"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 almostroughly, "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 mudwouldn'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."
THE WORLD AGAINST THE THREE
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...."
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, butas 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."
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 tohis 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, thearrière 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 shouldhave 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 wasan 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 presidingover 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 ofLife 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 ofsophistication 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.
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 thepost 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."
"TheFurlonger!"
"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!"
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. Shetook 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 stagefright?—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."
"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 stagefright?—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 wasindependent 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."
"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, Ican'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——"
"My Darling, Darling Boy,
"Why don't you write? Didn't you get my last letter? I posted it on the 16th. Quentin, Ican'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 prancingalong, 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 eightto-nighttheconcert 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 notstand 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.
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 whichshe 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 thegleaming 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 toldher?" She was accepting the impossible quite meekly now.
"No, no!—I can't tellher."
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 asever 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 mether... 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 aslight 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 hissalvation, 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 inthe 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 mybrothers, 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—