John Powys - Rodmoor

Linda lay breathing softly. On her lips was a child-like smile of serene happiness. She had tossed the bed-clothes away and one of her arms, bare to the elbow, hung over the edge of the bed. It seemed she was holding fast, in the hand thus pathetically extended, some small object round which her fingers were tightly closed. Nance moved to her side and took this hand in her own. The girl turned her head uneasily but continued to sleep. Nance opened the fingers which lay helplessly in her own and found that what they held so passionately was a small fir-cone. The bright August sunshine pouring down upon the room enabled her to catch sight of several strands of light brown hair woven round the thing’s rough scales. She let the unconscious fingers close once more round the fir-cone and glanced anxiously at the sleeping girl. She guessed in a moment the meaning of that red scratch across the girl’s bosom. She must have been carrying this token pressed close against her flesh and its rough prickly edges had drawn blood.

Nance sighed heavily and remained for a moment buried in gloomy thought. Then, stepping softly to the door, she ran downstairs to see if Mrs. Raps were still in her kitchen or had left any preparations for their belated dinner. Their habit was to make their own breakfast and tea, but to have their midday meal brought up to them from their landlady’s table. She found an admirable collation carefully prepared for them on a tray and a little note on the dresser telling her that the family had gone to Mundham for the afternoon.

“Bless your poor, dear heart,” the note ended, “the old man and I thought best not to disappoint the children.”

Nance felt faint with hunger. She put the kettle on the fire and made tea and with this and Mrs. Raps’ tray she returned to her sister’s side and roused her from her sleep.

Linda seemed dazed and confused when she first woke. For the moment it was difficult not to feel as though all the events of the night and morning were a troubled and evil dream. Nance noticed the nervous and bewildered way in which she put her hand to the mark upon her breast as if wondering why it hurt her and the hasty disconcerted movement with which she concealed the fir-cone beneath her pillow. In spite of everything, however, their meal was not by any means an unhappy one. The sun shone warm and bright upon the floor. Pleasant scents, in which garden-roses, salt-sea freshness and the vague smell of peat and tar mingled together, came in through the window, blent with the lazy, cheerful sounds of the people’s holiday. After all they were both young and neither the unsatisfied ache in the soul of the one nor the vague new dread, bitter-sweet and full of strange forebodings, in the mind of the other could altogether prevent the natural life-impulse with which, like two wind-shaken plants in an intermission of quiet, they raised their heads to the sky and the sunshine. They were young. They were alive. They knew — too well, perhaps! — but still they knew what it was to love, and the immense future, with all its infinite possibilities, lay before them. “Sursum Corda!” the August airs whispered to them. “Sursum Corda!” “Lift up your hearts!” their own young flesh and blood answered.

Linda did not hesitate as she ate and drank to confess to Nance how she had betrayed her and how she had seen Brand in the park. Of the cedar trees and their more ominous story she said nothing, but she told how Philippa had sprung upon her in the avenue and of wild, cruel taunts.

“She frightened me,” the girl murmured. “She always frightens me. Do you think she would really have made me go back with her to the house — to meet Brand and Mrs. Renshaw and all? I couldn’t have done it,” she put her hands to her cheeks and trembled as she spoke, “I couldn’t — I couldn’t! It would have been too shameful! And yet I believe she was really going to make me. Do you think she was, Nance? Do you think she could have done such a thing?”

Nance gripped the arms of her chair savagely.

“Why didn’t you leave her, dear?” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you simply leave her and run off? She isn’t a witch. She’s simply a girl like ourselves.”

Linda smiled. “How fierce you look, darling! I believe if it had been you you’d have slapped her face or pushed her down or something.”

Nance gazed out of the window, frowning. She wondered to herself by what spiritual magic Mr. Traherne and his white rat proposed to obliterate the poisonous rage of jealousy. She wondered what he would say, the devoted priest, to this uncalled for and cruel attack upon her sister. She had never heard him mention Philippa at any time in their talks. Was he as much afraid of her beauty as he pretended to be of her own? Did he make Philippa hide her ankles in her skirt when she visited him? But she supposed she never did visit him. It was somehow very difficult to imagine the sister of Brand Renshaw in the priest’s little study.

From Traherne, Nance’s mind wandered to Dr. Raughty. How kind he had been to her when she was in despair about Linda! She had never seen him half so serious or troubled. She could hardly help smiling as she remembered the peculiar expression he wore and the way he pulled on his coat and laced up his boots. She had let him give her a little glass of crême de menthe and she could see now, with wonderful distinctness, the gravity with which he had watched her drink it. She felt certain his hand had shaken with nervousness when he took the glass from her. She could hear him clearing his throat and muttering some fantastic invocation to what sounded like an Egyptian divinity. Surely the effect of extreme anxiety could produce upon no one else in the world but Dr. Raughty a tendency to allude to the great god Ra! And what extraordinary things he had put into his little black bag as he sallied forth with her to the bridge! Linda might have been in need of several kinds of surgical operations from the preparations he made.

He had promised to spend that day on a fishing trip, out to sea, with Adrian and Baltazar. She wondered whether their boat was still in sight or whether they had got beyond the view of Rodmoor harbour.

“Linda, dear,” she said presently, catching her sister’s hand feeling about under her pillows for the fir-cone she had hidden, “Linda, dear, if I’m to forgive you for what you did last night, for running away from me, I mean, and pretending things, will you do something that I want now? Will you come down to the shore and see if we can see anything of Adrian’s boat? He’s fishing with Dr. Raughty and Mr. Stork, and I’d love to get a sight of their sail. I know it’s a sailing boat they’ve gone in because Dr. Raughty said he was going to take his mackintosh so that when they went fast and the water splashed over the side he might be protected. I think he was a little scared of the expedition. Poor dear man, between us all, I’m afraid we give him a lot of shocks!”

Linda jumped up quite eagerly. She felt prepared at that moment to do anything to please her sister. Besides, there were certain agitating thoughts in her brain which cried aloud for any kind of distraction. They dressed and went out, choosing, as suited the holiday occasion, brighter frocks and gayer hats than they had worn for many weeks. Nance’s position in the Pontifex shop was a favourable one as far as their wardrobe was concerned.

They made their way down to the harbour. They were surprised, and in Linda’s case at any rate not very pleasantly surprised, to find tied to a post where the wharf widened and the grass grew between the cobble-stones the little grey pony and brown pony-cart which Mrs. Renshaw was in the habit of using when the hot weather made it tiring for her to walk.

“Let’s go back! Oh, Nance, let’s go back!” whispered Linda in a panic-stricken voice. “I don’t feel I can face her to-day.”