FATE'S AFTERTHOUGHT
Janet did not open her bill till her brothers had gone out to the farm.
Then she tore the envelope. The bill ran--
"JANEY SWEET,
"Curse it!--I have to go to Brighton on Saturday. It's for my
father, so I daren't object, in case he should ask too many
questions. But I must see you, dear one--it's nearly a month since
we met, and I'm dying for the sight of you and the touch of you.
Can't you come to-day? I'm sure you can get away for an hour or
two--your brothers must not take you from me. I'll be waiting in
Furnace Wood, in the old place down by the hedge, at five. Come to
me, Janey sweet. I dreamed of you last night--dreamed of you with
your hands full of flowers.
"Your lover,
"QUENTIN."
Janey stuffed the letter into her pocket.
"It's dreadful of me," she repeated, in the same tone as she had said it
to the boys. Those poor boys! How innocently and trustfully they had
swallowed her lie--it was like deceiving children.
But she could not tell them--though Nigel's strange new reserve made her
long all the more to be frank and without secret--they would be furious
if they knew her story, now the story of three years. Once she had tried
hinting it to Len, but though he had not half understood her, he had
made his feelings about Quentin Lowe pretty plain, and Janet had been
only too glad to change the subject before the danger line was passed.
Nigel would, of course, side with Leonard. They would look upon her love
as treachery, for though there was no outward breach between the
Furlongers and the Lowes, the former had always suspected the latter of
sharp dealing over the Kent land--old Lowe would never have offered that
absurd price if he had not known that the Furlongers were absolutely
obliged to sell.
Old Lowe was a retired clergyman who had come with his son to Redpale
Farm, just over the Kentish border. From the first he had cast a longing
eye on the Furlonger acres, which touched his on the Surrey side. A row
of cottages in obvious disrepair and insanitation had given his longing
the necessary smack of righteousness. At that time Nigel was in prison
on remand, and the news soon trickled through the neighbourhood that his
brother and sister were in desperate money difficulties, and would have
to sell most of their land. Lowe at once came forward with what he
considered a fair offer, which the Furlongers, as no one else seemed
inclined to bid, were bound to accept. The negotiations had been carried
on chiefly through a solicitor, but young Lowe had paid two or three
visits to Sparrow Hall.
Janet would never forget one of these. Leonard was not in that day, but
though she had told Quentin she could decide nothing without her
brother, he had insisted on sitting with her in the kitchen, arguing
some obscure point. She remembered it all--the table between them, the
firelight on the walls, the square of darkness and stars seen through
the uncurtained window, the pipe and rattle of the wind. He had risen to
go, and suddenly she had seen that he was trembling--and before she had
time to be surprised she saw that she was trembling too. They faced each
other for a minute, shaking from head to foot, and dumb. Then they
stooped together swiftly in a burning kiss, their hearts full of
uncontrollable ecstasy and despair.
It had all been so sudden. She could not remember having felt the
faintest thrill in his presence till that moment. He said the same. When
he had sat down opposite her at the table, she had been merely a woman
with whom he was doing business. It seemed as if fate had brought them
together as an afterthought, and at first Janey believed it could not
last. But it lasted. It had lasted all through those years, in spite of
much wretchedness and a killing need for secrecy on both sides. This
need was more vital for Quentin than for Janey. He was utterly dependent
on his father, who, of course, looked on the Furlongers with righteous
disgust. So for three years meetings had been stolen, letters smuggled,
and happiness snatched out of sudden hours.
To-day Janet was not sure how she could arrange a meeting. Meetings with
Quentin generally needed the most careful planning, and on this
occasion he had not given her much time. However, she thought, the boys
would very probably go shooting in the early evening, and she could then
run over to Furnace Wood.
This was what happened. A little manoeuvring sent Nigel and Leonard out
to pot rabbits, and a minute or so later Janey stole from Sparrow Hall,
climbing the gate opposite into the fields of Wilderwick. She did not
wear a hat--she never did--and over her dress was a disreputable old
jacket. She went gaily and innocently to meet her lover in garments many
women would not have swept the floor in.
