alone in the dark house. Or rather, he told himself that he would be up
with Quentin in a minute, and would have settled him in a couple more.
He would drag him back to Sparrow Hall by the scruff of the neck, and
Janey, poor, outraged Janey, should be his judge, and taste triumph even
in her despair.
He climbed the stile and ran up the path, plunging recklessly through
the tall, ghostly buttercups, glowing faintly in the twilight. He had
soon lost the path, a mere borstall, and was trampling the hay-grass,
but he did not slack.
Quentin had for the moment disappeared. The trees of Goatsluck Wood
waved against the sky: Len was conscious of a kind of illusion as he
approached them--it seemed as if they were very far away, then suddenly
he found himself on the tangled rim of the wood, the boughs shuddering
and rustling over him, as he groped his way into the darkness.
He had to run along the hedge till he found the stile, and he realised
that Lowe now had a good start. But he would not stop, nor defer his
vengeance to another, more auspicious, day. Janey would probably not
wake till the next morning--and meantime his blood was up. He was not
quite sure what he should do to Quentin when he overtook him--he was not
worth killing, that would only mean more sorrow for Janey, but he had
ideas of pounding him more or less to a jelly and then dragging him back
to Sparrow Hall and making him kiss the ground at Janey's feet, and
grovel and slobber for her forgiveness, with other humiliations which he
did not think for a minute his sister would not enjoy.
Meantime he floundered stupidly among the trees. The path was not often
used, and the undergrowth had become tangled across it--branches of ash
and hazel whipped his cheeks, and brambles caught his feet and sent him
stumbling. Once he fell full length, with the soft suck of mud under his
body, and once he had to stop and fight for his breath which had been
knocked out of him by the low bough of an oak. It was very dark in
Goatsluck Wood--like a dark dream. He looked up and saw shuddering
patches of sky, and they intensified the strange dream spell, for he
seemed to be moving through them, tossed by the wind and scorched by
whirling stars.
Then suddenly a meadow swam towards him--another meadow full of
buttercups, all gleaming faintly in the marriage of twilight and
moonlight that revelled over the fields. A soft wind baffed him, and
cooled his lips with little drops of rain. He pounded on through the
buttercups, thought and self-consciousness both almost swallowed up in
the abnormal consciousness of environment that accompanies certain
states of fever. He saw the moon hanging low and yellow in the east, he
saw long, tangled hedges, and tufts of wood--and all round him, in
meadow after meadow, that ceaseless shimmer of buttercups, as the wind
puffed through them and bowed them to the moon.
Then suddenly he saw Quentin Lowe. His pace had slackened, for he had
not seen Furlonger for some minutes, but the next moment he looked over
his shoulder and hurried on again.
"Stop!" cried Leonard.
The figure hunched itself against the wind and plunged on.
"Stop!" gasped Len, and calling up all his strength broke into a run.
Quentin looked back, and saw that he was running. He himself was too
proud to run, but he doubled against the hedge, and changing his
direction, walked towards Langerish, so that Len nearly overran him.
But just in time he saw the short, heavy figure groping along the rim of
the buttercups, and the chase took a southward direction.
Len had not the breath to run far--he wondered vaguely what had winded
him. He came panting after Quentin, always the same distance behind; he
no longer cried "Stop!"--just padded gasping after him.
They skirted the meadow known as Watch Oak, then followed the grass lane
to Golden Pot and the outhouses of Anstiel. Quentin was trying to work
his way back towards Kent and the valley of the hammer ponds, but
Leonard drove him obstinately southwards. He was beginning to gain on
him a little. Quentin could hear his footsteps, and he knew why he was
following him.
A sick dread was creeping up Lowe's back--he looked round at the
shuddering woods and that strange sky of storm and stars, and he
trembled with the presentiment that he saw them all for the last time.
Furlonger was a great, big, burly brute--and Furlonger would kill him.
Perhaps, after all, he deserved to die--the country through which he
plunged in this horrible death-chase had a reproach in each spinney, a
regret in each field. And yet his heart was stiff with defiance--what
right had the gods to dangle salvation before a man's eyes, and then
slay him when he grasped it? A sob rose in his throat. The gates of
Paradise had rolled back for him at last--and must he die just inside
them?
His defiance grew. He would not be robbed of his salvation. To grasp it
he had let go more than he dared think. The gods should not mock him
with their gifts--or rather, merchandise. They should not take his awful
price, and then deny the goods. Life should not suddenly turn and smile
on him, and then hurry away. He called after departing Life--"I will not
let thee go except thou bless me...."
He bent his head and began to run.
Then suddenly his mood changed. The power that had steadied his voice
and straightened his back during his terrible interview with Janey, had
not forsaken him now. He loved Tony Strife, and he was too proud in her
love to play the coward. He would not run away from fate. It should not
be said of Tony's lover that he had died running away. He stopped
abruptly, swung round and faced Furlonger.
Leonard was so surprised at this change of tactics that for a moment he
did not speak. He stood staring at Lowe, his hands clenched, his muscles
taut, his veins boiling and throbbing. The two men faced each other in
the corner of a high field known as Cowsanish. On one side a hedgerow
was whispering with winds, on the other the ground sloped downwards to a
ruined outhouse--then it dipped suddenly, and the distance was full of
mists, through which could be seen blotches of woods and farmhouse
lights. The sky was still wind-swept and scattered with stars.
"What do you want?" asked Lowe at last.
Leonard mumbled a little before he spoke. "To wring your neck."
"Why?"
"You know why."
Furlonger's mouth was working with passion, and his eyes were
deliriously bright. He really meant to wring Lowe's neck. He had
forgotten his earlier schemes of vengeance--nothing would suffice him
now but the extreme, the uttermost.
Lowe folded his arms across his chest, and called up all his memories of
Tony.
"You want to kill me," he said in a struggling voice, "because of what
I've done to Janey--but I tell you it's been a blessing to her as well
as to me. We were both in the mud together, and now I've got out it'll
be easier for her to do so."
"You've blighted her with your damned love!" cried Leonard incoherently,
"she's half dead, she's in the mud, she's in hell. When you got out, as
you call it, you kicked her deeper in."
"But there's no good killing me for it."
"Why?"
Len asked the question almost lamely. He felt giddy and inert, and
Quentin's words seemed to be trickling past him somehow--it was a
strange feeling he could not quite realise.
"Why?--because you'll probably be hanged for it, and that won't do your
sister any good. Besides"--and here his voice quickened suddenly into
passion--"you've no right to kill me for grasping my only chance of
salvation."
"Damn your salvation!--I'm not going to kill you for getting out of the
ditch, but for dragging her into it--Janey, my sister, whose shoes you
aren't worthy to clean."
Lowe quailed for a moment. Furlonger's eyes were blazing, and he
crouched back as if for a spring.
"There's no good gassing about it," he said thickly, "if I let you talk,
you'll talk me stupid. I'm going to wring your neck because you dragged
my Janey into your own beastly hell, and then when you saw the chance,
climbed out over her shoulders, and left her to rot there. She's ill, I
tell you--she's half dead--and I'm going to kill you for it."
Quentin flung a last imploring look at the silent fields with their
waving, whispering grass. The clouds were scattering now, and the sky
blazed with stars. The night was full of the scent of hay.... In a
moment they would be lost in a black, choking whirl, that sky, those
stars--that sweet smell of hay. He sniffed at it. He thought of the huge
mown meadow by Shovelstrode, where only yesterday he and Tony had
lounged and played. He heard the voices of the workers, as they turned
the great swathes, and shook them on their forks, filling the air with
fragrance; he saw Tony in a muslin frock, with the white rose he had
given her in her breast. He saw the sun on the coils of her
mouse-coloured hair--heard her say some little, trivial, slangy thing
that had somehow made him kiss her. He remembered that kiss, so sweet,
so cool, so calm--and, as he drew back his head, the look of her
innocent eyes....
But once more the thought of Tony put courage into him. If he must die
inside the gates of Paradise, he would die worthily of the woman who had
opened them to him. For her sake he would die game--it was the only
thing he had left to do for her now. He would die with a proud face and
a high courage--and his last conscious thought should be of Tony, who,
if only for a few short days, had allowed him to see what love can be
when it comes in white.
He braced himself up, flung back his shoulders, and waited for the
attack.
It came.
Furlonger sprang forward and seized Quentin by the throat. For a moment
they swayed together, Lowe snatching at the other's hands and struggling
with the frenzy of despair. His eyes bulged, his lips blackened, and
still he fought. Then the darkness began to rush over him--first in
little clouds, then in long, black sweeps.
"Janey!... Janey!" he cried.
He opened his eyes at last. He was lying under the hedge, his cheek
scratched, his hands twisted in the grass. He stirred feebly, then sat
up, still crouching back against the hazel. Furlonger lay prone among
the buttercups, his chin turned up sharply, the moonlight blazing on his
face. Then Lowe remembered how things had happened--how the sickening
grip on his throat had suddenly relaxed, and he had gone crashing
backwards into the brambles, while something fell with a heavy thud at
his feet.
He wondered if Furlonger was dead. He went and looked into his face. The
features were strangely drawn, and there was a look of desperate anxiety
in their contraction. Then suddenly the eyes opened and looked up into
Lowe's, full of terror and fever.
