“If this ‘work-shop’ of yours,” muttered Sorio savagely, seizing him by the arm, “turns out to be one of your English tricks, you’d better—”
“Silence, you fool!” whispered the other. “Can’t you stop him, Miss Herrick? It’ll be pure murder if my mother hears this!”
Nance came quickly between them. “Lead on, Mr. Renshaw,” she said. “We’ll follow you.”
He led them across the hall and down a long dimly lit passage. At the end of this there was a heavily panelled door. Brand took a key from his pocket and after some ineffectual attempts turned the lock and stood aside to let them enter. He closed the door behind them, leaving the key on the outside. The “workshop” Brand had spoken of turned out to be nothing more or less than the old private chapel of Oakguard, disassociated, however, for centuries from any religious use.
Nance glanced up at the carved ceiling, supported on foliated corbels. The windows, high up from the ground, were filled with Gothic tracery, but in place of biblical scenes their diamonded panes showed the armorial insignia of generations of ancient Renshaws. There was a raised space at the east end, where, in former times, the altar stood, but now, in place of an altar, a carpenter’s table occupied the central position, covered with a litter of laths and wood-chippings. The middle portion of the chapel was bare and empty, but several low cane chairs stood round this space, like seats round a toy coliseum.
Brand indicated these chairs to his visitors, but neither Nance nor Sorio seemed inclined to avail themselves of the opportunity to rest. They all three, therefore, stood together, on the dark polished oak floor.
On first entering the chapel, Brand had lit one of a long row of tapers that stood in wooden candlesticks along the edge of what resembled choir stalls. Now, leaving his companions, he proceeded very deliberately to set light to the whole line of these. The place thus illuminated had a look strangely weird and confused.
Certain broken flower-pots on the ground, and one or two rusty gardening implements, combined with the presence of the wicker-chairs to produce the impression of some sort of “Petit Trianon,” or manorial summer-house, into which all manner of nondescript rubbish had in process of long years come to drift.
The coats-of-arms in the windows above, as the tapers flung their light upon them, had an air almost “collegiate,” as if the chamber were some ancient dining-hall of a monastic order. The carpenter’s table upon the raised dais, with some dimly coloured Italianated picture behind it, inserted in the panelling, gave Nance a most odd sensation. Where had she seen an effect of that kind before? In a picture—or in reality?
But the girl had no heart to analyse her emotions. There was too much at stake. The rain, pattering heavily on the roof of the building, seemed to remind her of her task. She faced Brand resolutely as he strolled back towards them across the polished floor.
“Linda has told me everything,” she said. “She is going to have a child, and you, Mr. Renshaw, are the father of it.”
Sorio made an inarticulate exclamation and approached Brand threateningly. But the latter, disregarding him, continued to look Nance straight in the face.
“Miss Herrick,” he said quietly, “you are a sensible woman and not one, I think, liable to hysteric sentimentalism. I want to discuss this thing quite freely and openly with you, but I would greatly prefer it if your husband—I beg your pardon—if Mr. Sorio would let us talk without interrupting. I haven’t got unlimited time. My mother and sister will be both waiting dinner for me and sending people to find me, perhaps even coming themselves. So it’s obviously in the interests of all of us—particularly of Linda—that we should not waste time in any mock heroics.”
Nance turned quickly to her betrothed. “You’ll hear all we say, Adrian, but if it makes things easier, perhaps—”
Without a word, in mute obedience to her sad smile, Sorio left their side, and drawing back, seated himself in one of the wicker chairs, hugging his heavy stick between his knees.
The rain continued falling without intermission upon the leaden roof, and from a pipe above one of the windows they could hear a great jet of water splashing down outside the wall.
Brand spoke in a low hurried tone, without embarrassment and without any sort of shame. “Yes, Miss Herrick, what she says is quite true. But now come down to the facts, without any of this moral vituperation, which only clouds the issues. You have, no doubt, come here with the idea of asking me to marry Linda. No! Don’t interrupt me. Let me finish. But I want to ask you this—how do you know that if I marry Linda, she’ll be really any happier than she is to-day? Suppose I were to say to you that I would marry her—marry her to-morrow—would that, when you come to think it over in cold blood, really make you happy in your mind about her future?
“Come, Miss Herrick! Put aside for a moment your natural anger against me. Grant what you please as to my being a dangerous character and a bad man, does that make me a suitable husband for your sister? Your instinct is a common instinct—the natural first instinct of any protector of an injured girl, but is it one that will stand the light of quiet and reasonable second thoughts?
