THE SERMON ON FORGIVENESS
Half-an-hour later the three Furlongers sat down to a cold breakfast.
They were almost silent, for there was nothing more to be said. The
matter was settled. Nigel had found an unexpected ally in Janet, and had
carried his point. Directly after breakfast he wrote to von
Gleichroeder. It was a difficult letter, for it meant nothing less than
eating humble pie, but for that very reason he did not take long over
it. An envelope addressed in his large, scrawling hand was soon ready to
be posted.
It was a clear, cold day, this feast of Stephen. A frosty sunshine
crisped the grass, scattering the damps of yesterday's fog. The lane
smelled of frost as Nigel walked up it to the post-office. But he did
not see it as it was--in the duress and beggarliness of winter; he saw
it as it would be, bursting with spring, full of scent and softness and
song. He pictured those naked bushes when spring had clothed them, those
grey banks when spring had fired them--the hedges were full of future
song, the hollows of primroses to be.
He posted his letter, then stood for a moment, looking southward. The
sunshine was so clear that the rims of distant windows gleamed with
white across the fields. He could see the windows of Shovelstrode....
Dared he?
After all, he would have to. He could not leave Sparrow Hall without
seeing Tony. He would not tell her of her place in his plans, but he
owed it to her and to himself that she should think of him as a man
living uprightly, striving after honour. Now she was thinking of him as
a scoundrel and an outcast--he came into her thoughts with a shudder. It
must not be.
At the same time he was afraid. It gave him a strange, cold qualm to
think he was afraid of Tony, once his comrade, now his love--but he was.
If he meant to see her, he must go at once, before his resolve lost
strength with spontaneity. He turned towards the south, where the
sunshine lay.
As he came near Shovelstrode his quakings grew. After all, by the time
he had made himself worthy to think of her, she would have given herself
to another. He could not even hint that he wanted her to wait. He must
trust to her aloofness to keep her free, and the memory of their
friendship to keep alive in her heart a little spark that he could some
day fan into flame. But it was all rather hopeless, a leap in the dark.
Perhaps, even, she would refuse to see him. He remembered the look in
her eyes when she had turned from him by Goatsluck Farm. All the
steel-cold virtue, all the ignorant horror, all the cruelty of youth had
been in that look. Perhaps she had turned from him for ever. Perhaps
nothing that he could ever achieve or be would wipe out from her memory
his foul betrayal of others and herself.
But he went too far in his fears for utter despair. Reaction set
in--hope began once more to lacerate him, and whipped him forward to
make his last desperate appeal to the fates that had always hitherto
been deaf and blind.
He hesitated a moment when he came to the house. The servants might know
who he was and not allow him in, or he might be seen by some of the
family. It struck him that he had better go and look for her in the park
before risking himself on the doorstep. She had once told him that she
often wandered among the pines.
He slipped round behind the lodge, and was skirting the lawn at the back
of the house, when he saw one of the French windows open and a girl come
out with her dog. His heart gave a suffocating leap, and something
seemed to rise in his throat and stay there, making him gulp
idiotically. He had never before felt any emotion at the sight of
her--just pleasure, a calm, slow-moving comfort. But to-day his head
swam, and he could hardly see her as she came running and skipping
across the lawn in a manner wholly at variance with her long skirts and
coiled-up hair.
She turned aside before she reached the bushes that hid him, and he just
managed to call after her--
"Tony!--Tony!"
The dog barked, and the next minute had scented him, and came cantering
over the grass. Tony stood still and listened. She looked uncertain, and
he called again--
"Tony!"
She turned quickly, and slipped behind the bushes, running to him along
the path. When she was a few yards off she stopped dead.
"Mr. Furlonger...."
She stood outlined against a patch of wintry sky. It was the first time
that he had seen her since her return. He thought that she was paler
than in the valiant days of their friendship, and certainly the way she
did her hair gave her a grown-up look. The stifling sensation in his
throat became worse, and he could not speak.
"What is it ... Mr. Furlonger?"
"I--I want to speak to you."
"Oh, no! I can't!" Her voice was quite childish.
"I must--please do."
She hesitated a moment.
"Then come into the shrubbery. We can be seen here from the house."
"I know. I'm not here to get you into trouble. I--I only came to say
good-bye."
"Good-bye," she repeated vaguely, not quite understanding him, for her
heart had said good-bye to him long ago.
"Yes--I'm going to London."
They were walking away from the house to where the pine-needles were
thick under their feet--on a little, moist path smelling of winter. The
sunshine came slanting down on Tony as she stopped, showing up her slim,
strong figure in a cold purity of light. It rested on her hair, and he
saw golden threads in it--in her eyes, and he saw golden sparks in them.
For the first time he realised how beautiful she was in all the
assurance and unconsciousness of her youth. He longed to tell her so.
Instead he muttered--
"How grown-up you look."
"Do I?--it's my hair, I suppose."
"Did they make you put it up?"
"Aunt Maggie said I was old enough--and I think so too."
"I hope you don't mind my coming here to see you." He was desperately
embarrassed, and her manner did not reassure him. "I'm going away, you
see, to study music, and I--I thought I should like to say good-bye."
"Oh, no," she said rather awkwardly, her excessive youth showing nowhere
more clearly than in her inability to put him at his ease. "Oh, no, I'm
glad you came--to say good-bye."
"I'm going to work very hard. There's a fellow--Eitel von Gleichroeder,
I don't know if you've heard of him--who's taken a fancy to me, and says
he'll coach me if I'll take up the violin professionally."
"I didn't know you played."
"Yes--but I'd no idea I was any good till I met this chap. He says I
ought to make quite a decent thing out of it. I--I think it's worth
trying."
"Oh, yes."
"You see," he continued, his voice shaking with emotion, "I want to
start a new life--to be respectable, I suppose you'd call it. If I win
fame as a violinist--and von Gleichroeder thinks I may--I--I shall have
lived down everything."
"Yes ... of course."
It was embarrassment, not lack of interest, that made her replies so
trite. Memories of their friendship--now dim and far-off, separated from
her by many wonderful happenings--were creeping up to her and filling
her with a vague uneasiness.
As for Nigel, he realised now what had taken place. He understood why
his tongue had suddenly become tied in her presence, and his eagerness
collapsed into shuffling uncouthness. He had come to Shovelstrode to
speak to a little girl--and he had found a woman. Tony the schoolgirl,
the hoyden, the gay comrade, was now nothing but a little ghost haunting
the slopes of Ashdown and the secret lanes of Kent. In her place stood a
woman--come suddenly, as the woman always comes--and the woman, he knew,
was trying to call back the girl, and see things from her eyes once
more--and could not.
"Tony--Miss Strife--I wanted to tell you this, just to show you I'm not
always going to be a convict on ticket-of-leave."
"I'm sure you won't. I hope you'll become very famous."
The words passed her lips in jerks. Her memories of him carried
something very like repulsion. The more she struggled to revisualise the
comradeship of two months ago, the greater was her distaste and
humiliation. The kindest attitude possible for her now was one of
embarrassed shyness. At first she had tried to heal herself with her
memories, but as soon as she had worked back to them she found their
sweet secrets all sicklied with bitterness and shame.
He looked steadfastly at her, and he saw what had happened.
"Tony--you don't want to know me any longer--you want to forget we ever
were friends. There's no good denying it, for I can see it."
She stood motionless, her lips white, her hands clenched in front of
her.
"It's true--I can see it," he repeated.
She did not speak. Her memories were calling very loud, and there were
tears in the voices, softening the shame.
"You can't bear the thought of having once been my friend."
Tears were rising in her throat, and with her tears the little
school-girl who had run away came back, and showed her face again before
she went for ever.
"Oh, it's hurt me!" she cried. "You don't know how it's hurt me!"
"To know I was a bad 'un?" He grasped the shaking hand she thrust out
before her.
"Yes--I can't bear to think...."
"But I've changed--I swear I have. I'm going to live a decent life; and
you're going to help me--by just saying you believe I can."
She shuddered, and pulled her hand away.
"I tell you I've changed," he exclaimed bitterly; "won't you believe
me?"
She was crying now.
"You don't understand ... you don't understand ... what one feels about
men like you."
He winced.
"You don't know what I felt ... when I heard...."
"Tony!" he cried, "you _must_ forgive me."
"I do forgive you--it's not me you've hurt--but----"
"'But' you don't forgive me, and it is you I've hurt--that's what your
'but' means."
There was another silence, broken only by her muffled crying and the
throbbing of the wind in the pine-tops. Nigel felt that his old life was
struggling in its cerements to spring up and strangle the new life at
its birth.
"I can't understand," sobbed the girl, "how you or any man could have
done such a horrible thing. You've been merciless and cruel and grasping
and unworthy--and you won my friendship by false pretences, by lies and
shams--when all the time you knew that if I'd had any idea who you
really were I wouldn't have let you come near me. Oh, it probably seems
only a little thing to you, but it's dreadful for me to think I've given
my friendship to a man who's been a--a cad."
His anger kindled, for her inexperience and ignorance no longer
attracted him--they were now only fragments that remained of something
he had worshipped.
"Then are you going to inquire into the history of every man you meet,
in case any one else should 'win your friendship under false
pretences'? Most men have had a little shake up in their pasts."
"You don't call yours a little shake up, do you?"
The retort was obvious, and he flushed--but at the same time it gave him
an unwonted courage.
