Rodmoor

by John Cowper Powys

  As she approached the avenue where the trunks of the cedars rose dark against the misty white light, she was suddenly startled by the flapping wings of an enormous heron which, mounting up in front of her out of the shadow of the trees, went sailing away across the park, its extended neck and outstretched legs outlined against the eastern sky. She passed in among the shadows from which the heron had emerged, and there, as though he had been waiting for her only a few moments, was Brand Renshaw.

  With one swift cry she flung herself into his arms and they clung together as if from an eternity of separation. In her flimsy dress wet with mist she seemed like a creature evoked by some desperate prayer of earth-passion. Her cheeks and breast were cold to his touch, but the lips that answered his kisses were hot as if with burning fever. She clung to him as though some abysmal gulf might any moment open beneath their feet. She nestled against him, she twined herself around him. She took his head between her hands and with her cold fingers she caressed his face. So thinly was she clad that he could feel her heart beating as if it were his own.

  “I knew you were calling me,” she gasped at last. “I felt it—I felt it in my flesh. Oh, my only love, I’m all yours—all, all yours! Take me, hold me, save me from every one! Hold me, hold me, my only love, hold me tight from all of them!”

  They swayed together as she clung to him and, lifting her up from the ground he carried her, still wildly kissing him, into the deeper shadow of the great cedars. Exhausted at last by the extremity of her passion, she hung limp in his arms, her face white as the white light which now flooded the eastern horizon. He laid her down then at the foot of one of the largest trees and bending over her pushed back the hair from her forehead as if she had been a tired child.

  By some powerful law of his strange nature, the very intensity of her passion for him and her absolute yielding to his will calmed and quieted his own desire. She was his now, at a touch, at a movement; but he would as soon have hurt an infant as have embraced her then. His emotion at that moment was such as never again in his life he was destined to experience. He felt as though, untouched as she was, she belonged to him, body and soul. He felt as though they two together were isolated, separated, divided, from the whole living world. Beneath the trunks of those black-foliaged cedars they seemed to be floating in a mystic ship over a great sea of filmy white waves.

  He bent down and kissed her forehead, and under his kiss, chaste as the kiss a father might give to a little girl, she closed her eyes and lay motionless and still, a faint-flickering smile of infinite contentment playing upon her lips.

  They were in this position—the girl’s hand resting passively in his—and he bending over her, when through an eastward gap between the trees the sun rose above the mist. It sent towards them a long blood-coloured finger that stained the cedar trunks and caused the strangely shaped head of the stooping man to look as if it had been dipped in blood. It made the girl’s mouth scarlet-red and threw an indescribable flush over her face, a flush delicate and diaphanous as that which tinges the petals of wild hedge roses.

  Linda opened her eyes and Brand leapt to his feet with a cry. “The sun!” he shouted, and then, in a lower voice, “what an omen for us, little one—what an omen! Out of the sea, out of our sea! Come, get up, and let’s watch the morning in! There won’t be a trace of mist left, or dew either, in an hour or so.”

  He gave her his hand and hurriedly pulled her to her feet. “Quick!” he cried. “You can see it across the sea from over there. I’ve often seen it, but never like this, never with you!”

  Hand in hand they left the shade of the trees and hastening up the slope of a little grassy mound—perhaps the grave of some viking-ancestor of his own—they stood side by side surveying the wonder of the sunrise.

  As they stood there and the sun, mounting rapidly higher and higher, dispersed the mists and flooded everything with golden light, Brand’s mood began to change towards his companion. The situation was reversed now and it was his arms that twined themselves round the girl’s figure, while she, though only resisting gently and tenderly, seemed to have recovered the normal instincts of her sex, the instincts of self-protection and aloofness.

  The warmer the sun became and the more clearly the familiar landscape defined itself before them, the more swiftly did the relations between the two change and reverse. No longer did Brand feel as though some mystic spiritual union had annihilated the difference between their sex. The girl was once more an evasive object of pursuit. He desired her and his desire irritated and angered him.

  “We shan’t have the place to ourselves much longer,” he said. “Come—let’s say good-bye where we were before—where we weren’t so much in sight.”

  He sought to lead her back to the shade of the cedars; but she—looking timidly at his face—felt for the first time a vague reaction against him and an indefinable shrinking.

  “I think I’ll say good-bye to you here,” she said, with a faint smile. “Nance will be looking for me everywhere and I mustn’t frighten her any further.”

  She was astonished and alarmed at the change in his face produced by her words.

