IN THE RAIN
From Nigel's bed as well as Janey's one could see woods, and in summer
he had often lain listening to the night-jar in them--that mysterious
whirring, dull and restless, as if ghosts were spinning.
That night all was windless silence, and there was no motion in the dark
patch of window-view, except the flashing of the stars. Towards morning
a delicious sense of cold stole over Nigel's sleep. Soft airs seemed to
be baffing him, rippling round him, and there seemed to be water--water
and wind. Then suddenly a bell rang in his brain. The dream collapsed,
pulverised. He sprang up in bed, then scrambled out--then opened his
eyes, to see himself still surrounded by his dream.
It was five o'clock, and the Parkhurst bell had rung in his head just as
it had rung at that hour for hundreds of mornings. But he was not at
Parkhurst, he was still in his dream--water and wind. Against the
horizon stretched a long dim line of woods, and above them the sky was
lucent with the first hope of dawn. Into the fields splashed a gentle
rain, and in at his window blew the west wind, soft, damp and cold.
For the first time Nigel realised that he was home, and that he was
free.
Yesterday had all been so strange, he had not had time to think of
things. After years of confinement and discipline it had been a
terrifying ordeal to walk through the crowded streets of a town and take
a long train journey, involving several changes. He had wished then that
he had allowed Len to come and meet him at Parkhurst--the dull fears
that had made him insist on his brother coming no nearer than East
Grinstead had seemed nothing to this terror of carts and horses and
motors and trams and trains, these constantly shifting faces and
strident voices, this hurry, this disorder, this horrible respect of
people who called him "Sir," and said "I beg your pardon," if they fell
over his big feet.
When he came to Sparrow Hall, it had been worse still--not at first, but
afterwards, when Janet and Leonard had said all those terrible things to
him, and hurt him so. They had hurt him, and he had frightened them, and
it had all been miserable.
But this morning everything had changed. He no longer felt terrified of
his independence or of what his brother and sister might say. His heart
was warm and happy--his lungs were full of the sweet moist morning air.
He crossed the room. It was ecstasy to feel that no one was watching
him, that there was no ugly observation hole in the door. Why, privacy
was as sweet as independence, and not nearly so startling. He pulled off
his sleeping-suit, and stood naked by the bed. For the first time in
three years he felt the pride of his young manhood, the splendour of his
body. The lust of life frothed up in his heart. The dawn, his strong
bare limbs, the rain, plunged him into a rapture of thanksgiving. He was
home, and he was free.
He knelt down by the window, the rain spattering softly on him, and
stared out at the woods--Ashplats Wood and Hackenden Wood and Summer
Wood, with Swites Wood in the west. The woods, the dear brown
wind-rocked woods!--he would walk in them that morning, there was no one
to hinder him--he was home, and he was free among the woods.
He rose lightly, and began to dress. He put on old rough clothes that he
had worn before he went to prison. They had been old then, and now they
were positively disreputable, for Janet had folded them away carelessly,
so that they had creased and frayed. But he loved them, they seemed even
now to smell of the cows he had milked and the soft loam of the fields.
He ran downstairs whistling--some music-hall song that had been popular
three years ago, but was long forgotten now. To Leonard in the yard and
Janet in the dairy he sounded like a cheerful ghost. They both thought
of going to meet him, but both at last decided to leave him alone.
The house was full of the delicious smell of rain, and the wind crooned
through it tenderly, rattling the doors and windows, and fluttering the
untidy rags of wall-paper that here and there hung loose on the walls.
Nigel went into the kitchen, where the fire was burning. He sat down by
it and warmed his hands, though he was not really cold. He had not seen
a fire for three years.
Then suddenly he noticed something in the corner--it was his
fiddle-case, wrapped in green baize. Nigel had always passed for
something of a musician, and during a few stormy years spent in London
with his father had been fairly well taught. Farming and scheming had
never made him forget his fiddle, though occasionally it had lain for
weeks as it lay now, wrapped up in dusty cloths in the corner.
He stooped down and took it out of its many covers. It was a fairly good
instrument of modern make, best in its low tones. All the strings were
broken except the G, but he found a coil of the D in the case, and
screwed it on. By means of harmonics and the seventh position he could
manage fairly well with two strings.
It seemed a terribly long time since he had felt a fiddle under his
chin, and sniffed its peculiar smell of sweet varnished wood and rosin.
He lifted his arm slowly, and the bow dropped on the strings. It was
scratchy, and he felt horribly stiff, but in course of time matters
improved a little, and Len and Janey, together in the Dutch barn, smiled
at each other as the strains of Handel's "Largo" drifted out to them.
"He'll feel better now," said Leonard.
Nigel forgot the "Largo" in the middle, and started "O Caro Nome," from
Rigoletto. His taste in music had always been the despair of his
teachers. He had never seemed able to appreciate the modern school, or,
indeed, the more advanced of the ancients. He had a desperate fondness
for Balfe and Donizetti, for the most sugary moods of Verdi and Gounod.
He revelled in high notes, trills and tremolo--"O Caro Nome" and "I
dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls" appealed to a side of him which was
definitely sentimental. He stood there by the window, swaying
sentimentally from side to side, shaking shrill colorature from his
violin, regardless of the squeaking of a nearly rosinless bow.