"What's happened? Who's there? Oh, my God!"
Remembrance had come with a spasm of that ghastly face. Leonard sat up
in the grass, and held his hands to his head.
"I'm ill, I think," he muttered.
He must have fainted--fainted through the stress and horror of it all,
just when his enemy's breath had nearly sobbed away under his hands.
"You'd better go home," said Quentin.
Leonard did not speak. He still sat there in a piteous huddle--and then
suddenly tremor after tremor began to go through him. He shuddered from
head to foot, his teeth chattered, and his limbs shook so that he could
not rise.
"I want some water--I want something to drink," he panted.
Quentin put his hands under his shoulders to help him get up. He felt
quite generously towards him now. He had been snatched by a timely
accident from death, and could afford to pity this poor fellow who had
tried to kill him, but failed.
"Let me help you home."
"No--by God!"
"Let me--you're ill."
"Yes, I was ill when I started after you--or you wouldn't be alive and
grinning at me now. I was a fool--I should have waited. But look out for
me another day, you skunk!"
The ghastly rigor choked his last words. The look of terror and anxiety
deepened on his face. Then at last he managed to stumble up.
"I--I'm going home," he stuttered, and felt sick as he realised he would
have to pass again through Goatsluck Wood.
"And you won't let me go with you?"
"No--I shan't let myself owe you anything, for I mean to kill you some
day."
"I advise you not to threaten me--I might be obliged to take proceedings
against you."
"A pretty mess you'd be in if you did. I suppose you don't want your new
girl to hear about Janey?"
Quentin flushed.
"If I wasn't obliged to shield my sister," continued Len, "I'd tell that
girl myself. But you know my tongue's tied--besides, I'd rather kill
you."
"The secret might come out that way too. No, Furlonger, if you are wise
you'll let me alone."
He drew back a little as he spoke--the friendly reaction was passing. He
had always hated Janey's brothers, because he was jealous of her love
for them; and now, though the original reason was gone, he still hated
them for the cause of that reason--for what he believed was the
foundation of Janey's love, their physical strength and fitness.
However, there was not much of either to be seen in Leonard now. He
swayed pitifully as he stood there facing Quentin, and though his lips
moved, no sounds came past them. Then he turned away. Lowe watched him
stagger across the field. He expected him to fall every minute, except
once, when for some strange reason he expected him to turn back and
confront him again. But he neither fell nor turned. He stumbled blindly
on, then disappeared into the next field.
For a moment or two Quentin stood alone in the great meadow, under the
hurrying sky. The scent of hay no longer blew to him wistfully, but
triumphantly, like the fragrance of festal wine. He spread out his arms,
and stood there in the quivering, scented hush, while the wind cooled
his damp forehead, and ruffled the hair back from it tenderly.
Then he turned homewards from Cowsanish.
But he had not gone far before he altered his direction. He struck again
southwards, through the grass lanes that wind past Old Surrey Hall,
towards Shovelstrode. He would lay his thankfulness, his deliverance,
his redemption, at Tony's feet--at the feet of the woman who symbolised
them all.
CHAPTER VI
AND I ALSO DREAMED
Behind the stage at the Bechstein Hall one could hear the applause that
burst from the auditorium. Nigel listened hungrily. He wondered whether
those hands would clap and those feet stamp when it was his turn to
leave the platform, his violin under his arm. He stood leaning against
the wall, his fiddle already out of its case, but still wrapped tenderly
in silks. The little group of girls and men who were whispering together
not far off sent him from time to time glances of mingled curiosity and
admiration.
There was a big difference between the convict with his close-cropped
hair and disreputable clothes, and this young man in orthodox evening
dress, whose hair was brushed in a heavy, shining mass from his
forehead, to hang over his ears and neck in the approved musician's
style. Nigel had been unable to resist this rather primitive piece of
swank--besides, it was symbolical, it marked the contrast between what
he had been in the days of his shame, and what he was now in the days of
regeneration. The girl who had just come off the stage stared at him
half amused, half envying.
"Do you come on soon?"
"Yes--after this next thing."
"Just a little bit nervous?"
He nodded.
As a matter of fact, he was in a mortal funk. He would not have
believed it possible that he could be afraid of a crowd of strangers,
who were nothing to him and to whom he was nothing. But infinite things
were at stake. If he failed, if he made an ass of himself, he pushed
further away, if not altogether out of sight, the dream in which for the
last six months he had worked and lived. On the other hand, if he
succeeded, if to-morrow's papers took his name out of the gutter, just
as four years ago they had helped to kick it in, his dream would be
transmuted into hope. The violin he clutched so desperately was no mere
instrument of music, but an instrument of redemption, the token of that
dear salvation which if a man but see truly he must grasp.
Six months had gone by since he left Sparrow Hall, and during them he
had worked desperately with scanty rest. He had flung his proud
self-will and undisciplined love of prettiness into mechanical exercises
for fingers and bow, he had subjected his taste for the tuneful and
sentimental to Herr von Gleichroeder's dissonantal preferences. But he
had been happy--his dream had always been with him, and had breathed all
the sentimentality of hope into the dry bones of Chabrier, Chausson and
Strauss. He had found it everywhere--even in his bow exercises.
He was happy, too, in his environment--the companionship of his
fellow-students with their young, clear spirits and enthusiasm. Most of
them knew his story, but in their careless code it did not tell much
against him, for every one admired him for his originality and liked
him for his desperate pluck. So Nigel found a new form of gratification
for that strange part of him born in prison. The companionship of an
unripe little school-girl with her slang, the sight of children dancing
in the dusk, had been succeeded by many a racket with young men and
women of his own age--Bohemian supper-parties, followed by impromptu
concerts or startling variety turns; expeditions in rowdy throngs to a
theatre or music-hall; small, friendly meals with some
fellow-enthusiast, who confessed in private an admiration for Gounod....
It was a draught of new life to him; he loved it all--down to the
constant musical jargon, the endless "shop." Much of his bitterness was
leaving him, his sullen bouts were rarer, even the lines of his face
were growing rounded and more boyish.
Chausson's "Chanson Perpetuelle" drawled and wailed its way towards a
close. Nigel's muscles tightened to prevent a shudder. To-night the hall
would be full of the friends and relations of the students; they had
come out to encourage their respective prodigies, and his item on the
programme would belong, so to speak, to no one. He almost wished he had
not forbidden Len and Janey to come--at least they would have made a
noise.
The thought of Len and Janey brought an additional stake into the game.
He must succeed for their sakes too. He must justify to them his
departure from Sparrow Hall. If he failed, they would look upon it as a
mere piece of obstinate cruelty, they would plague him to return, and
he, in all the sickness of failure, would find it hard to resist them.
Another round of applause ... the "Chanson Perpetuelle" had ended, and
the singer, a self-confident little contralto, came off, with the string
quartet which had accompanied her. Herr von Gleichroeder bustled up, and
there was some talk of an encore, which was in the end refused. Then he
turned to Nigel.
"You'd better go on at once. Here are two telegrams for you--but you
mustn't wait."
Nigel stuffed the two yellow envelopes into his pocket, and moved
mechanically towards the stage. Two telegrams--a sick hope was in his
heart--one was from Len, he knew; but the other ... Tony knew the date
of his concert; perhaps.... He dared not think it, yet that "perhaps"
made him hold his head high as he walked on the stage.
He bowed stiffly. Von Gleichroeder had spent a long time trying to teach
him a graceful bow. He remembered his last public appearance, and it
made him not only stiff but a trifle hard. There was no applause at
first--no one in the hall knew him; then a kind-hearted old lady felt
sorry for the poor young man who had no one to encourage him, and gave a
feeble clap, which was more disconcerting than silence.
The accompanist struck the chord--his fiddle was soon in tune and he
lifted it to his shoulder. A cold chill ran down his back--he had
entirely forgotten the first bars of the Prelude.
The accompanist had some preliminary business. Nigel listened to him in
detached horror, as if he were the spectator of some dreadful scene with
which he had absolutely no connection. He heard the music crashing
through familiar phrases--only five bars more--only three--only one--
Then there was a pause-bar--a very long pause.
Then suddenly he realised that he had been playing for some time. The
violin was warm under his chin, the bow warm between his fingers. He
knew that if he stopped to think about it all, he was lost. It was
always fatal for him to think of his music as so many little black signs
on paper, and it was nearly as fatal for him to think of it as so many
movements of his bow or positions of his fingers. Von Gleichroeder had
always had to combat his pupil's tendency to play almost entirely by
ear, lost meanwhile in a kind of sentimental dream--in the transports of
which he swayed violently from side to side and generally looked
ridiculous.
To-night he slapped into the Scriabin with tremendous vigour--the
infinite pains he had spent during the last six months showing clearly
in the ease with which he surmounted its technical difficulties. But the
watchful ear of von Gleichroeder told him that his pupil was playing
subconsciously, so to speak--from his heart, rather than his head. If
anything--the slipping of a peg or a sudden noise in the hall--were to
interrupt him, to wake him up, all would be lost.
But luckily nothing happened. Nigel was roused only by the last crash
of his bow on the strings. The Prelude was finished, and at the same
time a desperate panic seized him. He forgot to bow, and bolted headlong
from the stage.
The audience applauded heartily, and his fellow-students crowded round
him with congratulations.
