"And I also dreamed, which pleased me most,That you loved me still the same...."
"And I also dreamed, which pleased me most,That you loved me still the same...."
"And I also dreamed, which pleased me most,That you loved me still the same...."
"And I also dreamed, which pleased me most,
That you loved me still the same...."
He took out the telegram and unfolded it. It ran—
"Come at once. Leonard is ill. Janey."
The little star melody wailed on, rippled characteristically and died. Even then Nigel did not move, he sat with his hands dropped between his knees, still holding Janey's telegram. He seemed to be sitting alone, in a black corner of space, stricken, blank, forsaken.
Then suddenly he recovered himself. "Come at once." He must go at once. He sprang to his feet, pushed his way past one or two meaningless shadows who called after him meaningless words, and the next minute found himself in the passage behind the stage. Seizing his hat and overcoat from the wall, he hurried to the stage-door. The street outside was quiet, at either end were lights and commotion, but the street itself was plunged in echoing peace. A strange fear assaulted Nigel—he hurried into Oxford Street and hailed a taxi. Then he knew what he was afraid of—the opportunity to sit and think.
He tried not to think—he tried to find refuge from thought even in the words that had smitten him. "Come at once. Leonard is ill."—he repeated them over and over, striving for mere mechanical processes. The taxi threaded swiftly through the traffic, the lights swung past with the roar and the whistles. Luckily the streets were notmuch crowded at that hour—it was just before the closing of the theatres and the consequent rush....
He was at Victoria, and a porter had told him that the next train for East Grinstead did not start for half-an-hour. He paced miserably up and down, cursing the blank time, gnawed by conjectures. "Leonard is ill." Len was hardly ever ill, and it must be something serious, or Janey would not have said "Come at once." It must have been sudden too, for the two telegrams had been handed to him together. Perhaps there had been an accident. Perhaps Len was dead. Ice seemed to form suddenly on Nigel's heart—Janey might be trying to break the news gently by saying his brother was ill. No doubt Len was dead—— Oh, Lenny, Lenny!
A strange thing had happened. The dream in which he had lived and worked and slept and eaten for the last six months had suddenly fallen back from him, leaving him utterly alone with his brother and sister. His life in London, with all its struggle and ambition, was as something far off, unreal; no part of his life seemed real, except what he had spent with Len and Janey. After all did anything really matter as much as they? They had been with him always, and his dream had sustained him only a few months. He thought of their childhood together in the old Sussex house, of their adventures and scrapes and hide-and-seeks; he thought of their growing-up, of the wonderful discoveries they had made about themselves, and shared; he thought of their arrival at Sparrow Hall,full of pluck and plans, of the difficulties that had damped the one and dashed the other—of the awful disgrace that had separated the three Furlongers for damnable years. Len and Janey had been his pals, his comrades, his comforters before he had so much as heard of Tony. She was not dethroned, his dream was not dead, but the past which he had half impatiently thrust behind him was coming back to show that it, as well as the future, held treasures and the immortality of love.
The half-hour was nearly over, and the platform was dotted with men and women in evening dress, who had come up from the country to the theatres, and now were going home by the last train. Nigel shut himself into a third-class carriage. The train was not very crowded, and no one disturbed him. Almost mechanically he lighted a cigarette, then leaned back, closing his eyes.
The train began to move—it pulled itself together with a shudder, then slid slowly out of the station. Signal lights swept past, whistles wailed up out of the darkness and died away—suburban stations gleamed—then the train swung out into the night.
Both the windows were wide open, and the wind blew in on Nigel, but he did not notice it. His cigarette had gone out, but he still sucked and bit the end, filling his mouth with strings of tobacco, which he did not notice either, though every now and then he mechanically spat them out. All he was conscious of was the pungent smell of night,which invaded even the rushing train. He knew that the trees were heavy and the hedges tangled with their green—he tried to fling his imagination into some sheltered hollow by a wood, and find rest there. He tried to think of sheep and grass and flowers and watching stars. But it was no use—the night was full of the restlessness of the pulsing train, he could not escape from the train, which throbbed like his heart, and by its throbbing seemed to hold his heart a prisoner in it, as if some mysterious astral link connected the two pulses. The train was the heart of the night and darkness, pulsing in ceaseless despair, and he was the heart of the train, pulsing despairingly too, the very centre of sorrow. It was a definite strain for him to realise this, and yet somehow the sensation would not relax—it was infinite relief when at last the great, noisy heart, the heart of the train, stopped beating, though its silence brought with it a sudden wrench and shock, like death.
Nigel stumbled out on the East Grinstead platform, his limbs cramped, his head swimming. He thought of taking a cab, but by the time he had roused up the local livery stables and set off in one of their concerns he could almost have reached Sparrow Hall by the fields. A walk would do him good. The night was fine, though it smelled of rain.
He had soon left the town behind him, and struck across the fields by St. Margaret's convent. There was no moon, but the stars were unusually lustrous, and the distance was clear, Oxted chalkquarry showing a pale scar on the northern hills. Now and then dark sweeps of cloud passed swiftly overhead, and the wind came in sudden gusts, whistling over the fields, and throbbing through the woods with a great swish of leaves. Nigel had not seen the Three Counties since Easter, which had been early and bleak. The London months since then had to a certain extent denaturalised him, and he was conscious of a vague strangeness in the fields. It was, moreover, four years since he had seen them in their June lushness—the scent of grass was brought him pungently now and then, the scent of leaves, the scent of water.
