'And throughout all eternityI forgive you, you forgive me—As our dear Redeemer said:This the wine and this the bread.'"
'And throughout all eternityI forgive you, you forgive me—As our dear Redeemer said:This the wine and this the bread.'"
'And throughout all eternityI forgive you, you forgive me—As our dear Redeemer said:This the wine and this the bread.'"
'And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me—
As our dear Redeemer said:
This the wine and this the bread.'"
"You don't believe in the dear Redeemer, do you?"
"Of course not—but it's poetry."
They had neither of them realised that the interview was near an end, but these last words seemed to have finished it somehow. They were both standing, and the silence remained unbroken.
Then suddenly Janey moved. An absolutely new impulse had seized her. She went over to the glass, and looked at herself in it. Then she smoothed her hair, arranged her gown, made it tidy at the waist, and buttoned it at the wrists. Quentin watched her in blank wonder—he had never before seen her pay the slightest heed to her appearance. But to-day she stood a full five minutes before the glass, patting, smoothing, arranging—settling every fold of her careless garments with minutest care. Then she turned to him.
"Good-bye, Quentin."
Her head was held high—one would scarcely know her in her sleekness and order.
"Janey—you forgive me."
She did not speak.
"Janey—for God's sake!—oh, please forgive me!—because I've suffered so much, because I've wanted you so, because I've struggled to find redemption...."
His eyes burned, full of entreaty. But at first she could not answer him. She moved slowlytowards the door, but stopped on the threshold, and looked back at him, her heart hot and sick in her breast with pity. She had never realised Quentin's youth so absolutely and heartrendingly as to-day.
"I forgive you," she said, "but not for any of those reasons. I forgive you because you are—oh, God!—only a boy."
Janet walked quickly through the darkening country. A power from behind seemed to be driving her on—a hot, smoky power of uttermost shame. It was symbolised by the thunder-vapour that curled in the east, a black, swagging cloud that lumbered towards the sunset over reaches of heat-washed sky.
She hardly realised how she had won through that interview at Redpale Farm. The details were dim and jumbled in her memory, like the details of what has taken place just before an accident or during an illness. She hoped she had not been undignified, but really did not care very much about it. The tension which had characterised both her calmness and her hysteria was gone—her emotions seemed to flop. Unlike so many women, pride gave her no support in her dreadful hour.
But her feelings were merely relaxed, not subdued, and her loose, run-down nerves quivered as agonisedly as during their stretch and strain. The realisation of all she had lost swept over her heart, engulfing it. The very fields through which she walked were part of this realisation—it was here, or it was there, that she had stood with Quentin on such and such a day, or had watched him coming towards her out of the mist-blurred distance, or seen him go from her, stopping toraise his arm in farewell, just there, where the foxgloves lifted purple poles in the ditches of Starswhorne. She could see the thickets of Furnace Wood, hazed over with heat—they were haunted now, she would never go near Furnace Wood again. Two ghosts wandered up and down its heat-baked paths, rustled in the hazels, and stood where the tufted hedge shut off Furnace Field—loving and dumb. They were not the ghosts of dead bodies, but of dead selves—of two who walked apart in distant ways, who would never again meet each other save in memory and in sleep.
A metallic hardness had dropped upon the day. The arch of the sky was steel, sunless, yet bright with a cold sheen; at the rim it dipped to copper, hot and sullen, save where in the west two brazen bars sent out harsh lights to rest on the fields and make them too like brass.
Janet at last reached Sparrow Hall, and as she did so, for the first time felt physical fatigue. It came upon her in a spasm—she was just able to stagger into the kitchen, and sink down in her accustomed chair, every muscle aching and exhausted, her head splitting with pain, and her body shuddering with a sudden and unaccountable sickness.
For some time she did not move, she just fought with the sheer physical discomfort of it all. Her head lay on the table, her arms were spread over the wood, and the collapsed line of her shoulders was of utter powerlessness and pain. Then two tears rolled slowly from her eyes—they were part of her physical plight, and for it alone she wept.For the sorrow of her soul it seemed as if she could only weep dry salt.
