Rodmoor

by John Cowper Powys

  “We must introduce ourselves,” she said. “My name is Miss Herrick. This is Mr. Adrian Sorio.” She paused and waited. A long shrill cry followed by a most melancholy wail which gradually died away in the distance, came to them over the marshes.

  “A curlew,” remarked the intruder. “Beautiful and curious—and with very interesting mating habits. They are rare, too.”

  “Come along, Nance,” Sorio burst out. But the girl turned to her new acquaintance and extended her hand.

  “You haven’t told us your name yet,” she said. “I hope we shall meet again.”

  The stranger gave her a look which, for caressing softness, could only be compared to a virtuoso’s finger laid upon an incomparable piece of Egyptian pottery.

  “Certainly we shall meet,” he murmured. “Of course, most certainly. I know every one here. My name is Raughty—Doctor Fingal Raughty. I was with old Doorm when he died. A noble head, though rather malformed behind the ears. He had a peculiar smell too—not unpleasant—rather musky in fact. They called him Badger in the village. He could drink more gin at a sitting than any man I have ever seen. He resembled the portraits of Descartes. Good-bye, Miss—Nance!”

  As soon as the lovers were alone Sorio’s rage broke forth.

  “What a man!” he cried. “Who gave him leave to talk like that of Mr. Doorm? How did he know you weren’t related to him? And what surpassing coolness to call you by your Christian name! Confound him—he’s gone the way we wanted to go. I believe he knew that. Look! He’s fooling about in the ditch, waiting for us to overtake him!”

  Nance could not help laughing a little at this. “Not at all, my dear. He’s looking for shrew-mice.”

  “What?” rejoined the other crossly. “On the public road? He’s mad. Come, we must get round him somehow. Let’s go through here and hit the tow path.”

  They had no more interruptions as they strolled slowly back along the river’s bank. Nance was perplexed, however, by Adrian’s temper. He seemed irritable and brusque. She had never known him in such a mood, and a dim, obscure apprehension to which she could assign no adequate cause, began to invade her heart.

  They had both become so silent, and the girl’s nerves had been so set on edge by his unusual attitude towards her, that she gave a quite perceptible start when he suddenly pointed across the stream to a clump of oak trees, the only ones, he told her, to be found in the neighbourhood.

  “There’s something behind them,” she remarked, “a house of some kind. I shouldn’t like to live out in that place. How they must hear the wind! It must howl and moan sometimes—mustn’t it?” She smiled at him and shivered.

  “I think I miss London Bridge Road a little, and—Kensington Park. Don’t you, too, Adrian?”

  “Yes, there’s a house behind them,” Sorio repeated, disregarding her last words and staring fixedly at the oak trees. “There’s a house behind them.”

  His manner was so queer that the girl looked at him with serious alarm.

  “What’s the matter with you, Adrian?” she said. “I’ve never known you like this—”

  “It’s where the Renshaws live,” her lover continued. “They have a kind of park. Its wall runs close to the village. Some of the trees are very old. I walked there this morning before breakfast. Baltazar advised me to.”

  Nance looked at him still more nervously. Then she gave a little forced laugh. “That is why you were so late in coming to see me, I suppose! Well, you say the Renshaws live there. May one ask who the Renshaws are?”

  He took the girl’s arm in his own and dragged her forward at a rapid pace. She remarked that it was not until some wide-spreading willows on the further side of the river concealed the clump of oaks that he replied to her question.

  “Baltazar told me everything about them. He ought to know, for he’s one of them himself. Yes, he’s one of them. He’s the son of old Herman, Brand’s father; not legitimate, of course, and Brand isn’t always kind to him. But he’s one of them.”

  He stopped abruptly on this last word and Nance caught him throwing a furtive glance across the stream.

  “Who are they, Adrian? Who are they?” repeated the girl.

  “I’ll tell you,” he cried, with strange irritation. “I’ll tell you everything! When haven’t I told you everything? They are brewers. That isn’t very romantic, is it? And I suppose you might call them landowners, too. They’ve lived here forever, it seems, and in the same house.”