"No, of course not. But you mustn't think it's been just as easy for me
to keep straight as for you. Do you realise what being a man means?--it
means to be tempted."
"Women are tempted."
He laughed.
"But not like men."
He saw the incredulousness of her eyes, and once more his rage flared
up.
"You don't understand!" he cried, "you don't understand!"
Then it struck him that she would never understand, that she would go
through life with her narrow ideas, acquired in a girls' school and
nurtured in her home. All her divine womanly powers of sympathy and
forgiveness would be strangled by her ignorance and her hard-and-fast
rules based on inexperience. She was the only woman he knew of her
class, but he knew the limitations of that class, and Tony would soon be
bound by them like the others. Janey was so different--Janey realised
what one felt like when one simply had to go on the bust, when one came
beastly muckers. She scolded, but she understood. Tony did not scold,
and she did not understand.
"I want you to understand," he said painfully.
"What?"
"About me--about other men."
"Why do you think I don't understand?"
"You don't!--you don't! You simply can't--and if you go on as you are,
you never will. Oh, I wish you could! You're too good to be like--other
women."
Something in his nervous, excited manner frightened her, and strange to
say that faint thrill of fear removed the shame which had tarnished her
attitude towards him that day. Once more she felt the subtle magic of
his unusualness--the attraction of Mr. Smith.
"Tell me," she said in a low voice, "tell me about yourself."
He laughed a little.
"Oh, my story is just every man's. I've mucked it a bit worse, that's
all. But the fight's pretty well as hard with all of us. Directly we're
grown up, almost before, there are people going about whose paid
business it is to tempt us. Tempting us, just when Nature has made it
most difficult for us to resist, is the profession of thousands of human
beings. We fall--we often fall--for if we didn't a powerful set would
have empty pockets--so they see that we fall. And then we can't pick
ourselves up, we sink deeper and deeper into the mud ... and some of us
touch bottom."
He paused, but she did not speak. Her face was turned away.
"The horrible thing I did," he continued almost roughly, "which, if
you'd only believe me, I loathe as much as you do--I did only as the
consequence of other things, not quite so bad, before it. If a woman
like you had come along when I first fell--I was only nineteen--she
might have pulled me up again. But she didn't come. Other women came,
and they knocked me flatter. They couldn't forgive. Poor devils! I don't
blame them--they'd a great deal to forgive. I went down--and down--till
it became a sort of habit to lie there in the ditch. Then you came, and
I--I wanted to get up."
She still looked away from him, but her head was bowed.
"Oh, Tony--won't you give me a hand?"
"How can I?"
"By just believing I can and will do better, and by saying that if I
live a decent life, and pull my name out of the dirt, and make myself
fit to know you, I may be your--friend. You've a right to punish me, but
I ask you to put aside that right for--for pity's sake."
"I don't see why you want my forgiveness so much--why it means such a
lot to you."
"It means the world to me. Oh, Tony--little pal that was--forgive me!
Life's a hard, rotten, wretched thing, and if there was no one to
forgive...."
"I'll try."
"Oh, please try! If you think, you'll come to understand things
presently, even if you can't now. It's for your own sake as well as mine
I ask it. Think how many a man who lies in the mud wouldn't be there if
only he had some woman to forgive him."
"I'll try----" she repeated falteringly.
"Then I've got what'll keep me going for the present. And, Tony, you'll
believe that I can and will behave decently, and make myself worthy to
be your--your friend?"
"Yes, I'll believe it."
"Thank you."
She was trembling from head to foot.
"Good-bye," he said.
"Good-bye."
He took her hand, and longed to kiss it. But he was still humble and
afraid, and let it fall.
"Tony--Tony--you will have to forgive me a great many things ... because
I am so very hungry."
BOOK II
THE WORLD AGAINST THE THREE
CHAPTER I
GLIMPSES AND DREAMS
I
There was a foam of anemones in the hollows of Furnace Wood. The wind
crept over the heads of the hazel bushes, bowing them gently, and
shaking out of them the scent of their budding. From the young grass and
tender, vivid mosses crept up more scents, faint, moist and earthy. The
sky was grey behind the stooping hazels, but glimmered with the yellow
promise of noon.
Janet Furlonger and Quentin Lowe had met to say good-bye in Furnace
Wood. The scent of spring was in Janey's clothes, and when her lover
drew her head down to his shoulder he tasted spring in her hair. But
there was not spring on her lips when he sought them--only the salt wash
of sorrow.
"Why do you cry, little Janey? This is the beginning of hope."
Another tear slid down towards her mouth, but she wiped it away--he must
not drink her tears.
"Quentin ... I hope it won't be for long."
"No, no--not long, little Janey, sweet, not long. It can't be. In six
months, perhaps in less, you'll have a letter asking you to come up to
town and marry a poor but independent journalist."
"You really think that this time you're going to succeed?"
"Of course. Do you imagine I'd touch Rider's idiotic rag with the tongs
if I didn't look on it as a stepping-stone to better things. There's a
mixed metaphor, Janey. Didn't you notice it?"
"No, dear."
"You're not critical enough, little one. You're worthy of good
prose--when I'm too weak and heavy-hearted for poetry."
The wind sighed towards them, bringing the scent of hidden water.
"I must leave you, my own--or I shall be late. Now for months of hard
work and hungry dreams of Janey, who will be given at last to my great
hunger. Little heart, do you know what it is to hunger?"
She trembled. "Yes."
"Then pity me. Pity me from the fields when you walk in them, as you and
I have so often walked, over fallen leaves--pity me from your fire when
you sit by it and see in the embers things too beautiful to be--from
your meals when you eat them--you and I have had only one meal together,
Janey--and from your bed when you lie waking in it. Janey, Janey--pity
me."
"Pity ... yes...."
He was holding her in his arms, looking into her beautiful, haggard
face. A sudden pang contracted her limbs, then released them into an
abandonment of weakness.
"Quentin ... promise me that you will never forget how much you loved
me."
"Janey!"
"Promise me."
"Janey, how dare you!--'loved you'! What do you mean?"
"Oh, please promise!"
She was crying. He had never seen her like this. Hitherto at their
meetings she had left the stress and earthquake of love to him, fronting
it with a sweet, half-timid calm. Now she clung to him, twisted and
trembled.
"Promise, Quentin."
"Well, since you're such a silly little thing, I will. Listen. 'I
promise never to forget how much I loved you.' There, you darling fool."
"Thank you ..." she said weakly.
He drew her close, kissed her, and laughed at her.
"Janey--you're the spring, with its doubts and distresses. You were the
autumn when autumn was here, all tanned and flushed and rumpled, with
September in your eyes. Now you're the spring, thin, soft, aloof and
wondering--you're sunshine behind a cloud--you're the promise of August
and heavy apple-boughs."
"And you'll never forget how much you loved me...."
II
The golden lights of late afternoon were kindled in London, warring with
the smoky remnants of an April day. They shone on the wet pavements and
mud-slopped streets--down Oxford Street poured the full blaze of the
sunset, flamy, fogged, mysterious, crinkling into dull purples behind
the Circus and the spire in Langham Place.
The Queen's Hall was emptying--crowds poured out, taxi-horns answered
taxi-whistles, and the surge of the streets swept by, gathering up the
units, and whirling them into the nothingness of many people. It
gathered up Nigel Furlonger, and rushed him, like a bubble on a torrent,
down Regent Street, with his face to the darkness of the south--lit from
below by the first flash of the electric advertisements in Piccadilly
Circus, from above by the first pale, useless glimmer of a star.
He walked quickly, his chin lifted, but mechanically taking his part in
the general hustle, not too much in dreamland to make way, shift, pause,
or plunge, as the ballet of the pavements might require. His hands were
clenched in his pockets. He, perhaps alone among those hundreds, saw the
timid star.
A dream was threading through his heart, knitting up the tags of
longing, regret and hope that fluttered there. A definite scheme seemed
now to explain the sorrow of the world. The armies of the sorrowful had
received marching orders, had marched to music, had been given a nation,
and a song. Nigel had heard the Eroica Symphony.
In his ears was still the bourdon of drums, the sigh of strings, the
lilt of wood-wind, the restless drone of brasses. He had heard sorrow
claim its charter of rights, vindicate its pleadings, fight, triumph and
crown itself. He had seen the life-story of the sorrowful man, presented
not as a tragedy or a humiliation, a shame to be veiled, but as a
pageant, a tremendous spectacle, set to music, lighted, staged,
applauded.
At first the sorrowful man was half afraid, he sought refuge and
disguise in laughter, he pined for distraction and a long sleep. But
each time he touched his desire, the wailings of heavenly wood-wind
called him onward to holier, darker things. He had dropped the dear,
dustless prize, and gone boldly on into the fire and blackness.... A
thick, dark cloud swagged on the precipices of frozen mountains, frowned
over deserts of snow. The sorrowful man stumbled in the dark, and his
loud crying and the flurry of his seeking rose in a wail against the
thudding drums of fate. Gold crept into the cloud, curling out from
under it like a flame, and the sorrowful man seemed to see a human face
looking down on him, and a hand that held seven stars.... "Who made the
Seven Stars and Orion...." It was by the light of those stars in the
Hero's hand that the sorrowful man saw, in a sudden awful wonder, that
he was not alone--he marched in the ranks of a huge army. All round him,
over the frozen plain, under the cloud with its lightnings, towards the
blackness of the boundless void, marched the army of the sorrowful,
unafraid. They marched in mail, helmeted, plated, with drawn swords. The
ground shook with the thunder of their tread, the mountains quaked, the
darkness smoked, the heavens heeled over, toppled and scattered before
the conquering host whom the Lord had stricken--triumphant, fearless,
proud, crowned and pierced....
