John Powys - Rodmoor

“Is that what you wish to bring about by this interference on her behalf? It’s absurd to pretend that you think of me as a mere hot-headed amorist, desperately in love with Linda, as she is with me, and that, by marrying us, you are smoothing out her path and settling her down happily for the rest of her life. You think of me as a cold-blooded selfish sensualist, and to punish me for being what I am, you propose to put Linda’s entire happiness absolutely in my hands!

“Of course, I speak to you like this knowing that, whatever your feelings are, you have the instincts of a lady. A different type of woman from yourself would consider merely the worldly aspect of the matter and the advantage to your sister of becoming mistress of Oakguard. That , I know, does not enter, for one moment, into your thoughts, any more than it enters into hers. I am not ironical in saying this. I am not insulting you. I am speaking simply the truth.

“Forgive me, Miss Herrick! Even to mention such a thing is unworthy of either of us. I am, as you quite justly realize — and probably more than you realize — what the world calls unscrupulous. But no one has ever accused me of truckling to public opinion or social position. I care nothing for those things, any more than you do or Linda does. As far as those things go I would marry her to-morrow. My mother, as you doubtless know, hopes that I shall marry her — wishes and prays for it. My mother has never given a thought, and never will give a thought, to the opinion of the world. It isn’t in her nature, as no doubt you quite realize. We Renshaws have always gone our own way, and done what we pleased. My father did — Philippa does; and I do.

“Come, Miss Herrick! Try for a moment to put your anger against me out of the question. Suppose you did induce me to marry Linda, and Linda to marry me, does that mean that you make me change my nature? We Renshaws never change and I never shall, you may be perfectly sure of that! I couldn’t even if I wanted to. My blood, my race, my father’s instincts in me, go too deep. We’re an evil tribe, Nance Herrick, an evil tribe, and especially are we evil in our relations with women. Some families are like that, you know! It’s a sort of tradition with them. And it is so with us. It may be some dark old strain of Viking blood, the blood of the race that burnt the monasteries in the days of Æthelred the Unready! On the other hand it may be some unaccountable twist in our brains, due — as Fingal says — to — oh! to God knows what!

“Let it go! It doesn’t matter what it is; and I daresay you think me a grotesque hypocrite for bringing such a matter into it at all. Well! Let it go! There’s really no need to drag in Æthelred the Unready! What you and I have to do, Miss Herrick, is, seriously and quietly, without passion or violence, to discuss what’s best for your sister’s happiness. Put my punishment out of your mind for the present — that can come later. Your friend Mr. Sorio will be only too pleased to deal with that! The point for us to consider, for us who both love your sister, is, what will really be happiest for her in the long run — and I can assure you that no woman who ever lived could be happy long tied hand and foot to a Renshaw.

“Look at my mother! Does she suggest a person who has had a happy life? I tell you she would give all she has ever enjoyed here — every stick and stone of Oakguard — never to have set eyes on my father — never to have given birth to Philippa or to me! We Renshaws may have our good qualities — God knows what they are — but we may have them. But one thing is certain. We are worse than the very devil for any woman who to live with us! It’s in our blood, I tell you. We can’t help it. We’re made to drive women mad — to drive them into their graves!”

He stopped abruptly with a bitter and hopeless shrug of his shoulders. Nance had listened to him, all the way through his long speech, with concentrated and frowning attention. When he had finished she stood staring at him without a word, almost as if she wished him to continue; almost as if something about his personality fascinated her in spite of herself, and made her sympathetic.

But Sorio, who had been fidgetting with his heavy stick, rose now, slowly and deliberately, to his feet. Nance, looking at his face, saw upon it an expression which from long association she had come to regard with mingled tenderness and alarm. It was the look his features wore when on the point of rushing to the assistance of some wounded animal or ill-used child.

He uttered no word, but flinging Nance aside with his left hand, with the other he struck blindly with his stick, aiming a murderous blow straight at Brand’s face.

Brand had barely time to raise his hand. The blow fell upon his wrist, and his arm sank under it limp and paralysed.

Nance, with a loud cry for assistance, clung frantically to Sorio’s neck, trying to hold him back. But apparently beyond all consciousness now of what he was doing, Sorio flung her roughly back and drove his enemy with savage repeated strokes into a corner of the room. It was not long before Brand’s other arm was rendered as useless as the first, and the blows falling now on his unprotected head, soon felled him to the ground.

Nance, who had flung open the door and uttered wild and panic-stricken cries for help, now rushed across the room and pinioned the exhausted flagellant in her strong young arms. Seeing his enemy motionless and helpless with a stream of blood trickling down his face, Adrian resigned himself passively to her controlling embrace.

They were found in this position by the two menservants, who came rushing down the passage in answer to her screams. Mrs. Renshaw, dressing in her room on the opposite side of the house, heard nothing. The steady downpour of the rain dulled all other sounds. Philippa had not yet returned.

Under Nance’s directions, the two men carried their master out of the “workshop,” while she herself continued to cling desperately to Sorio. There had been something hideous and awful to the girl’s imagination about the repeated “thud — thud — thud” of the blows delivered by her lover. This was especially so after the numbing of his bruised arms reduced Adrian’s victim to helplessness.

As she clung to him now she seemed to hear the sound of those blows — each one striking, as it seemed, something resistless and prostrate in her own being. And once more, with grotesque iteration, the figures upon Linda’s almanac ticked like a clock in answer to the echo of that sound. “October the twenty-eighth — October the twenty-eighth,” repeated the church-almanac, from its red-lettered frame.

The extraordinary thing was that as her mind began to function more naturally again, she became conscious that, all the while, during that appalling scene, even at the very moment when she was crying out for help, she had experienced a sort of wild exultation. She recalled that emotion quite clearly now with a sense of curious shame.

She was also aware that while glancing at Brand’s pallid and unconscious face as they carried him from the room, she had felt a sudden indescribable softening towards him and a feeling for him that she would hardly have dared to put into words. She found herself, even now, as she went over in her mind with lightning rapidity every one of the frightful moments she had just gone through, changing the final episode in her heart, to quite a different one; to one in which she herself knelt down by their enemy’s side, and wiped the blood from his forehead, and brought him back to consciousness.

Left alone with Sorio, Nance relaxed her grasp and laid her hands appealingly upon his shoulder. But it was into unseeing eyes that she looked, and into a face barely recognizable as that of her well-beloved. He began talking incoherently and yet with a kind of terrible deliberation and assurance.