He crossed from Sussex into Surrey at Hackenden, then plunged through Ashplats Wood into the Wilderwick road. His footsteps were like shadows on the awful silence that filled the night. The stars were flashing from a coal-black sky—between the high hedges only a wisp of the great waste was visible with its dazzle of constellations. Nigel saw Cancer burning his lamps in the west, while straight above him hung the sign of Libra, brilliant, cold, unearthly. Surely the stars were larger and brighter to-night than was normal, than was good. He wished he was at Sparrow Hall. It could not be that he was frightened of the stars, and yet somehow they seemed part of an evil dream. Perhaps he would wake to find himself in his Notting Hill lodgings—perhaps his dream would go on for ever, eternal, malevolent, but still a dream—he would lie on in his bed at Notting Hill, and people would shake him and try to wakehim, and, when they could not wake him, take him and bury him—and he would lie in the earth, deep, with a stone over him—but still with his awful dream of night and high hedges, terror and stars....
He had come to Sparrow Hall. He saw the tall, black chimney against a mass of stars—it seemed to be canting a little, perhaps that was part of the dream. There was a light in Len's room, and the next moment some one moved between it and the window.
"Janey ..." called Nigel softly.
His voice rose with the scents of the garden, in the hush of the night. The next minute there were footsteps on the stairs, then the door flew open, and Janey was in Nigel's arms.
They clung together for several moments. The door had slammed in the draught, and the darkness crept softly round them like an embrace. The dream slipped from Nigel—his silly and hideous nightmare of stars. This quivering, tear-stained woman in his arms had brought him into the reality of sorrow.
"Where is he?—what's happened?" he asked, still holding Janey.
"He's upstairs in bed—he's very ill, Nigel."
"But he's not dead?"
"Not yet."
"Is there any hope?"
"Not much—he's got pneumonia. It's dreadful."
"Has the doctor seen him?"
"Yes—he's been gone only an hour. He saidyou were to be sent for at once. Oh, Nigel, Nigel, it's my fault!"
"What d'you mean?"
"I was wretched and selfish—he'd been queer all the afternoon, and I didn't notice it. I thought only of myself. Then he went out while I was asleep, and when he came back.... Oh, Nigel!... the doctor says he practically did for himself by going out then."
Nigel did not understand, but his mind made no effort to grasp at details.
"I'd better go at once," he said; "is he conscious?"
"Yes—but he says funny things sometimes."
She led the way upstairs, and the next minute they were in Leonard's room. It was a queer little room, extremely low, with bulging walls, sagging beams and an uneven floor. Len lay propped very high with pillows. His face was drawn and feverish—he was literally fighting for his breath, and his lips were blue.
He smiled when he saw Nigel.
"Hullo, old man!... good of you to come.... Lord!"—as he saw his clothes—"put me among the nuts."
"Don't talk," said his brother sharply.
"Your hair ..." panted Len.
"Shut up!"
Len pointed to a glass of water by the bed. Janey gave him a drink. He began to cough violently, and his face became purple. Nigel felt sick.
"I—I'm better," gasped Leonard. "I—I had ... a beastly stitch ... but it's gone."
"When's the doctor coming again?" Nigel asked Janet.
"The first thing to-morrow."
"He ought to have a nurse."
"Oh, no!" cried Len; "you and Janey can manage me ... between you ... I'll soon be all right ... I don't want any little Tottie Coughdrop fussing round."
"He's dreadful," said Janey, "he will talk."
"How long has he been like this?"
"As I tell you, he'd been feeling queer all the afternoon. Then I crocked up for some silly reason, and instead of being properly attended to, he had to look after me"—a sob broke into her voice, and she pulled Nigel aside. "The doctor says it's a frightfully acute case," she whispered.
"But ... but" interrupted Len, "Nigel hasn't told us ... about the concert ... where's the laurel crown?... left it in the train?"
"Oh, do shut up! I'll tell you anything you like if you'll hold your tongue."
"Tell him while I'm giving him his milk," said Janey; "the doctor ordered him milk every two hours, but he simply won't take it."
"I'll make him," said his brother grimly.
"I'll go and fetch it—you stay with him, Nigel."
She left the room, and Len lay silent a moment, looking out at the stars.
"Old man," he whispered suddenly, "while Janey's away ... I want to tell you something."
"What is it?—can't it wait till you're better?"
"No.... It's this.... She ... she's in ... infernal trouble."
Nigel quailed.
"What is it, Len?"
"She'd rather tell you herself ... she's going to ... all I want to say is ... when you hear, just remember that ... she's our Janey."
The doctor called early the next morning, and looked serious. Leonard had had a restless night, and his symptoms were becoming very grave. He still kept up his efforts at conversation, though they were more painful than ever.
"I—I'm not going to die, Doc," he panted.
"Well, keep quiet, and we'll see about it," said the doctor.
"But have you heard about my brother?... the one who fills the Albert Hall?... Oh, 'ninety-nine,' since you insist."
Nigel had been sent over to Dormans the first thing in the morning, to buy up all the papers he could. Several of them had a report of von Gleichroeder's concert, and most of these mentioned Nigel's performance favourably.
"Mr. Furlonger has undoubtedly a great deal to learn on the mechanical side of his art, but he has a wonderful force of temperament, which last night compensated in many ways for faulty technique. He even managed to work some emotional beauty into Scriabin's bundle of tricks, and one can imagine that in music which depended on the beautiful instead of on the bizarre for its appeal, he would have the chance, which was denied him last night, of a really fine performance. We do not say that Mr. Furlonger will ever be a master, but if he will avoid fashionablegymnastics and not despise such out-of-date considerations as beauty and harmony, he may become a temperamental violinist of the first order." All the critics, more or less, had a hit at the "advanced" type of music, and Nigel imagined von Gleichroeder's wrath.