"Well done, old man!--pulled it off splendidly," and his back was
vigorously thumped.
"Worked up beautifully over the climax."
"But played G instead of B in the last bar but one," added a precise
youth.
"Muddled your runs in that chromatic bit," put in some one else,
encouraged.
"Go on and bow--go on and bow," blustered von Gleichroeder, hurrying up.
Nigel bowed perfunctorily and came back. The clapping did not subside.
"I don't allow encores," said the German, "but you're in luck, my
friend, in luck."
The colour was darkening on Nigel's face. It was his hour of triumph. He
wished Tony was there, and Janey and Leonard--he would let them come to
his next concert.
He went on and bowed again--he had to appear several times before the
demand for an encore was given up as hopeless, and the applause
gradually died away.
He went to the back of the stage and sat down, holding his head in his
hands. He wanted to be alone, and to read his telegrams. The future was
now a flaming promise--his feet at last were set on the honourable way.
He let his mind lose itself in its dream, and for a moment he was
conscious of nothing but infinite hope. From the stage a plaintive,
bizarre air of Moussorgski's came to him. To be Russian was to von
Gleichroeder synonymous with to be modern, and Moussorgski and Rimsky
Korsakov were encouraged where their French or Italian contemporaries
were banned. Every now and then a little slow ripple brought an end to
strange wailing dissonances; it was played without much fire--without
much feeling--but it haunted.
Nigel opened his first telegram. It read--
"Go it, old chap--laurels is cheap."
That was from Leonard, and a half tender, half humorous smile crept over
Furlonger's grim mouth. Dear old Len!--dear old Janey! How he wished
they were there! He would wire to them the first thing to-morrow and
tell them of his success.
Then suddenly the smile passed away, and his hands shook a little. Who
had sent the second telegram?
He tore nervously at the envelope. Had Tony remembered him? one word of
encouragement from her was worth all the clappings and stampings of the
audience, all the eulogies of the press....
"And I also dreamed, which pleased me most,
That you loved me still the same...."
He took out the telegram and unfolded it. It ran--
"Come at once. Leonard is ill. Janey."
CHAPTER VII
WOODS AT NIGHT
The little star melody wailed on, rippled characteristically and died.
Even then Nigel did not move, he sat with his hands dropped between his
knees, still holding Janey's telegram. He seemed to be sitting alone, in
a black corner of space, stricken, blank, forsaken.
Then suddenly he recovered himself. "Come at once." He must go at once.
He sprang to his feet, pushed his way past one or two meaningless
shadows who called after him meaningless words, and the next minute
found himself in the passage behind the stage. Seizing his hat and
overcoat from the wall, he hurried to the stage-door. The street outside
was quiet, at either end were lights and commotion, but the street
itself was plunged in echoing peace. A strange fear assaulted Nigel--he
hurried into Oxford Street and hailed a taxi. Then he knew what he was
afraid of--the opportunity to sit and think.
He tried not to think--he tried to find refuge from thought even in the
words that had smitten him. "Come at once. Leonard is ill."--he repeated
them over and over, striving for mere mechanical processes. The taxi
threaded swiftly through the traffic, the lights swung past with the
roar and the whistles. Luckily the streets were not much crowded at
that hour--it was just before the closing of the theatres and the
consequent rush....
He was at Victoria, and a porter had told him that the next train for
East Grinstead did not start for half-an-hour. He paced miserably up and
down, cursing the blank time, gnawed by conjectures. "Leonard is ill."
Len was hardly ever ill, and it must be something serious, or Janey
would not have said "Come at once." It must have been sudden too, for
the two telegrams had been handed to him together. Perhaps there had
been an accident. Perhaps Len was dead. Ice seemed to form suddenly on
Nigel's heart--Janey might be trying to break the news gently by saying
his brother was ill. No doubt Len was dead---- Oh, Lenny, Lenny!
A strange thing had happened. The dream in which he had lived and worked
and slept and eaten for the last six months had suddenly fallen back
from him, leaving him utterly alone with his brother and sister. His
life in London, with all its struggle and ambition, was as something far
off, unreal; no part of his life seemed real, except what he had spent
with Len and Janey. After all did anything really matter as much as
they? They had been with him always, and his dream had sustained him
only a few months. He thought of their childhood together in the old
Sussex house, of their adventures and scrapes and hide-and-seeks; he
thought of their growing-up, of the wonderful discoveries they had made
about themselves, and shared; he thought of their arrival at Sparrow
Hall, full of pluck and plans, of the difficulties that had damped the
one and dashed the other--of the awful disgrace that had separated the
three Furlongers for damnable years. Len and Janey had been his pals,
his comrades, his comforters before he had so much as heard of Tony. She
was not dethroned, his dream was not dead, but the past which he had
half impatiently thrust behind him was coming back to show that it, as
well as the future, held treasures and the immortality of love.
The half-hour was nearly over, and the platform was dotted with men and
women in evening dress, who had come up from the country to the
theatres, and now were going home by the last train. Nigel shut himself
into a third-class carriage. The train was not very crowded, and no one
disturbed him. Almost mechanically he lighted a cigarette, then leaned
back, closing his eyes.
The train began to move--it pulled itself together with a shudder, then
slid slowly out of the station. Signal lights swept past, whistles
wailed up out of the darkness and died away--suburban stations
gleamed--then the train swung out into the night.
Both the windows were wide open, and the wind blew in on Nigel, but he
did not notice it. His cigarette had gone out, but he still sucked and
bit the end, filling his mouth with strings of tobacco, which he did not
notice either, though every now and then he mechanically spat them out.
All he was conscious of was the pungent smell of night, which invaded
even the rushing train. He knew that the trees were heavy and the hedges
tangled with their green--he tried to fling his imagination into some
sheltered hollow by a wood, and find rest there. He tried to think of
sheep and grass and flowers and watching stars. But it was no use--the
night was full of the restlessness of the pulsing train, he could not
escape from the train, which throbbed like his heart, and by its
throbbing seemed to hold his heart a prisoner in it, as if some
mysterious astral link connected the two pulses. The train was the heart
of the night and darkness, pulsing in ceaseless despair, and he was the
heart of the train, pulsing despairingly too, the very centre of sorrow.
It was a definite strain for him to realise this, and yet somehow the
sensation would not relax--it was infinite relief when at last the
great, noisy heart, the heart of the train, stopped beating, though its
silence brought with it a sudden wrench and shock, like death.
Nigel stumbled out on the East Grinstead platform, his limbs cramped,
his head swimming. He thought of taking a cab, but by the time he had
roused up the local livery stables and set off in one of their concerns
he could almost have reached Sparrow Hall by the fields. A walk would do
him good. The night was fine, though it smelled of rain.
He had soon left the town behind him, and struck across the fields by
St. Margaret's convent. There was no moon, but the stars were unusually
lustrous, and the distance was clear, Oxted chalk quarry showing a pale
scar on the northern hills. Now and then dark sweeps of cloud passed
swiftly overhead, and the wind came in sudden gusts, whistling over the
fields, and throbbing through the woods with a great swish of leaves.
Nigel had not seen the Three Counties since Easter, which had been early
and bleak. The London months since then had to a certain extent
denaturalised him, and he was conscious of a vague strangeness in the
fields. It was, moreover, four years since he had seen them in their
June lushness--the scent of grass was brought him pungently now and
then, the scent of leaves, the scent of water.
He crossed from Sussex into Surrey at Hackenden, then plunged through
Ashplats Wood into the Wilderwick road. His footsteps were like shadows
on the awful silence that filled the night. The stars were flashing from
a coal-black sky--between the high hedges only a wisp of the great waste
was visible with its dazzle of constellations. Nigel saw Cancer burning
his lamps in the west, while straight above him hung the sign of Libra,
brilliant, cold, unearthly. Surely the stars were larger and brighter
to-night than was normal, than was good. He wished he was at Sparrow
Hall. It could not be that he was frightened of the stars, and yet
somehow they seemed part of an evil dream. Perhaps he would wake to find
himself in his Notting Hill lodgings--perhaps his dream would go on for
ever, eternal, malevolent, but still a dream--he would lie on in his bed
at Notting Hill, and people would shake him and try to wake him, and,
when they could not wake him, take him and bury him--and he would lie in
the earth, deep, with a stone over him--but still with his awful dream
of night and high hedges, terror and stars....
He had come to Sparrow Hall. He saw the tall, black chimney against a
mass of stars--it seemed to be canting a little, perhaps that was part
of the dream. There was a light in Len's room, and the next moment some
one moved between it and the window.
"Janey ..." called Nigel softly.
His voice rose with the scents of the garden, in the hush of the night.
The next minute there were footsteps on the stairs, then the door flew
open, and Janey was in Nigel's arms.
They clung together for several moments. The door had slammed in the
draught, and the darkness crept softly round them like an embrace. The
dream slipped from Nigel--his silly and hideous nightmare of stars. This
quivering, tear-stained woman in his arms had brought him into the
reality of sorrow.
"Where is he?--what's happened?" he asked, still holding Janey.
"He's upstairs in bed--he's very ill, Nigel."
"But he's not dead?"
"Not yet."
"Is there any hope?"
"Not much--he's got pneumonia. It's dreadful."
