Rodmoor (36 page)

It was not till late in the afternoon that Nance
received
an answer to her message. She was alone when she opened it, Linda having gone as usual, under her earnest persuasion, to practise in the church. The message was brief and satisfactory: “Sailing
tomorrow
Altrunia
Liverpool six days boat Baptiste.”

So he would really be here—here in Rodmoor—in seven or eight days. This was news for Adrian, if he had the power left to understand anything! She folded the paper carefully and placed it in her purse.

Mr. Traherne had come to her about noon, bringing news that, on the whole, was entirely reassuring. It seemed that Sorio had done little else than sleep since
his first entrance into the place; and both the doctors there regarded this as the best possible sign.

Hamish explained to her that there were three
degrees
of insanity—mania, melancholia, and dementia—and, from what he could learn from his conversations with the doctors, this heavy access of drowsiness ruled out of Adrian’s case the worst symptom of both these latter possibilities. What they called “mania,” he
explained
to her, was something quite curable and with nearly all the chances in favour of recovery. It was really—he told her he had gathered from them—“only a question of time.”

The priest had been careful to inquire as to the possibility of Nance being allowed to visit her
betrothed
; but neither of the doctors seemed to regard this, at any rate for the present, as at all desirable. He cordially congratulated her, however, on having sent for Sorio’s son. “Whatever happens,” he said, “it’s right and natural that
he
should be here with you.”

While Nance was thus engaged in “wrestling with fate,” a very different mental drama was being enacted behind the closed windows of Baltazar’s cottage.

Mr. Stork had not been permitted even to fall asleep before rumours reached him that some startling event had occurred at Oakguard. Long before midnight, by the simple method of dropping in at the bar of the Admiral’s Head, he had picked up sufficient information to make him decide against seeing any one that night. They had taken Sorio away, and Mr. Renshaw had escaped from a prolonged struggle with the
demented
man with the penalty of only a few bruises. Thus, with various imaginative interpolations which he
discounted as soon as he heard them, Baltazar got from the gossips of the tavern a fair account of what had occurred.

There was, indeed, so much excitement in Rodmoor over the event that, for the first time in the memory of the oldest inhabitants, the Admiral’s Head remained open two whole hours after legal closing time. This was in part explained by the fact that the two
representatives
of the law in the little town had been
summoned
to Oakguard to be ready for any emergency.

It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon. Baltazar had found himself with little appetite for either breakfast or lunch, and at this moment, as he sat staring at a fireplace full of nothing but burnt out ashes, his eyes had such dark lines below them that one might have assumed that sleep as well as food had lost its savour for him in the last twelve hours. By his side on a little table stood an untasted glass of brandy, and at his feet in the fender lay innumerable, but in many cases only half-smoked, cigarettes.

The impression which was now upon him was that of being one of two human creatures left alive, those two alone, after some world-destroying plague. He had the feeling that he had only to go out into the street to come upon endless dead bodies strewn about, in
fantastic
and horrible attitudes of death, and in various stages of dissolution. It was his Adriano who alone was left alive. But he had done something to him—so that he could only hear his voice without being able to reach him.

“I must end this,” he said aloud; and then again, as if addressing another person, “We must put an end to this, mustn’t we, Tassar?”

He rose to his feet and surveyed himself in one of his numerous beautifully framed mirrors. He passed his slender fingers through his fair curls and peered into his own eyes, opening the lids wide and wrinkling his forehead. He smiled at himself then—a long strange wanton smile—and turned away, shrugging his shoulders.

Then he moved straight up to the picture of the Venetian Secretary and snapped his fingers at it. “You wait, you smirking ‘imp of fame’; you wait a little! We’ll show you that you’re not so deep or so subtle after all. You wait, Flambard, my boy, you wait a while; and we’ll show you plots and
counterplots
!”

Then without a word he went upstairs to his
bathroom
. “By Jove!” he muttered to himself, “I begin to think Fingal’s right. The only place in this
Christian
world where one can possess one’s soul in peace is a tiled bathroom—only the tiles must be perfectly white,” he added, after a pause.