It was a long tramp to Furnace Wood. The rain had cleared, but the grass
was wet, and the trees shook down rain-drops and wet leaves. Autumn was
late that year, still in the fiery stage--whole hedges flamed, and
backgrounds were mostly yellow. But everywhere now were the dead leaves,
damp as well as dead. Her feet splashed through them, they caked her
boots, they filled every corner with their smell of sweet rottenness.
Furnace Wood marked the beginning of the chain of hammer ponds below
Holtye Common. For a long time the fields had been sloping eastward,
till at last they dropped into a tangled valley stretching from Old
Surrey Hall to Sweetwoods Farm. Here was a great stillness and a great
solitude--woods, and thick old orchards, with now and then an oast-house
or a chimney struggling up among them. In this valley lay Redpale Farm,
Clay Farm, and Scarlet Farm, all old, alone, forsaken, beside the
gleaming hammer ponds.
The waters of the first pond flashed like a shield through the
half-naked branches of Furnace Wood. Janet's quick eyes saw Quentin
standing by the hedge, and she began to run. She splashed over the
drenched field, climbed the hedge with an agility she owed to a total
disregard for her clothes--and crept warm and panting into his arms, as
he stood there among the drifted leaves.
"Janey," he whispered, kissing her lips and her hair and her wrist wet
with rain, "how I love you ... little Janey sweet."
It pleased Quentin to call her little, though as a matter of fact she
was considerably taller than he. Quentin was a few years younger than
Janey--delicate-looking, and yet thick-set. His face was pale, though
the features were roughly hewn, and his shoulders were so high as to
give him almost the appearance of a hunchback. In spite of this, he
often struck people as handsome in a strange way--which was due,
perhaps, to a certain nobility in the casting of his face, with its
idealistic mouth, strong nose, and great bright eyes, which seemed to be
burning under his heavy brows.
"Janey," he continued, "you're beautiful to-day--you're part of the
evening. There's rain on your hair, and on your cheek, so that when I
kiss it I taste rain--you're brown and red, just like the fields, you're
windswept and rumpled like the woods."
Janey laughed.
"And your teeth gleam like that white pond through the trees."
"You should put that into a poem, Quentin," she said, still laughing,
"it sounds funny in prose."
"Prose! Prose!--as if there could be any prose when you are near!"
A copper gleam of sunlight came suddenly from under the rim of a leaden
cloud. For a moment it flared on the hedge, making the wet leaves shine.
It gave a metallic look to the evening--instead of sweetening the soaked
landscape it seemed only to make it sadder, with a harsh, reckless
sadness it had not worn in the gloom. Quentin put up his hand and picked
one of the shining sprays, to fasten it in Janey's jacket. Whenever he
saw beautiful things in the hedges, he wanted to give them to Janey. He
never wanted to give her the beautiful things he saw in shops; he did
not, like so many men, stare into shop windows, longing to see her in
those clothes, those jewels, and great hats like the moon. But if ever
he found a sudden splash of bryony in the hedge, or a flush of
bloody-twig, or honeysuckle, or nuts, he wanted to pick them for her.
When it was May he had often met her in Furnace Wood with his arms full
of hawthorn, in June he had brought her dog-roses, in August ripe ears
of barley, in September wild-apple boughs; and now in October he picked
her sprays of red, sodden leaves. There was a little nut on this
spray--he picked it off and cracked it with his teeth, and put the
kernel into her mouth. Then suddenly the sunlight faded, and a soft rush
of gloom swept up the valley of the hammer ponds.
"Nigel came home last night," said Janet, breaking the silence that had
lasted with the sun.
"How is he looking?"
"He's changed, Quentin."
"It's aged him, of course."
"That isn't so terrible--we could have endured that, we'd expected it.
The awful thing is that it's made him so childish. Sometimes you'd
really think he was a child, by the way he speaks--and goes on."
"He'll soon be all right--you'll heal him, Janey."
"I don't see how I'm going to. The worst thing is that he's so reserved
with me and Len. It isn't that he doesn't talk and tell us things, but I
know he doesn't tell us the things that really matter. Oh,
Quentin"--turning suddenly to him--"I feel such a wretch, having a
secret from the boys when Nigel's like this."