"Has the doctor seen him?"
"Yes--he's been gone only an hour. He said you were to be sent for at
once. Oh, Nigel, Nigel, it's my fault!"
"What d'you mean?"
"I was wretched and selfish--he'd been queer all the afternoon, and I
didn't notice it. I thought only of myself. Then he went out while I was
asleep, and when he came back.... Oh, Nigel!... the doctor says he
practically did for himself by going out then."
Nigel did not understand, but his mind made no effort to grasp at
details.
"I'd better go at once," he said; "is he conscious?"
"Yes--but he says funny things sometimes."
She led the way upstairs, and the next minute they were in Leonard's
room. It was a queer little room, extremely low, with bulging walls,
sagging beams and an uneven floor. Len lay propped very high with
pillows. His face was drawn and feverish--he was literally fighting for
his breath, and his lips were blue.
He smiled when he saw Nigel.
"Hullo, old man!... good of you to come.... Lord!"--as he saw his
clothes--"put me among the nuts."
"Don't talk," said his brother sharply.
"Your hair ..." panted Len.
"Shut up!"
Len pointed to a glass of water by the bed. Janey gave him a drink. He
began to cough violently, and his face became purple. Nigel felt sick.
"I--I'm better," gasped Leonard. "I--I had ... a beastly stitch ... but
it's gone."
"When's the doctor coming again?" Nigel asked Janet.
"The first thing to-morrow."
"He ought to have a nurse."
"Oh, no!" cried Len; "you and Janey can manage me ... between you ...
I'll soon be all right ... I don't want any little Tottie Coughdrop
fussing round."
"He's dreadful," said Janey, "he will talk."
"How long has he been like this?"
"As I tell you, he'd been feeling queer all the afternoon. Then I
crocked up for some silly reason, and instead of being properly attended
to, he had to look after me"--a sob broke into her voice, and she pulled
Nigel aside. "The doctor says it's a frightfully acute case," she
whispered.
"But ... but" interrupted Len, "Nigel hasn't told us ... about the
concert ... where's the laurel crown?... left it in the train?"
"Oh, do shut up! I'll tell you anything you like if you'll hold your
tongue."
"Tell him while I'm giving him his milk," said Janey; "the doctor
ordered him milk every two hours, but he simply won't take it."
"I'll make him," said his brother grimly.
"I'll go and fetch it--you stay with him, Nigel."
She left the room, and Len lay silent a moment, looking out at the
stars.
"Old man," he whispered suddenly, "while Janey's away ... I want to
tell you something."
"What is it?--can't it wait till you're better?"
"No.... It's this.... She ... she's in ... infernal trouble."
Nigel quailed.
"What is it, Len?"
"She'd rather tell you herself ... she's going to ... all I want to say
is ... when you hear, just remember that ... she's our Janey."
CHAPTER VIII
VIGIL
The doctor called early the next morning, and looked serious. Leonard
had had a restless night, and his symptoms were becoming very grave. He
still kept up his efforts at conversation, though they were more painful
than ever.
"I--I'm not going to die, Doc," he panted.
"Well, keep quiet, and we'll see about it," said the doctor.
"But have you heard about my brother?... the one who fills the Albert
Hall?... Oh, 'ninety-nine,' since you insist."
Nigel had been sent over to Dormans the first thing in the morning, to
buy up all the papers he could. Several of them had a report of von
Gleichroeder's concert, and most of these mentioned Nigel's performance
favourably.
"Mr. Furlonger has undoubtedly a great deal to learn on the mechanical
side of his art, but he has a wonderful force of temperament, which last
night compensated in many ways for faulty technique. He even managed to
work some emotional beauty into Scriabin's bundle of tricks, and one can
imagine that in music which depended on the beautiful instead of on the
bizarre for its appeal, he would have the chance, which was denied him
last night, of a really fine performance. We do not say that Mr.
Furlonger will ever be a master, but if he will avoid fashionable
gymnastics and not despise such out-of-date considerations as beauty and
harmony, he may become a temperamental violinist of the first order."
All the critics, more or less, had a hit at the "advanced" type of
music, and Nigel imagined von Gleichroeder's wrath.
Len insisted on having all the criticisms read to him, and a thrill of
pride went through even Janey's numb breast. She had never tried to
speak to Nigel alone, and he gave her no hint that he knew she was in
trouble. But when his heart was not bursting with anxiety for Len, it
brimmed with compassion for Janey. She might have been nursing her
brother for weeks instead of hours to judge by her haggard face, white
lips, and faded eyes. Her movements were listless, and her figure in
rest had the droop of utter exhaustion.
She and Nigel divided the nursing between them. Len was never left
alone. He had to be fed every two hours, and it generally took both of
them to do it, as he was very perverse in the matter of meals, saying
that the food choked him. In the afternoon he became a little delirious.
He seemed to be trying to ask for things, and yet to be unable to say
what he really meant, often saying something quite different. He was
intensely pathetic in his weakness. This dulling, or rather disturbance,
of his faculties seemed to distress him far more than his difficult
breathing or the pain in his side. Now and then he would hold out his
hands piteously to Nigel and Janey, and would lie for some time holding
the hand of each, his brown eyes staring at them imploringly, as if they
were fighting for the powers of speech which the tongue had lost--in
the way that the eyes of animals often fight.
They tried to make him go to sleep, but he was always restless and
awake. They read to him, talked to him and to each other, with no
success. Outside, the day was dull, yet warm and steamy. Every now and
then a shower would rustle noisily on the leaves, and after it passed
there would be many drippings.
Nigel went out for an hour or two's work on the farm when evening fell.
It seemed extraordinary that only some eighteen hours lay between him
and the concert at the Bechstein Hall. That part of his life had been
put aside--not for ever, perhaps, but none the less temporarily banished
by a usurping present. Some day, no doubt, he would put on the last six
months again, just as he would put on the dress clothes he had folded
away, but now he wore corduroys and the last eighteen hours.
At six the doctor called again. He shook his head at the sight of
Leonard.
"He must have a nurse," he said.
"Oh, no ... for heaven's sake!" groaned Len.
"Nigel and I can nurse him," said Janey.
"My dear young lady, have you seen your own face in the glass?"
Len raised himself with difficulty on his pillows.
"Lord, Janey!--you look quite cooked up.... I say, old girl, I won't
have it.... Doctor, I surrender."
"I don't know whether I can send any one in to-night--but I'll try.
Anyhow, to-morrow morning--now 'ninety-nine,' please."
Nigel went over to East Grinstead for ice and fruit. Len was dreadfully
thirsty all the evening. They put bags of ice on his forehead and sides,
but it did not seem to cool him much. The doctor had left a
sleeping-draught, to be administered the last thing at night.
"If I take it," said Len, "will you two go to bed?"
"Janey will," said Nigel. "I'll have a shake-down in here."
"Well, it'll keep me quiet, I suppose ... so I'll take the beastly
thing.... I want to sleep ... but I don't want to die.... I won't die,
in fact."
"Don't talk of it, old man."
He lifted Len in his strong arms, and settled him more comfortably in
the bedclothes. Then he gave him the sleeping-draught.
The window was wide open, and one could hear the rain pattering on the
lilac bushes. The wind, sweet-smelling with damp and hay, puffed the
curtains into the room, then sucked them back. A fire was burning low on
the hearth. Janey went and sat beside it. Nigel sat by the bed, for
between sleeping and waking his brother suffered from strange fears.
At last, after a few sighs and struggles, Len fell asleep, still high on
his pillows, the lines of his face very tired and grim. There was a
little light in the room, or rather the mingled lights of a dying fire
and a fighting moon. Nigel rose softly, and went over to Janet.
"You must go to bed."
"No--I'd rather stay here."
"You must have some sleep, or you'll be worn out."
"I couldn't sleep."
The words broke from her in a strangling sigh, and the next minute his
arm crept round her, for he remembered Leonard's words.
"Dear Janey ..." he whispered.
She began to cry.
For a moment or two he held her to him, helping her to choke her sobs
against his breast.
"Won't you tell me what it is?"
"How do you know there's anything more than that?" and she pointed
towards the bed.
"Len told me."
"About Quentin?..."
"Quentin!"
"Yes--I thought you said he'd told you."
"He told me you were wretched about something. But who's Quentin?--not
Quentin Lowe?"
They were the very words Len had used, and Janey shuddered.
"Yes ..." she said faintly, "Quentin Lowe."
"But----"
"You'll never understand.... I hid it from you for three years."
"Hid what, Janey?"
"My--my love."
Nigel's arm dropped from her waist, but hers was round his neck, and
she clung to him feverishly.
"Yes, I loved him. I loved him and I pitied him ... and I wanted, I
tried, to help him--and--and I've been his ruin--and another woman has
saved him."
Nigel was speechless. What astonished him, the man of secrets, most, was
that Janey should have had a secret from him for three years.
"Don't tremble so, darling--but tell me about it. I won't be hard on
you."
"You will--when you know all."
"Does Len know all?"
"Yes."
He glanced over to the sleeping man, then put back his arm round Janey's
waist.
"Now tell me--all."
Janey told him--all.
For some moments there was silence. The rain was still beating on the
leaves, but the moon had torn through the clouds, and flung a white
patch over Leonard's feet. The fire was just a red lump, and Janey and
Nigel, sitting outside the moonrays, were lost in darkness.
