

“Brand told me Philippa meets Adrian every night in the park. He said he spied on them once and found them kissing each other. He said they were leaning against one of the oak trees and Adrian bent her head back against the trunk and kissed her like that. He showed me just how he did it. And he made me laugh like anything afterwards by something else he said. But I don’t think I’ll tell you that — unless you want to hear very much — Do you want to hear?”

Nance, at this moment, lifted up her head. She had a look in her eyes that nothing except the inexhaustible pitilessness of a woman thwarted in her passion could have endured without being melted.

“Are you trying to kill me, Linda?” she murmured.

Her sister gave her one quick glance and looked away again at Flambard. She remained silent after that, while the French clock ticked out the seconds with a jocular malignity.

The wind, rising steadily, swept large drops of rain against the window and the noise of the waves which it brought with it sounded louder and clearer than before as if the sea itself had advanced several leagues across the land since first they entered the house.

NANCE said nothing to Rachel Doorm on the night they returned, driven home by the landlord of the Admiral’s Head. What Rachel feared, or what she imagined, as the sisters entered the house in their thin attire carrying the bundle of drenched clothes, it was impossible to surmise. She occupied herself with lighting a fire in their room and while they undressed she brought them up their supper with her own hands. It was a wretched night for both of the sisters and few were the words exchanged between them as they ate their meal. Once in bed and the light extinguished, it was Nance, in spite of all, who fell asleep first. “The pangs of despised love” have not the same corrosive poison as the sting of passion embittered by rancour.

Nance was up early and took her breakfast alone. She felt an irresistible need to see Mr. Traherne. She arrived at the priest’s house almost as early as she had done on a former occasion, only this time, the day being overcast and the wind high, he received her within-doors. She found him reading “Don Quixote” and, without giving her time to speak, he made her listen to the gentle and magnanimous story of the poor knight’s death.