“I am, let us say, a selfish and unscrupulous man who has seduced a young girl. Very well! You want to punish me for my ill-conduct, and how do you go about it? By giving up your sister into my hands! By giving up to me—a cruel and unscrupulous wretch, at your own showing—the one thing you love best in the world! Is that a punishment such as I deserve? In one moment you take away all my remorse, for no one remains remorseful after he has been punished. And you give my victim up—bound hand and foot—into my hands.
“Linda may love me enough to be glad to marry me, quite apart from the question of her good fame. But will you, who probably know me better than Linda, feel happy at leaving her in my hands? Your idea may be that I should marry her and then let her go. But suppose I wouldn’t consent to let her go? And suppose she wouldn’t consent to leave me?
“There we are—tied together for life—and she as the weaker of the two the one to suffer for the ill-fated bargain! That will not have been a punishment for me, Nance Herrick, nor will it have been a compensation for her. It will simply have worked out as a temporary boredom to one of us, and as miserable wretchedness to the other!
“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.
“What’s that you say? Only the rain? They say it’s only the rain when they want to fool me and quiet me. But I know better! They can’t fool me like that. It’s blood, of course; it’s Nance’s blood. You, Nance? Oh, no, no, no! I’m not so easily fooled as that. Nance is at the bottom of that hole in the wood, where I struck her—one—two—three! It took three hits to do it—and she didn’t speak a word, not a word, nor utter one least little cry. It’s funny that I had to hit her three times! She is so soft, so soft and easy to hurt. No, no, no, no! I’m not to be fooled like that. My Nance had great laughing grey eyes. Yours are horrible, horrible. I see terror in them. She was afraid of nothing.”
His expression changed, and a wistful hunted look came into his face. The girl tried to pull him towards one of the chairs, but he resisted—clasping her hand appealingly.
“Tell me, Phil,” he whispered, in a low awe-struck voice, “tell me why you made me do it. Did you think it would be better, better for all of us, to have her lying there cold and still? No, no, no! You needn’t look at me with those dreadful eyes. Do you know, Phil, since you made me kill her I think your eyes have grown to look like hers, and your face, too—and all of you.”
Nance, as he spoke, cried out woefully and helplessly. “I am! I am! I am! Adrian—my own—my darling—don’t you know me? I am your Nance!”
He staggered slowly now to one of the chairs, moving each foot as he did so with horrible deliberation as if nothing he did could be done naturally any more, or without a conscious effort of will. Seating himself in the chair, he drew her down upon his knee and began passing his fingers backwards and forwards over her face.
“Why did you make me do it, Phil?” he moaned, rocking her to and fro as if she were a child. “Why did you make me do it? She would have given me sleep, if you’d only let her alone, cool, deep, delicious sleep! She would have smoothed away all my troubles. She would have destroyed the old Adrian and made a new one—a clear untroubled one, bathed in great floods of glorious white light!”
His voice sank to an awe-struck and troubled murmur. “Phil, my dear,” he whispered, “Phil, listen to me. There’s something I can’t remember! Something—O God! No! It’s some one—some one most precious to me—and I’ve forgotten. Something’s happened to my brain, and I’ve forgotten. It was after I struck those blows, those b
lows that made her mouth look so twisted and funny—just like yours looks now, Phil! Why is it, do you think, that dead people have that look on their mouths? Phil, tell me; tell me what it is I’ve forgotten! Don’t be cruel now. I can’t stand it now. I must remember. I always seem just on the point of remembering, and then something in my brain closes up, like an iron door. Oh, Phil—my love, my love, tell me what it is!”
As he spoke he clasped the girl convulsively, crushing her and hurting her by the strength of his arms. To hear him address her thus by the name of her rival was such misery to Nance that she was hardly conscious of the physical distress caused by his violence. It was still worse when, relaxing the force of his grasp, he began to fondle and caress her, stroking her face with his fingers and kissing her cheeks.
“Phil, my love, my darling!” he kept repeating, “please tell me—please, please tell me, what it is I’ve forgotten!”
Nance suffered at that moment the extreme limit of what she was capable of enduring. She dreaded every moment that Philippa herself would come in. She dreaded the re-appearance of the servants, perhaps with more assistance, ready to separate them and carry Adrian away from her. To feel his caresses and to know that in his wild thoughts they were not meant for her at all—that was more, surely more, than God could have intended her to suffer!
Suddenly she had an inspiration. “Is it Baptiste that you’ve forgotten?”
The word had an electrical effect upon him. He threw her off his lap and leapt to his feet.
“Yes,” he cried savagely and wildly, the train of his thoughts completely altered, “you’re all keeping him away from me! That’s what’s at the bottom of it! You’ve hidden Nance from me and given me this woman who looks like her but who can’t smile and laugh like my Nance, to deceive me and betray me! I know you—you staring, white-faced, frightened thing! You don’t deceive me! You don’t fool Adrian. I know you. You are not my Nance.”
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