Janey wondered when her brother would speak. She could see the outline
of his face, blurred in the shadows. He held his head high, and he had
not dropped his arm from her waist, but his free hand was clenched--then
she felt the other clench against her side. Sickening fears assailed
her. Why did he not speak? Only that arm round her gave her hope....
Then suddenly he took it away, and put both his hands over his face.
She saw his shoulders quiver, just for a moment, then for what seemed
long moments he did not move.
A paralysis of horror was creeping towards her heart. He was taking
things even worse than she had expected, but they did not seem to fill
him with anger so much as with grief. His body was crumpled as if under
a load, and when he suddenly dropped his hands and looked up at her, she
drew back shuddering from what she saw in his eyes.
"My poor boy!--I wish I hadn't told you."
"Oh, God!--oh, God!"
Something in his cowering, hopeless attitude woke all the divine
motherhood in Janey. She forgot her fear of unforgiveness, her danger of
a rebuff, and put her arms round him, drawing his head to her breast.
"My poor Nigel ... my poor, poor lad!"--so she comforted him for the
shame he felt for her.
After a time, when thought was not quite swallowed up in tenderness, she
began to wonder why he let her hold him so.
Then suddenly he rose, and began to pace up and down the room--up and
down, up and down, swinging round sharply at the corners, but always,
she noticed with a gulp, treading softly for fear of waking Len. She
watched him in numb despair. The minutes dragged on. Now and then he put
his hand over his brow, as if he fought either for or against some
memory, now and then he bent his head so low that she could not see his
face. She wondered how much longer she would be able to endure it.
"Nigel----" she whispered at last.
He stopped and turned towards her.
"Nigel ..."
"What is it?"
"For heaven's sake ... don't keep me in suspense."
"Suspense about what?"
"Your forgiveness."
In a moment he was at her side.
"Janey--if I thought you could be doubting that----"
He put his arms round her, and the relief was so sudden that she burst
into tears.
"What a selfish hound I am!--wrapped up in my own beastly feelings, and
forgetting yours. But I never imagined you could think----"
"I thought ... perhaps you couldn't."
"Janey, how dare you!"
"When you got up and walked about ..."
"I know--I know. But that wasn't anger against you--my poor, outraged,
suffering darling," and he covered her face with kisses.
She clung to him in a passion of love and relief.
"Oh, you're good--you and Len!"
"Nonsense, Janey. You mustn't talk like that. We're not worthy to tie
your shoes--we never shall be. How could you think we'd turn against
you? It's him, that little, loathly cad, that----"
"Oh, hush, dear--I can't bear it."
His rage was stronger and fiercer than Len's, his whole body quivered in
the passion of it. Then suddenly it changed unaccountably to grief, and
his head fell back against her shoulder, the eyes dull, the mouth old
and drawn. She thought it was for her, and he hugged his poor, dead
secret too tight to grant her the mercy of disillusion.
The night wore on, and they clung together on the hearthstone, where
cinders fell and glowed, making the only sound, the only light, in the
room. Two lost children, they huddled together in the only warm place
they had left--each other's arms.
There was a feeble sigh, a feeble stirring in the bed--just as the first
of the morning came between the curtains, and pointed like a finger into
the gloom.
"Lenny...."
Janet and Nigel rose, wearily dropping their stiff arms from each other,
and went over to the bed.
"How long have you been awake?"
"Only just woke up ... would you draw back the curtains?"
Nigel pulled them back, and a white dawn shuddered into the room.
"What time is it?"
"About three--can't you go to sleep again?"
"No--I've wakened for good ... I mean ... I mean ..."
"What, old man?"
"I think I am going to die after all."
"No, Lenny, no...."
"It's rather a come down ... after saying I wouldn't ... but I feel so
tired."
His face was spread over with a ghastly pallor, and something which
Nigel and Janey could not exactly define, which indeed they hardly saw
with their bodily sight, but which impressed them vaguely as a kind of
film.
"I'm going to die," he repeated, plucking with cold fingers at the
sheet.
"I'll go and fetch the doctor," cried Nigel.
"No ... I don't want you to leave me."
"But we must do something."
"There's nothing to do ... only talk to me ... and don't let me get
funky."
"You might look out of the window, Nigel, and see if any one's passing,"
said Janey.
There was not likely to be any one at that hour, but he thrust his head
out and eagerly scanned the lane. The rain had stopped, though the sky
was shagged over with masses of cloud. One or two stars glimmered wanly
above the woods. It was the constellation of Orion, setting.
"There's no one," said Nigel, "nor likely to be--I must go, Len."
"Oh, no ... don't ... don't leave me ... the doctor couldn't do
anything.... Perhaps I won't die ... only I hate the dark."
A strangling pity seized Nigel. He went over to his brother, and sat
down beside the bed, taking his hand.
"There, there, old boy, don't worry. We'll both stay with you. I'll hold
this hand, and Janey 'ull hold the other, and you'll soon get over it."
Len lay shivering and gasping. Nigel and Janey looked into each other's
eyes across him, and swallowed their grief.
"I--I expect it's nothing," panted Leonard. "One often feels low at this
time of night."
They leaned upon the bed each side of him, and suddenly Janey thrust out
her hand and grasped Nigel's across him.
"Now we're all three holding hands," she said.
The minutes flew by. A clock was ticking--measuring them out.
"Kiss me ..." moaned Leonard suddenly.
They both stooped and kissed him.
He shut his eyes, then opened them, and a strange, piteous resignation
was in their glazing depths.
"I'm sorry ... I must die.... I'm so tired."
"You will go to sleep, Len."
"No ... I'm too tired ... it wouldn't be enough."
Janey's tears fell on his face.
"Don't cry, Janey ... it's--it's all right.... Remember me to the doctor
... and say my last words were 'ninety-nine' ... laugh, Janey ... it's a
joke."
"Lenny, Lenny...."
There was another silence, and a faint flush tinted the watery sky. A
bird chirrupped in the eaves of Sparrow Hall.
"Hold my hands tighter," gasped Len.
They both gripped tighter.
"And give my love to Tottie Coughdrop ... and say I'm sorry to have
missed her.... Tighter ... oh!... tighter."
His breath came in a fierce, whistling rush, and he sat bolt upright,
gripping their hands and struggling.
"Nigel, fetch the doctor!" shrieked Janey.
But Len had his brother's hand in the agonised grip of dying.
"Tighter ... oh, tighter...."
There was another whistling rush of breath, but this time no
struggle--only a sigh.
Len fell back on the pillow, and the terror passed suddenly from his
face.
CHAPTER IX
AND YOU ALSO SAID ...
During the week that followed Leonard's death, there was a succession of
heavy storms. Chill sodden winds drove June from the fields, and
substituted a bleak mock-autumn. Sparrow Hall was full of the moaning
winds--they sped down the passages, and throbbed against the doors, they
whistled through cracks and chinks, and rumbled in the chimneys.
Janey was in bed for the first few days; she had collapsed utterly. The
two blows which had fallen on her almost together had smitten her into a
kind of numbness, in which she lay, white and stiff and tearless,
through the windy hours. Nigel scarcely ever left her, and he scarcely
ever spoke to her--they just crouched together, she on the bed, he on a
chair beside it, their fingers twined, both dumbly busy with the
problems of death and anguish that had assaulted their lives.
Meantime the routine of the house and farm remained unbroken. The "man"
looked after the latter, and through the former moved a figure that
seemed strangely out of place. When "Tottie Coughdrop" arrived the
morning after Len's death, she proved to be no more or less than a
novice from St. Margaret's Convent, and finding her ministrations as
truly needed as if her patient had been alive, she did not leave on
finding him dead.
She nursed Janey--at least she did for her the little that Nigel could
not do; she dusted and cooked; she made Furlonger eat, the stiffest duty
of all. It used to hurt Nigel when he thought how Len would have enjoyed
seeing him sit down to supper every night with a nun.
Novice Unity Agnes also undertook all the arrangements for the
funeral--which had always been a nightmare to Nigel and Janey. Moreover,
the day before, she went to East Grinstead and bought a black skirt and
blouse and hat for Janey, who but for her would never have thought of
going into mourning at all; and though her charity was not able to
overcome her diffidence and buy a mourning suit for Nigel, she sewed
black bands on all his coats.
That was how it happened that the funeral of Leonard Furlonger was such
a surprise to the inhabitants of the Three Counties. The coffin was met
at the church door by the choir headed by a crucifix, and the service
was read by a priest in a black cope. There were hymns too--Novice Unity
Agnes's favourites, all about as appropriate as "How doth the little
busy bee"--and incense, and a little collection of nuns, persuaded by
the kind-hearted novice to swell the scanty number of mourners. In fact,
as Nigel remarked bitterly, the whole thing was a joke, and it was a
shame Len had missed it.
He and Janey walked home alone, arm in arm, through the wet lanes. As
usual, they did not speak, but they strained close together as the
solitude of the fields crept round them. The rain had cleared, but the
wind was still romping in the hedges--little tearful spreads of sky
showed among the clouds, very pale and rain-washed, soon swallowed up by
moving shapes of storm.