Len insisted on having all the criticisms read to him, and a thrill of pride went through even Janey's numb breast. She had never tried to speak to Nigel alone, and he gave her no hint that he knew she was in trouble. But when his heart was not bursting with anxiety for Len, it brimmed with compassion for Janey. She might have been nursing her brother for weeks instead of hours to judge by her haggard face, white lips, and faded eyes. Her movements were listless, and her figure in rest had the droop of utter exhaustion.
She and Nigel divided the nursing between them. Len was never left alone. He had to be fed every two hours, and it generally took both of them to do it, as he was very perverse in the matter of meals, saying that the food choked him. In the afternoon he became a little delirious. He seemed to be trying to ask for things, and yet to be unable to say what he really meant, often saying something quite different. He was intensely pathetic in his weakness. This dulling, or rather disturbance, of his faculties seemed to distress him far more than his difficult breathing or the pain in his side. Now and then he would hold out his hands piteously to Nigel and Janey, and would lie for some time holding the hand of each, his brown eyes staring at them imploringly, as if they werefighting for the powers of speech which the tongue had lost—in the way that the eyes of animals often fight.
They tried to make him go to sleep, but he was always restless and awake. They read to him, talked to him and to each other, with no success. Outside, the day was dull, yet warm and steamy. Every now and then a shower would rustle noisily on the leaves, and after it passed there would be many drippings.
Nigel went out for an hour or two's work on the farm when evening fell. It seemed extraordinary that only some eighteen hours lay between him and the concert at the Bechstein Hall. That part of his life had been put aside—not for ever, perhaps, but none the less temporarily banished by a usurping present. Some day, no doubt, he would put on the last six months again, just as he would put on the dress clothes he had folded away, but now he wore corduroys and the last eighteen hours.
At six the doctor called again. He shook his head at the sight of Leonard.
"He must have a nurse," he said.
"Oh, no ... for heaven's sake!" groaned Len.
"Nigel and I can nurse him," said Janey.
"My dear young lady, have you seen your own face in the glass?"
Len raised himself with difficulty on his pillows.
"Lord, Janey!—you look quite cooked up.... I say, old girl, I won't have it.... Doctor, I surrender."
"I don't know whether I can send any one in to-night—but I'll try. Anyhow, to-morrow morning—now 'ninety-nine,' please."
Nigel went over to East Grinstead for ice and fruit. Len was dreadfully thirsty all the evening. They put bags of ice on his forehead and sides, but it did not seem to cool him much. The doctor had left a sleeping-draught, to be administered the last thing at night.
"If I take it," said Len, "will you two go to bed?"
"Janey will," said Nigel. "I'll have a shake-down in here."
"Well, it'll keep me quiet, I suppose ... so I'll take the beastly thing.... I want to sleep ... but I don't want to die.... I won't die, in fact."
"Don't talk of it, old man."
He lifted Len in his strong arms, and settled him more comfortably in the bedclothes. Then he gave him the sleeping-draught.
The window was wide open, and one could hear the rain pattering on the lilac bushes. The wind, sweet-smelling with damp and hay, puffed the curtains into the room, then sucked them back. A fire was burning low on the hearth. Janey went and sat beside it. Nigel sat by the bed, for between sleeping and waking his brother suffered from strange fears.
At last, after a few sighs and struggles, Len fell asleep, still high on his pillows, the lines of his face very tired and grim. There was a little light in the room, or rather the mingled lights of a dyingfire and a fighting moon. Nigel rose softly, and went over to Janet.
"You must go to bed."
"No—I'd rather stay here."
"You must have some sleep, or you'll be worn out."
"I couldn't sleep."
The words broke from her in a strangling sigh, and the next minute his arm crept round her, for he remembered Leonard's words.
"Dear Janey ..." he whispered.
She began to cry.
For a moment or two he held her to him, helping her to choke her sobs against his breast.
"Won't you tell me what it is?"
"How do you know there's anything more than that?" and she pointed towards the bed.
"Len told me."
"About Quentin?..."
"Quentin!"
"Yes—I thought you said he'd told you."
"He told me you were wretched about something. But who's Quentin?—not Quentin Lowe?"
They were the very words Len had used, and Janey shuddered.
"Yes ..." she said faintly, "Quentin Lowe."
"But——"
"You'll never understand.... I hid it from you for three years."
"Hid what, Janey?"
"My—my love."
Nigel's arm dropped from her waist, but herswas round his neck, and she clung to him feverishly.
"Yes, I loved him. I loved him and I pitied him ... and I wanted, I tried, to help him—and—and I've been his ruin—and another woman has saved him."
Nigel was speechless. What astonished him, the man of secrets, most, was that Janey should have had a secret from him for three years.
"Don't tremble so, darling—but tell me about it. I won't be hard on you."
"You will—when you know all."
"Does Len know all?"
"Yes."
He glanced over to the sleeping man, then put back his arm round Janey's waist.
"Now tell me—all."
Janey told him—all.
For some moments there was silence. The rain was still beating on the leaves, but the moon had torn through the clouds, and flung a white patch over Leonard's feet. The fire was just a red lump, and Janey and Nigel, sitting outside the moonrays, were lost in darkness.
Janey wondered when her brother would speak. She could see the outline of his face, blurred in the shadows. He held his head high, and he had not dropped his arm from her waist, but his free hand was clenched—then she felt the other clench against her side. Sickening fears assailed her. Why did he not speak? Only that arm round her gave her hope....
Then suddenly he took it away, and put both his hands over his face. She saw his shoulders quiver, just for a moment, then for what seemed long moments he did not move.
