John Powys - Rodmoor

“It was the kind of form, Nance, that one can imagine wandering in vain helplessness down all the years of human history, seeking amid the dreams of all the great, perverse artists of the world for the incarnation it has been denied by the will of God.” He paused again, and an imperceptible breath of hot balmy air stirred the young leaves of the beech branch above them.

“Ah!” he whispered, “I know what I thought of then. I thought of that ‘Secret Rose Garden’ where the timid boy-girl thing — you know the picture I mean, Nance? — is led forth by some wanton lamp bearer between rose branches that are less soft than her defenceless sides.”

Once more he was silent and the hot wind, rising a little, uttered a perceptible murmur in the leaves above their heads.

“But what was more startling to me, Nance,” he went on, “even than the figure I saw (and it only stayed a moment before disappearing) was the fact that at the very second it vanished, I heard, spoken quite distinctly, in the room next to mine, the word ‘Rodmoor.’

“I threw down the ‘Book of Litanies’ and once more stood breathlessly listening. I caught the word again, uttered in a tone that struck me as having something curiously threatening about it. It was your Miss Doorm, Nance. No wonder she and I instinctively hated each other when we met. She must have known that I had heard this interesting conversation. Your sister’s voice — and you must think about that, Nance, you must think about that — sounded like the voice of a little girl that has been punished — yes, punished into frightened submissiveness.

“Miss Doorm was evidently talking to her about this Rodmoor scheme. ‘It’s what I’ve waited for, for years and years,’ I heard her say. ‘Every Spring that came round I hoped he would die, and he didn’t. It seemed that he wouldn’t — just to spite me, just to keep me out of my own. But now he’s gone — the old man — gone with all his wickedness upon him, and my place returns to me — my own place. It’s mine, I tell you, mine! mine! mine!’ It was extraordinary, Nance, the tone in which she said these things. Then she went on to speak of you. ‘I can free her now,’ she said, ‘I can free her at last. Aren’t you glad I can free her? Aren’t you glad?’

“I confess it made me at that moment almost indignant with your sister that she should need such pressing on such a subject. Her voice, however, when she murmured some kind of an answer, appeared, as I have said, quite obsequious in its humility.

“‘O my precious, my precious!’ the woman cried again, evidently apostrophising you, ‘you’ve worked for me, and saved for me, and now I can return it — I can return it!’ There was a few minutes’ silence then, and I moved,” Sorio continued, “quite close to the wall so as to catch if I could your sister’s whispers.

“Miss Doorm soon began once more and I liked her tone still less. ‘Why don’t you speak? Why do you sit silent and sulky like that? Aren’t you glad she’ll be free of all this burden — of all this miserable drudgery? Aren’t you glad for her? She kept you here like a Duchess, you with your music lessons! A lot of money you’ll ever earn with your music! And now it’s my turn. She shall be a lady in my house, a lady!’”

Nance’s head hung low down over her knees as she listened to all this and the hand that her lover still retained grew colder and colder.

“I remember her next words,” Sorio went on, “particularly well because a lovely fragrance of lilacs came suddenly into the window from a cart in the street and I thought how to my dying day I should associate that scent with this first morning under your roof.

“‘You say you don’t like the sea?’ Miss Doorm went on, ‘and you actually suppose that your not liking the sea will stop my freeing her! No! No! You’ll have the sea, my beauty, at Rodmoor — the sea and the wind. No more dilly-dallying among the pretty shop windows and the nice young music students. The Wind and the Sea! Those are the things that are waiting for you at Rodmoor — at Rodmoor, in my house, where she will be a lady at last!’

“You see, Nance,” Adrian observed, letting her hand go and preparing to light a cigarette, “Miss Doorm’s idea seems to be that you will receive quite a social lift from your move to her precious Rodmoor. She evidently holds the view that no lady has ever earned her living with her own hands. Does she propose to keep a horde of servants in this small house, I wonder, and stalk about among them, grim and majestic, in a black silk gown?

“I must confess I feel at this moment a certain understanding of your sister’s reluctance to plunge into this ‘milieu.’ I can see that house — oh, so clearly! — surrounded by a dark back-water and swept by horribly cold winds. I’m sure I don’t know, Nance, what kind of neighbours you’re going to have on the Doorm estate. Probably half the old hags of East Anglia will troop in upon you, like descendants of the Valkyries. And the North Sea! You realise, my dear, I suppose, what the North Sea is? I don’t blame little Linda for shivering at the thought of it.”

For the first time since she had known him Nance’s voice betrayed irritation. “Don’t tease me, Adrian. I can’t stand it to-night. You don’t know what all this means to Rachel.”

Adrian smiled. “Your dear Rachel,” he said, “seems to have got you both fairly well under her thumb.”

“She was my mother’s best friend!” the girl burst out. “I should never forgive myself if I made her unhappy!”

“There seems more chance, as I see it now,” observed Sorio, “that Miss Doorm will make Linda unhappy. I think I may take it that Linda’s mother wasn’t much of a favourite of hers? Isn’t that so, my dear?”

“We must be getting home now,” the girl remarked, rising from the bench. But Sorio remained seated, coolly puffing wreaths of cigarette smoke into the aromatic night.

“There’s not the slightest need to get cross with me,” he said gently, giving the sleeve of her coat a little deprecatory caress.

“As a matter of fact, when I heard that woman scold Linda for not wanting to set you free I felt, in a most odd and subtle manner, curiously anxious to scold her, too; I quite longed to overcome and override her absurd reluctance. I even felt a strange excitement in the thought of walking with her along the edge of this water, and in the face of this wind. O! I became Miss Doorm’s accomplice, Nance! You may be perfectly happy. I made up my mind that very moment that I would write at once to Baltazar and accept his invitation. Indeed I did write to him, the minute I could hear no more talking. I was too excited to write much. I just wrote: ‘Amico mio — I will come to you very soon.’ and when I’d finished the letter I went straight out and posted it. I believe I heard Linda crying as I went downstairs, but, as I tell you, Nance, I had become quite an accomplice of Miss Doorm! It seemed to me outrageous that the selfish silliness of a child like that should interfere with your emancipation. Besides I liked the thought of walking with her by the shore of this sea and calming her curious fear.”

He threw away his cigarette and, rising to his feet, drew the girl’s arm within his own and led her homewards.

The beech-tree, as if relieved by their departure, gave itself up with more delicious abandonment than ever to the embraces of the warm Spring night. They had not far to go now, and Nance only spoke once before they arrived at their door in the London Bridge Road.

“Had that figure you saw,” she asked in a low constrained voice, “the same look Linda has — now that you know what she is like?”

“Linda?” he answered, “Oh, no, my dear, no, no! That one had nothing to do with Linda. But I think,” he added, after a pause, “it had something to do with Rodmoor.”