“I am good now,” she heard her say, “I am good now, Rachel. You can let me out now! I will say those words, I am good now. I won’t disobey you again.”
There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the Sea and the beating of Nance’s heart. Then once more, the voice rose.
“It’s down too deep, Rachel, you can’t reach it with that. But I’ll go in. I’m not afraid any more! If only you’ll let me out. I’ll go in deep — deep — and get it for you. She can’t hold it tight. The water is too strong. Oh, I’ll be good, Rachel. I’ll get it for you if only you’ll let me out!”
Nance, unable to endure any more of this, put her arms gently round her sister’s body and drew her back into the room. The young girl did not resist. With wide-open but utterly unconscious eyes she let herself be led across the room. Only when she was close to her bed she held back and her body became rigid.
“Don’t put me in there again, Rachel. Anything but that!”
“Darling!” cried Nance desperately, “don’t you know me? I’m with you, dear. This is Nance with you. No one shall hurt you!”
The young girl shuddered and looked at her with a bewildered and troubled gaze as if everything were vague and obscure. At that moment there came over Nance that appalling terror of the unconscious, of the sub-human which is one of the especial dangers of those who have to look after the insane or follow the movements of somnambulists. But the shudder passed and the bewildered look was superseded by one of gradual obliviousness. The girl’s body relaxed and she swayed as she stood. Nance, with a violent effort, lifted her in her arms and laid her down on the bed. The girl muttered something and turned over on her side. Nance watched her anxiously but she was soon relieved to catch the sound of her quiet breathing. She was asleep peacefully now. She looked so pathetically lovely, lying there in a childish position of absolute abandonment that Nance could not resist bending over her and lightly kissing her cheek.
“Poor darling!” she said to herself, “how blind I’ve been! How wickedly blind I’ve been!” She pulled the blanket from her own bed and threw it over her sister so as not to disturb her by altering the bed-clothes. Then, wrapping herself in her dressing-gown she lay back upon her pillows resigned for the rest of the night to remaining wakeful.
The next day she noticed no difference in Linda’s mood. There was the same abstraction, the same listless lack of interest in anything about her and worst of all that same inscrutable look which filled Nance with every sort of wild imagination. She cast about in despair for some way of breaking the evil spell under which the girl was pining. She went again and again to see Mr. Traherne and the good man devoted hours of his time to discussing the matter with her but nothing either of them could think of seemed a possible solution.
At last one morning, some days after that terrifying night, she met Dr. Raughty in the street. She walked with him as far as the bridge explaining to him as best she could her apprehensions about her sister and asking him for his advice. Dr. Haughty was quite definite and unhesitating.
“What Linda wants is a mother,” he said laconically. Nance stared at him.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “I know well enough, poor darling! But that’s the worst of it, Fingal. Her mother’s been dead years and years and years.”
“There are other mothers in Rodmoor, aren’t there?” he remarked.
Nance frowned. “You think I don’t look after her properly,” she murmured. “No, I suppose I haven’t. And yet I’ve tried to — I’ve tried my very best.”
“You’re as hopeless as your Adrian with his owl,” cried the Doctor. “He was feeding it with cake the other day. Cake! He’d better not bring his owl and our friend’s rat together. There won’t be much of the rat left. Cake!” And the Doctor put back his head and uttered an immense gargantuan laugh. Nance looked a little disturbed and even a little indignant at his merriment.
“What do you mean by other mothers?” she asked. They had just reached the bridge and Dr. Raughty bade her look over the parapet.
“What exquisite bellies those dace have!” he remarked, snuffing the air as he spoke. “There’ll be rain before night. Do you feel it? I know from the way those fish rise. The sea too, it has a different voice — has that ever caught your attention? — when there’s rain on the wind. Those dace are shrewd fellows. They’re after the bits of garbage the sea-gulls drop on their way up the river. You might think they were after flies, but they’re not. I suppose George Crabbe or George Borrow would switch ’em out with some bait such as was never dreamed of — the droppings of rabbits perhaps or ladybird grubs. I suppose old Doctor Johnson would wade in up to his knees and try and scoop ’em up in his hands. There’s a big one! Do you see? The one waving his tail and turning sideways. I expect he weighs half a pound or more. Fish are beautiful things, especially dace. Isn’t it wonderful to think that if you pulled any of those things backwards through the water they would be drowned, simply by the rush of water through their gills? Look, Nance, at that one! What a silver belly! What a delicate, exquisite tail! A plague on these fellows who philander with owls and rats! Give me fish — if you want to make-a cult of something.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, “I should think Lubric de Lauziere must have kept a pet fish in his round pond!”
“Good-bye, Fingal,” said Nance, holding out her hand.
“What! Well! Where! God help us! What’s wrong, Nance? You’re not annoyed with me, are you? Do you think I’m talking through my hat? Not at all! I’m leading up to it. A mother — that’s what she wants. She wants it just as those dace want the water to flow in their faces and not backwards through their gills. She’s being dragged backwards — that’s what’s the matter with her. She wants her natural element and it must flow in the right direction. You won’t do. Traherne won’t do. A mother is the thing! A woman, Nance, who has borne children has certain instincts in dealing with young girls which make the wisest physicians in the world look small!”
Nance smiled helplessly at him.
“But, Fingal, dear,” she said, “what can I do? I can’t appeal to Mrs. Raps, can I — or your friend Mrs. Sodderley? When you come to think, there are very few mothers in Rodmoor!”
The Doctor sighed. “I know it,” he observed mournfully, “I know it. The place will die out altogether in fifty years. It’s as bad as the sand-dunes with their sterile flora. Women who bear children are the only really sane people in the world.”
He ran his thumb, as he spoke, backwards and forwards over a little patch of vividly green moss that grew between the stones of the parapet. The air, crisp and autumnal with that vague scent of burning weeds in it which more than anything else suggests the outskirts of a small town at the end of the summer, flowed round them both with a mute appeal to her, so it seemed to Nance, to let all things drift as they might and submit to destiny. She looked at the Doctor dreamily in one of those queer intermissions of human consciousness in which we stand apart, as it were, from our own fate and listen to the flowing of the eternal tide.