Janet went to bed early. She had suddenly found that she could sleep,
and her appetite for sleep became abnormal. She woke each morning
greedily counting the hours till night. In the old careless days she had
never set such store on sleep, because it had meant merely strengthening
and resting and refreshing; now it meant what was more to her than
anything else in life--forgetting.
Nigel could not sleep. In his heart the lights were not yet all put out.
There were flashes of terror and sparks of desire, and dull flares of
conjecture. He had sometimes hesitated whether he should tell Janey his
secret, but had drawn back on each occasion, urged partly by the thought
of adding to her burden, but principally by a feeling of shame. His
wonderful dream, which had sustained him so triumphantly during six
months of work and sacrifice, had now shrivelled into a poor little
secret, such as school-girls nurture--a love which must always be hidden
and silent and unconsummated.
His brain ached with regrets and revisualisations, quaked with
apprehension and the knowledge of his own utter helplessness in the face
of circumstances. The thought of Lowe's perfidy to Janet would rouse in
him a sweat of rage from his poor attempts at sleep. Janey stood to
Nigel for all that was noble, meek and understanding, and that she
should be treated heartlessly and lightly by a scoundrel not worthy to
black her boots, was a thought that drove him nearly rabid with hate.
What was he to do to save Tony from this swine? He knew perfectly well
how she would look upon him if she heard his story. He remembered the
hard, stiff little figure in the garden of Shovelstrode--"You won my
friendship under false pretences." What would she say to the cad who had
won by false pretences not only her friendship but her body, her heart
and her soul? Yet he could never tell her the truth. He would not betray
Janet even to this girl he loved, and a vague accusation could easily be
denied by Lowe, and was not likely to be believed by Tony.
Often he envied Len--lost in cool sleep, free from responsibilities and
problems, eased for ever from the soul-chafing burdens of hate and love.
It was the beginning of July. Sunshine baked on the fields, and drank
the green out of the grass, so that the fields were brown, with splashes
of yellow where the buttercups still grew. In the hedges the wild
elder-rose sent out its sickening sweetness, while from the ditches came
the even more cloying fragrance of the meadowsweet. The haze of a great
heat veiled the distance from Nigel, as he tramped over the parched
grass into Kent. He saw the roofs of Scarlets and Redpale shimmering in
the valley of the hammer ponds, but beyond them was a fiery, thundering
dusk, which swallowed up the hills of Cowden in the east.
He walked with bent head and arms slack. He often took these lonely
walks, undaunted by either storm or swelter. He knew that Janey missed
him, but he could not keep his body still while his mind ran to and fro
so desperately.
His walks were full of dark and furious planning of schemes that came to
nothing. He roamed aimlessly through the country, without noticing where
he went--except that he half unconsciously avoided the roads and wider
lanes. He was desperate because his brain worked so slowly, a cloud
seemed to lie on it, and he had a tendency to lose the thread of his
ideas after he had followed them a little way.
This afternoon he was wandering towards the valley of the hammer ponds.
It was nearly seven when he came to Furnace Wood. The sun was swimming
to the west through whorls of heat. A sullen glow crawled over the sky,
nearly brown in the west. The air hung heavy in the wood, laden with the
pungency of midsummer flowers and grasses--scarcely a leaf stirred,
though now and then an unaccountable rustling shudder passed through the
thickets.
Weariness dropped on Nigel like a cloak--he was used to it. It was not
really physical, only the deadly striving of his soul reaching out to
his body and exhausting it. He flung himself down in a clump of bracken
and tansy, sinking down in it, till everything was shut out by the tall,
earth-smelling stalks. This was what he often found himself longing for
with a desperate physical desire--a little corner, cool and quiet and
green, shut off from life, where he could drowse--and forget.
This evening only the first part of his desire was satisfied. He had his
corner, but he could not drowse in it. His limbs lay inert, but his
thoughts kicked painfully. His brain hammered with old impressions,
which, instead of wearing away with time, each day bored and jarred with
renewed power. He was the victim of an abnormally acute mentality--just
as to a swollen limb the lightest touch is painful, so to Nigel's brain
inflamed with grief and struggle, every impression was like a blow, an
enduring source of agony.
He heard footsteps on the path. No one could see him--it was still quite
light in the fields, but in the wood was dusk and a blurring of
outlines; besides, he was deeply buried in the tall stalks. However,
though he could not be seen, he could see, for on the path stood a
golden pillar of sunshine into which the footsteps must pass. Nigel
wondered if it could be Lowe, returning early for some reason from
Shovelstrode. But the steps did not sound heavy enough, and the next
minute he saw the white of a woman's dress through the trees. In an
instant his limbs had shrunk together, for another of those sickening
blows had smitten his brain. The figure had passed out of the pillar of
sunset, but he had seen Tony Strife as she went by.
She was dressed in white, and wore no hat, only a muslin scarf over her
hair. She carried a cloak on her arm, and Furlonger realised that she
must be going to dine at Redpale. The sight of Tony--he had not seen
her since he lost her, or rather his dream of her--threw him into a fit
of torment. He flung himself back among the stalks, and rolled there,
biting them, suddenly mad with pain.
The next moment he started up. A thud and a low cry came from a few
yards further on.
Nigel sprang to his feet. He remembered that not far off the path ran by
the mouth of a disused chalk quarry, from which it was divided only by a
very rickety fence. Suppose.... He crashed through the bushes to the
path, and dashed along it to the chalk-pit. Something white lay only a
few feet from the dreadful brink.
Just here the path was in darkness--hazel bushes and a dense thicket of
alder shut out the sun. For a moment he could not make out clearly what
had happened, but was immediately reassured by seeing Tony sit up, and
try to struggle to her feet.
"What is it?" she cried, hearing his steps behind her. "Who's there?"
"Are you hurt?"
"Oh, Mr. Furlonger...."
She made another struggle to rise, but could not without his hand.
"Are you hurt?" he repeated.
"No-o-o."
"I think you are a little."
He was trembling all over, and hoped she did not notice it.
"I fell over some wire, just here, where the path is so dark. I might
have gone over the edge," she added with a shudder.
"You had a lucky escape--but I'm afraid you're hurt."
"It isn't much. I may have twisted my ankle a bit, that's all."
She stood there in the shadows, her white dress gleaming like a moth,
her face mysterious in the disarray of her wrap. Nigel's eyes devoured
her, while his heart filled itself with inexpressible pain.
"Take my arm," he said huskily, "and I'll help you back to
Shovelstrode."
"Oh, no!--I'll go on to Redpale. It's much nearer--if you'll be so kind
as to help me."
"But how about getting home?"
"My fiancé, Mr. Lowe, will drive me home. He was to have fetched me too,
but at the last moment he had to go up to town, and couldn't be back in
time."
"Are you sure you're well enough to go out to dinner?" He hated the idea
of taking her to Redpale.
"Oh, quite--this is nothing. Besides, dining at Redpale is just like
dining at home--I don't call it going 'out' to dinner."
Furlonger winced, and gave her his arm, hoping she would not notice how
it shook.
They walked slowly out of Furnace Wood, towards the leaden east. Tony
limped slightly, and Nigel wanted to carry her, but he dared not risk
his patched self-control too far.
"You should never have come all this way alone," he said gruffly,
"these woods by the quarries are dangerous."
"I expect my father will be furious when he finds out what I've done.
But I hoped that if I walked across the fields, instead of driving round
by the road, I--I might meet my fiancé on his way home from the
station."
A tremulous archness crept into her voice. Nigel shuddered.
"I'm pleased I met you," she said gently, after a pause, "because I
wanted to tell you how dreadfully sorry I am about your brother."
"Thank you."
"And I want to tell you that I'm so glad about your success in London. I
saw in the papers how you distinguished yourself at Herr von
Gleichroeder's concert."
Nigel did not speak.
"I suppose you'll soon be going back to town?" she went on timidly.
"I don't know. I can't leave my sister."
"But you can take her with you. It would be a pity to throw up your
career just when everything looks so promising."
They were not far from Redpale now. The sunset was creeping over the
sky--only the east before them was dark, banked high with thundery
vapour. Nigel could still hear Tony speaking, as if in a kind of dream.
His thoughts were busy elsewhere.
"Won't you?" repeated Tony for the second time.
"Won't I what?"
"Go back to London, and make yourself famous."
"I don't see much chance of that."
"But I do--and so will you when you're not so unhappy. Now, to please
me, won't you promise to go back to London and make yourself a great
career? You and I used to be friends once--I hope we're friends
still--and I shall always be interested in everything you do. I expect
to see your name in a very high place some day. Now, for my sake,
promise to go back."
"For your sake...."
"Yes--since you won't go for your own."
They had stopped a moment to rest her foot. Nigel lifted his eyes from
the grass and looked into hers--wondering. Was it true, was it even
possible, that she had never seen his love? She could not, or she would
not speak like this--"For my sake." After all, she would never expect
him to dare ... that would blind her to much that might have betrayed
him had he been worthier. No, she had not seen his love, and she had
never loved him. She had never loved any man but Quentin Lowe--he was
her first love, he had lit the first flame in her heart, and that heart
was his, in all its purity and burning.
Standing there beside her in the sunset, her weight resting deliciously
on him as she raised her injured foot from the ground, he realised the
change that had come to Tony. Her manner was as entirely different from
her manner of six months ago at Shovelstrode as that had been different
from the manner of those still earlier days at Lingfield or Brambletye.