Footsteps overtook Nigel, and he heard the greeting of a fellow
student.
"You're in the clouds, old man. Who sent you there? Beethoven?"
Nigel stared.
"But the only cosmic genius is Offenbach."
"You mean the 'Orphée'?"
"Yes--and 'Hoffmann.' Life isn't a triumphal march, for all Beethoven
would make it--it's comic opera, with just a pinch of the bizarre and a
spice of the macabre. That's Offenbach."
Furlonger was still marching with the stricken army.
"When a man suffers," continued the student, "the gods laugh, the world
laughs, and last of all--if he's a sport--the man laughs too."
"Sorrow is a triumph," said Nigel, dreamily.
"Not at all, old man--sorrow is a commonplace. The question is, what are
we to make of the commonplace--a pageant or a joke? I'm not sure that
Offenbach hasn't given a better answer than Beethoven."
III
In a small room in Gower Street a man lay on his bed, his face crammed
into the pillow, his shoulders high against his ears, his legs twisted
in a rigid lock of endurance. Now and then a shudder went through him,
but it was the shudder of something taut and stiff, over which the
merest surface tremble can pass.
In his hand he crushed a letter. Behind his teeth words were forming,
and fighting through to his colourless lips. "Janey!--my Janey! Oh, my
God! I can't bear this."
He suddenly twisted himself round on to his back, and faced the aching,
yellow square of the window, where a May day was mocked by rain. There
was a pipe close to the window, and the water poured from it in a quick
tinkling trickle, cheering in rhythm, tragic in tone. Quentin unfolded
Janey's letter.
He read it--but that word is inadequate, for he read it in the same
spirit as an Egyptian priest might read the glyphs of his divinity,
seeing in each sign a volume of esoteric meaning, so that every jot and
tittle was worthy of long minutes' contemplation.
It was some time since Janey's letters had ceased to be for Quentin what
she hoped. Literally they were rather bald and laboured, for Janey was
no penwoman, but she put a wealth of thought and passion into the
straggling lines, and for a long while he had seen this. But now he saw
much more, she would have trembled to think of the meaning he read into
her words--he tested each phrase for the insincerity he felt sure it
must conceal, he hunted up and down the pages for that monster unknown
to Janet, the _arrière pensée_. Her letters were a torture to him--they
tortured his brain with shadows and seekings, they tortured his heart
with blue fires of misgiving and scorchings of jealousy. She did not
write oftener than once a week, but the torment of a single letter
lasted till its successor at once varied and renewed it.
Lying there in the hideous dusk of what should have been a summer
afternoon, Quentin wondered if the doom of love and lovers had not been
spoken him--"thou canst not see My Face and live."
It was a vital fear. Before he had brought his love to its consummation,
snatched the veil from its mysteries, and looked it in the face, it had,
in spite of hours of anguish, been his comfort, the strongest,
tenderest, purest thing in his life. But now he saw, without much
searching, that this love, though deeper and fiercer than ever, belonged
somehow to his lower self. To realise it brought despair instead of
comfort, wreckage instead of calm. He dared not, as in former days,
plunge his sick heart into it as into a spring of healing waters--rather
it was a scalding fountain, bubbling and seething out of death.
He had hoped that perhaps separation would make him calmer. Of late he
had often denied himself the sight of Janey in that same vain hope. But
now, as then, he found her letters almost as disintegrating as her
presence--indeed more so, since they gave wider scope to his familiar
demon of doubt. He wondered if he would ever find rest. Would marriage
give it to him? He started up suddenly on the bed. An awful thought was
thrust like a sword against his heart--the thought that even in marriage
he would not find peace.
He had fallen into the habit of looking on marriage as the end of
sorrows--and now, when fate and hard work seemed to have brought it
within gazing-distance of hope, he suddenly saw that it would be as full
of torment as his present state; or rather, more so--just as his present
state was an intensification of the pain of earlier days. He
realised--hardly definitely, but with horrible acuteness--that he had
allowed love to frustrate love, and that by his demand to look into that
great dread Face, he had brought on himself scorching and blindness and
doom.
"Thou canst not see my Face and live."
He sprang off the bed. His pulses were hammering, his blood was thick, a
kind of film obscured his eyes, so that he groped his way to the
dressing-table. A clock struck four, and he suddenly remembered an
engagement he had that afternoon. He would go--it would distract him. He
might forget Janey--if only for an hour, he would be free of the torment
that each thought of her carried like poison in a golden bowl. It was
strange, it was terrible, that he should ever have come to want to
forget Janey--and it was not because he did not love her; he loved her a
hundred times more passionately than ever. But the love which had once
been his strength and salve had now become a rotten sickness of the
soul.
He dressed himself, removed as far as possible the stains of sorrow and
exhaustion from his face, and plunged out to take his place in the
restless, ill-managed pageant of the pavements, where threads are
tangled, characters lost, and cues unheard. He was going to a
semi-literary gathering at a friend's flat in Coleherne Gardens. He did
not look forward to it particularly, but it might help him in his
twofold struggle--to win Janey in the future and forget her for the
present.
The room was crowded. Hallidie was presiding over a mixed assembly of
more-or-less celebrities with that debonair self-confidence which had
helped make him a famous novelist in spite of his novels. There were one
or two great ones present, just to raise the level--he did not introduce
them to Lowe. He knew exactly whom they would like to meet, and Lowe, he
felt, would let the conversation down, just when it was becoming yeasty
with literary wit. There were other people in the room who showed a
tendency to do this, and Hallidie had carefully introduced them to one
another, so that they could all fail mutually in a well-upholstered
corner.
"Ah--Lowe. Glad to see you. Come, let me introduce you to Miss
Strife"--and sweeping Quentin past the renowned author of _Life and How
to Bear It_, and Dompter, the little, insignificant, world-famous
sea-poet, he presented him to a very young girl, sitting alone on a
divan.
Quentin's first feeling was one of outrage. What right had Hallidie to
drag him away from the pulse of things, so vital to his struggling
ambition, and condemn him to atrophy with a flapper. He stared down at
her disapprovingly--then something in her wistful look disarmed him.
"I believe our fathers are neighbours in the country," he said stiffly.
He did not notice her reply. It was not that which made him stop his
furious glances at Hallidie and sit down beside her. She was evidently
very young. There was a lack of sophistication about her hair-dressing
which proclaimed an early attempt, her frock was simple and girlish, her
face alert and innocent.
Quentin found himself gulping in his throat, almost as if tears had
found their way there at last; for he suddenly realised how new and
beautiful it was to sit beside a woman and not be tormented. As he
looked at her delicate profile, the pure curves of her chin and
collarless neck, his heart became suddenly still. There was a great
calm. Peace had come down on him like water. Simplicity rested on his
parched thoughts like rain-clouds on a desert. He seemed suddenly to
come back to life, to the world, and to see them in the calm, usual
light of every day. The racket, the glare, the sense of being in an
abnormal relation to his surroundings--all were gone. For the first time
in his complicated, sophisticated, catastrophic life, Quentin Lowe was
at peace.
IV
It was late in June. A haze wimpled the pine-trees of Shovelstrode, and
the heather between their trunks was in full flower. The old house
shimmered in the haze and sunshine, and stared away to yellow fields of
buttercups and distances of brown and blue.
Tony and Awdrey Strife were lying in the shadow of a chestnut on the
lawn. Two young gracious figures in muslins, they lay with their chins
on their hands, and looked away towards the golden weald. They did not
speak much, for the post had just come, and they were reading their
letters. Awdrey giggled to herself a good deal over hers, but Tony was
serious--the corners of her mouth even drooped a little, but whether
from sorrow or tenderness or both it would be hard to say. Suddenly she
made an exclamation.
"What's the matter?" asked Awdrey.
"It's a letter from Furlonger."
"_The_ Furlonger!"
"Yes--he's written me quite a long letter."
"What cheek. I thought you'd seen the last of him."
"He came to say good-bye before he went to London."
"Oh----"
Awdrey rolled over on her side, and stared hard at her sister.
"Did he know you were in town last month?"
"No--I've never written to him, and this is the first time he's written
to me."
"Then he hasn't shown unseemly eagerness--it's nearly six months since
he left. What does he say?--anything exciting?"
"Exciting for him. Von Gleichroeder is giving a pupils' concert at the
Bechstein, and Mr. Furlonger is going to play."
"A solo?"
"Yes--something by Scriabin. He's only had six months' teaching, but von
Gleichroeder's so pleased with him that he's going to let him play at
this concert of his. Then he'll finish his course, and then he'll start
professionally."
"Good Lord!--it sounds thrilling for an ex-convict. Let's see his
letter."
"Here it is. No," changing suddenly, "I think I'd rather read it to
you."
"Right-O! Excuse a smile."
