“Yes, you must take lodgings in the village. Eighteen shillings a week—that was what that Pontifex woman promised you, wasn’t it?—won’t be over much for two of you. But it’ll keep you alive. Wait, though, wait! I don’t see why Linda shouldn’t play for us, up here, on Sundays. I’m always having to go round begging for some one. Often I have to be organist myself as well as priest. Yes—let her try—let her try! It’ll help me to keep an eye on her. It’ll be a distraction for her. Yes, let her try! I could give her a little for doing it—not what she ought to have, of course, but a little, enough to make her feel she was helping you in your housekeeping. Yes,” he clapped his hands together so violently that Ricoletto scrambled up against his collar and clung there with his paws. “Yes, that’s what we’ll do, my dear. We’ll turn your sister into a regular organist. Music’s the best charm in the world to drive away devils, isn’t it, Ricoletto? Better even than white rats.”
Nance looked at him with immense gratitude and, completely forgetting his instructions, altered her position to what it had been before. Mr. Traherne rose and, turning his back to her, drummed with his fingers on the mantelpiece while Ricoletto struggled desperately to retain his balance.
A queer thought came suddenly into Nance’s head and she asked the priest why it was that there were so many unmarried men in Rodmoor. He swung round at that and gave her a most goblinish look, rubbing the rat’s nose as he did so, against his cheek.
“You go far, Nance, you go far with your questions. As a matter of fact, I’ve sometimes asked myself that very thing. You’re quite right, you know, perfectly right. It applies to the work-people here as much as to the gentry. We must see what Fingal Raughty says. He’d laugh at my explanation.”
“What’s your explanation?” enquired the girl.
“A very simple one,” returned the priest. “It’s the effect of the sea. If you look at the plants which grow here you’ll understand better what I mean. But you haven’t seen the plant yet which is most of all characteristic of Rodmoor. It’ll be out soon and I’ll show it to you. The yellow horned poppy! When you see that, Nance,—and it’s the devil’s own flower, I can assure you!—you’ll realize that there’s something in this place that tends to the abnormal and the perverse. I don’t say that the devil isn’t active enough everywhere and I don’t say that all married people are exempt from his attacks. But the fact remains that the Rodmoor air has something about it, something that makes it difficult for those who come under its influence to remain quite simple and natural. We should grow insane ourselves—shouldn’t we, old rat? shouldn’t we, my white beauty?—if it weren’t that we had the church to pray in and ‘Don Quixote’ to read! I don’t want to frighten you, Nance, and I pray earnestly that your Adrian will shake off, like King Saul, the devil that troubles him. But Rodmoor isn’t the place to come to unless you have a double share of sound nerves, or a bottomless fund of natural goodness—like our friend Fingal Raughty. It’s absurd not to recognize that human beings, like plants and animals, are subject to all manner of physical influences. Nature can be terribly malign in her tricks upon us. She can encourage our tendencies to morbid evil just as she can produce the horned yellow poppy. The only thing for us to do is to hold fast to a power completely beyond Nature which can come in from outside, Nance—from outside!—and change everything.”
While Nance listened to Mr. Traherne’s discourse with a portion of her mind, another part of it reverted to Linda and as soon as he paused she broke in.
“Can’t we do anything, anything at all, to stop Mr. Renshaw from seeing my sister?”
The priest sighed heavily and screwed his face into a hundred grotesque wrinkles.