"You've lost your logic, sweet--or, rather, thank God, you never had
any. Your brother's secrets ought to make you worry less about your
own."
"You don't understand--it's just the other way round."
She sighed deeply, and her pain irritated him.
"You have the power to end it if you like--you're not so badly off as I
am. You can tell your brothers any day you choose--they can't
interfere."
"Of course not--but it would make them miserable. They'd be miserable
enough at the idea of my marrying any one, and leaving them--and as for
marrying you----"
"Oh, I know they hate me," broke in Quentin. "And they despise me
because I haven't got their health and muscle. They hate me for what I
have got--their land; and they despise me for what I haven't got--their
muscle."
Janet's eyes filled. She knew that he was wretchedly jealous of her
brothers, and it hurt her more than anything else. She laid her hand
timidly on his arm.
"Quentin, I wish you wouldn't feel that way towards the boys. I can't
help loving them."
"But you love them more than me."
"I don't, indeed I don't. And you mustn't think they hate you. They've
got their hand against every one, you know, and of course they feel sick
about the Kent lands, there's no denying it. If they knew you loved me,
they might hate you then--they'd be jealous; and if I told them now--oh,
it would be all misery at home!--for them as well as for me. I'd far
rather have my secret--that hurts only me. When we've settled anything
definitely, of course I shall tell them. But we may have to go on like
this for years."
Quentin groaned.
"Yes, Janey, that's true--that's the damned truth. You should never have
loved a helpless fool like me, all tied up in paper and strings. Good
Lord! my father will have something to answer for--if there's any one to
answer to for our muddlings in this muddled hell."
"But you'll win your independence."
"Yes; if two things happen: if my father dies, which he isn't likely to,
and which, hang it all, I don't want him to--or if I can make enough by
my writing to support two people, which is never done by pessimistic
poets in this world of optimistic prose. I ought to hear from Baker
soon--he's had that manuscript over a month--he's the twenty-eighth man
that's had it. Oh, damn it all, Janey!"
They were sitting together on a tree-trunk under the hedge, the darkness
creeping up round them. Quentin drew very close to Janey, and clutched
her hand.
"I'm a beast to go whining to you like this--but it helps me. It's such
a relief to get all my furies off my chest and feel your
sympathy--_feel_ it, Janey, you needn't speak, words seem to nail things
down. Oh, why were you and I born into this muddle and never given a
chance? I've never had a chance--not the shadow of one. All my life I've
suffered that vile plague, dependence, and it's poisoned my blood and
sapped my strength and perverted my reason. My father's to blame for it.
The whole object of his life has been to keep me dependent on him. He's
stinted me of everything--friends, money, education--just to keep me
dependent. He's well off, as you know, but he allows me a miserable
screw many tradesmen would be ashamed to offer their sons. He's made my
bad health an excuse for cutting short my time at college, and for not
bringing me up to any profession. He's in terror lest I should strike
out a line for myself. He wants me to live my whole life on a
negation--'thou shalt not,' he says. He doesn't say it because he's my
father, but because he's a clergyman. It's that which has spoiled him,
because it hasn't let him go to life for his principles. Christianity
never does. I hate Christianity, Janey--Christianity's a piece of
Semitic bargaining--all Semitic religions are commercial, but
Christianity has been so far Europeanised that it offers its rewards not
for what you do but for what you don't do. I once wrote a poem on the
Christian heaven--God and all the angels and curly-locked saints yawning
their heads off because they're all so tired of doing nothing, and at
last all falling asleep together. Ugh! One reason I love you, Janey, is
that you're so beautifully pagan--just like the country here. The
country's all pagan at bottom, and that's why every one loves the
country, even the Christians."
Janey smiled, and pressed his hand. She knew Quentin liked "talking," so
she let him "talk," though she troubled very little about the questions
that were so vital to him. She knew it relieved him to pour into her
ears the torrent of abuse which was always roaring against its sluices,
and had no other outlet--unless it found its way into publishers'
offices and damaged his poor chances there.