"Don't be an idiot, Awdrey. Now listen; he says: 'Von Gleichroeder's
concert is fixed for the twenty-seventh'--why, that's next Friday--'and
it's been settled that I'm to play Scriabin's second Prelude. It sounds
like cats fighting, but it's exciting stuff. Von Gleichroeder is
tremendously keen on the ultra-moderns--nothing makes him madder than to
hear Verdi or Gounod or Rossini. So I play d'Indy and Stravinsky and
Strauss and Sibelius; except when I'm alone in my digs--and then I have
the old tunes out, for I like them best.'"
She did not read the next paragraph aloud.
"I've been having a hard fight for it, Tony--but I'm pulling through.
Music has helped me, and the memory of our friendship, and the thought
that you're trying to understand me and forgive me."
"Well, I wish him luck," said Awdrey; "what a good thing von
Gleichroeder found him out!"
"Yes, he'll have his chance now--his chance of a decent life."
"Nonsense, Tony! That's not what he's after--fame and dibs, my dear
girl, fame and dibs."
"He told me he was accepting von Gleichroeder's offer because he wanted
to be--good."
"Well, London's a queer place to go for that."
"He's gone there to work. He had no chance here."
"More chance than he'll have there--you bet he's painted the place
pretty red by this time."
Her sister was about to retort sharply, when a man suddenly came round
the corner of the house towards them.
"Awdrey!" cried Tony, springing up. "Here's Quentin!"
CHAPTER II
THE LETTER THAT DID NOT COME
The door was wide open at Sparrow Hall, and a square of sunshine lay on
the kitchen floor. In the little flower-stuffed garden bees were humming
lazily, and a thrush was singing in the last of the laburnum. Tangles of
roses trailed over the farm-house walls, they hung round the
window-frames, darkening the rooms, and over the door, sending faint
perfumes to Janey as she sat in the kitchen.
She looked pale and washed-out with the heat. The outlines of her
splendid figure were drooping, and there was an ominous hollowing of the
curves of her face and arms. She sat at the table, her cheek resting on
her palm, reading from a pile of letters. They were long letters,
closely written in a sharp, scrawling hand, on thin paper that crackled
gently as she fingered it. Every now and then she looked up anxiously,
and seemed to listen. Then her head would bow again, and the paper would
crackle softly as before.
At last the garden gate clicked, and she saw the postman's cap coming up
the path between the rows of sweet peas. She sprang to her feet,
trembling and fighting for her self-command. She reached the door just
as he lifted his hand to knock.
"A letter for you, miss," and old Winkworth smiled genially.
The colour rushed over Janey's cheeks like a wave, then as a wave ebbed
out again. She took the letter with a hand that shook piteously, her
lips parted and a low laugh broke from them. Then suddenly her
expression changed--in such a manner that Winkworth muttered anxiously--
"Fine afternoon, ain't it, miss?"
"Yes--a glorious afternoon. Good-day, Winkworth."
"Good-day, miss," and he shambled off.
Janey turned into the house, and dropping into her chair by the table,
began to sob childishly. It was more from exhaustion than grief--the
exhaustion of hopes strained to breaking-point, and then allowed to
relax again into disappointment and frustration. She was so dreadfully
tired--she so longed to sleep, quietly, deeply, at once. She laid her
head on the table, and her shoulders heaved, straining and struggling as
if the burden of her sorrow were physical.
Then suddenly she noticed the unopened letter, and her sobs broke out
with even greater vehemence. Nigel! poor Nigel! She had not opened his
letter--she had flung it aside and forgotten it, because it was not
Quentin's. It was the day of his concert, too--what a beast she felt!
She tore open the envelope, and wiped away the tears that blinded her.
"MY OWN DEAR JANEY,
"This is just to keep myself from thinking of that damned concert.
It's scaring me a bit--more than a bit, in fact. Who would have
thought that any one with my past could suffer from stage
fright?--but that little thing of Scriabin's is the very devil. Old
von G. has been ragging me no end over it--we nearly came to blows
last practice. I hope you and the lad don't mind my not wanting you
to come up for the show; I feel it would be the last straw for you
two to see me make a fool of myself--not that I mean to, but you
never know what may happen. Cheer up--you shall come and help me
when I fill the Albert Hall.
"By the way, I saw that little bounder Quentin Lowe at a concert at
the Queen's last Sunday.
"Now, good-bye; I'm turning into bed. This time to-morrow it'll all
be over, and I'll send you a telegram. Greetings to the lad.
"Ever yours, dear,
"NIGEL."
Janey folded the letter with trembling hands. It filled her with a kind
of pitiful anguish, for she knew that the only thing in it that
interested her was the reference to Quentin. Nigel's wonderful concert,
about which she and Len had dreamed so many dreams, had faded into the
background of her thoughts, driven out by her sleepless, bruising
anxiety for her lover.
It was over a fortnight since he had written. She had before her his
last letter, in which he said: "I will write again in a day or two, and
tell you the exact date of my return." She had waited, but the letter
had not come. She had written, but had had no answer. What could have
happened?
There had been nothing in the past few weeks to make her expect this
silence. His last bid for independence had met with more success than
the others. He had fought hard against failure and discouragement, and
had now found work on one or two good dailies. Their marriage was at
last in sight. He was expected home for a couple of weeks' holiday, then
he would work on through the autumn, and there was no reason why, if
things prospered, they should not be married soon after Christmas.
Yes--at last their marriage was a thing to be reckoned with, talked
about, and planned for. For the first time Janey could consider such
things as home and outfit, breaking the news to her brothers, and
leaving Sparrow Hall--all were now within the range of probability and
expectation. But a terrible gloom had settled on these last days. It was
not merely her sorrow at leaving the farm and the boys--it was something
less accountable and more tempestuous than that. It had its source in
Quentin's letters. She could see that he was not happy--their marriage,
their longed-for, prayed-for, wept-for, worked-for marriage, was not
bringing him happiness. On the contrary, his suffering seemed to have
increased. His doubts and forebodings had been transferred from material
circumstances to more subtle terrors of soul--he doubted the future more
passionately, because more spiritually, than ever.
Janey had not been able to understand this at first, but in time his
attitude had communicated itself to her, though whether her distrust was
independent or merely a reflection of his, it would be hard to say.
Anyhow, she doubted--fiercely, miserably, despondingly. She had started,
on his recommendation, to make herself some clothes, but the work lagged
and depressed her. She found herself hungering for the early times of
their courtship, when their marriage was a dream made golden by
distance. She thought of the days when his name had rung like bells in
her heart, without a horrid dissonance of fear, when his letters were
pure joy, and the thought of meeting him pure anticipation. Would those
days return?--And now, here was his silence, consuming her. Why didn't
he write? He had been so eager in his last letter, though, as usual,
eagerness had soon been throttled by despair.
"I shall have you--I shall have you at last, my beautiful, tall
Janey, for whom I hunger. But I am filled with doubts. There are
some men in whose mouths manna turns to dust and the water of life
to gall. Everything I touch is doomed. Either my soul or my body
betrays me--my soul is so hot and my body so weak--so damnably
weak. If only my hot soul had been given a stout body, or my weak
body a weak soul ... then I should have been happy. But now it is
the eternal fight between fire and water."
Janey pushed the letter aside, and picked up another. She had been
trying to comfort herself with Quentin's letters, but they were not on
the whole of a comforting nature. His restless misery was in them all.
If his last letter had been happy, she would not have worried nearly so
much. She would have put down his silence to some trite external
cause--pressure of work or indefiniteness of plans--he had always been
an erratic correspondent. But his unhappiness opened a dozen roads to
her morbid imaginings. It was dreadful to think that all she had given
to Quentin had only made him more unhappy.
Perhaps he was too miserable to write--not likely, since he was one of
those men whom despair makes voluble, but nevertheless a real terror to
her unreason. Perhaps he had not received her last letter, and thought
that she had played him false--he had always been jealous and inclined
to suspicion. This last idea obtained a hold on her that would have been
impossible had not her mind been weakened by anxiety. She had heard of
letters going astray in the post, and probably Quentin had been
expecting one from her, and not receiving it had been too proud to write
himself. Or perhaps he had received it, but had thought it cold. He had
often taken her to task for some fancied coldness which she had never
meant.
In her desperation she resolved to write again. Hastily cramming his
letters into the boot-box where she unromantically kept them, she seized
paper and ink, and began to scrawl despairingly--
"MY DARLING, DARLING BOY,
"Why don't you write? Didn't you get my last letter? I posted it on
the 16th. Quentin, I can't stand this suspense. Are you unhappy?
Oh, my boy, my boy, my heart aches for you. I know you suffer--and
I can't bear it----"
The pen fell from her shaking hand as footsteps sounded in the garden.
The next minute Leonard came in--luckily for Janet he was not very
observant.
"Well, Janey--I've sent off the wire."
"What wire?" she asked dully.
"To the old bounder, of course--to buck him up for to-night. I said
'Cheer up. You'll soon be dead.' That ought to encourage him."
Janey smiled wanly.
"Meantime I've got a piece of news for you. It'll make you laugh. But
let's have a drink first--I'm dreadfully thirsty. This weather dries one
up like blazes."
"There's beer in the cupboard."
"Right-O! Now we'll drink to Nigel's very good health. Have some, old
girl. No? But I say, you look as if you needed it. You're as white as
chalk."
"It's only the heat. What's your news, Len?"
"Nothing much, really--only that little misshapen monkey Quentin Lowe's
engaged to be married."
"Quentin Lowe...."
Janey's voice seemed to her to come from very far away, as if some one
in another part of the room were speaking. She grew sick and faint, but
at the same time knew it was all ridiculous.