Oh, merciful God!—Quentin looked upon her love as his ruin, and turned from her in panic to another woman. In this other love he would find the peace and happiness and goodness that Janey had ached and striven for years to give him; he would learn to forget the wicked Janey Furlonger, whose love had all but been his perdition, who had brought him to sin and torture and despair—and now would lie in the background of his heart, as an evil thing we cover up and pray to forget. This young, innocent girl would save him from his memories of the woman who had given more for his sake than Tony Strife would ever dream of giving. He did not realise her sacrifice—she had given up for his sake the innocence and purity that were more to her simple soul than life, and now he turned from her because she had them not.
Then for the first time a convulsion of wrath seized Janey. For the first time she saw the cruelty and outrage of it all. Her anger blazed up—against Quentin, against the world, against herself. His last letter lay on the table. She seized it, and thrust it into the fire. Then she noticed the box that held his other letters. She seized that too, and crammed it into the grate. Long tongues of flame shot out, and suddenly one of them caught her dress—she screamed, flames and smoke seemed to wrap her round, and in madness she rushed to the door. A man was in the passage. Hegrasped her, and held her to him, beating out the flames.
"Quentin!" she shrieked, "Quentin! Quentin!"
"Janey—darling sister! There! it's all over now. The fire's out. Are you much hurt?"
"Quentin! Quentin!"
Leonard picked her up bodily, and carried her into the kitchen, sitting down by the fire with her on his knee. He began to examine her. Her skirt was nothing but charred rags, her face and hands were black with grime, and there was a horrible smell of singed hair, but she did not seem to be actually burnt. She was trembling from head to feet, her face hidden against his breast.
"I don't think you're really hurt, dear. What a lucky chance I happened to be there! If I'd done as I said and gone to Cherrygarden, you might have been burnt to death. How did you do it, Janey?"
"I was burning Quentin's letters.... Oh, Quentin! Quentin!"
The last dregs of Janey's self-control were gone. Anxiety, shock, grief, humiliation, love, despair and sickening, physical fright, all crowded into a few short hours, had almost deprived her of her reason.
"Quentin! Quentin!" she cried, clinging to Leonard.
She was so tall that he had difficulty in holding her on his knee while she struggled.
"Janey, I can't understand, dearest. Who's Quentin?—not Quentin Lowe?"
"Yes—Quentin Lowe. Lenny, Lenny—he doesn't love me any more."
Leonard kissed her smoke-grimed face repeatedly. He was utterly bewildered.
"He doesn't love me any more," she continued, gasping. "He loves Tony Strife—he's going to marry her. Lenny, he's a devil."
"My darling, can't you tell me what it is? Did you ever love him?"
"Oh, I loved him! I loved him! I gave up all I had to him. Lenny, he thinks my love was his ruin ... he wants to be happy and good, and he thinks he can't be either if he loves me ... he says—
'And throughout all eternityI forgive you, you forgive me.'"
'And throughout all eternityI forgive you, you forgive me.'"
'And throughout all eternityI forgive you, you forgive me.'"
'And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.'"
"My poor old Janey, I'm going to carry you upstairs."
"I can walk," and she tried to stand, but he had only just time to catch her.
"I'm going to carry you. Poor, poor Janey—see what a big baby you are."
He carried her up the rickety stairs, into her room, laying her on the bed.
"Would you like to undress?"
"No—no—Lenny, don't leave me."
He was in despair.
"Janey, dearest, I wish you'd tell me what's happened. I can't comfort you properly when I don't know. Do you really mean to say that you love Quentin Lowe?"
"I love him ... oh, I love him ... but he's a devil."
"Did he know?—did he love you?"
"Yes, he loved me ... and he made me give up everything for his sake ... and now he's going to marry another woman ... Oh, Lenny, Lenny, I want Nigel!"
"Janey—don't—I simply can't bear this. Don't give way so—he isn't worth it."
"Oh, I knew you'd say that."
"I won't say it if you don't like it. But don't be in despair—you'll soon feel better—you'll get over it. And meantime there's Nigel and me...."
"Oh, I want Nigel!"
"I'll wire to him to come down for the week-end, after his concert."
"Lenny ... you'll never forsake me?"