A paralysis of horror was creeping towards her heart. He was taking things even worse than she had expected, but they did not seem to fill him with anger so much as with grief. His body was crumpled as if under a load, and when he suddenly dropped his hands and looked up at her, she drew back shuddering from what she saw in his eyes.
"My poor boy!—I wish I hadn't told you."
"Oh, God!—oh, God!"
Something in his cowering, hopeless attitude woke all the divine motherhood in Janey. She forgot her fear of unforgiveness, her danger of a rebuff, and put her arms round him, drawing his head to her breast.
"My poor Nigel ... my poor, poor lad!"—so she comforted him for the shame he felt for her.
After a time, when thought was not quite swallowed up in tenderness, she began to wonder why he let her hold him so.
Then suddenly he rose, and began to pace up and down the room—up and down, up and down, swinging round sharply at the corners, but always, she noticed with a gulp, treading softly for fear of waking Len. She watched him in numb despair. The minutes dragged on. Now and then he put his hand over his brow, as if he fought either for or against some memory, now and then he bent his head so low that she could not see hisface. She wondered how much longer she would be able to endure it.
"Nigel——" she whispered at last.
He stopped and turned towards her.
"Nigel ..."
"What is it?"
"For heaven's sake ... don't keep me in suspense."
"Suspense about what?"
"Your forgiveness."
In a moment he was at her side.
"Janey—if I thought you could be doubting that——"
He put his arms round her, and the relief was so sudden that she burst into tears.
"What a selfish hound I am!—wrapped up in my own beastly feelings, and forgetting yours. But I never imagined you could think——"
"I thought ... perhaps you couldn't."
"Janey, how dare you!"
"When you got up and walked about ..."
"I know—I know. But that wasn't anger against you—my poor, outraged, suffering darling," and he covered her face with kisses.
She clung to him in a passion of love and relief.
"Oh, you're good—you and Len!"
"Nonsense, Janey. You mustn't talk like that. We're not worthy to tie your shoes—we never shall be. How could you think we'd turn against you? It's him, that little, loathly cad, that——"
"Oh, hush, dear—I can't bear it."
His rage was stronger and fiercer than Len's, his whole body quivered in the passion of it. Thensuddenly it changed unaccountably to grief, and his head fell back against her shoulder, the eyes dull, the mouth old and drawn. She thought it was for her, and he hugged his poor, dead secret too tight to grant her the mercy of disillusion.
The night wore on, and they clung together on the hearthstone, where cinders fell and glowed, making the only sound, the only light, in the room. Two lost children, they huddled together in the only warm place they had left—each other's arms.
There was a feeble sigh, a feeble stirring in the bed—just as the first of the morning came between the curtains, and pointed like a finger into the gloom.
"Lenny...."
Janet and Nigel rose, wearily dropping their stiff arms from each other, and went over to the bed.
"How long have you been awake?"
"Only just woke up ... would you draw back the curtains?"
Nigel pulled them back, and a white dawn shuddered into the room.
"What time is it?"
"About three—can't you go to sleep again?"
"No—I've wakened for good ... I mean ... I mean ..."
"What, old man?"
"I think I am going to die after all."
"No, Lenny, no...."
"It's rather a come down ... after saying I wouldn't ... but I feel so tired."
His face was spread over with a ghastly pallor,and something which Nigel and Janey could not exactly define, which indeed they hardly saw with their bodily sight, but which impressed them vaguely as a kind of film.
"I'm going to die," he repeated, plucking with cold fingers at the sheet.
"I'll go and fetch the doctor," cried Nigel.
"No ... I don't want you to leave me."
"But we must do something."
"There's nothing to do ... only talk to me ... and don't let me get funky."
"You might look out of the window, Nigel, and see if any one's passing," said Janey.
There was not likely to be any one at that hour, but he thrust his head out and eagerly scanned the lane. The rain had stopped, though the sky was shagged over with masses of cloud. One or two stars glimmered wanly above the woods. It was the constellation of Orion, setting.
"There's no one," said Nigel, "nor likely to be—I must go, Len."
"Oh, no ... don't ... don't leave me ... the doctor couldn't do anything.... Perhaps I won't die ... only I hate the dark."
A strangling pity seized Nigel. He went over to his brother, and sat down beside the bed, taking his hand.
"There, there, old boy, don't worry. We'll both stay with you. I'll hold this hand, and Janey 'ull hold the other, and you'll soon get over it."
Len lay shivering and gasping. Nigel andJaney looked into each other's eyes across him, and swallowed their grief.
"I—I expect it's nothing," panted Leonard. "One often feels low at this time of night."
They leaned upon the bed each side of him, and suddenly Janey thrust out her hand and grasped Nigel's across him.
"Now we're all three holding hands," she said.
The minutes flew by. A clock was ticking—measuring them out.
"Kiss me ..." moaned Leonard suddenly.
They both stooped and kissed him.
He shut his eyes, then opened them, and a strange, piteous resignation was in their glazing depths.
"I'm sorry ... I must die.... I'm so tired."
"You will go to sleep, Len."
"No ... I'm too tired ... it wouldn't be enough."
Janey's tears fell on his face.
"Don't cry, Janey ... it's—it's all right.... Remember me to the doctor ... and say my last words were 'ninety-nine' ... laugh, Janey ... it's a joke."
"Lenny, Lenny...."
There was another silence, and a faint flush tinted the watery sky. A bird chirrupped in the eaves of Sparrow Hall.
"Hold my hands tighter," gasped Len.
They both gripped tighter.
"And give my love to Tottie Coughdrop ... and say I'm sorry to have missed her.... Tighter ... oh!... tighter."
His breath came in a fierce, whistling rush, and he sat bolt upright, gripping their hands and struggling.