  He burst into an uneasy laugh.

  “In the same house for centuries and centuries! The churchyard is full of them. It’s only lately they’ve taken to be brewers—I suppose the land don’t pay for their vices.”

  And again he laughed in the same jarring and ungenial way.

  “Brand employs Baltazar—just as if he wasn’t his brother at all—in the office at Mundham. You remember Mundham? We came through it in the train. It’s over there,” he waved his hand in front of him, “about seven miles off. It’s a horrid place—all slums and canals. That’s where they make their beer. Their beer!” He laughed again.

  “You haven’t yet told me who they are—I mean who else there is,” observed Nance while, for some reason or other, her heart began to beat tumultuously.

  “Haven’t I said I’d tell you everything?” Sorio flung out. “I’ll tell you more than you bargain for, if you tease me. Oh, confound it! There’s Rachel and Linda! Look now, do they appear as if they were happy?”

  Favoured by the wind which blew seawards, the lovers had been permitted to approach quite close to their friends without any betrayal of their presence.

  Linda was seated on the river bank, her head in her hands, while Miss Doorm, like a black-robed priestess of some ancient ritual, leant against the trunk of a leafless pollard.

  “They were perfectly happy when I left them,” whispered Nance, but she was conscious as she spoke of a cold, miserable misgiving in her inmost spirit. Like a flash her mind reverted to the lilac bushes of the London garden, and a sick loneliness seized her.

  “Linda!” she cried, with a quiver of remorse in her voice. The young girl leapt hurriedly to her feet, and Miss Doorm removed her hand from the tree. A quick look passed between the sisters, but Nance understood nothing of what Linda’s expression conveyed. They moved on together, Adrian with Linda and Nance with Rachel.

  “What do they call this river?” Nance enquired of her companion, as soon as she felt reassured by the sound of the girl’s laugh.

  “The Loon, my dear,” replied Miss Doorm. “They call it the Loon. It runs through Mundham and then through the fens. It forms the harbour at Rodmoor.”

  Nance sat silent. In the depths of her heart she made a resolution. She would find some work to do here in Rodmoor. It was intolerable to be dependent on any one. Yes, she would find work, and, if need be, take Linda to live with her.

  She felt now, though she would have found it hard to explain the obscure reason for it, more reluctant than ever to return to London. Every pulse of her body vibrated with a strange excitement. A reckless fighting spirit surged up within her. Not easily, not quickly, should her hold on the man she loved be loosed! But she felt danger on the horizon—nearer than the horizon. She felt it in her bones.

  They had now reached the foot of Rachel’s garden and there was a general pause in order that Adrian might do justice to the heavy architecture of Dyke House, as it was called—that house which the Badger—to follow Doctor Raughty’s tale—had taken into his “noble” but “malformed” head to leave to his solitary descendant.

  As they passed in one by one through the little dilapidated gate, Nance had a sudden inspiration. She seized her lover by the wrist. “Adrian,” she whispered, “has there been anything—any one—to remind you—of what—you saw—that morning?”

  She could not but believe that he had heard her and caught her meaning, yet it was hard to assume it, for his tone was calm and natural as he answered her, apparently quite misunderstanding her words:

/>   “The sea, you mean? Yes, I’ve heard it all night and all day. We’ll go down there this afternoon, and Linda with us.” He raised his voice. “You’ll come to the sea, Linda; eh, child? To the Rodmoor sea?”

  The words died away over the river and across the fens. The others had already entered the house, but a laughing white face at one of the windows and the tapping of girlish hands on the closed pane seemed to indicate acquiescence in what he suggested.

  III

  SEA-DRIFT

  THE wind had dropped but no gleam of sunshine interrupted the monotonous stretch of grey sky, grey dunes and grey sea, as the sisters with their two companions strolled slowly in the late afternoon along the Rodmoor sands.