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"I don't expect—I daren't——"
"What do you mean?"
"The disgrace ..."
He stared at her in bewilderment.
"Oh, Lenny ... I don't think you understand."
She had made him understand at last—and in the process had strangely enough recovered something of her self-control. At first she had thought his brain could never receive this ghastly new impression; but gradually she had seen the colour fade from his lips, while a terrible sternness crept into his eyes; she had seen his hand go up to hisforehead with the swift yet uncertain movement of one who has been smitten.
"My God!"
Leonard stepped back from the bed.
She lay gazing at him like a drowning woman. She saw the stern lines of his mouth—had girls any right to expect their brothers to forgive them such things? Yet if Lenny turned from her ... if she lost not only Quentin but the boys....
For a moment there was silence in the little room, with its faded reds and casement open to the fields.
Then suddenly Leonard sprang forward, stooped, and caught Janey in his arms, turning her face to his breast.
They clung together in silence, both trembling. The first faint wind of the evening crept in and ruffled their hair.
"You won't love me so much now."
"I will love you more—but, by God! I'll kill that man!"
"No—no!—Len, no!"
"Hush, dear, don't get excited again."
"But you must promise ... he—he's only a boy."
"Boy be damned! He's a skunk—he's a loathly little reptile, that's all. He isn't worthy to sweep out your cinders, and he—oh, God, Janey! I'd give my life to-morrow for the privilege of wringing his neck to-night."
"Len, promise me you won't hurt him—I—I shall die if you do."
"Well, I'll promise to leave him alone for the present, because I've got you to look after. I want you to go to sleep, dear. Do you think you could sleep?"
"I'm sure I couldn't."
"You could if I mixed you some nice hot brandy and water. Let me go downstairs and get some."
"Oh, Lenny—I'm frightened of being alone."
"But it won't take me a minute—the kettle's on the fire."
The combined longing for a stimulant and for oblivion was too intense for Janey to resist.
"You're sure you won't be long?"
"Yes—I promise—just down and up again."
"Then thank you, Len."
He went down to the kitchen, and mixed a pretty stiff grog—for himself. Janey had been too over-wrought to notice that her brother was trembling and flushed, and that there was a strange, drawn look about his face. He had turned back half-way to Cherrygarden because he felt "queer," and to this no doubt she owed her life. In the horror and confusion of the last half-hour he had forgotten his own illness, but now it was growing upon him, and he must fight it for her sake. He drank a tumblerful of brandy and water, then mixed some for Janey, and went upstairs.
He helped her take off her charred skirt and bodice, and wrapped her in a dressing-gown. He bathed her smoky face and hands, then he pulled a rug over her, and gave her the brandy. It was a strong dose for a woman, and in spite of all she had said she was soon asleep.
He sat down beside her and closed his eyes. The soft air fanned him, and the scents of the little garden steamed up and scattered themselves in the room.
Janey lay with her head sunk deep in the pillow, her face half-buried in it, and her breathing came heavily, almost in sobs. Her knees were drawn up, and her arms crossed on her breast, the hands twisted together—there was something pathetic and childish in the huddled attitude.
Leonard thought to himself—
"It's nearly time for Nigel's concert—I wonder if he's thinking of Janey and me."
Leonard dozed a little, but he did not sleep. A leaden weariness was in his limbs, but his heart and brain were horribly active, forbidding rest. His heart was full of rage, and his brain was full of images—he could doze only till these last crystallised in dreams, when their vividness woke him up at once. He woke each time with a start and a vague feeling of uneasiness and alarm. He feared he was going to be ill—just when Janey needed him so badly. He must bear up till to-morrow; by then she would be better, to-night she was helpless without him. He looked at the cramped figure on the bed, and his throat tightened with sorrow, shame and rage.
She should be avenged—he swore it. Lowe should be made to realise that it was not with impunity that one dragged women like Janey into the mud and then climbed out over their shoulders. He should be made to grovel to her and implore her forgiveness. Len had not quite settled his course of action, but he had fixed the results. Lowe was a worm, a miserable, loathly, little, wriggling worm, and he had slimed a lily—he should squirm under a decent man's boot....
