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Rodmoor. John Cowper Powys
Читать онлайн.Название Rodmoor
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isbn 4064066248031
Автор произведения John Cowper Powys
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
“I confess it made me at that moment almost indignant with your sister that she should need such pressing on such a subject. Her voice, however, when she murmured some kind of an answer, appeared, as I have said, quite obsequious in its humility.
“ ‘O my precious, my precious!’ the woman cried again, evidently apostrophising you, ‘you’ve worked for me, and saved for me, and now I can return it—I can return it!’ There was a few minutes’ silence then, and I moved,” Sorio continued, “quite close to the wall so as to catch if I could your sister’s whispers.
“Miss Doorm soon began once more and I liked her tone still less. ‘Why don’t you speak? Why do you sit silent and sulky like that? Aren’t you glad she’ll be free of all this burden—of all this miserable drudgery? Aren’t you glad for her? She kept you here like a Duchess, you with your music lessons! A lot of money you’ll ever earn with your music! And now it’s my turn. She shall be a lady in my house, a lady!’ ”
Nance’s head hung low down over her knees as she listened to all this and the hand that her lover still retained grew colder and colder.
“I remember her next words,” Sorio went on, “particularly well because a lovely fragrance of lilacs came suddenly into the window from a cart in the street and I thought how to my dying day I should associate that scent with this first morning under your roof.
“ ‘You say you don’t like the sea?’ Miss Doorm went on, ‘and you actually suppose that your not liking the sea will stop my freeing her! No! No! You’ll have the sea, my beauty, at Rodmoor—the sea and the wind. No more dilly-dallying among the pretty shop windows and the nice young music students. The Wind and the Sea! Those are the things that are waiting for you at Rodmoor—at Rodmoor, in my house, where she will be a lady at last!’
“You see, Nance,” Adrian observed, letting her hand go and preparing to light a cigarette, “Miss Doorm’s idea seems to be that you will receive quite a social lift from your move to her precious Rodmoor. She evidently holds the view that no lady has ever earned her living with her own hands. Does she propose to keep a horde of servants in this small house, I wonder, and stalk about among them, grim and majestic, in a black silk gown?
“I must confess I feel at this moment a certain understanding of your sister’s reluctance to plunge into this ‘milieu.’ I can see that house—oh, so clearly!—surrounded by a dark back-water and swept by horribly cold winds. I’m sure I don’t know, Nance, what kind of neighbours you’re going to have on the Doorm estate. Probably half the old hags of East Anglia will troop in upon you, like descendants of the Valkyries. And the North Sea! You realise, my dear, I suppose, what the North Sea is? I don’t blame little Linda for shivering at the thought of it.”
For the first time since she had known him Nance’s voice betrayed irritation. “Don’t tease me, Adrian. I can’t stand it to-night. You don’t know what all this means to Rachel.”
Adrian smiled. “Your dear Rachel,” he said, “seems to have got you both fairly well under her thumb.”
“She was my mother’s best friend!” the girl burst out. “I should never forgive myself if I made her unhappy!”
“There seems more chance, as I see it now,” observed Sorio, “that Miss Doorm will make Linda unhappy. I think I may take it that Linda’s mother wasn’t much of a favourite of hers? Isn’t that so, my dear?”
“We must be getting home now,” the girl remarked, rising from the bench. But Sorio remained seated, coolly puffing wreaths of cigarette smoke into the aromatic night.
“There’s not the slightest need to get cross with me,” he said gently, giving the sleeve of her coat a little deprecatory caress.
“As a matter of fact, when I heard that woman scold Linda for not wanting to set you free I felt, in a most odd and subtle manner, curiously anxious to scold her, too; I quite longed to overcome and override her absurd reluctance. I even felt a strange excitement in the thought of walking with her along the edge of this water, and in the face of this wind. O! I became Miss Doorm’s accomplice, Nance! You may be perfectly happy. I made up my mind that very moment that I would write at once to Baltazar and accept his invitation. Indeed I did write to him, the minute I could hear no more talking. I was too excited to write much. I just wrote: ‘Amico mio:—I will come to you very soon,’ and when I’d finished the letter I went straight out and posted it. I believe I heard Linda crying as I went downstairs, but, as I tell you, Nance, I had become quite an accomplice of Miss Doorm! It seemed to me outrageous that the selfish silliness of a child like that should interfere with your emancipation. Besides I liked the thought of walking with her by the shore of this sea and calming her curious fear.”
He threw away his cigarette and, rising to his feet, drew the girl’s arm within his own and led her homewards.
The beech-tree, as if relieved by their departure, gave itself up with more delicious abandonment than ever to the embraces of the warm Spring night. They had not far to go now, and Nance only spoke once before they arrived at their door in the London Bridge Road.
“Had that figure you saw,” she asked in a low constrained voice, “the same look Linda has—now that you know what she is like?”
“Linda?” he answered, “Oh, no, my dear, no, no! That one had nothing to do with Linda. But I think,” he added, after a pause, “it had something to do with Rodmoor.”
II
DYKE HOUSE
Nance Herrick stood at her window in the Doorm dwelling the morning after their arrival thinking desperately of what she had done. The window, open at the top, let in a breath of chilly, salt-tasting wind which stirred the fair loose hair upon her forehead and cooled her throat and shoulders. At the sound of her sister’s voice she closed the window, cast one swift, troubled look at the river flowing so formidably near, and moved across to Linda’s side. Drowsy and warm after her deep sleep, the younger girl stretched out her long, youthful arms from the bed and clasped them round Nance’s neck.
“Are you glad,” she whispered, “are you glad, after all, that I made you come? I couldn’t have borne to be selfish, dear. I should have had no peace. No!—,” she interrupted an ejaculation from Nance, “—it wasn’t anything to do with Rachel. It wasn’t, Nancy darling, it really and truly wasn’t! I’m going to be perfectly good now. I’m going to be so good that you’ll hardly know me. Shall I tell you what I’m going to do? I’m going to learn the organ. Rachel says there’s a beautiful one in the church here, and Mr. Traherne—he’s the clergyman, you know—plays upon it himself. I’m going to persuade him to teach me. O! I shall be perfectly happy!”
Nance extricated herself from the young girl’s arms and, stepping back into the middle of the room, stood contemplating her in silence. The two sisters, thus contrasted, in the hard white light of that fen-land morning, would have charmed the super-subtle sense of some late Venetian painter. Nance herself, without being able precisely to define her feeling, felt that the mere physical difference between them was symbolic of something dangerously fatal in their conjunction. Her sister was not an opposite type. She too was fair—she too was tall and flexible—she too was emphatically feminine in her build—she even had eyes of the same vague grey colour. And yet, as Nance looked at her now, at her flushed excited cheeks, her light brown curls, her passionate neurotic attitude, and became at the same time conscious