"Nigel, fetch the doctor!" shrieked Janey.
But Len had his brother's hand in the agonised grip of dying.
"Tighter ... oh, tighter...."
There was another whistling rush of breath, but this time no struggle—only a sigh.
Len fell back on the pillow, and the terror passed suddenly from his face.
During the week that followed Leonard's death, there was a succession of heavy storms. Chill sodden winds drove June from the fields, and substituted a bleak mock-autumn. Sparrow Hall was full of the moaning winds—they sped down the passages, and throbbed against the doors, they whistled through cracks and chinks, and rumbled in the chimneys.
Janey was in bed for the first few days; she had collapsed utterly. The two blows which had fallen on her almost together had smitten her into a kind of numbness, in which she lay, white and stiff and tearless, through the windy hours. Nigel scarcely ever left her, and he scarcely ever spoke to her—they just crouched together, she on the bed, he on a chair beside it, their fingers twined, both dumbly busy with the problems of death and anguish that had assaulted their lives.
Meantime the routine of the house and farm remained unbroken. The "man" looked after the latter, and through the former moved a figure that seemed strangely out of place. When "Tottie Coughdrop" arrived the morning after Len's death, she proved to be no more or less than a novice from St. Margaret's Convent, and finding her ministrations as truly needed as if her patient had been alive, she did not leave on finding him dead.
She nursed Janey—at least she did for her the little that Nigel could not do; she dusted and cooked; she made Furlonger eat, the stiffest duty of all. It used to hurt Nigel when he thought how Len would have enjoyed seeing him sit down to supper every night with a nun.
Novice Unity Agnes also undertook all the arrangements for the funeral—which had always been a nightmare to Nigel and Janey. Moreover, the day before, she went to East Grinstead and bought a black skirt and blouse and hat for Janey, who but for her would never have thought of going into mourning at all; and though her charity was not able to overcome her diffidence and buy a mourning suit for Nigel, she sewed black bands on all his coats.
That was how it happened that the funeral of Leonard Furlonger was such a surprise to the inhabitants of the Three Counties. The coffin was met at the church door by the choir headed by a crucifix, and the service was read by a priest in a black cope. There were hymns too—Novice Unity Agnes's favourites, all about as appropriate as "How doth the little busy bee"—and incense, and a little collection of nuns, persuaded by the kind-hearted novice to swell the scanty number of mourners. In fact, as Nigel remarked bitterly, the whole thing was a joke, and it was a shame Len had missed it.
He and Janey walked home alone, arm in arm, through the wet lanes. As usual, they did not speak, but they strained close together as the solitude of the fields crept round them. The rain hadcleared, but the wind was still romping in the hedges—little tearful spreads of sky showed among the clouds, very pale and rain-washed, soon swallowed up by moving shapes of storm.
Janet went to bed early. She had suddenly found that she could sleep, and her appetite for sleep became abnormal. She woke each morning greedily counting the hours till night. In the old careless days she had never set such store on sleep, because it had meant merely strengthening and resting and refreshing; now it meant what was more to her than anything else in life—forgetting.
Nigel could not sleep. In his heart the lights were not yet all put out. There were flashes of terror and sparks of desire, and dull flares of conjecture. He had sometimes hesitated whether he should tell Janey his secret, but had drawn back on each occasion, urged partly by the thought of adding to her burden, but principally by a feeling of shame. His wonderful dream, which had sustained him so triumphantly during six months of work and sacrifice, had now shrivelled into a poor little secret, such as school-girls nurture—a love which must always be hidden and silent and unconsummated.
His brain ached with regrets and revisualisations, quaked with apprehension and the knowledge of his own utter helplessness in the face of circumstances. The thought of Lowe's perfidy to Janet would rouse in him a sweat of rage from his poor attempts at sleep. Janey stood to Nigel for all that was noble, meek and understanding, and that she should be treated heartlessly and lightly by ascoundrel not worthy to black her boots, was a thought that drove him nearly rabid with hate. What was he to do to save Tony from this swine? He knew perfectly well how she would look upon him if she heard his story. He remembered the hard, stiff little figure in the garden of Shovelstrode—"You won my friendship under false pretences." What would she say to the cad who had won by false pretences not only her friendship but her body, her heart and her soul? Yet he could never tell her the truth. He would not betray Janet even to this girl he loved, and a vague accusation could easily be denied by Lowe, and was not likely to be believed by Tony.
Often he envied Len—lost in cool sleep, free from responsibilities and problems, eased for ever from the soul-chafing burdens of hate and love.
It was the beginning of July. Sunshine baked on the fields, and drank the green out of the grass, so that the fields were brown, with splashes of yellow where the buttercups still grew. In the hedges the wild elder-rose sent out its sickening sweetness, while from the ditches came the even more cloying fragrance of the meadowsweet. The haze of a great heat veiled the distance from Nigel, as he tramped over the parched grass into Kent. He saw the roofs of Scarlets and Redpale shimmering in the valley of the hammer ponds, but beyond them was a fiery, thundering dusk, which swallowed up the hills of Cowden in the east.
He walked with bent head and arms slack. Heoften took these lonely walks, undaunted by either storm or swelter. He knew that Janey missed him, but he could not keep his body still while his mind ran to and fro so desperately.
His walks were full of dark and furious planning of schemes that came to nothing. He roamed aimlessly through the country, without noticing where he went—except that he half unconsciously avoided the roads and wider lanes. He was desperate because his brain worked so slowly, a cloud seemed to lie on it, and he had a tendency to lose the thread of his ideas after he had followed them a little way.