  Linda was a little pale and silent, and Nance fancied she discerned now and again, in the glances Miss Doorm threw upon her, a certain sinister exultation, but she was prevented from watching either of them very closely by reason of the extraordinary excitement which the occasion seemed to arouse in Sorio. He kept shouting bits of poetry, some of which Nance caught the drift of, while others—they might have been Latin or Greek, for all she knew—conveyed nothing to her but a vague feeling of insecurity. He was like an excited magician uttering incantations and invoking strange gods.

  The sea was neither rough nor calm. Wisps of tossed-up foam appeared and disappeared at far distant points in its vast expanse, and every now and then the sombre horizon was broken in its level line by the emergence of a wave larger and darker than the rest.

  Flocks of gulls disturbed by their approach rose, wheeling and screaming, from their feeding-grounds on the stranded seaweed and flapped away over the water.

  The four friends advanced along the hard sand, close to the changing line of the tide’s retreat, and from the blackened windrow there, of broken shells and anonymous sea refuse they stopped, each one of them, at different moments, to pick up some particular object which attracted or surprised them. It was Nance who was the first to become aware that they were not the only frequenters of that solitude. She called Adrian’s attention to two figures moving along the edge of the sand-dunes and apparently, from the speed with which they advanced, anxious to reach a protruding headland and disappear from observation.

  Adrian stopped and surveyed the figures long and intently. Then to her immense surprise, and it must be confessed a little to her consternation, he started off at a run in pursuit of them. His long, lean, hatless figure assumed so emphatic and strange an appearance as he crossed the intervening sands that Linda burst into peals of laughter.

  “I wish they’d run away from him,” she cried. “We should see a race! Who are they? Does he know them?”

  Nance made no reply, but Miss Doorm, who had been watching the incident with sardonic interest, muttered under her breath, “It’s begun, has it? Soon enough, in all conscience!”

  Nance turned sharply upon her. “What do you mean, Rachel? Does Adrian know them? Do you know who they are?”

  No answer was vouchsafed to this, nor indeed was one necessary, for the mystery, whatever it was, was on the point of resolving itself. Adrian had overtaken the objects of his pursuit and was bringing them back with him, one on either hand. Nance was not long in making out the general characteristics of the strangers. They were both women, one elderly, the other quite young, and from what she could see of their appearance and dress, they were clearly ladies. It was not, however, till they came within speaking distance that the girl’s heart began to beat an unmistakable danger-signal. This happened directly she obtained a definite view of the younger of Adrian’s companions. Before any greeting could be given Rachel had whispered abruptly into her ear, “They’re the Renshaws—I haven’t seen them since Philippa was a child, but they’re the Renshaws. He must have met them this morning. Look out for yourself, dearie.”

  Nance only vaguely heard her. Every fibre of attention in her body and soul was fixed upon that slender equivocal figure by Adrian’s side.

  The introduction which followed was of a sufficiently curious character. Between Nance and the young woman designated by Rachel as Philippa there was an exchange of glances when their fingers touched like the crossing of two naked blades. Mrs. Renshaw retained Linda’s hand in her own longer than convention required, and Linda herself seemed to cling to the brown-eyed, grey-haired lady with a movement of childish confidence. Nance was calm enough, for all the beating of her heart, to remark as an interesting fact that her rival’s mother, though oppressively timid and retiring in her manner towards them all, seemed to exercise a quelling and restraining influence upon Rachel Doorm, who began at once speaking to her with unusual deference and respect. The whole party, after some desultory conversation, began to drift away from the sea towards the town and Nance found herself in spite of some furtive efforts to the contrary, wedged closely in between Mrs. Renshaw and Rachel—with Linda walking in front of them—as they followed the narrow uneven path between the sand-dunes and the heavy sand of the upper shore.

  Every now and then Mrs. Renshaw would bend down and call their attention to some little sea plant, telling them its name in slow sweet tones, as if repeating some liturgical formula, and indicating into what precise colour its pale glaucous buds would unsheathe as the weather grew warm.

  On these occasions Nance quickly turned her head; but do what she could, she could only grow helplessly conscious that Adrian and his companion were slipping further and further behind.

  Once, as the tender-voiced lady touched lightly, with the tips of her ungloved fingers, a cluster of insignificant leaves and asked Nance if she knew the lesser rock-rose the agitated girl found herself on the point of uttering a strangely irrelevant cry.