  “As you please,” he said harshly, “here, as well as anywhere else, if that’s your line! You’d better go back the way you came, but the gates aren’t locked if you prefer the avenue.” He actually left her when he said this, and without touching her hand or giving her another look, strode down the slope and away towards the house.

  This was more than Linda could bear. She ran after him and caught him by the arm. “Brand,” she whispered, “Brand, my dearest one, you’re not really angry with me, are you? Of course, I’ll say good-bye wherever you wish! Only—only—” and she gave an agitated little sigh, “I don’t want to frighten Nance more than I can help.”

  He led her back to the spot where, under the dark wide-spreading branches, the red finger of the sun had first touched them. She loved him too well to resist long, and she loved him too well not to taste, in the passionate tears that followed her abandonment to his will, a wild desperate sweetness, even in the midst of all her troubled apprehensions as to the calamitous issues of their love.

  It was in the same place, finally, and under the same dark branches, that they bade one another good-bye. Brand looked at his watch before they parted and they both smiled when he announced that it was nearly six, and that at any moment the milk-cart might pass them coming up from the village. As he moved away, Linda saw him stoop and pick up something from the ground. He turned with a laugh and flung the thing towards her so that it rolled to her feet. It was a fir-cone and she knew well why he threw it to her as their farewell signal. They had wondered, only a little while ago, how it drifted beneath their cedar-tree, and Brand had amused himself by twining it in her hair.

  She picked it up. The hair was twisted about it still—of a colour not dissimilar from the cone, but of a lighter shade. She slipped the thing into her dress and let it slide down between her breasts. It scratched and pricked her as soon as she began to walk, but this discomfort gave her a singular satisfaction. She felt like a nun, wearing for the first time her symbol of separation from the world—of dedication to her lord’s service. “I am certainly no nun now,” she thought, smiling sadly to herself, “but I am dedicated—dedicated forever and a day. Oh, my dear, dear Love, I would willingly die to give you pleasure!”

  She moved away, down the avenue towards the village. She had not gone very far when she was startled by a rustle in the undergrowth and the sound of a mocking laugh. She stopped in terror. The laugh was repeated, and a moment later, from a well-chosen hiding-place in a thicket of hazel-bushes, Philippa Renshaw, with malignant shining eyes, rushed out upon her.

  “Ah!” she cried joyously, “I thought it was you. I thought it was one or other of you! And where is our dear Brand? Has he deserted you so quickly? Does he prefer to have his little pleasures before the sun is quite so high? Does he leave her to go back all alone and by herself? Does he sneak off like a thief
as soon as daylight begins?”

  Linda was too panic-stricken to make any reply to this torrent of taunts. With drawn white face and wide-open terrified eyes, she stared at Philippa as a bird might stare at a snake. Philippa seemed delighted with the effect she produced and stepping in front of the young girl, barred her way of escape.

  “You mustn’t leave us now,” she cried. “It’s impossible. It would never do. What will they say in the village when they see you like that, crossing the green, at this hour? What you have to do, Linda Herrick, is to come back and have breakfast with us up at the house. My mother will be delighted to see you. She always gets up early, and she’s very, very fond of you, as you know. You do know my mother’s fond of you, don’t you?

  “Listen, you silly white-faced thing! Listen, you young innocent, who must needs come wandering round people’s houses in the middle of the night! Listen—you Linda Herrick! I don’t know whether you’re stupid enough to imagine that Brand’s going to marry you? Are you stupid enough for that? Are you, you dumb staring thing? Because, if you are, I can tell you a little about Brand that may surprise you. Perhaps you think you’re the first one he’s ever made love to in this precious park of ours. No, no, my beauty, you’re not the first—and you won’t be the last. We Renshaws are a curious family, as you’ll find out, you baby, before you’ve done with us. And Brand’s the most curious of us all!

  “Well, are you coming back with me? Are you coming back to have a nice pleasant breakfast with my mother? You’d better come, Linda Herrick, you’d better come! In fact, you are coming, so that ends it. People who spend the night wandering about other people’s grounds must at least have the decency to show themselves and acknowledge the hospitality! Besides, how glad Brand will be to see you again! Can’t you imagine how glad he’ll be? Can’t you see his look?

  “Oh, no, Linda Herrick, I can’t possibly let you go like this. You see, I’m just like my dear mother. I love gentle, sensitive, pure-minded young girls. I love their shyness and their bashfulness. I love the unfortunate little accidents that lead them into parks and gardens. Come, you dumb big-eyed thing! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you speak? Come! Back with you to the house! We’ll find my mother stirring—and Brand too, unless he’s sick of girls’ society and has gone off to Mundham. Come, white-face; there’s nothing else for it. You must do what I tell you.”