This afternoon he was wandering towards the valley of the hammer ponds. It was nearly seven when he came to Furnace Wood. The sun was swimming to the west through whorls of heat. A sullen glow crawled over the sky, nearly brown in the west. The air hung heavy in the wood, laden with the pungency of midsummer flowers and grasses—scarcely a leaf stirred, though now and then an unaccountable rustling shudder passed through the thickets.
Weariness dropped on Nigel like a cloak—he was used to it. It was not really physical, only the deadly striving of his soul reaching out to his body and exhausting it. He flung himself down in a clump of bracken and tansy, sinking down in it, till everything was shut out by the tall, earth-smelling stalks. This was what he often found himself longing for with a desperate physical desire—a little corner, cool and quiet and green,shut off from life, where he could drowse—and forget.
This evening only the first part of his desire was satisfied. He had his corner, but he could not drowse in it. His limbs lay inert, but his thoughts kicked painfully. His brain hammered with old impressions, which, instead of wearing away with time, each day bored and jarred with renewed power. He was the victim of an abnormally acute mentality—just as to a swollen limb the lightest touch is painful, so to Nigel's brain inflamed with grief and struggle, every impression was like a blow, an enduring source of agony.
He heard footsteps on the path. No one could see him—it was still quite light in the fields, but in the wood was dusk and a blurring of outlines; besides, he was deeply buried in the tall stalks. However, though he could not be seen, he could see, for on the path stood a golden pillar of sunshine into which the footsteps must pass. Nigel wondered if it could be Lowe, returning early for some reason from Shovelstrode. But the steps did not sound heavy enough, and the next minute he saw the white of a woman's dress through the trees. In an instant his limbs had shrunk together, for another of those sickening blows had smitten his brain. The figure had passed out of the pillar of sunset, but he had seen Tony Strife as she went by.
She was dressed in white, and wore no hat, only a muslin scarf over her hair. She carried a cloak on her arm, and Furlonger realised that she must be going to dine at Redpale. The sight of Tony—hehad not seen her since he lost her, or rather his dream of her—threw him into a fit of torment. He flung himself back among the stalks, and rolled there, biting them, suddenly mad with pain.
The next moment he started up. A thud and a low cry came from a few yards further on.
Nigel sprang to his feet. He remembered that not far off the path ran by the mouth of a disused chalk quarry, from which it was divided only by a very rickety fence. Suppose.... He crashed through the bushes to the path, and dashed along it to the chalk-pit. Something white lay only a few feet from the dreadful brink.
Just here the path was in darkness—hazel bushes and a dense thicket of alder shut out the sun. For a moment he could not make out clearly what had happened, but was immediately reassured by seeing Tony sit up, and try to struggle to her feet.
"What is it?" she cried, hearing his steps behind her. "Who's there?"
"Are you hurt?"
"Oh, Mr. Furlonger...."
She made another struggle to rise, but could not without his hand.
"Are you hurt?" he repeated.
"No-o-o."
"I think you are a little."
He was trembling all over, and hoped she did not notice it.
"I fell over some wire, just here, where the pathis so dark. I might have gone over the edge," she added with a shudder.
"You had a lucky escape—but I'm afraid you're hurt."
"It isn't much. I may have twisted my ankle a bit, that's all."
She stood there in the shadows, her white dress gleaming like a moth, her face mysterious in the disarray of her wrap. Nigel's eyes devoured her, while his heart filled itself with inexpressible pain.
"Take my arm," he said huskily, "and I'll help you back to Shovelstrode."
"Oh, no!—I'll go on to Redpale. It's much nearer—if you'll be so kind as to help me."
"But how about getting home?"
"My fiancé, Mr. Lowe, will drive me home. He was to have fetched me too, but at the last moment he had to go up to town, and couldn't be back in time."
"Are you sure you're well enough to go out to dinner?" He hated the idea of taking her to Redpale.
"Oh, quite—this is nothing. Besides, dining at Redpale is just like dining at home—I don't call it going 'out' to dinner."
Furlonger winced, and gave her his arm, hoping she would not notice how it shook.
They walked slowly out of Furnace Wood, towards the leaden east. Tony limped slightly, and Nigel wanted to carry her, but he dared not risk his patched self-control too far.
"You should never have come all this wayalone," he said gruffly, "these woods by the quarries are dangerous."
"I expect my father will be furious when he finds out what I've done. But I hoped that if I walked across the fields, instead of driving round by the road, I—I might meet my fiancé on his way home from the station."
A tremulous archness crept into her voice. Nigel shuddered.
"I'm pleased I met you," she said gently, after a pause, "because I wanted to tell you how dreadfully sorry I am about your brother."
"Thank you."
"And I want to tell you that I'm so glad about your success in London. I saw in the papers how you distinguished yourself at Herr von Gleichroeder's concert."
Nigel did not speak.
"I suppose you'll soon be going back to town?" she went on timidly.
"I don't know. I can't leave my sister."
"But you can take her with you. It would be a pity to throw up your career just when everything looks so promising."
They were not far from Redpale now. The sunset was creeping over the sky—only the east before them was dark, banked high with thundery vapour. Nigel could still hear Tony speaking, as if in a kind of dream. His thoughts were busy elsewhere.
"Won't you?" repeated Tony for the second time.
"Won't I what?"
"Go back to London, and make yourself famous."
"I don't see much chance of that."
"But I do—and so will you when you're not so unhappy. Now, to please me, won't you promise to go back to London and make yourself a great career? You and I used to be friends once—I hope we're friends still—and I shall always be interested in everything you do. I expect to see your name in a very high place some day. Now, for my sake, promise to go back."
"For your sake...."
"Yes—since you won't go for your own."