He made an elaborate and careful toilet, brushing his hair with exhaustive assiduity, and perfuming his hands and face. He dressed himself in spotlessly clean linen and put on a suit that had never been worn before. Even the shoes which he chose were elegant and new. He took several minutes deciding what tie to wear and finally selected one of a pale mauve colour. Then, with one final long and wistful glance at
himself
, he kissed the tips of his fingers at his own image, and stepped lightly down the stairs.

He paused for a moment in the little hallway to
select
a cane from the stick rack. He took an ebony one
at last, with an engraved silver knob bearing his own initials. There was something ghastly about the
deliberation
with which he did all this, but it was ghastliness wasted upon polished furniture and decrepit flies—unless every human house conceals invisible
watchers
. He hesitated a little between a Panama hat and one of some light-coloured cloth material, but finally selected the former, toying carefully with its flexible rim before placing it upon his head, and even when it was there giving it some final touches.

The absolute loneliness of the little house, broken only by an occasional voice from the tavern door,
became
, during his last moments there, a sort of passive accomplice to some nameless ritual. At length he opened the door and let himself out.

He walked deliberately and thoughtfully towards the park gates, and, passing in, made his way up the
leaf-strewn
avenue. Arrived at the house, he nodded in a friendly manner at the servant who opened the door, and asked to be taken to Mrs. Renshaw’s room. The man obeyed him respectfully, and went before him up the staircase and down the long echoing passage.

He found Mrs. Renshaw sewing at the half-open
window
. She put down her work when he entered and greeted him with one of those
illumined
smiles of hers, which Fingal Raughty was accustomed to say made him believe in the supernatural.

“Thank you for coming to see me,” she said, as he seated himself at her side, spreading around him an atmosphere of delicate odours. “Thank you,
Baltazar
, so much for coming.”

“Why do you always say that, Aunt Helen?” he
murmured, almost crossly. It was one of the little long-established conventions between them that he should address his father’s wife in this way.

There came once more that indescribable spiritual light into eyes. her faded “Well,” she said gaily, “
isn’t
it kind of a young man, who has so many
interests
, to give up his time to an old woman like me?”

“Nonsense, nonsense, Aunt Helen!” he cried, with a rich caressing intonation, laying one of his slender hands tenderly upon hers. “It makes me absolutely angry with you when you talk like that!”

“But isn’t it true, Tassar?” she answered. “Isn’t this world meant for the young and happy?”

“As if I cared what the world was
meant
for!” he exclaimed. “It’s meant for nothing at all, I fancy. And the sooner it reaches what it was meant for and collapses altogether, the better for all of us!”

A look of distress that was painful to witness came into Mrs. Renshaw’s face. Her fingers tightened upon his hand and she leant forward towards him. “Tassar, Tassar, dear!” she said very gravely, “when you talk like that you make me feel as if I were absolutely alone in the world.”

“What do you mean, Aunt Helen?” murmured the young man in a low voice.

“You make me feel as if it were wrong of me to love you so much,” she went on, bending her head and
looking
down at his feet.

As he saw her now, with the fading afternoon light falling on her parted hair, still wavy and beautiful even in its grey shadows, and on her broad pale
forehead
, he realized once more what he alone perhaps, of
all who ever had known her realized, the unusual and almost terrifying power of her personality. She forced him to think of some of the profound portraits of the sixteenth century, revealing with an insight and a
passion
, long since lost to art, the tragic possibilities of human souls.

He laughed gently. “Dear, dear Aunt Helen!” he cried, “forget my foolishness. I was only jesting. I don’t give a fig for any of my opinions on these things. To the deuce with them all, dear! To free you from one single moment of annoyance, I’d believe every word in the Church Catechism from ‘What is your name?’ down to ‘without doubt are lost eternally’!”

She looked up at this, and made a most heart-
breaking
effort not to smile. Her abnormally sensitive mouth—the mouth, as Baltazar always maintained, of a great tragic actress—quivered at the corners.