  She laid her hand on Linda’s shoulder, and, such was the terror she excited, the unhappy girl might actually have been magnetized into obeying her, if a timely and unexpected interruption had not changed the entire situation. This was the appearance upon the scene of Adrian Sorio. Sorio had recently acquired an almost daily habit of strolling a little way up the Oakguard avenue before his breakfast with Baltazar. On two or three of these occasions he had met Philippa, and he had always sufficient hope of meeting her to give these walks a tang of delicate excitement. He had evidently heard nothing of Linda’s disappearance. Nance in her distress had, it seemed, resisted the instinct to appeal to him. He was consequently considerably surprised to see the two girls standing together in the middle of the sunlit path.

  Linda, flinging Philippa aside, rushed to meet him. “Adrian! Adrian!” she cried piteously, “take me home to Nance.” She clung to his arm and in the misery of her outraged feelings, began sobbing like a child who has been lost in the dark. Sorio, soothing and petting her as well as he could, looked enquiringly at Philippa as she came up.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s nothing, Adrian. It’s only that I wanted her to come up to the house. She seems to have misunderstood me and got silly and frightened. She’s not a very sensible little girl.”

  Sorio looked at Philippa searchingly. In his heart he suspected her of every possible perversity and maliciousness. He realized at that moment how entirely his attraction to her was an attraction to what is dangerous and furtive. He did not even respect her intelligence. He had caught her more than once playing up to his ideas in a manner that indicated a secret contempt for them. At those moments he had hated her, and—with her—had hated, as he fancied, the whole feminine tribe—that tribe which refuses to be impressed even by world-crushing logic. But how attractive she was to him! How attractive, even at this moment, as he looked into her defiant, inscrutable eyes, and at her scornfully curved lips!

  “You needn’t pity her, Adrian,” she went on, casting a bitter smile at Linda’s bowed head as the young girl hid her face against his shoulder. “There’s no need to pity her. She’s just like all the rest of us, only she doesn’t play the game frankly and honestly as I do. Send her home to her sister, as she says, and come with me across the park. I’ll show you that oak tree if you’ll come—the one I told you about, the one that’s haunted.”

  She threw at him a long deep look, full of a subtle challenge, and stretched out her hand as if to separate him from the clinging child. Sorio returned her look and a mute struggle took place between them. Then his face hardened.

  “I must go back with her,” he said. “I must take her to Nance.”

  “Nonsense!” she rejoined, her eyes darkening and changing in colour. “Nonsense, my dear! She’ll find her way all right. Come! I really want you. Yes, I mean what I say, Adrian. I really want you this time!”

  The expression with which she challenged him now would have delighted the great antique painters of the feminine mystery. The gates of her soul seemed to open inwards, on magical softly-moving hinges, and an incalculable power of voluptuous witchcraft emanated from her whole body.

  It is doubtful whether a spell so provocative could have been resisted by any one of an origin different from Sorio’s. But he had in him—capable of being roused at moments—the blood of that race in which of all others women have met their match. To this witchcraft of the north he opposed the marble-like disdain of the south—the disdain which has subtlety and knowledge in it—the disdain which is like petrified hatred.

  His face darkened and hardened until it resembled a mask of bronze.

  “Good-bye,” he said, “for the present. We shall meet again—perhaps to-morrow. But anyway, goodbye! Come, Linda, my child.”

  “Perhaps to-morrow—and perhaps not!” returned Philippa bitterly. “Good-bye, Linda. I’ll give your love to Brand!”

  Sorio said little to his companion as he escorted her back to her lodging in the High Street. He asked her no questions and seemed to take it as quite a natural thing that she should have been out at that early hour. They discovered Dr. Raughty in the house when they arrived, doing his best to dissuade Nance from any further desperate hunt after the wanderer, and it was in accordance with the doctor’s advice, as well as their own weariness that the two sisters spent the later morning hours of their August Bank-holiday in a profound and exhausted sleep.

  XVIII

  BANK-HOLIDAY

  IT was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon when Nance woke out of a heavy dreamless sleep. She went to the window. The shops in the little street were all closed and several languid fishermen and young tradesmen’s apprentices were loitering about at the house doors, chaffing lazily and with loud bursts of that peculiarly empty laughter which seems the prerogative of rural idleness, the stray groups of gaily dressed young women who, in the voluptuous contentment of after-dinner repletion, were setting forth to take the train for Mundham or to walk with their sweethearts along the sea-shore. She turned and looked closely at her still sleeping sister.

  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 ena
bled 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.