"Yes--I don't wonder you're surprised. Guess whom to."
"Are you sure--quite sure?"
"Yes, of course. I had it from his father. Guess whom to."
"I can't ... I--I can't believe it."
"Yes, it's no end of a joke, isn't it? You'd never think a woman would
be fool enough to have him, when you can get the genuine article from
any organ-grinder. But stop laughing, Janey, and guess who it is."
"I--I can't.... Did you really hear it from his father?... It can't be
true. Quentin's in London."
"He's been there for the last three months, but he came home on
Wednesday."
"Wednesday----"
"Yes--why not? But you haven't guessed who the girl is yet."
"I can't guess ... tell me, Len."
"Well, it's Strife's youngest daughter, the one that's just come out."
Janet made a grab at Leonard's half-emptied glass and drained it.
"That's it--drink her health. She'll need it."
"Len--did--did you really hear it from old Lowe?"
"Well, I heard it first of all in the Wheatsheaf. I've been as thirsty
as hell all the afternoon, so on my way back from the post-office I
turned in at the old pub for a pint. Dunk told me, Dunk of Golden
Compasses. Then no sooner had I got outside than I saw the old
devil-dodger prancing along, and I couldn't resist howling to
him--'Hear your son's engaged--wish him victory in the strife.' He
looked poisonous, so I just said, 'You'll be letting strife into your
household.' To which he deigned reply, 'I
am--ah--um--completely--ah--satisfied with
my--ah--son's--um--matrimonial choice."
Janey managed to reach the window.
"He met her a lot in town, I believe. Of course, he'd known her father
down here, but had never met the girl herself. I believe it all happened
pretty quick. Dunk says so. I don't see how he knows, but every one
always seems to know everything about engaged couples."
"Is that all?"
"What more do you want?--I'm off now to Cherrygarden Farm--I promised
Wilsher I'd be round to look at those chicks of his."
"Don't be long...."
"What time's supper?"
"Any time you like."
"Well, make it half-past eight. It's a good peg over to Cherrygarden,
and if I come back by Dormans I can send another wire to Nigel."
"Oh, don't, Len!"
"Why ever not?"
"I don't see that it's so ... so very important that he should know."
"About what?"
"The--the engagement."
"You silly old girl! I wasn't going to wire him about that--waste of a
good sixpence that would be! But don't you realise that at eight
to-night _the_ concert begins? I telegraphed to him an hour ago, just
to buck him up beforehand--next time I want to catch him in full
squeak."
"Very well--but, Len ... don't be late."
She was still standing by the window, but something in her words made
him go across to her.
"You're feeling seedy, Janey?"
"Just a bit washed-out."
"It's the heat, I expect. It's made me feel a little queer too."
"Then ought you to go to Cherrygarden?"
"I must--and it's getting cooler now. Take care of yourself, old sister,
and don't sit too much in this hot kitchen."
He squeezed her hand, and went out. She watched him go, blessing his
obtuseness, even though it was leaving her to fight through her awful
hour alone. He went down the path, and out at the gate--then she
staggered back into the room, and fell in a heap against the table.
She had not fainted, though she longed to faint--to win the respite of
forgetfulness at whatever cost, if only for a minute. She lay an inert,
huddled mass against the table-leg, motionless except for a long shudder
now and then. All power had left her limbs--they indeed might be in a
swoon--but her brain throbbed with a dazzling consciousness; it seemed
as if it had drawn into itself all the consciousness of her body,
leaving senses dull, nerves dumb, and muscles slack, in order to prime
itself with the whole range of feeling.
Strange to say, pain was not the paramount emotion, and despair was
scarcely present. Rather, she was consumed by a passionate sense of
doubt--of Quentin, of herself, of the whole world. It was like the
sudden removal of a prop which one had thought could not be shaken--it
was like a sudden precipitation into a world where the ordinary cosmic
laws did not hold--she seemed almost to doubt her own identity in that
first gasp of revelation.
It could not be true. Quentin could not have failed her like this.
Leonard must be mistaken. If one were to see the sun setting in the east
or the sea on fire one would doubt one's senses, one would not doubt the
universal laws. Neither would she doubt Quentin--she rather would doubt
Leonard's senses, doubt her own.
She had not in the whole course of her love doubted Quentin. It was he
who had doubted her, who had tormented her with his distrusts and
jealousies. "I'm only a misshapen little bounder, Janey--the first
decent man who comes along will snatch you from me. But he will never
love you as I do--Janey, Janey, little Janey" ... the words seemed to
come from outside her, from the shadowy corners of the room. She sat up
and listened. They came again--"Janey, my own little love, my little
heart--our love wounds, but it is the wound of immortality, the wound
which must always be when the Infinitely Great lifts up and gathers to
itself the infinitely little." ... "Stand by me, stand by me--I have
nothing but my sword. I threw away my shield long ago. If you do not
stand by me I shall fall." ... "Janey, love, dear little love, with eyes
like September."...
She crouched back in terror. Was she going mad? No, these were only
words from Quentin's letters--the letters she had just read--ringing in
her strung and distracted brain.
"Love, my little sweet love, do you think of me sometimes in the long
evenings when I think of you?--sometimes when I am thinking of you, I
tremble lest you should not be thinking of me...." "Do you know how
often I dream of you, Janey? You come to me so often in sleep--once you
stood between me and the window, and I saw the stars through your hair.
Oh, God!--when I dream I hold you in my arms, and wake with them
empty."...
She could stand it no longer. She sprang to her feet--the strength of
desperation had come at last. There was one only who could tell her
which she was to doubt--her own senses or, as it seemed to her, the
cosmic laws of his love.
She would go over to Redpale Farm--she would see Quentin, she would have
an explanation. There would be one--and she would take her stand boldly
beside him, against his father, against the whole world--though she,
like him, had thrown away her shield long ago.
CHAPTER III
ONLY A BOY
It was about four o'clock, and in spite of what Leonard said, not much
cooler than at noon. The sun scorched on the hay-grass, drawing out of
it a drowsy perfume, which a faint, hot breeze scattered into the
hedges. The trees scarcely moved, and their shadows were rusted with the
curling sorrel. Clumps of dog-roses and elder flowers splashed the
bushes with sudden pinks and whites, while vetches trailed their purples
less startlingly in the hedgerows.
Janey walked fast, and every now and then she ran for little sprints.
Her breath sobbed in her throat, her eyes were fixed and her hands
clenched. She climbed recklessly over gates, and plunged through copses;
her hair was soon almost on her shoulders, flying from her face in
wisps, straggling round her ears; her face became flushed and moist with
the heat--she tore her sleeve, and scraps of bramble hung on her skirt.
What woman but Janey would have rushed to confront a faithless lover in
such a state? But even now, when almost any one would have realised how
much depended on her appearance, she was careless and oblivious. She did
not feel in the least dismayed at the start given by the servant who
admitted her, nor, later, by her own reflection in a mirror in the
study.
It was the same little book-lined room in which she had had tea with
Quentin on her first visit to Redpale. There was the glorious Eastern
rug which he had said "had her tintings--her browns and whites and
reds." There was the big pewter jar that had then held chrysanthemums,
but held roses now. They were delicate white roses, faintly, sweetly
scented. Janey went over to them and laid her hot face against them. She
could hardly tell why, but they seemed to bring into the room an alien
atmosphere. Quentin had never given her white roses--as a matter of fact
he had given her scarcely any garden flowers, except chrysanthemums--he
had once said that only wild flowers were for wild things. She thought
of bunches of buttercups, of broom with bursting pods, of hazel sprays
and tawny grasses. Now she suddenly wished that he would give her a
white rose. She took one out of the jar, and was trying to fasten it in
her breast when footsteps sounded outside the room.
She turned deadly pale, and dropped the rose. For the first time she
felt that she had been foolish to come. Quentin might be angry with her,
for her coming would rouse his father's suspicions. Her hurry and
desperation might prejudice him against her. In an unaccustomed qualm
she realised that she was flushed, dishevelled and perspiring. She felt
at a disadvantage, and drew back as the door opened, seeking the shadows
by the hearth.
"Janey!"
He stood in the doorway, his hand on the latch, his chin thrust forward,
his pale face bright in the gleaming afternoon. His youth struck her
with a sudden appeal--his youth and delicacy, both emphasised in the
soft yellow light--and a sob tore up through her breast.
"Oh ..." she said, and moved towards him.
He shut the door.
"Oh, I'm sorry I came!" she cried.
He did not speak, but came forward, stopping abruptly a few feet away.
"Janey--I want to explain...."
"Explain...." She had not thought there would be any explanation
needed--or, if needed, possible.
"Yes--I ought to have written, but I couldn't, somehow--or rather, I
wrote you a dozen letters, and tore them all up."
She wondered why she felt so calm.
"I--I asked my father to call and see you."
"You mean to say--he knows?"
"Yes."
"Oh, my God!"
Her calmness staggered, and all but collapsed. For the first time her
doubts gave way to even bitterer realisation. This confession to
Quentin's father, this betrayal of the secret she had spent her health
and happiness for four years to keep, made her grasp what an hour ago
had seemed beyond the reach even of credulity.
"Quentin--why did you tell him?--how could you!--after all we've
suffered...."
"I--I--I was desperate, Janey, I had to tell some one, and he was so
sympathetic--much more than I'd expected."
