"Not even in a dream hast thou known compassion ... thou knowest
not even the phantom of pity; but the silver hair will remind thee
of all this by and by."--CALLIMACHUS.
The Dower House stands so near to the church that Janey Manvers sitting
by her bedroom window in the dusk could hear fragments of the choir
practice over the low ivied wall which separates the churchyard from the
garden. She could detect Annette's voice taking the same passage over
and over again, trying to lead the trebles stumbling after her.
Presently there was a silence, and then her voice rose sweet and clear
by itself--
"_They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the
sun light on them, nor any heat._"
The other voices surged up, and Janey heard no more.
Was it possible there really was a place somewhere where there was no
more hunger and thirst, and beating, blinding heat? Or were they only
pretty words to comfort where no comfort was? Janey looked out where one
soft star hung low in the dusk over the winding river and its poplars.
It seemed to her that night as if she had reached the end of her
strength.
For years, since her father died, she had nursed and sustained her
mother, the invalid in the next room, through what endless terrible days
and nights, through what scenes of anger and bitterness and despair.
Janey had been loyal to one who had never been loyal to her, considerate
to one who had ridden rough-shod over her, tender to one who was harsh
to her, who had always been harsh. And now her mother, not content with
eating up the best years of her daughter's life, had laid her cold hand
upon the future, and had urged Janey to promise that after her death she
would always keep Harry, her half-witted younger brother, in the same
house with her, and protect him from the world on one side and a lunatic
asylum on the other. Something desperate had surged up in Janey's heart,
and she had refused to give the promise. She could see still her
mother's look of impotent anger as she turned her face to the wall,
could hear still her hysterical sobbing. She had not dared to remain
with her, and Anne the old housemaid was sitting with her till the
trained nurse returned from Ipswich, a clever, resourceful woman, who
had made herself indispensable to Lady Louisa, and had taken Harry to
the dentist--always heretofore a matter difficult of accomplishment.
Janey realized with sickening shame this evening that she had
unconsciously looked forward to her mother's death as a time when
release would come from this intolerable burden which she had endured
for the last seven years. Her poor mother would die some day, and a home
would be found for Harry, who never missed anyone if he was a day away
from them. And she would marry Roger, dear kind Roger, whom she had
loved since she was a small child and he was a big boy. That had been
her life, in a prison whose one window looked on a green tree: and poor
manacled Janey had strained towards it as a plant strains to the light.
Something fierce had stirred within her when she saw her mother's hand
trying to block the window. That at any rate must not be touched. She
could not endure it. She knew that if she married Roger he would never
consent that Harry and his attendants should live in the house with
them. What man would? She felt sure that her mother had realized that
contingency and the certainty of Roger's refusal, and hence her
determination to wrest a promise from Janey.
She was waiting for her cousin Roger now. He had not said whether he
would dine or come in after dinner,--it depended on whether he caught
the five o'clock express from Liverpool Street,--but in any case he
would come in some time this evening to tell her the result of his
mission to Paris. Roger lived within a hundred yards, in the pink
cottage with the twirly barge boarding almost facing the church, close
by the village stocks.
Janey had put on what she believed to be a pretty gown on his account,
it was at any rate a much-trimmed one, and had re-coiled her soft brown
hair. The solitude and the darkness had relieved somewhat the strain
upon her nerves. Perhaps Roger might after all have accomplished his
mission, and her mother might be pacified. Sometimes there had been
quiet intervals after these violent outbreaks, which nearly always
followed opposition of any kind. Perhaps to-morrow life might seem more
possible, not such a nightmare. To-morrow she would walk up to Red Riff
and see Annette--lovely, kind Annette--the wonderful new friend who had
come into her life. Roger ought to be here, if he were coming to dinner.
The choir was leaving the church. Choir practice was never over till
after eight. The steps and voices subsided. She lit a match and held it
to the clock on the dressing-table. Quarter-past eight. Then Roger was
certainly not coming. She went downstairs and ordered dinner to be
served.
It was a relief that for once Harry was not present, that she could eat
her dinner without answering the futile questions which were his staple
of conversation, without hearing the vacant laugh which heralded every
remark. She heard the carriage rumble out of the courtyard to meet him.