The room darkened. The curtains, fluttering in the dusk-wind, were like ghosts. The line of woods on the horizon became dim, and an owlcalled from them suddenly. Then a procession of clouds began to flit solemnly across the window—driven from the south-west. They were brown against the bottomless grey, and there was a kind of majestic rhythm in their march before the wind.
Len rose with a shudder—somehow he could not sit still. He went to the window and looked out. Then he remembered that he had not shut in the fowls for the night or stalled the cows. He would have to leave Janey for a little and attend to the farm. He stepped back and looked at her. Her bed was in darkness, and all he could see was a long, black mass on the paleness of the bed-clothes. She was sleeping heavily, with quick, stertorous breathing, and it was not likely that she would wake for some time—he had certainly better go now, while she slept so well.
He crept quietly from the room and down the dark stairs. Outside the breeze puffed healingly upon him, cooling him with a sweet dampness as he climbed into the stream-field where the cows were pastured. The mists were too high and clammy for them to be left out at night, and the man had gone home after milking them. He called to them softly, and great shadows began to move out of the fogs towards him. The peace of the twilight and of his work with the calm, milk-smelling beasts, was so great that, in spite of rage and suffering, a kind of dreamy comfort came to Len—a quiet he felt only in the fields. He began to whistle as he drove the cows home before him. Then suddenly the whistling made him remember Nigel's concert.
He had meant to send off a second telegram, which Nigel would receive just before he went on the platform at the Bechstein. The last shattering hour had made him forget his plan, and he realised that if his brother was to have his message of good-cheer it must be sent at once. But how? There was still time, but he could not leave the house, even on such an errand—and yet his brother must be "bucked up" at all costs. To-morrow he would send another wire, asking him to come down for the week-end, but he thought it as well not to risk alarming him to-night. Len pondered a minute, then suddenly it occurred to him that he could give his telegram to the postman, who was due to pass Sparrow Hall on his way back from his round. By a lucky chance there was a telegraph-form in the house; Len filled it in, and then ran out with it to the lane.
He looked up at Janey's window—all was quiet, only the white curtains fluttered out on the wind; anyhow he would hear if she woke and called him. The lane was very dark—the sky was still faintly light above it, but night had fallen between the hedges. He heard footsteps, and saw a figure coming down Wilderwick hill.
"Hullo, Winkworth!" he cried, "I want you to do something for me."
He stepped out into the middle of the lane, and at the same time the figure began to climb the stile into Wilderwick meadows.
"Hi!" shouted Len—he suddenly realised that on fine dry nights the postman would take the field-path to Dormans.
"Hi!" he shouted, running after him. "Winkworth!—I've a——".
The words died on his tongue. He had reached the stile, and saw standing on the further side of it, on the high ground which the darkness had not reached—with the last of the western light upon his face—Quentin Lowe.
For a moment both men stared at each other, then Lowe moved away. Len stood stock still, a queer grimace on his features.
"Were you calling me, sir?"
A voice behind him made him start. The postman had come out of the darkness and stood at his elbow.
"I thought I heard you shout 'Winkworth' when I was far up the hill. Anything you want, Mus' Furlonger?"
"Yes—yes—would you take this telegram to Dormans, and see it sent off? Here's a bob...."
His voice sounded vague, somehow, as if it were a mechanical process unconnected with his real self. He stood watching the old postman as he climbed the stile and took the turning for Dormans, where the track divided. A minute later a figure became silhouetted against the sky on his right; the path to Cowden and the valley farms dipped abruptly a few yards beyond the stile, then climbed to the high grounds near Goatsluck Wood. Quentin Lowe was clearly visible as he hurried away towards Kent—almost as if he feared pursuit.
Leonard stared after him, his eyes bright with hate and fever. A kind of delirium was in hisbrain as he watched that thick-set, slouching figure, caricatured into a dwarf by his fury and the cheverel light. Then suddenly he bounded forward.
He forgot all about the illness that was creeping over him, and Janey 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 wouldonly 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 ceaselessshimmer 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 runningaway. 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'sin 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 thedarkness 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 apiteous 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.
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 oneadmired 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 obstinatecruelty, 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 wasroused 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 loseitself 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....