"When did you tell him?"
"The night I came back from town."
"After the--the rest was settled?"
He nodded.
"Quentin, have you told _her_?" She was accepting the impossible quite
meekly now.
"No, no!--I can't tell _her_."
She waited a moment for what she thought the inevitable entreaty not to
betray him. Thank God!--it did not come.
"She would never forgive you," she said slowly. "Young girls don't."
"And you, Janey...."
She drew back from him.
"You can't ask me that now."
"Why?"
"Well--well, can't you see I hardly realise things as yet. An hour ago I
preferred to doubt my own senses rather than doubt you. Now----"
"You doubt me."
"No, I don't doubt you. I'm convinced--that you're a cad."
Her voice, clear at the beginning of the sentence, had sunk almost to a
whisper. He shrank back, wincing before her gentleness.
She herself wondered how long it would last, this unnatural calm. It
came to her quite easily, she did not have to fight for it, and yet the
general sensation was of being under an anæsthetic. She only half
realised her surroundings, this horrible new earth on which she was
wandering homeless; her emotions seemed dull and inadequate to the
situation--it would be a relief if she could feel more.
Then suddenly feeling came--it came in a tide, a tempest, a whirlwind.
It shook her like an earthquake and blasted her like a furnace. She
staggered sideways, as a great gloom darkled on her eyes. Then the
shadows parted, and she saw Quentin's face, half turned away--pale,
fragile, sullen, the face of a boy--of a boy in despair.
"Quentin!" she cried. "Oh, my boy--my little boy! You aren't going to
behave like a cad."
"But I am a cad, my dear Janey."
He spoke brutally, in the stress of feeling.
"Oh, Quentin!--Quentin!"
She was losing not only her calm, but her dignity--yet she did not heed
it. She sprang towards him, seized his hands, and gasped her words close
to his ear, as unconsciously he turned his head from her.
"Quentin, you can't forsake me--not now--not after all I've given
you--you can't, you can't! You loved me so much--you love me still. You
can't have stopped loving me all of a sudden like this. And if you love
me, you can't forsake me. Quentin, I shall die if you forsake me."
"Janey--let me explain. I can't explain if you're so frenzied. Oh,
Janey, don't faint."
She fell back from him suddenly, and he caught her in his arms.
The soft weight of her, her warmth, the familiar scent of her hair and
her tumbled gown, snatched him back into departing days. He suddenly
lost his self-command, or rather his sense of the present. He clasped
her to him, and kissed her and kissed her--as eagerly, passionately and
tenderly as ever in Furnace Wood. She did not resist or shrink, her
eyes were closed, and she lay back a dead weight in his arms, drinking
her last despairing draught of happiness.... His clasp grew tighter--oh,
that he would crush the life out of her as she lay there under his
lips!...
Then suddenly he dropped his arms, and they staggered back from each
other, piteously conscious once more of the present and its doom.
"Janey, Janey ... I can't--I mustn't love you."
"But you do love me----"
She sank into a chair, and covered her face.
"Yes--I love you. But it's in byways of love. Can't you understand?"
She shook her head.
"Don't you see that, all through, my love for you has been unworthy--the
worst in me?..."
She tried to speak, but her words were unintelligible.
"You and I have never been happy together----"
"Never?..."
"Yes--at times. But it was a blasting, scorching happiness--there was no
peace in it. We doubted each other."
"I never doubted you."
"Yes, you did. When I said good-bye to you before going to London, you
made me promise never to forget how much I'd loved you."
"But it wasn't you I doubted then. I doubted fate, chance, God, anything
you like--but not you."
She had recovered her self-control, and her voice was hard and even.
"Oh, don't, Janey!"
"Why not?--why should I spare you? You haven't spared me."
"You mustn't think I intended you to--to hear things in this way. I'd
meant to give you an explanation first. But the news leaked out----"
"Well, you can give me an explanation now."
"I'll try--but it will be very difficult," he said falteringly. "You're
like a flood to me--I feel giddy and helpless when I'm with you. I don't
think I'll ever be able to make you understand. I wish you hadn't come
like this--I wish----"
"Please go on, Quentin."
Her manner disconcerted him. He could not understand her alternations
between hysteria and stolid calm.
"You mustn't think I don't realise I've behaved like a skunk. But I
don't want to dwell on it--it would only be putting mud on my face to
make you pity me--but I do ask you to try to understand me.... Janey,
I've done this for your good as well as mine. You shared the misery and
ruin of my love. In saving myself, I've saved you too. Janey,
Janey--don't you see that our love was nothing but a rotten sickness of
the soul?"
He looked at her anxiously, but her face was expressionless as wood.
"You and I have always been more or less wretched together, and though
at first I felt our unhappiness was doing us good--strengthening us and
purifying us--of late I felt it was doing us harm, it was disorganising
and unmanning us...."
He paused--even an outburst of fury or denial would have been welcome.
"To begin with," he continued in an uncertain voice, "I thought it was
the hopelessness of it all that was making it so dreadful, but when our
marriage was actually in sight--of hope, at least--I felt matters were
only getting worse. My thoughts were like sand and fire--my love was
like the salt water I compared it to long ago, with madness in each
draught. I felt our marriage would be a bigger hell than anything that
had gone before it--and yet, I wanted you! Oh, God! I wanted you!"
She bowed forward suddenly, over her clenched hands.
"Janey, Janey--I don't want to hurt you more than I must. It's not your
fault that every thought of you was fire and poison to me. You were just
a weapon in fate's hands to wound me--we were both in fate's hands, to
wound each other."
Paradoxically it was at that moment the old impulse returned. He came
forward, holding out his arms to her. But this time she shrank back,
cowering into the chair. Her movement brought him to his senses.
"You see how I can hardly speak to you. I must get on, and get done. I
want to tell you how I met _her_ ... Tony."
Janey shuddered. She had now come to the most awful pain of all.
"Tony ..." repeated Quentin. She noticed how he dwelt on the word, as if
he were drawing strength from it, and at the same time she saw a slight
change in his manner. He lifted his head and spoke more steadily.
"I met her at a literary function, and I sat beside her all the evening.
I remember every minute--I didn't speak much, nor did she, but a
wonderful simplicity and calm seemed to radiate from her, a beautiful
innocence---- What is it, Janey?"
"Nothing--go on."
"She was so young, scarcely more than a child--young and sweet. When I
got home that night I felt for the first time an infinite peace in my
soul--I felt all quiet and simple. I didn't worry or brood any more. I
wasn't in love with her then--oh, no!--but I wanted to meet her again,
just for the quiet of it. I did meet her shortly afterwards, and it was
as beautiful as before. Then suddenly it all rushed over me--I wanted
her, for my own; because she was pure and childlike and simple and
inexperienced."
The confidence of his voice had grown, and in his eyes was something
Janey had never seen there before. She now realised a little what Tony
meant to him--what she, Janey, had never meant. She knew now that she
could never win him back, and more, that she did not particularly want
to. Tony stood to Quentin for all that was lovely and heroic in
womanhood, whereas she, his Janey, had never been more to him than the
incarnation of his own desperate passions. She stepped back, and the
action was symbolical--she stepped out of his way. Her pleadings would
no longer harass and shake him, she would leave him to his salvation,
since he loved it better than the woman who had meekly renounced hers
for his sake.
"I grew desperate for her," continued Quentin, in the new assured voice.
"Oh, don't think I gave you up without a struggle!--I had a dreadful
time. I suffered horribly. But what will not a man do for his soul? I
felt that my soul was at stake. It's damned rot to talk of men turning
away from salvation--no man can get a real chance of salvation and not
grasp it at once. Oh, don't think it didn't cut me to the heart to treat
you as I did! I felt a swine and a cad, but I saw that I was grasping my
only chance of redemption--and yours too. I couldn't help it, I tell
you--no man can. Oh, don't think that if I could have saved myself with
you, I wouldn't have done it rather than.... Oh, my God!--but I
couldn't."
There are moments in a woman's life when she is simply staggered by the
selfishness of the male, and yet to every woman there is something
inevitable about it, so that it does not stir up her rage and contempt,
as it would if she saw it in her own sex. Janey felt no anger with
Quentin, she only thought how pitifully young he looked.
There was a pause--a long pause, broken by the rustling of the wind in
the garden. Janey's eyes were fixed on Quentin's face, her whole being
seemed concentrated upon it, all her thoughts, all her passion, all her
pity. Poor child! poor, poor boy!
"Tony is very young," she said suddenly.
"Yes, only seventeen."
"And she's very good and gentle and well-bred."
He nodded.
"And she's never done anything really wrong."
"No."
There was another silence. This time it was Quentin who stared at Janey.
He was still strong in the assurance Tony gave him; he was glad that
they had begun to discuss her--he had not that feeling of being left
alone with Janey, which at first had threatened to make the interview so
terrible. At one time it had seemed almost as if the past had risen to
swamp him--but now Tony had come to hold back the floods. The thought of
her changed everything somehow, altered the old values, weakened what
before had been invincible. Janey's face stood out from the shadows,
washed in the indiscreet light of the afternoon, and for the first time
he noticed a certain age and weariness about it. She was twenty-eight,
nearly four years older than he, but he had never thought of her in
relation to years and time. She had been to him an eternity of youth,
her age was as irrelevant as the age of a play of Shakespeare or a
symphony of Beethoven. But now he realised that she was
twenty-eight--and looked it. There were hollows under her cheek-bones,
where full, firm flesh should have been; there were tiny lines branching
from the corners of her eyes, very faint, still undoubtedly there; and
the autumnal colour on her cheeks did not lie as evenly as it might.