“If
I
had taught you your catechism,” she said, “you would remember it better than that!”

Baltazar’s eyes softened as he watched her, and a strange look, full of a pity that was as impersonal as the sea itself, rose to their surface. He lifted her hand to his lips.

“Don’t do that! You mustn’t do that!” she
murmured
, and then with another flicker, of a smile, “you must keep those pretty manners, Tassar, for all your admiring young women!”

“Confound my young women!” cried the young man. “You’re far more beautiful, Aunt Helen, than all of them put together!”

“You make me think of that passage in ‘Hamlet,’” she rejoined, leaning back in her chair and resuming
her work. “How does it go? ‘Man delights me not nor woman either—though by your smiling you seem to say so!’”

“Aunt Helen!” he cried earnestly, “I have
something
important to say to you. I want you to
understand
this. It’s sweet of you not to speak of
Adriano
’s illness. Any one but you would have condoled with me most horribly already!”

She raised her eyes from her sewing. “We must pray for him,” she said. “I have been praying for him all day—and all last night, too,” she added with a faint smile. “I let Philippa think I didn’t know what had happened. But I knew.” She shuddered a little. “I knew. I heard him in the ‘workshop.’”

“What I wanted to say, Aunt Helen,” he went on, “was this. I want you to remember—whatever
happens
to either of us—that I love you more than any one in the world. Yes—yes,” he continued, not
allowing
her to interrupt, “better even than Adriano!”

A look resembling the effect of some actual physical pain came into her face. “You mustn’t say that, my dear,” she murmured. “You must keep your love for your wife when you marry. I don’t like to hear you say things like that—to an old woman.” She
hesitated
a moment. “It sounds like flattery, Tassar,” she added.

“But it’s true, Aunt Helen!” he repeated with
almost
passionate emphasis. “You’re by far the most beautiful and by far the most interesting woman I’ve ever met.”

Mrs. Renshaw drew her hand across her face. Then she laughed gaily like a young girl. “What would Philippa say,” she said, “if she heard you say that?”

Baltazar’s face clouded. He looked at her long and closely.

“Philippa is interesting and deep,” he said with a grave emphasis, “but she doesn’t understand me.
You
understand me, though you think it right to hide your knowledge even from yourself.”

Mrs. Renshaw’s face changed in a moment. It
became
haggard and obstinate. “We mustn’t talk any more about understanding and about love,” she said. “God’s will is that we should all of us only completely love and understand the person He leads us, in His wisdom, to marry.”

Baltazar burst into a fit of heathen laughter. “I thought you were going to end quite differently, Aunt Helen,” he said. “I thought the only person we were to love was going to be God. But it seems that it is man—or woman,” he added bitterly.

Mrs. Renshaw bent low over her work and the shadow grew still deeper upon her face. Seeing that he had really hurt her, Baltazar changed his tone.

“Dear Aunt Helen!” he whispered gently, “how many happy hours, how many, how many!—have we spent together reading in this room!”

She looked up quickly at this, with the old bright look. “Yes, it’s been a happy thing for me, Tassar, having you so near us. Do you remember how, last winter, we got through the whole of Sir Walter Scott? There’s no one nowadays like
him
—is there? Though Philippa tells me that Mr. Hardy is a great writer.”

“Mr. Hardy!” exclaimed her interlocutor
whimsically
. “I believe you
would
have come to him at last—perhaps you
will
, dear, some day. Let’s hope so! But I’m afraid I shall not be here then.”

“Don’t talk like that, Tassar,” she said without looking up from her work. “It will not be
you
who will leave
me
.”

There was a pause between them then, and Baltazar’s eyes wandered out into the hushed misty garden.

“Mr. Hardy does not believe in God,” he remarked.

“Tassar!” she cried reproachfully. “You know what you promised just now. You mustn’t tease me. No one deep down in his heart disbelieves in God. How can we? He makes His power felt among us every day.”