Читать книгу Rodmoor - John Cowper Powys - Страница 5

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 sea-wards, 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.