In those days, during their playtime, Tony had been a school-girl, a
delightful hoyden, the best pal and fellow-adventurer a man could have.
In December, in the garden at Shovelstrode, she had lost that valiant
girlhood, and at the same time her womanhood was unripe--she had been a
crude mixture of girl and woman, sometimes provokingly both, sometimes
repellingly neither. But to-day she was woman complete. Both her mind
and her body seemed to have stepped out of their green adolescence.
There was a certain dignity of curve about the tall figure resting
against him, which Nigel had not seen in the forest or in the garden;
there was a clear and confident look in the eyes which in earlier days
had been either wistful or timid; there was a heightened colour on the
cheeks. Her manner was full of gentle assurance, her speech easy and
sympathetic--as utterly different from the crude tactlessness of
Christmastide as from the school-girl rattle of November.
Yes, Tony was a woman come into her kingdom, proud, sweet, compassionate
and strong. Quentin Lowe had made her this in the short weeks of his
love. Unworthy little cad as he was, he had yet been able to raise her
from girlhood to womanhood, to crown her with the diadem of her
heritage....
"Tony," cried Nigel, caught in a sudden storm of impulse, "do you love
Quentin Lowe?"
"Love him!--why, of course.... Let's move on."
"You're not angry with me?--I have my reason for asking."
"No, I'm not angry. But what reason can you have?"
"I remember," said Nigel desperately, "what you told me six months ago.
You said you couldn't forgive...."
The colour rushed to his face, but he fought on.
"There is something which I think you ought to know about him."
"What do you mean?"
She spoke sharply, but not quite so sharply as he had expected.
"Miss Strife--it's very difficult for me ... but I think I ought----"
"I suppose," she said, her voice faltering a little, "you're trying to
tell me--you think you ought to tell me--that Quentin hasn't always been
quite--quite worthy of himself. I know."
"You know!"
"Yes."
There was silence, broken only by the swish of their footsteps through
the grass.
"How did you know?--Who told you?" cried Furlonger suddenly.
"I might ask--how do _you_ know?"
"The girl--was a friend of mine...."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"Don't mistake me. I--I didn't love her--not in that way, I mean. But,
Tony--who told you?"
"Quentin."
"My God!"
"Why are you so surprised? It was right that he should tell me."
"Of course. But I--I didn't think he would."
Tony hesitated a moment--it struck Nigel that she was considering how
far she ought to take him into her confidence. The thought humiliated
him.
"He did tell me," she said after a pause, "he told me everything, one
night, nearly three weeks ago, just before your brother died. He
suddenly came to Shovelstrode--very late, after we had all gone
upstairs. He wanted to see me--and I came down ... oh, I shall never
forget it! He was standing there, all white and tired--and very wet, as
if he'd been lying in the grass. He tried to speak, but he couldn't--and
I was frightened, like a silly ass, and I cried ... and then he told me
all about himself--and this girl."
"And you?..."
She shuddered.
"I--I told him he must go."
"You told him to go!"--his voice had a hungry catch in it.
"Yes--I was a beast."
Anxiety and scorn strove together in him.
"But you changed your mind."
She nodded.
"Tony!"
"Well, why not?"
"Because it's paltry and weak of you--he doesn't deserve your
forgiveness--and you've no right to forgive him for what he did to
another woman."
"Do you think I haven't considered that other woman?"
"You must have. But--egad!--you're so calm about it. Don't you realise
what all this means--to her?"
"You think I ought to make him marry her?"
"Of course not--she wouldn't have him if she was paid. But--but how can
_you_ marry him, Tony?"
She bit her lip.
"I'm sorry I put things so bluntly, but I'm always a blundering ass when
I'm excited. Tony, you're not to marry this man."
By her mounting colour he saw that he had said too much.
"I beg your pardon--I know all this sounds like impertinent
interference. But it isn't. I've been worrying about it a lot--about
your marrying him. I felt you ought to know...."
"Well, I do know--and I've forgiven him."
"I'm not sure that isn't even worse than your not knowing."
She stared at him in anger and surprise.
"You say that!--you!--the man but for whom perhaps I never should have
forgiven him."
Nigel gasped. "What do you mean?"
"Well, at first, as I told you, I felt I couldn't forgive him. But
afterwards I remembered all you said."
"_I_ said!"
"Yes."
"What?--When?"
"Don't you remember that day you came over to Shovelstrode and said,
'You will have to forgive me a great many things because I am so very
hungry'?"
They had stopped again; the fields swelled round them, ghostly in the
lemon twilight, and a wistful radiance glowed on Tony's face. He
searched her eyes despairingly--he scarcely knew what for. The anger in
them had died, and in its place was a beautiful serenity and kindliness.
But that was not what he was looking for. His heart was full of hunger
and tears, yet he did not hunger or cry for the woman who stood before
him, but for the little girl he had known long months ago.
"Quentin used almost the same words as you did," she said, breaking the
silence, "he told me how all his life he had been hungry, always craving
for something good and pure and satisfying, never able to reach it. Then
he met this girl, and he thought that he'd find in her all he was
seeking. But he found only sorrow--sorrow for them both. He was in
despair, in hell--and he believed I could help him out and make him a
good man again. Don't you remember how you said that a man's only chance
of rising out of the mud was for some woman to give him a hand and help
him up?"
Nigel could not find words. A thick, misty horror was settling on him.
Had those poor pleadings of his dying self then turned against him in
his hour of need?
"There was Quentin asking for my help," continued Tony. "Oh, I know I'm
no better than other girls, than the girl he used to love, but somehow
I can't help feeling I'm the girl sent to help Quentin. When I told him
he must go, he nearly went crazy ... his father said he was afraid he
would kill himself ... and I--I was nearly mad too, for I--oh, God! I
loved him."
A sounding contralto note swept into her voice; it seemed to swell up
from her heart, from her heaving woman's breast on which her hands were
folded.
"So I forgave him."
"Tony!..." cried Nigel faintly.
"Yes--I'm grateful to you. I'm afraid that when I saw you at
Shovelstrode I was very stupid and stiff--I was a horrid little beast,
and I couldn't forgive you for what was after all an honour you had done
me. Now I see how much your friendship meant to me. But for you, Quentin
and I might have been parted for ever."
A stupid rage was tearing Furlonger, and there was a mockery of laughter
in it. He saw that his tragedy was after all only a farce--he was the
time-honoured lover of farce, who with infinite pains makes a ladder to
his lady's chamber, and then sees his rival swarm up it. There he stood,
forlorn, discomfited, frustrated--but also intensely comic. Perhaps the
student was right about Offenbach....
"I'm surprised that you should be so disgusted with me," said Tony.
The ghostly laughter pealed again, and at the same time he remembered
that "if the man's a sport, he laughs too." He threw back his head, and
startled her with a hearty laugh.
"Mr. Furlonger!"
"I'm sorry--but things struck me suddenly as rather funny."
"How?"
"Oh, I don't suppose they'd strike you the same way. But it seems funny
you should care whether I'm disgusted or not."
"I do--of course I do; and I can't see why you are disgusted. After all
you said...."
"Damn all I said!--I'm sorry, but I never thought of a case like this."
He blushed, remembering the case he had thought of.
They walked down the hill--they could see Redpale now, huddling beneath
them in its orchards. The colours of the sunset had grown fainter, and
pale, trembling lights burned on the barn-roofs and the pond.
Their feet beat swiftly on the rustling grass. Furlonger's time was
short.
"I'm going to try to be a big woman," said Tony softly, "a strong, brave
woman; and I don't want to think sentimental rot about a perfect knight
and a spotless hero and all that. I want to be a man's fighting
comrade--I want to feel he can't do without me. It was you who first
told me that I must take men as I find them--but not leave them so."
"Tony, if only I thought there was any good in him----"
"I tell you there's a mine of good in him. But he's never had a chance
till now. Our engagement is to be a very long one, and already I can see
a difference in him. It's not I that have done it--it's his love for
me. And all the sorrow he went through, when he thought he'd lost me,
seems to have made him gentler and humbler somehow. Quentin has suffered
dreadfully"--there was a little click in her throat--"and he wants so
much to be good and pure and true. And I've promised to help him, by
believing that he can and will do better."
His own words were being mercilessly fired back at him. He remembered
how he had first breathed them to her, full of hope and entreaty. In the
face of such artillery his rout was complete.
"Forgive him, Tony!" he cried. "Forgive him! But oh, forgive me, too!"
They had reached the gate of Redpale Farm. He stopped--he would go no
further.
"Tony--forgive me too."
The words broke from his lips in an exceeding bitter cry.
"Forgive you!--what for?"
"For a great deal--for all you know of, and for the more you don't
know."
"Of course I forgive you--but I thank you most."
"No, you must forgive me most--are you sure that you forgive me for what
you don't know as well as for what you know?"
"Quite sure"--her voice trembled a little, for he was beginning to
frighten her.
"Then good-bye."
"Good-bye. I--I hope I haven't brought you very far out of your way."
He muttered something unintelligible, pulled off his cap, and left her.
He walked quickly, pricked on by a discovery which was also a triumph.
