John Powys - Rodmoor

But as the girls continued to outrage each other’s most secret feelings, each unconsciously quickening her pace as she poured forth her taunts, and both dragging Sorio forward with them, the feeling grew upon him that he was watching some deep cosmic struggle, that was, in its way, as inhuman and elemental as a conflict between wind and water. With this idea lodged in his brain, he began to derive a certain wild and fantastic pleasure from the way they lacerated one another. There was no coxcombry in this. He was far too wrought-upon and shaken in his mind. But there was a certain grim exultant enjoyment, as if he were, at that moment, permitted a passing glimpse into some dark forbidden “cellarage” of Nature, where the primordial elements clash together in eternal conflict.

Inspired by this strange mood, he returned the pressure of Philippa’s fingers, and entwined his arm round the trembling form of his betrothed, drawing both the girls closer towards him, and, in consequence, closer towards one another.

They continued their merciless encounter, almost unconscious, it seemed, of the presence of the man who was the cause of it, and without strength left to resist the force with which he was gradually drawing them together.

Suddenly the wind, which had dropped a little during the previous hour, rose again in a violent and furious gust. It tore at the dark branches above their heads and went moaning and wailing through the thickets on either side of them. Drops of rain, held in suspension by the thicker leaves, splashed suddenly upon their faces, and from the far distance, with a long-drawn ominous muttering, that seemed to come from some unknown region of flight and disaster, the sound of thunder came to their ears.

Sorio dropped Philippa’s hand and embracing her tightly, drew her, too, closely towards him. Thus interlocked by the man’s arms, all three of them staggered forward together, lashed by the wind and surrounded by vague wood-noises that rose and fell mysteriously in the impenetrable darkness.

The powers of the earth seemed let loose, and strange magnetic currents in fierce antipodal conflict, surged about them, and tugged and pulled at their hearts. The sound of the thunder, the wild noises of the night, the strange dark evocations of elemental hatred which at once divided and united his companions, surged through Sorio’s brain and filled him with a sort of intoxication.

The three of them together might have been taken, had the clock of time been put back two thousand years, for some mad Dionysian worshippers following their god in a wild inhuman revel.

Inspired at last by a sort of storm-frenzy, while the wind came wailing and shrieking down the avenue into their faces, Sorio suddenly stopped.

“Come, you two little fools,” he cried, “let’s end this nonsense! Here — kiss one another! Kiss one another, and thank God that we’re alive and free and conscious, and not mere inert matter, like these dead drifting leaves!”

As he spoke he stepped back a little, and with a swing of his powerful arms, brought both the girls face to face with one another. Nance struggled fiercely, and resisted with all her strength. Philippa, with a strange whispering laugh, remained passive in his hands.

“Kiss one another!” he cried again. “Are you kissing or are you holding back? It’s too dark for me to see!”

Philippa suddenly lost her passivity, slipped like a snake from under his encircling arms, and rushed away among the trees. “I leave her to you!” she called back to them out of the darkness. “I leave her to you! You won’t endure her long. And what will Baptiste do , Adriano?”

This last word of hers calmed Sorio’s mood and threw him back upon his essential self. He sighed heavily.

“Well, Nance,” he said, “shall we go back? It’s no use waiting for her. She’ll find her way to Oakguard. She knows every inch of these woods.” He sighed again, as if bidding farewell, in one fate-burdened moment, both to the woods and the girl who knew them.

“ You can go back if you like,” Nance answered curtly. “I’m going to speak to Brand”; and she told him in a brief sentence what she had learned from Linda.

Sorio seized her hand and clutched it savagely. “Yes, yes,” he cried, “yes, yes, let’s go together. He must be taught a lesson — this Brand! Come, let’s go together!”

They moved on rapidly and soon approached the end of the avenue and the entrance to the garden. As Sorio pushed open the iron gates, a sharp crack of thunder, followed by reverberating detonations, broke over their heads. The sudden flash that succeeded the sound brought into vivid relief the dark form of the house, while a long row of fading dahlias, drooping on their rain-soaked stems, stood forth in ghastly illumination.

Nance had time to catch on Adrian’s face a look that gave her a premonition of danger. Had she not herself been wrought-up to an unnatural pitch of excitement by her contest with Philippa, she would probably have been warned in time and have drawn back, postponing her interview with Brand till she could have seen him alone. As it was, she felt herself driven forward by a force she could not resist. “Now — very now,” she must face her sister’s seducer.

A light, burning behind heavy curtains, in one of the lower mullioned windows, enabled them to mount the steps. As she rang the bell, a second peal of thunder, but this time farther off, was followed by a vivid flash of lightning, throwing into relief the wide spaces of the park and the scattered groups of monumental oak trees. For some queer psychic reason, inexplicable to any material analysis, Nance at that moment saw clearly before her mind’s eye, a little church almanac, which Linda had pinned up above their dressing-table, and on this almanac she saw the date — the twenty-eighth of October — printed in Roman figures.

To the servant who opened the door Nance gave their names, and asked whether they could see Mr. Renshaw. “ Mr . Renshaw,” she added emphatically, “and please tell him it’s an urgent and important matter.”

The man admitted them courteously and asked them to seat themselves in the entrance hall while he went to look for his master. He returned after a short time and ushered them into the library, where a moment later Brand joined them.

During their moment of waiting, both in the hall and in the room, Sorio had remained taciturn and inert, sunk in a fit of melancholy brooding, his chin propped on the handle of his stick. He had refused to allow the servant to take out of his hands either his stick or his hat, and he still held them both, doggedly and gloomily, as he sat by Nance’s side opposite the carved fireplace.

When Brand entered they both rose, but he motioned them to remain seated, and drawing up a chair for himself close by the side of the hearth, looked gravely and intently into their faces.

At that moment another rolling vibration of thunder reached them, but this time it seemed to come from very far away, perhaps from several miles out to sea.

Brand’s opening words were accompanied by a fierce lashing of rain against the window, and a spluttering, hissing noise, as several heavy drops fell through the old-fashioned chimney upon the burning logs.

“I think I can guess,” he said, “why you two have come to me. I am glad you have come, especially you, Miss Herrick, as it simplifies things a great deal. It has become necessary that you and I should have an explanation. I owe it to myself as well as to you. Bah! What nonsense I’m talking. It isn’t a case of ‘owing.’ It isn’t a case of ‘explaining.’ I can see that clearly enough”—he laughed a genial boyish laugh—“in your two faces! It’s a case of our own deciding, with all the issues of the future clearly in mind, what will be really best for your sister’s happiness.”