  “Rose au regard saphique,” her confused heart murmured, “plus pâle que les lys, rose au regard saphique, offre-nous le parfum de ton illusoire virginité fleur hypocrite, fleur de silence.”

  They approached at last the entrance of the little harbour, and to Nance’s ineffable relief Mrs. Renshaw paused and made them sit down on a fish-smelling bench, among coils of rope, and wait the appearance of the missing ones.

  The tide was low and between great banks of mud the water rushed seaward in a narrow, swirling current. A heavy fishing smack with high tarred sides and red, unfurled, sails, was being steered down this channel by two men armed with enormous poles. Through the masts of several other boats, moored to iron rings in the wooden wharf, and between the slate roofs of some ramshackle houses on the other side, they got a glimpse, looking westward across the fens, of a low, rusty-red streak of sombrely illuminated sky. This apparently was all the sunset Rodmoor was destined to know that evening and Nance, as she listened vaguely to Mrs. Renshaw’s gentle voice describing to Linda the various “queer characters” among the harbour people, had a strange, bewildered sense of being carried far and far and far down a remorseless tide, with a heavy sky above her and interminable grey sands around her, and all the while something withheld, withdrawn, inexplicable in the power that bore her forward.

  They came at last—Adrian and Philippa Renshaw, and Nance had, in one heart-rending moment, the pitiless suspicion that the battle was lost already and that this fragile thing with the great ambiguous eyes and the reserved manner, this thing whose slender form and tight-braided, dusky hair might have belonged to a masquerading boy, had snatched from her already what could never for all the years of her life be won again!

  As they left the harbour and entered the main village street, Adrian made one or two deliberate efforts to detach Nance from the rest. He pointed out little things to her in the homely shop-windows and seemed surprised and disappointed when she made no response to his overtures. She could not make any response. She could not bring herself so much as to look into his face. It was not from any capricious pride or mere feminine pique that she thus turned away but from a profound and lamentable numbness of every emotion. The wound seemed to have gone further even than she herself had known. Her heart felt like a dead cold weight—like a murdered, unborn child�
�beneath her breast, and out of her lethargy and inertness, as in certain tragic dreams, she could not move. Her limbs seemed formed of lead, and her lips—at least as far as he was concerned—became those of a dumb animal.

  A man, viewing the situation from outside, the slightness and apparent triviality of the incident, would have been astounded at the effect upon her of so insubstantial a blow, but women move in a different world, a world where the drifting of the tiniest straw is indicative of crushing catastrophes, and to the instinct of the least sensitive among women Nance’s premonitions would have been quite explicable.

  It was at that moment that it was sharply borne in upon her how slight her actual knowledge of her lover was. Her absorption in him was devoted and complete but in regard to the intricacies and complications of his character she was as much in the dark to-day as when they first met in London Bridge Road.

  Strangely enough, in the paralysis of her feelings, Nance was unconscious of any definite antagonism to the cause of her distress. She found she could talk quite naturally and spontaneously to Miss Renshaw when chance threw them together as they emerged upon the village green.

  “Oh, I like those trees!” she cried, as the row of ancient sycamores which gave the forlorn little square its chief appeal first struck her attention.

  The cottage of Baltazar Stork, it turned out, was just behind these sycamores and next door to the building which, with its immense and faded signboard, offered the natives of Rodmoor their unique dissipation. “The Admiral’s Head!” Nance repeated, surveying the sign and thinking to herself that it must have been under that somewhat sordid roof that Miss Doorm’s parent had drunk himself to death.

  “Don’t look at it,” she heard Mrs. Renshaw say, “I feel ashamed every time I pass it.”

  Philippa gave Nance a quick and rather bitter smile.

  “Mother is telling them that it is our beer which they sell there. You know we are brewers, don’t you? Mother thinks it her duty to remind every one of that fact. She gets a curious pleasure out of talking about it. It’s her morbid conscience. You’ll find we’re all rather morbid here,” she added, looking searchingly into Nance’s face.