These discoveries brought him a strange sense of relief. He had hitherto
looked on her loveliness as unapproachable, and the thought of her
physical perfection had been a mighty factor in the war that had raged
so devastatingly in his heart. But now he saw that it was no longer to
be reckoned with. Tony was, in point of fact, more beautiful than Janey.
His eyes travelled down from her face, and saw her collar all askew, her
blouse hanging sloppily out at the waist, her shoe-string untied. Tony
always wore such dainty muslins, such soft, pretty white things.... Then
he noticed Janey's hair. For the first time he wondered whether she
brushed it often enough.
His spirits revived wonderfully during this contemplation, and with them
a surge of tender pity towards her. He did not want her to feel
humiliated by his unfaithfulness.
"Janey, you mustn't think I don't thank you and honour you for all
you've been to me."
"You don't know what I've been to you."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't realise what I've sacrificed for you. You talk of Tony
Strife's purity and innocence as if it was more to her credit to have
them than for me to have given them up--for your sake."
"Janey----"
"Listen, Quentin. There's one thing this girl will never do for you--I
did it--and I think that now you despise me for it, in spite of your
words. You don't know what it cost me. I did my best to hide my pain
from you, because you were happy; but now I think you ought to know that
this thing for which you despise me was--was the greatest act of
self-sacrifice in my whole life. Oh, Quentin, I always meant to keep
straight, because of my brothers, and because--because I wanted to be
pure and good. Oh, I loved goodness and purity--I love them still, quite
as much as Tony Strife loves them--and there were the poor boys, with
only my example to restrain them. And then I loved you--and you asked me
to climb over the gates of Paradise with you, because they would never
be unlocked. Oh, God! I yielded because I loved you so. I gave up what
was dearer to me than anything else in the world, the one thing I was
struggling to keep unspotted, for my own sake and the boys'. I gave it
up to you--and now ... and now ... you talk about another woman's purity
and innocence."
Her voice died into tearless silence.
"Janey, you mustn't feel like that--you mustn't think that I reproach
you. It's myself I blame--not you."
"But you do--you do--and I ought to have known it from the first."
He could not speak, the words stuck to his tongue--he wanted to fall at
her feet, but could not, for he knew it would be mockery.
"I can't say anything," he stammered huskily; "we're just the victims of
a damnable mistake, and the less we say about it the better. Each word
one of us speaks is a wound for the other. There's only this left--
'And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me--
As our dear Redeemer said:
This the wine and this the bread.'"
"You don't believe in the dear Redeemer, do you?"
"Of course not--but it's poetry."
They had neither of them realised that the interview was near an end,
but these last words seemed to have finished it somehow. They were both
standing, and the silence remained unbroken.
Then suddenly Janey moved. An absolutely new impulse had seized her. She
went over to the glass, and looked at herself in it. Then she smoothed
her hair, arranged her gown, made it tidy at the waist, and buttoned it
at the wrists. Quentin watched her in blank wonder--he had never before
seen her pay the slightest heed to her appearance. But to-day she stood
a full five minutes before the glass, patting, smoothing,
arranging--settling every fold of her careless garments with minutest
care. Then she turned to him.
"Good-bye, Quentin."
Her head was held high--one would scarcely know her in her sleekness and
order.
"Janey--you forgive me."
She did not speak.
"Janey--for God's sake!--oh, please forgive me!--because I've suffered
so much, because I've wanted you so, because I've struggled to find
redemption...."
His eyes burned, full of entreaty. But at first she could not answer
him. She moved slowly towards the door, but stopped on the threshold,
and looked back at him, her heart hot and sick in her breast with pity.
She had never realised Quentin's youth so absolutely and heartrendingly
as to-day.
"I forgive you," she said, "but not for any of those reasons. I forgive
you because you are--oh, God!--only a boy."
CHAPTER IV
FLAMES
Janet walked quickly through the darkening country. A power from behind
seemed to be driving her on--a hot, smoky power of uttermost shame. It
was symbolised by the thunder-vapour that curled in the east, a black,
swagging cloud that lumbered towards the sunset over reaches of
heat-washed sky.
She hardly realised how she had won through that interview at Redpale
Farm. The details were dim and jumbled in her memory, like the details
of what has taken place just before an accident or during an illness.
She hoped she had not been undignified, but really did not care very
much about it. The tension which had characterised both her calmness and
her hysteria was gone--her emotions seemed to flop. Unlike so many
women, pride gave her no support in her dreadful hour.
But her feelings were merely relaxed, not subdued, and her loose,
run-down nerves quivered as agonisedly as during their stretch and
strain. The realisation of all she had lost swept over her heart,
engulfing it. The very fields through which she walked were part of this
realisation--it was here, or it was there, that she had stood with
Quentin on such and such a day, or had watched him coming towards her
out of the mist-blurred distance, or seen him go from her, stopping to
raise his arm in farewell, just there, where the foxgloves lifted purple
poles in the ditches of Starswhorne. She could see the thickets of
Furnace Wood, hazed over with heat--they were haunted now, she would
never go near Furnace Wood again. Two ghosts wandered up and down its
heat-baked paths, rustled in the hazels, and stood where the tufted
hedge shut off Furnace Field--loving and dumb. They were not the ghosts
of dead bodies, but of dead selves--of two who walked apart in distant
ways, who would never again meet each other save in memory and in sleep.
A metallic hardness had dropped upon the day. The arch of the sky was
steel, sunless, yet bright with a cold sheen; at the rim it dipped to
copper, hot and sullen, save where in the west two brazen bars sent out
harsh lights to rest on the fields and make them too like brass.
Janet at last reached Sparrow Hall, and as she did so, for the first
time felt physical fatigue. It came upon her in a spasm--she was just
able to stagger into the kitchen, and sink down in her accustomed chair,
every muscle aching and exhausted, her head splitting with pain, and her
body shuddering with a sudden and unaccountable sickness.
For some time she did not move, she just fought with the sheer physical
discomfort of it all. Her head lay on the table, her arms were spread
over the wood, and the collapsed line of her shoulders was of utter
powerlessness and pain. Then two tears rolled slowly from her eyes--they
were part of her physical plight, and for it alone she wept. For the
sorrow of her soul it seemed as if she could only weep dry salt.
Oh, merciful God!--Quentin looked upon her love as his ruin, and turned
from her in panic to another woman. In this other love he would find the
peace and happiness and goodness that Janey had ached and striven for
years to give him; he would learn to forget the wicked Janey Furlonger,
whose love had all but been his perdition, who had brought him to sin
and torture and despair--and now would lie in the background of his
heart, as an evil thing we cover up and pray to forget. This young,
innocent girl would save him from his memories of the woman who had
given more for his sake than Tony Strife would ever dream of giving. He
did not realise her sacrifice--she had given up for his sake the
innocence and purity that were more to her simple soul than life, and
now he turned from her because she had them not.
Then for the first time a convulsion of wrath seized Janey. For the
first time she saw the cruelty and outrage of it all. Her anger blazed
up--against Quentin, against the world, against herself. His last letter
lay on the table. She seized it, and thrust it into the fire. Then she
noticed the box that held his other letters. She seized that too, and
crammed it into the grate. Long tongues of flame shot out, and suddenly
one of them caught her dress--she screamed, flames and smoke seemed to
wrap her round, and in madness she rushed to the door. A man was in the
passage. He grasped her, and held her to him, beating out the flames.
"Quentin!" she shrieked, "Quentin! Quentin!"
"Janey--darling sister! There! it's all over now. The fire's out. Are
you much hurt?"
"Quentin! Quentin!"
Leonard picked her up bodily, and carried her into the kitchen, sitting
down by the fire with her on his knee. He began to examine her. Her
skirt was nothing but charred rags, her face and hands were black with
grime, and there was a horrible smell of singed hair, but she did not
seem to be actually burnt. She was trembling from head to feet, her face
hidden against his breast.
"I don't think you're really hurt, dear. What a lucky chance I happened
to be there! If I'd done as I said and gone to Cherrygarden, you might
have been burnt to death. How did you do it, Janey?"
"I was burning Quentin's letters.... Oh, Quentin! Quentin!"
The last dregs of Janey's self-control were gone. Anxiety, shock, grief,
humiliation, love, despair and sickening, physical fright, all crowded
into a few short hours, had almost deprived her of her reason.
"Quentin! Quentin!" she cried, clinging to Leonard.
She was so tall that he had difficulty in holding her on his knee while
she struggled.
"Janey, I can't understand, dearest. Who's Quentin?--not Quentin Lowe?"
"Yes--Quentin Lowe. Lenny, Lenny--he doesn't love me any more."
Leonard kissed her smoke-grimed face repeatedly. He was utterly
bewildered.
"He doesn't love me any more," she continued, gasping. "He loves Tony
Strife--he's going to marry her. Lenny, he's a devil."
"My darling, can't you tell me what it is? Did you ever love him?"
"Oh, I loved him! I loved him! I gave up all I had to him. Lenny, he
thinks my love was his ruin ... he wants to be happy and good, and he
thinks he can't be either if he loves me ... he says--
'And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.'"