What appealed to Nigel was never the technique of a composition, but its
emotional quality. Music was to him not so much sound as feeling--he did
not value a piece for its own intrinsic beauty, but for the emotions it
was able to call forth. As he played that morning whole cycles of
experience passed before him. All the old dreams that for three years
had lain dead in his violin now revived--but a new quality was added to
them, a soft twang of sorrow. Before his imprisonment his dreams had
been winged and shod with fire, wild things compounded of desire and
endeavour, tender only in their background of the seasons' moods, rain
and sunshine and wind and shadows and stars. But to-day longing took in
them the place of endeavour, and all their desire was for forgetfulness.
Stars and rain were in them still, but the stars and rain of the new
heavens and the new earth which suffering had created--the rain which is
tears, and the stars which spring from the dumb desire of sorrow
brooding over the formless deep of its own immensity--"Let there be
light." And there was light--one or two faint dream-like constellations,
burning over and reflected in the swirling waters of the abyss.... A
great wind passed over the face of the waters, and parted them, and out
of them rose a little island for a man to stand upon--so the dry land
came out of the water. And the suffering man can stand on the island,
where there is just room for his feet, and he can see the stars above
him--and when he is too weary to lift his head he sees them reflected in
the surging waters beneath....
Nigel dropped his violin, and looked out with dream-filled eyes at the
fields, seen dimly through the rain-drops dripping from the eaves. In
the front garden stood a little girl--a little dirty girl with a
milk-can.
"Hullo!" said Nigel.
He felt an unaccountable desire to talk to this child; not because he
liked her particularly--indeed, she was rather an unattractive
object--but because he realised suddenly that he was very fond of
children. He had never known it before, never imagined that he cared
about kids; but, whether it was his long exile in prison he could not
tell, he felt quite overwhelmed this morning by his love for them, and
realised that he absolutely must make friends with the highly
unfavourable specimen before him.
"Hullo!" he repeated.
The maiden vouchsafed no reply.
"Have you come for the milk?" he asked conversationally.
She nodded. Then she pointed to his violin.
"Did the noise come out of that box?"
"Yes--would you like to hear it again?"
"No."
He was not to be daunted.
"Come in, and I'll show you a pussy."
"Is there a pussy in that box?"
"No--but there's a beauty in the chair by the fire."
Nigel dived out of the window, and caught her up bodily. Her clothes
smelt strongly of milk and garden mould, not an altogether pleasing
combination. But for some reason or other he felt delighted, and carried
her in triumph round the kitchen before he introduced her to a large
placid-looking cat.
"Don' like it."
This was humiliating, but Nigel persevered.
"Have some of this--" and he offered her a spoonful of jam out of the
pot on the table.
The little girl sniffed it with the air of a connoisseur.
"Don' like it."
"Well, try this--" plunging the same spoon into the sugar basin.
"Don' like it."
Fortunately at that moment Janey came in.
"Nigel, what on earth are you doing?--Hullo, Ivy!"
She looked surprised at the scowling infant perched on her brother's
shoulder.
"She's come for the milk, and I'm giving her some breakfast."
"Wan'er go 'ome!" shrieked Ivy.
Nigel looked so mortified that Janey could hardly help laughing--till
suddenly she realised that there was something rather pathetic about it
all. Nigel had never used to struggle for the good-will of dirty
children.
"She'd better come with me," she said, "and I'll give her the milk. Her
mother won't like it if she's kept."
Ivy alighted with huge satisfaction on the floor, and left the room with
Janey, after throwing a bit of box-lid at the cat.
Janey came back in a few minutes.
"Like to help me get the breakfast, old man?" she asked cheerily.
Nigel was pacing up and down the kitchen.
"What a dear little thing she is!" he said.
"Who? Ivy? I think she's a regular little toad. How funny you are,
Nigel!"
Half-an-hour later the three Furlongers were at breakfast. Nigel had
always been subject to moods just like a girl, and sometimes his changes
from heights to depths had been irritating. But to-day his brother and
sister saw the advantages of such a nature. The two boys fooled together
all through the meal, and Janet watched them, smiling. Nigel had found
his tongue to some purpose. Strange to say, he was more than ready to
talk of his prison experiences, though, as he had already hinted to
Janey, he had two sets of these. One set, typified by his fumigated
clothes, he seemed positively to revel in; the other set he never
mentioned of his free will, though he obviously used to brood over them.
"Hullo! there's the postman!" cried Janet suddenly.
She rose to go to the door, but Nigel was nearest it, and sprang out
before her.
"Morning, Winkworth!" he shouted hilariously. "I'm back again."
"Glad to see you, Mus' Furlonger," chuckled the postman. "You look in
pretty heart."
"Never was better in my life," and waving a letter in his hand he swung
back into the kitchen.
"A letter for Janey!--Janey's the lucky devil"--as he flung it across
the table.
"I wonder who it's from," said Leonard; "open it, Janey, and see."
Letters were always an excitement in the Furlonger family--they were few
enough to be that.
"Know the writing, Janey?"
Janey turned the letter over. "It's a bill."
The boys' faces fell.
"How dull," said Leonard, "and how immoral, Janet!--another of those
ten-guinea hats, I suppose."
"And you promised us solemnly," said Nigel, "not to buy any more."
"It's dreadful of me," said Janet.
The boys glanced at her in surprise--for she looked as if she meant it.