"It's Christianity which makes my father so damned clever in keeping me
dependent," continued Lowe. "He's got so used to tying souls up in paper
and string that he can make a neat parcel even of a bulky, bulgy soul
like mine. You know how we admire shop people for the neat way they tie
up parcels--we couldn't do it. Well, my father's a kind of celestial
shop-keeper, and I'm the goods he's sending out--payment on delivery.
Oh, damn!"
Janey's hand went up to his face and stroked it. Quentin's furies always
struck her as infinitely pathetic.
"It'll be all right, dear," she whispered. "I'm sure it will. You're
bound to get free."
He seized her hand and held it fiercely in his while he stared into her
eyes.
"Janey--I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get free--or if I do, whether
I'll find freedom the ecstasy I imagine it. Perhaps freedom, like
everything else, is a mirage, a snare, a disillusion. Yesterday I was
reading the _Epic of Gilgamesh_--
Gilgamesh, why dost thou wander around?
Life which thou seekest thou canst not find.
That's the horrible truth--nothing that we seek shall we ever find,
unless it's been found over and over again already. And then there's
love, Janey, that's one of the things we never find, though we seek it
till our tears are blood. I've written a poem about that, comparing love
to the sea--to salt water, rather, for of course hundreds of poets have
compared love to the sea. Love is like the salt water that splashes
round the poor sailor dying of thirst--he drinks it in his desperation,
and the more he drinks the fiercer becomes his thirst, and still he
drinks on in despair and hope, till at last he ends in madness--that's
love. Janey, that's love."
He stooped suddenly forward, till his head was buried in her knees.
"That's my love, sweet, sweet thing--my love for you. It never sates,
it always burns, it tortures, it maddens. There is no rest, no rest in
my love--it wakes me from my sleep to long for you--it is a hunger that
gnaws through all my meals--it is a darkness that may be felt, a light
too blinding to be borne...."
His shoulders shook, and tears rushed scalding into Janet's eyes. With
one hand she stroked and tangled his coarse hair, the other he had
seized and laid under his cheek--and she felt one burning tear upon it.
Her whole heart seemed to open itself to her lover in tender pity, and
not only to him, but to all men--men, with their fierceness in desire
and gentleness in satiety, with their terrible sudden temptations, their
weakness and nobleness, their beasthood and their godhead. Men struck
her--had always struck her--as intensely pathetic; and now Quentin and
his love wrung her breast with tears. Before that storm of hungry love
she bowed her head in mute homage--she worshipped him as he lay there on
her knees.
He lifted himself suddenly. Darkness was creeping fast into the woods,
with little shivering gasps.
"Janey, before you go, there's something I want particularly to ask you.
Next Tuesday week my father's going to London for the day. He won't be
back till late--I want you to come to Redpale when he's gone."
"Redpale ... but there are the servants, Quentin."
"They're all right. I'll send the girls over to Grinstead in the
afternoon; there'll only be the men about the farm, and they needn't
trouble us."
"But...."
"Oh, there's your brothers, of course," he cried harshly; "can't you get
away from them for one afternoon?"
"Yes, I can.... I don't know why I said 'But.'"
"You mustn't say 'But'--Janey, do you realise that you and I have never
had a meal together?"
"No."
"We must have a meal together--I want to see you eat--I want to drink
with you."
"Very well, I'll come. I'll get over early in the afternoon.... Now I
must say good-bye."
"When I see you next I may have heard from Baker. Then we shall know our
fate."
"Our fate...?"
"Yes, for if Baker can't take my stuff, no one else will, and my last
chance is gone."
"Don't think of such a thing, dear."
"No, I won't. I'll think of you, dream of you--whenever you are so
gracious as to let me sleep."
He stood up, and drew her head down to his shoulder, holding it there
with trembling hands, while his lips sought her face. Her mouth was
against his sleeve, and she kissed it while he kissed her cheek and
neck. For a full minute they stood together thus, and when they drew
apart, the first star hung a timid candle above the burnt-out fires of
the west.