"My poor old Janey, I'm going to carry you upstairs."
"I can walk," and she tried to stand, but he had only just time to catch
her.
"I'm going to carry you. Poor, poor Janey--see what a big baby you are."
He carried her up the rickety stairs, into her room, laying her on the
bed.
"Would you like to undress?"
"No--no--Lenny, don't leave me."
He was in despair.
"Janey, dearest, I wish you'd tell me what's happened. I can't comfort
you properly when I don't know. Do you really mean to say that you love
Quentin Lowe?"
"I love him ... oh, I love him ... but he's a devil."
"Did he know?--did he love you?"
"Yes, he loved me ... and he made me give up everything for his sake ...
and now he's going to marry another woman ... Oh, Lenny, Lenny, I want
Nigel!"
"Janey--don't--I simply can't bear this. Don't give way so--he isn't
worth it."
"Oh, I knew you'd say that."
"I won't say it if you don't like it. But don't be in despair--you'll
soon feel better--you'll get over it. And meantime there's Nigel and
me...."
"Oh, I want Nigel!"
"I'll wire to him to come down for the week-end, after his concert."
"Lenny ... you'll never forsake me?"
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"I don't expect--I daren't----"
"What do you mean?"
"The disgrace ..."
He stared at her in bewilderment.
"Oh, Lenny ... I don't think you understand."
She had made him understand at last--and in the process had strangely
enough recovered something of her self-control. At first she had thought
his brain could never receive this ghastly new impression; but gradually
she had seen the colour fade from his lips, while a terrible sternness
crept into his eyes; she had seen his hand go up to his forehead with
the swift yet uncertain movement of one who has been smitten.
"My God!"
Leonard stepped back from the bed.
She lay gazing at him like a drowning woman. She saw the stern lines of
his mouth--had girls any right to expect their brothers to forgive them
such things? Yet if Lenny turned from her ... if she lost not only
Quentin but the boys....
For a moment there was silence in the little room, with its faded reds
and casement open to the fields.
Then suddenly Leonard sprang forward, stooped, and caught Janey in his
arms, turning her face to his breast.
They clung together in silence, both trembling. The first faint wind of
the evening crept in and ruffled their hair.
"You won't love me so much now."
"I will love you more--but, by God! I'll kill that man!"
"No--no!--Len, no!"
"Hush, dear, don't get excited again."
"But you must promise ... he--he's only a boy."
"Boy be damned! He's a skunk--he's a loathly little reptile, that's all.
He isn't worthy to sweep out your cinders, and he--oh, God, Janey! I'd
give my life to-morrow for the privilege of wringing his neck to-night."
"Len, promise me you won't hurt him--I--I shall die if you do."
"Well, I'll promise to leave him alone for the present, because I've
got you to look after. I want you to go to sleep, dear. Do you think you
could sleep?"
"I'm sure I couldn't."
"You could if I mixed you some nice hot brandy and water. Let me go
downstairs and get some."
"Oh, Lenny--I'm frightened of being alone."
"But it won't take me a minute--the kettle's on the fire."
The combined longing for a stimulant and for oblivion was too intense
for Janey to resist.
"You're sure you won't be long?"
"Yes--I promise--just down and up again."
"Then thank you, Len."
He went down to the kitchen, and mixed a pretty stiff grog--for himself.
Janey had been too over-wrought to notice that her brother was trembling
and flushed, and that there was a strange, drawn look about his face. He
had turned back half-way to Cherrygarden because he felt "queer," and to
this no doubt she owed her life. In the horror and confusion of the last
half-hour he had forgotten his own illness, but now it was growing upon
him, and he must fight it for her sake. He drank a tumblerful of brandy
and water, then mixed some for Janey, and went upstairs.
He helped her take off her charred skirt and bodice, and wrapped her in
a dressing-gown. He bathed her smoky face and hands, then he pulled a
rug over her, and gave her the brandy. It was a strong dose for a woman,
and in spite of all she had said she was soon asleep.
He sat down beside her and closed his eyes. The soft air fanned him,
and the scents of the little garden steamed up and scattered themselves
in the room.
Janey lay with her head sunk deep in the pillow, her face half-buried in
it, and her breathing came heavily, almost in sobs. Her knees were drawn
up, and her arms crossed on her breast, the hands twisted
together--there was something pathetic and childish in the huddled
attitude.
Leonard thought to himself--
"It's nearly time for Nigel's concert--I wonder if he's thinking of
Janey and me."
CHAPTER V
COWSANISH
Leonard dozed a little, but he did not sleep. A leaden weariness was in
his limbs, but his heart and brain were horribly active, forbidding
rest. His heart was full of rage, and his brain was full of images--he
could doze only till these last crystallised in dreams, when their
vividness woke him up at once. He woke each time with a start and a
vague feeling of uneasiness and alarm. He feared he was going to be
ill--just when Janey needed him so badly. He must bear up till
to-morrow; by then she would be better, to-night she was helpless
without him. He looked at the cramped figure on the bed, and his throat
tightened with sorrow, shame and rage.
She should be avenged--he swore it. Lowe should be made to realise that
it was not with impunity that one dragged women like Janey into the mud
and then climbed out over their shoulders. He should be made to grovel
to her and implore her forgiveness. Len had not quite settled his course
of action, but he had fixed the results. Lowe was a worm, a miserable,
loathly, little, wriggling worm, and he had slimed a lily--he should
squirm under a decent man's boot....
The room darkened. The curtains, fluttering in the dusk-wind, were like
ghosts. The line of woods on the horizon became dim, and an owl called
from them suddenly. Then a procession of clouds began to flit solemnly
across the window--driven from the south-west. They were brown against
the bottomless grey, and there was a kind of majestic rhythm in their
march before the wind.
Len rose with a shudder--somehow he could not sit still. He went to the
window and looked out. Then he remembered that he had not shut in the
fowls for the night or stalled the cows. He would have to leave Janey
for a little and attend to the farm. He stepped back and looked at her.
Her bed was in darkness, and all he could see was a long, black mass on
the paleness of the bed-clothes. She was sleeping heavily, with quick,
stertorous breathing, and it was not likely that she would wake for some
time--he had certainly better go now, while she slept so well.
He crept quietly from the room and down the dark stairs. Outside the
breeze puffed healingly upon him, cooling him with a sweet dampness as
he climbed into the stream-field where the cows were pastured. The mists
were too high and clammy for them to be left out at night, and the man
had gone home after milking them. He called to them softly, and great
shadows began to move out of the fogs towards him. The peace of the
twilight and of his work with the calm, milk-smelling beasts, was so
great that, in spite of rage and suffering, a kind of dreamy comfort
came to Len--a quiet he felt only in the fields. He began to whistle as
he drove the cows home before him. Then suddenly the whistling made him
remember Nigel's concert.
He had meant to send off a second telegram, which Nigel would receive
just before he went on the platform at the Bechstein. The last
shattering hour had made him forget his plan, and he realised that if
his brother was to have his message of good-cheer it must be sent at
once. But how? There was still time, but he could not leave the house,
even on such an errand--and yet his brother must be "bucked up" at all
costs. To-morrow he would send another wire, asking him to come down for
the week-end, but he thought it as well not to risk alarming him
to-night. Len pondered a minute, then suddenly it occurred to him that
he could give his telegram to the postman, who was due to pass Sparrow
Hall on his way back from his round. By a lucky chance there was a
telegraph-form in the house; Len filled it in, and then ran out with it
to the lane.
He looked up at Janey's window--all was quiet, only the white curtains
fluttered out on the wind; anyhow he would hear if she woke and called
him. The lane was very dark--the sky was still faintly light above it,
but night had fallen between the hedges. He heard footsteps, and saw a
figure coming down Wilderwick hill.
"Hullo, Winkworth!" he cried, "I want you to do something for me."
He stepped out into the middle of the lane, and at the same time the
figure began to climb the stile into Wilderwick meadows.
"Hi!" shouted Len--he suddenly realised that on fine dry nights the
postman would take the field-path to Dormans.
"Hi!" he shouted, running after him. "Winkworth!--I've a----".
The words died on his tongue. He had reached the stile, and saw standing
on the further side of it, on the high ground which the darkness had not
reached--with the last of the western light upon his face--Quentin Lowe.
For a moment both men stared at each other, then Lowe moved away. Len
stood stock still, a queer grimace on his features.
"Were you calling me, sir?"
A voice behind him made him start. The postman had come out of the
darkness and stood at his elbow.
"I thought I heard you shout 'Winkworth' when I was far up the hill.
Anything you want, Mus' Furlonger?"
"Yes--yes--would you take this telegram to Dormans, and see it sent off?
Here's a bob...."
His voice sounded vague, somehow, as if it were a mechanical process
unconnected with his real self. He stood watching the old postman as he
climbed the stile and took the turning for Dormans, where the track
divided. A minute later a figure became silhouetted against the sky on
his right; the path to Cowden and the valley farms dipped abruptly a few
yards beyond the stile, then climbed to the high grounds near Goatsluck
Wood. Quentin Lowe was clearly visible as he hurried away towards
Kent--almost as if he feared pursuit.
Leonard stared after him, his eyes bright with hate and fever. A kind of
delirium was in his brain as he watched that thick-set, slouching
figure, caricatured into a dwarf by his fury and the cheverel light.
Then suddenly he bounded forward.