His teeth must have taken longer than usual. Perhaps even Nurse, who
had him so entirely under her thumb as a rule, had found him
recalcitrant.
As she was peeling her peach the door opened, and Roger came in. If
there had been anyone to notice it--but no one ever noticed anything
about Janey--they might have seen that as she perceived him she became a
pretty woman. A soft red mounted to her cheek, her tired eyes shone, her
small, erect figure became alert. He had not dined, after all. She sent
for the earlier dishes, and while he ate, refrained from asking him any
questions.
"You do not look as tired as I expected," she said.
Roger replied that he was not the least tired There was in his bearing
some of the alertness of hers, and she noticed it with a sudden secret
uprush of joy in her heart. Surely it was the same for both of them? To
be together was all they needed. But oh! how she needed that! How far
greater her need was than his!
They might have been taken for brother and sister as they sat together
in the dining-room in the light of the four wax candles.
They were what the village people called "real Manverses," both of them,
sturdy, well knit, erect, with short, straight noses, and grey, direct,
wide-open eyes, and brown complexions, and crisp brown hair. Each was
good-looking in a way. Janey had the advantage of youth, but her life
had been more burdened than Roger's, and at five-and-thirty he did not
look much older than she did at five-and-twenty, except that he showed a
tendency to be square-set, and his hair was thinning a little at the top
of his honest, well-shaped head. He was, as Mrs. Nicholls often
remarked, "the very statue of the old squire," his uncle and Janey's
father.
"Pray don't hurry, Roger. There is plenty of time."
"I'm not hurrying, old girl," with another gulp.
It was a secret infinitesimal grief to Janey that Roger called her "old
girl." A hundred little traits showed that she had seen almost nothing
of the world, but he, in spite of public school and college, gave the
impression of having seen even less. There were a few small
tiresomenesses about Roger to which even Janey's faithful adoration
could not quite shut its eyes. But they were, after all, only external
foibles, such as calling her "old girl," tricks of manner, small
gaucheries and gruntings and lapses into inattention, the result of
living too much alone, which wise Janey knew were of no real account.
The things that really mattered about Roger were his kind heart and his
good business-head and his uprightness.
"Never seen Paris before, and don't care if I never see it again," he
vouchsafed between enormous mouthfuls. He never listened--at least not
to Janey--and his conversation consisted largely of disjointed remarks,
thrown out at intervals, very much as unprofitable or waste material is
chucked over a wall, without reference to the person whom it may strike
on the other side.
"I should like to see Paris myself."
Roger informed her of the reprehensible and entirely un-British manner
in which luggage was arranged for at that metropolis, and of the price
of the cabs and the system of _pourboires_, and how the housemaid at the
hotel had been a man. Some of these details of intimate Parisian life
had already reached even Janey, but she listened to them with unflagging
interest. Do not antiquaries tell us that the extra rib out of which Eve
was fashioned was in shape not unlike an ear trumpet? Janey was a
daughter of Eve. She listened.
Presently the servants withdrew, and he leaned back in his chair and
looked at her.
"It was no go," he said.
"You mean Dick was worse?"
"Yes. No. I don't know how he was. He looked to me just the same,
staring straight in front of him with goggling eyes. Lady Jane said he
knew me, but I didn't see that he did. I said, 'Holloa, Dick,' and he
just gaped. She said he knew quite well all about the business, and that
she had explained it to him. And the doctor was there, willing to
witness anything: awful dapper little chap, called me _Chair Mussieur_
and held me by the arm, and tried to persuade me, but----" Roger shook
his head and thrust out his under lip.
"You were right, Roger," said Janey sadly; "but poor mother will be
dreadfully angry. And how are you to go on without the power of
attorney, if he's not in a fit state to grant it?"
But Roger was not listening.
"I often used to wonder how Aunt Louisa got Dick to sign before about
the sale of the salt marshes--that time when she went to Paris
herself--on purpose. But,"--he became darkly red,--"hang it all, Janey,
I see now how it was done."
"She shouldn't have sent me," he said, getting up abruptly. "Not the
kind for the job. I suppose I had better go up and see her. Expect I
shall catch it."