They had stopped a moment to rest her foot. Nigel lifted his eyes from the grass and looked into hers—wondering. Was it true, was it even possible, that she had never seen his love? She could not, or she would not speak like this—"For my sake." After all, she would never expect him to dare ... that would blind her to much that might have betrayed him had he been worthier. No, she had not seen his love, and she had never loved him. She had never loved any man but Quentin Lowe—he was her first love, he had lit the first flame in her heart, and that heart was his, in all its purity and burning.
Standing there beside her in the sunset, her weight resting deliciously on him as she raised her injured foot from the ground, he realised the change that had come to Tony. Her manner was as entirely different from her manner of six months ago at Shovelstrode as that had been different from the manner of those still earlier days at Lingfieldor Brambletye. In those days, during their playtime, Tony had been a school-girl, a delightful hoyden, the best pal and fellow-adventurer a man could have. In December, in the garden at Shovelstrode, she had lost that valiant girlhood, and at the same time her womanhood was unripe—she had been a crude mixture of girl and woman, sometimes provokingly both, sometimes repellingly neither. But to-day she was woman complete. Both her mind and her body seemed to have stepped out of their green adolescence. There was a certain dignity of curve about the tall figure resting against him, which Nigel had not seen in the forest or in the garden; there was a clear and confident look in the eyes which in earlier days had been either wistful or timid; there was a heightened colour on the cheeks. Her manner was full of gentle assurance, her speech easy and sympathetic—as utterly different from the crude tactlessness of Christmastide as from the school-girl rattle of November.
Yes, Tony was a woman come into her kingdom, proud, sweet, compassionate and strong. Quentin Lowe had made her this in the short weeks of his love. Unworthy little cad as he was, he had yet been able to raise her from girlhood to womanhood, to crown her with the diadem of her heritage....
"Tony," cried Nigel, caught in a sudden storm of impulse, "do you love Quentin Lowe?"
"Love him!—why, of course.... Let's move on."
"You're not angry with me?—I have my reason for asking."
"No, I'm not angry. But what reason can you have?"
"I remember," said Nigel desperately, "what you told me six months ago. You said you couldn't forgive...."
The colour rushed to his face, but he fought on.
"There is something which I think you ought to know about him."
"What do you mean?"
She spoke sharply, but not quite so sharply as he had expected.
"Miss Strife—it's very difficult for me ... but I think I ought——"
"I suppose," she said, her voice faltering a little, "you're trying to tell me—you think you ought to tell me—that Quentin hasn't always been quite—quite worthy of himself. I know."
"You know!"
"Yes."
There was silence, broken only by the swish of their footsteps through the grass.
"How did you know?—Who told you?" cried Furlonger suddenly.
"I might ask—how doyouknow?"
"The girl—was a friend of mine...."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"Don't mistake me. I—I didn't love her—not in that way, I mean. But, Tony—who told you?"
"Quentin."
"My God!"
"Why are you so surprised? It was right that he should tell me."
"Of course. But I—I didn't think he would."
Tony hesitated a moment—it struck Nigel that she was considering how far she ought to take him into her confidence. The thought humiliated him.
"He did tell me," she said after a pause, "he told me everything, one night, nearly three weeks ago, just before your brother died. He suddenly came to Shovelstrode—very late, after we had all gone upstairs. He wanted to see me—and I came down ... oh, I shall never forget it! He was standing there, all white and tired—and very wet, as if he'd been lying in the grass. He tried to speak, but he couldn't—and I was frightened, like a silly ass, and I cried ... and then he told me all about himself—and this girl."
"And you?..."
She shuddered.
"I—I told him he must go."
"You told him to go!"—his voice had a hungry catch in it.
"Yes—I was a beast."
Anxiety and scorn strove together in him.
"But you changed your mind."
She nodded.
"Tony!"
"Well, why not?"
"Because it's paltry and weak of you—he doesn't deserve your forgiveness—and you've no right to forgive him for what he did to another woman."
"Do you think I haven't considered that other woman?"
"You must have. But—egad!—you're so calm about it. Don't you realise what all this means—to her?"
"You think I ought to make him marry her?"
"Of course not—she wouldn't have him if she was paid. But—but how canyoumarry him, Tony?"
She bit her lip.
"I'm sorry I put things so bluntly, but I'm always a blundering ass when I'm excited. Tony, you're not to marry this man."
By her mounting colour he saw that he had said too much.
"I beg your pardon—I know all this sounds like impertinent interference. But it isn't. I've been worrying about it a lot—about your marrying him. I felt you ought to know...."
"Well, I do know—and I've forgiven him."
"I'm not sure that isn't even worse than your not knowing."
She stared at him in anger and surprise.
"You say that!—you!—the man but for whom perhaps I never should have forgiven him."
Nigel gasped. "What do you mean?"
"Well, at first, as I told you, I felt I couldn't forgive him. But afterwards I remembered all you said."
"Isaid!"
"Yes."
"What?—When?"
"Don't you remember that day you came over toShovelstrode and said, 'You will have to forgive me a great many things because I am so very hungry'?"
They had stopped again; the fields swelled round them, ghostly in the lemon twilight, and a wistful radiance glowed on Tony's face. He searched her eyes despairingly—he scarcely knew what for. The anger in them had died, and in its place was a beautiful serenity and kindliness. But that was not what he was looking for. His heart was full of hunger and tears, yet he did not hunger or cry for the woman who stood before him, but for the little girl he had known long months ago.
"Quentin used almost the same words as you did," she said, breaking the silence, "he told me how all his life he had been hungry, always craving for something good and pure and satisfying, never able to reach it. Then he met this girl, and he thought that he'd find in her all he was seeking. But he found only sorrow—sorrow for them both. He was in despair, in hell—and he believed I could help him out and make him a good man again. Don't you remember how you said that a man's only chance of rising out of the mud was for some woman to give him a hand and help him up?"