Quentin Lowe had not taken Tony from him after all. The Tony he loved
had never known Quentin Lowe, she had been no man's friend but Nigel
Furlonger's--and so much his friend that when he had been taken from her
she would not stay without him, but herself had gone away. Quentin Lowe
loved a beautiful woman--proud and sweet and assured, with just a dash
of the prig about her. Nigel had never loved this woman, he had loved a
little girl--and the little girl who had been his comrade in the Kentish
lanes and the ruins of Brambletye, would never be any man's but his.
He plunged recklessly through the fields, and recklessly into Furnace
Wood. Lowe could not be far off. He must have missed the fast train from
Victoria, but the next one arrived only an hour or so later. Nigel
hurried through the wood, now coal dark, and full of a strange dread for
him--though he did not know of the ghosts which haunted it. As he caught
his first glimpse of the faintly crimsoned west, he saw a figure
outlined against it. Some one was coming down the slope of Furnace
Field. It must be Lowe.
The two men met on the rim of the wood. It was a moment of blackness for
Quentin when he saw the blazing eyes and bitten lips of Furlonger.
Strange words broke from his tongue--
"Hast thou found me, O mine enemy!"
Nigel's great body towered over him. His lips had shrunk back from his
teeth, which gleamed in the dying ugly light. Lowe remembered the other
Furlonger who was dead. In Furnace Wood fate would not tamper with
vengeance as at Cowsanish.
Suddenly Nigel spoke.
"Two good women have forgiven you--so I've nothing to say--or do.
Pass----"
He moved out of the path, and waved his hand towards the wood.
"Pass----" he said.
Quentin hesitated a moment.
"Won't--won't you shake hands?"
"No. Pass--and for God's sake, pass quickly."
CHAPTER X
A TOAST
A few faint stars were in the west as Nigel tramped towards it. They
seemed to swim up out of the eddies of crimson fog that floated
there--they seemed to be showing little candles of hope to the man who
turned his back on the east. The castle of the dayspring lay behind him,
swallowed in thundery murk, but before him were the lights of a broader
palace where dead hopes and dead hatreds keep state together.
The west glowed and trembled and purpled--fiery rays rested on the
woods, and reached over the sky to the moon. Then against the purple
showed a tall chimney, rising from a high-roofed cottage that squatted
in the fields of Wilderwick.
As Nigel walked down the hill towards Sparrow Hall, a great quickening
realisation struck his exhausted heart. He knew that his dream was not
dead. Tony, the light in which he had seen it, was gone for ever, but
the dream itself was still there in the dark. For six months he had
tried to lead a good and honourable life, and now, though the motive was
gone, the old desire remained as strong and white as ever. He could
never be as he had been before he met Tony. He knew now that it was not
she that had called him--she had merely opened his ears to a voice that
had been calling him all through his life, through struggle, lust and
pain, failure and hate--and was calling him still, through the utter
darkness. The child in him, which had desperately sought congenial
comradeship in a little girl, rose out of the wreck, and heard as in a
dream the voices of boys and girls in London, laughing, fooling and
ragging together, calling to all in him that was gay and young and
outrageous. He wanted to go back to London, he wanted to play and to
work, and to win for himself what he had once yearned to win for Tony.
His music, that one touch of the poetic and supernatural in his sordid,
materialistic life, would raise him up in this his Last Day, and give
him his heart's desire--his desire for a clean life and an honourable
name.
He stood for a moment in the great lonely field--the last of the sun and
the first of the moon upon him, around him the dawning eternity of the
stars. Two hours ago he had been festering, sick, with his schemes, the
comrade of a hundred repulsive ideas. Now he was alone--utterly alone
with his one great ambition, stripped of the last rag of personal motive
that had clung to it--his ambition to be honest and pure and true.
Tony had pointed him out the way, and directly he had taken it, she had
gone--to show it to another man, and walk in it with him. Nigel suddenly
pictured that man. He was at Redpale Farm ... he kneeled in the dust at
Tony's feet ... her hands were upon his head. In her he found
redemption, love and blessing--and dared he, Furlonger, grudge
redemption, love and blessing to any man? He did not grudge them--let
Quentin Lowe take them, walk in white with Tony, and be worthy of her.
Furlonger, too, would walk in white and be worthy--but he would walk
alone.
No, not quite alone. He trod softly up the path to Sparrow Hall, between
the ranks of the folded flowers. The evening primroses and night-scented
stock sent their fragrance in with him at the door. The house was in
darkness, and he groped his way to the kitchen, where he found Janey.
She was half asleep in the armchair by the fire--she had laid the
supper, that dreary little supper for two, and now lay huddled by the
dying embers, cold, in spite of the thick heat of the night.
"Janey," whispered Nigel, as he kissed her.
She started.
"Oh, you're back at last!--what a time you've been!"
"I'm sorry, dear. Come now, I'll light the lamp, and we'll have supper."
She rose listlessly, and sat down opposite him.
"It's a rotten supper--I don't cook so well as Novice Unity Agnes."
"Nonsense! you cook quite well enough for me. Janey--will you come and
cook for me in London?"
"In London?"--she stared at him blankly.
"Yes, I must go back to my work--and I can't leave you here."
"But--but--I don't understand--and what shall we do about the farm?"
"We can sell it, and the money will keep us--just the two of us in a
workman's flat--till my training is over, and I'm earning money on my
own. Oh, Janey, I don't suppose I'll ever be rich or famous or that I'll
fill the Albert Hall--but I--I shall be more worthy of you, dear."
"Of me!"--she laughed.
"Yes. Don't you understand? I've got my dream back again--but there's an
empty place in it.... Will you fill it, Janey?"
She looked questioningly at him with her great haggard eyes.
"Who left it empty?"
"Tony Strife," he said in a low voice.
"Nigel!..."
She rose to her feet and came to him.
"My poor, poor boy."
Her pity, the first he had received, had an unexpected effect on him. It
nearly unmanned him--he put up his hands to her neck, and drew down her
face to him, while his body shuddered.
"Nigel ... did she know?"
"No, never--thank God!"
She stroked his hair, and held his head against her breast.
"It was a hopeless dream, Janey."
She could not contradict him.
"But it helped me."
"Then it was a good dream."
He gently slipped himself free.
"And now we'll say no more about it."
After supper Janey asked Nigel to play to her. He often used to play to
her in the evenings, to relieve the aching weight of agony that gathered
on her with the dusk. She lay back in the armchair, her eyes closed,
wondering why Nigel's music, which she had used sometimes to hate,
soothed her so inexpressibly now. She always asked him to play when she
felt her heart was becoming hard--music seemed to melt down that stony
sense of outrage which sometimes grew like a cancer into her thoughts.
She would not, dared not, have a hard heart, and music was the only
thing at present that could keep it soft.
She thought with gathering tears of the confession her brother had just
made her, but she would not let her mind dwell on it--somehow she felt
he would not like it. The episode did not belong to the surface of
things, it belonged to the hidden life of a secret man, a holy, hopeless
thing, to be guarded from the prying even of reverent thoughts. She knew
that though she and Nigel might often talk together of her sorrow, they
would never talk of his.
He was playing a strange tune that pattered on the silence like rain. It
was the song of the man who has dreamed of love, who has wakened at last
to find it only a dream, and that he lies with empty arms on a hard
bed--and then suddenly realises that he has before him that which is
sweeter than sleep and dreams--the joy of the day's work. He played the
Prelude of the Day's Work, through which would trill the magic memory of
love--love, which is so much sweeter in memory and in dream than in
realisation.
At last he put aside his violin, and going over to Janey, he knelt down
by her and kissed her tired face.
"Oh, Nigel ... Nigel!"
"You'll come with me to London, and help me in my new life?"
"I want a new life too."
"We'll start one together."
"And--and you'll play the devil out of me when he comes?"
"Always--and we won't have any secrets from each other, Janey."
She smiled faintly. Her brother always amused her when he spoke of
secrets.
There was silence for some minutes. The moon was leaving the window,
climbing high among the stars. A little wind began to flutter round
Sparrow Hall, whispering and throbbing.
"I'm tired," said Janey.
"You must go to bed."
"Yes."
"And you'll dream of the life you and I are going to live together--of
success for me, and happiness for you."
She rose and put her hands on his shoulders.
"Good-night, lad."
"Good-night. I think I'm going to bed too. I think I can sleep to-night.
But before we go we must drink a toast, Janey."
"A toast!--to whom?"
"To--to two people who we thought were going to make you and me
happy--but are going to make each other happy instead."
She did not answer for a moment. She and her brother stood facing each
other in the strange freak of lamplight and moonlight. Then she said--
"Yes. We must _want_ them to be happy, Nigel."
He turned to the uncleared supper-table and poured out some of the red
wine that Janey drank in these days of her weakness.
"We'll drink to their happiness, old sister. We won't go whining and
grudging because it isn't ours. Besides, we're going to have it some
day--we'll make a new lot of our own."
"Yes, Nigel"--Janey's eyes had kindled--"we're not going to grudge them
what they've got, or be envious and mean."
They faced each other across the table. The wind gave a sudden little
sigh round Sparrow Hall--blustered--and was still.
"A toast!" cried Nigel, lifting his glass, "a toast!--To those who've
got what we have lost."
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Three Furlongers, by Sheila Kaye-Smith