“Come back, come in, will you?” said Nance at last, “and say good-bye to us, Rachel. I shall come and see you, of course. We shall not be far away.”
She stretched out her hand to help her down the slope of the embankment. Rachel made no response to this overture but followed her in silence. No sooner, however, had they entered the garden and closed the little gate behind them, than the woman fell on her knees on the ground and caught the girl round the waist.
“Nance, my treasure!” she cried pitifully, “Nance, my heart’s baby! Nance, oh, Nance, you won’t leave me like this after all these years? No, I won’t let you go! Nance, you can’t mean it? You can’t really mean it?”
The wind, blowing in gusts about them, made the gate behind them swing open on its hinges. Rachel’s dishevelled tress of grey hair flapped like a tattered piece of rag against the girl’s side.
“Look,” the woman wailed, “I pray you on my knees not to desert me! You don’t know what you’re doing to me. You don’t, Nance, you don’t! It’s all my life you’re taking. Oh, my darling, won’t you have pity? You’re the only thing I’ve got—the only thing I love. Nance, Nance, have pity on me!”
Nance, with tears in her eyes but her face still firm and hard-set, tried to free herself from the hands that held her. She tried gently and tenderly at first but Rachel’s despair made the attempt difficult. Then she realized that this appalling tension must be brought at all costs to an end. With a sudden, relentless jerk, she tore herself away and rushed towards the house. Rachel fell forward on her face, her hands clutching the damp mould. Then she staggered up and raised her hand towards the lighted window above at which Linda’s figure was clearly visible.
“It’s you—it’s you,” she called aloud, “it’s you who’ve done this—who’ve turned my heart’s darling against me, and may you be cursed for it! May your love turn to poison and eat your white flesh! May your soul pray and pray for comfort and find none! Never—never—never—find any! Oh, you may well hide yourself! But he will find you. Brand will find you and make you pay for this! Brand and the sea will find you. Listen! Do you hear me? Listen! It’s crying out for you now!”
Whether it was the sudden cessation of her voice, intensifying the stillness, or a slight veering of the wind to the eastward, it is certain that at that moment, above the noise of the creaking gate and the rustling bushes, came the sound which, of all others, seemed the expression of Rodmoor’s troubled soul. Linda herself may not have heard it for at that moment she was feverishly helping Nance to pile up their belongings in the cart. But the driver of their vehicle heard it.
“The wind’s changing,” he remarked. “Can you hear that? That’s the darned sea!”
The trap carrying the two sisters was already some distance along the road when Nance turned her head and looked back. They had blown out their candles before leaving and the kitchen fire had died down so that there was no reason to be surprised that no light shone from any of the windows. Yet it was with a cold sinking of the heart that the girl leaned forward once more by the driver’s side. She could not help seeing in imagination a broken figure stumbling round the walls of that dark house, or perhaps even now standing in their dismantled room alone amid emptiness and silence, alone amid the ghosts of the past.