Nigel could not find words. A thick, misty horror was settling on him. Had those poor pleadings of his dying self then turned against him in his hour of need?
"There was Quentin asking for my help," continued Tony. "Oh, I know I'm no better than other girls, than the girl he used to love, butsomehow I can't help feeling I'm the girl sent to help Quentin. When I told him he must go, he nearly went crazy ... his father said he was afraid he would kill himself ... and I—I was nearly mad too, for I—oh, God! I loved him."
A sounding contralto note swept into her voice; it seemed to swell up from her heart, from her heaving woman's breast on which her hands were folded.
"So I forgave him."
"Tony!..." cried Nigel faintly.
"Yes—I'm grateful to you. I'm afraid that when I saw you at Shovelstrode I was very stupid and stiff—I was a horrid little beast, and I couldn't forgive you for what was after all an honour you had done me. Now I see how much your friendship meant to me. But for you, Quentin and I might have been parted for ever."
A stupid rage was tearing Furlonger, and there was a mockery of laughter in it. He saw that his tragedy was after all only a farce—he was the time-honoured lover of farce, who with infinite pains makes a ladder to his lady's chamber, and then sees his rival swarm up it. There he stood, forlorn, discomfited, frustrated—but also intensely comic. Perhaps the student was right about Offenbach....
"I'm surprised that you should be so disgusted with me," said Tony.
The ghostly laughter pealed again, and at the same time he remembered that "if the man's a sport, he laughs too." He threw back his head, and startled her with a hearty laugh.
"Mr. Furlonger!"
"I'm sorry—but things struck me suddenly as rather funny."
"How?"
"Oh, I don't suppose they'd strike you the same way. But it seems funny you should care whether I'm disgusted or not."
"I do—of course I do; and I can't see why you are disgusted. After all you said...."
"Damn all I said!—I'm sorry, but I never thought of a case like this." He blushed, remembering the case he had thought of.
They walked down the hill—they could see Redpale now, huddling beneath them in its orchards. The colours of the sunset had grown fainter, and pale, trembling lights burned on the barn-roofs and the pond.
Their feet beat swiftly on the rustling grass. Furlonger's time was short.
"I'm going to try to be a big woman," said Tony softly, "a strong, brave woman; and I don't want to think sentimental rot about a perfect knight and a spotless hero and all that. I want to be a man's fighting comrade—I want to feel he can't do without me. It was you who first told me that I must take men as I find them—but not leave them so."
"Tony, if only I thought there was any good in him——"
"I tell you there's a mine of good in him. But he's never had a chance till now. Our engagement is to be a very long one, and already I can see a difference in him. It's not I that have doneit—it's his love for me. And all the sorrow he went through, when he thought he'd lost me, seems to have made him gentler and humbler somehow. Quentin has suffered dreadfully"—there was a little click in her throat—"and he wants so much to be good and pure and true. And I've promised to help him, by believing that he can and will do better."
His own words were being mercilessly fired back at him. He remembered how he had first breathed them to her, full of hope and entreaty. In the face of such artillery his rout was complete.
"Forgive him, Tony!" he cried. "Forgive him! But oh, forgive me, too!"
They had reached the gate of Redpale Farm. He stopped—he would go no further.
"Tony—forgive me too."
The words broke from his lips in an exceeding bitter cry.
"Forgive you!—what for?"
"For a great deal—for all you know of, and for the more you don't know."
"Of course I forgive you—but I thank you most."
"No, you must forgive me most—are you sure that you forgive me for what you don't know as well as for what you know?"
"Quite sure"—her voice trembled a little, for he was beginning to frighten her.
"Then good-bye."
"Good-bye. I—I hope I haven't brought you very far out of your way."
He muttered something unintelligible, pulled off his cap, and left her.
He walked quickly, pricked on by a discovery which was also a triumph. Quentin Lowe had not taken Tony from him after all. The Tony he loved had never known Quentin Lowe, she had been no man's friend but Nigel Furlonger's—and so much his friend that when he had been taken from her she would not stay without him, but herself had gone away. Quentin Lowe loved a beautiful woman—proud and sweet and assured, with just a dash of the prig about her. Nigel had never loved this woman, he had loved a little girl—and the little girl who had been his comrade in the Kentish lanes and the ruins of Brambletye, would never be any man's but his.
He plunged recklessly through the fields, and recklessly into Furnace Wood. Lowe could not be far off. He must have missed the fast train from Victoria, but the next one arrived only an hour or so later. Nigel hurried through the wood, now coal dark, and full of a strange dread for him—though he did not know of the ghosts which haunted it. As he caught his first glimpse of the faintly crimsoned west, he saw a figure outlined against it. Some one was coming down the slope of Furnace Field. It must be Lowe.
The two men met on the rim of the wood. It was a moment of blackness for Quentin when he saw the blazing eyes and bitten lips of Furlonger. Strange words broke from his tongue—
"Hast thou found me, O mine enemy!"
Nigel's great body towered over him. His lips had shrunk back from his teeth, which gleamed in the dying ugly light. Lowe remembered the other Furlonger who was dead. In Furnace Wood fate would not tamper with vengeance as at Cowsanish.
Suddenly Nigel spoke.
"Two good women have forgiven you—so I've nothing to say—or do. Pass——"
He moved out of the path, and waved his hand towards the wood.
"Pass——" he said.
Quentin hesitated a moment.
"Won't—won't you shake hands?"
"No. Pass—and for God's sake, pass quickly."