As he leant over the counter, his eyes gleamed with a soft benignant ecstasy and he rallied the shop-woman about some heart-shaped confectionary adorned with blue ribbons.
Before Mr. Traherne rejoined them Nance had time to whisper to Linda, “They’re both a little excited, dear, but we needn’t notice it. They’ll be themselves in a moment. Men are all so babyish.”
Linda smiled faintly at this and nodded her head. She looked a little sad and a little pale.
Dr. Haughty soon appeared. “Come on,” he said, “let’s go down to the sea”; and in a low dreamy voice he murmured the following ditty:
“A boat — a boat — to cross the ferry!
And let us all be wise and merry,
And laugh and quaff and drink brown sherry!”
Linda caught at Nance’s sleeve. “I think I’ll let you go without me,” she whispered. “I feel rather tired.”
Nance looked anxiously into her eyes. “I’d come back with you,” she murmured, “but it would hurt their feelings. You’d better lie down a little. I’ll be back soon.” Then, in a lower whisper, “They did it to cheer us up. They’re dear, absurd people. Take care of yourself, darling.”
Linda stood for a while after she had bidden them all good-bye and watched them move down the street. In the misty sunshine there was something very gentle and appealing about Nance’s girlish figure as she walked between the two men. They both seemed talking to her at the same time and, as they talked, they watched her face with affectionate and tender admiration.
“She treats them like children,” said Linda to herself. “That’s why they’re all so fond of her.”
She walked slowly back up the street; but instead of entering her house, she drifted languidly across the green and made her way towards the park gates.
She felt very lonely, just then — lonely and full of a heart-aching longing. If only she could catch one glimpse, just one, of the man who was so dear to her — of the man who was the father of her child.
She thought of Adrian’s recovery and she thought vaguely and wistfully of the coming of Baptiste. “I hope he will like us,” she said to herself. “I hope he will like us both.”
Hardly knowing what she did, she passed in through the gates and began moving up the avenue. All the tragic and passionate emotions associated with this place came over her like a rushing wave. She stopped and hesitated. Then with a pitiful effort to control her feelings, she turned and began retracing her steps.
Suddenly she stopped again, her heart beating wildly. Yes, there were footsteps approaching her from the direction of Oakguard. She looked around. Brand Renshaw himself was behind her, standing at a curve of the avenue, bareheaded, under an enormous pine. The horizontal sunlight piercing the foliage in front of him shone red on the trunk of the great tree and red on the man’s blood-coloured head.
She started towards him with a little gasping cry, like an animal that, after long wandering, catches sight of its hiding-place.
The man had stopped because he had seen her, and now when he saw her approaching him a convulsive tremor ran through his powerful frame. For one second he made a movement as if to meet her; but then, raising his long arms with a gesture as if at once embracing her and taking leave of her, he plunged into the shadows of the trees and was lost to view.
The girl stood where he had left her — stood as if turned to stone — for several long minutes, while over her head the misty sky looked down through the branches, and from the open spaces of the park came the harsh cry of sea-gulls flying towards the coast.
Then, with drooping head and dazed expressionless eyes, she walked slowly back, the way she had come.
XXVII THRENOS
AFTER her encounter with Nance, Mrs. Renshaw, returning to Oakguard, informed both Philippa and Brand of the improvement in the condition of Adrian Sorio.
Philippa received the news quietly enough, conscious that the eyes of her brother were upon her; but as soon as she could get away, which was not till the afternoon was well advanced, she slipped off hastily and directed her steps, by a short cut through the park, to the Rodmoor railway-station. She had one fixed idea now in her mind — the idea of seeing Adrian and talking with him before any interview was allowed to the others.
She knew that her name and her prestige as the sister of the largest local landowner, would win her at any rate respectful consideration for anything she asked — and everything beyond that she left recklessly in the hands of fate.
Baltazar’s death had affected her more than she would herself have supposed possible. She had felt during these last days a sort of malignant envy of her mother, whose attitude towards her friend’s loss was so strange and abnormal.
Philippa, with her scarlet lips, her classic flesh, her Circean feverishness, suffered from her close association with this exultant mourner, as some heathen boy robbed of his companion might have suffered from contact with a Christian visionary, for whom death was “far better.”
At this moment, however, as she hurried towards the station, it was not of Baltazar, it was of Adrian, and Adrian only, that she thought.
She dismissed the fact of Baptiste’s expected arrival with bitter contempt. Let the boy go to Nance if he pleased! After all, it was to herself — much more intimately than to Nance — that Adrian had confided his passionate idealization of his son and his savage craving for him.
Yes, it was to her he had confided this, and it was to her always, and never to Nance, that he spoke of his book and of his secret thoughts. Her mind was what Adrian wanted — her mind, her spirit, her imagination. These were things that Nance, with all her feminine ways, was never able to give him.
Why couldn’t she tear him from her now and from all these people?
Let these others be afraid of his madness. He was not mad to her. If he were, why then, she too, she who loved him and understood him, was mad!
From the long sloping spaces of the park, as she hurried on, she could see at intervals, through the misty sun-bathed trees, the mouth of the harbour, with its masts and shipping, and, beyond that, the sea itself.
Ah! the sea was the thing that had mingled their souls! The sea was the accomplice of their love!
Yes, he was hers — hers in the heights and the depths — and none of them should tear him from her!
All the whimpering human crowd of them, with their paltry pieties and vulgar prudence — how she would love to strike them down and pass over them — over their upturned staring faces — until he and she were together!
Through the dreamy air, with its floating gossamer-seeds and faint smell of dead leaves, came to her, as she ran on, over the uneven ground, past rabbit-holes and bracken and clumps of furze, the far distant murmur of the waves on the sands. Yes! The sea was what had joined them; and, as long as that sound was in her ears, no power on earth could hold them apart!
She reached the station just in time. It was five minutes to five and the train left at the hour. Philippa secured a first-class ticket for herself and sank down exhausted in the empty compartment.
How long that five minutes seemed!
She was full of a fierce jealous dread lest any of Nance’s friends might be going that very evening to visit the patient.
She listened to the conversation of two lads on the platform near her carriage window. They were speaking of a great bonfire which was to be prepared that day, on the southern side of the harbour, to be set alight the following evening, in honour of the historic Fifth of November. In the tension of her nerves Philippa found herself repeating the quaint lines of the old refrain, associated in her mind with many childish memories.