They were sitting together on a tree-trunk under the hedge, the darkness creeping up round them. Quentin drew very close to Janey, and clutched her hand.
"I'm a beast to go whining to you like this—but it helps me. It's such a relief to get all my furies off my chest and feel your sympathy—feelit, Janey, you needn't speak, words seem to nail things down. Oh, why were you and I born into this muddle and never given a chance? I've never had a chance—not the shadow of one. All my life I've suffered that vile plague, dependence, and it's poisoned my blood and sapped my strength and perverted my reason. My father's to blame for it. The whole object of his life has been to keep me dependent on him. He's stinted me of everything—friends, money, education—just to keep me dependent. He's well off, as you know, but he allows me a miserable screw many tradesmen would be ashamed to offer their sons. He's made my bad health an excuse for cutting short my time at college, and for not bringing me up to any profession. He's in terror lest I should strike out a line for myself. He wants me to live my whole life on a negation—'thou shalt not,' he says. He doesn't say it because he's my father, but because he's a clergyman. It's that which has spoiledhim, because it hasn't let him go to life for his principles. Christianity never does. I hate Christianity, Janey—Christianity's a piece of Semitic bargaining—all Semitic religions are commercial, but Christianity has been so far Europeanised that it offers its rewards not for what you do but for what you don't do. I once wrote a poem on the Christian heaven—God and all the angels and curly-locked saints yawning their heads off because they're all so tired of doing nothing, and at last all falling asleep together. Ugh! One reason I love you, Janey, is that you're so beautifully pagan—just like the country here. The country's all pagan at bottom, and that's why every one loves the country, even the Christians."
Janey smiled, and pressed his hand. She knew Quentin liked "talking," so she let him "talk," though she troubled very little about the questions that were so vital to him. She knew it relieved him to pour into her ears the torrent of abuse which was always roaring against its sluices, and had no other outlet—unless it found its way into publishers' offices and damaged his poor chances there.
"It's Christianity which makes my father so damned clever in keeping me dependent," continued Lowe. "He's got so used to tying souls up in paper and string that he can make a neat parcel even of a bulky, bulgy soul like mine. You know how we admire shop people for the neat way they tie up parcels—we couldn't do it. Well, my father's a kind of celestial shop-keeper, and I'mthe goods he's sending out—payment on delivery. Oh, damn!"
Janey's hand went up to his face and stroked it. Quentin's furies always struck her as infinitely pathetic.
"It'll be all right, dear," she whispered. "I'm sure it will. You're bound to get free."
He seized her hand and held it fiercely in his while he stared into her eyes.
"Janey—I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get free—or if I do, whether I'll find freedom the ecstasy I imagine it. Perhaps freedom, like everything else, is a mirage, a snare, a disillusion. Yesterday I was reading theEpic of Gilgamesh—
Gilgamesh, why dost thou wander around?Life which thou seekest thou canst not find.
Gilgamesh, why dost thou wander around?Life which thou seekest thou canst not find.
Gilgamesh, why dost thou wander around?Life which thou seekest thou canst not find.
Gilgamesh, why dost thou wander around?
Life which thou seekest thou canst not find.
That's the horrible truth—nothing that we seek shall we ever find, unless it's been found over and over again already. And then there's love, Janey, that's one of the things we never find, though we seek it till our tears are blood. I've written a poem about that, comparing love to the sea—to salt water, rather, for of course hundreds of poets have compared love to the sea. Love is like the salt water that splashes round the poor sailor dying of thirst—he drinks it in his desperation, and the more he drinks the fiercer becomes his thirst, and still he drinks on in despair and hope, till at last he ends in madness—that's love. Janey, that's love."
He stooped suddenly forward, till his head was buried in her knees.
"That's my love, sweet, sweet thing—my love for you. It never sates, it always burns, it tortures, it maddens. There is no rest, no rest in my love—it wakes me from my sleep to long for you—it is a hunger that gnaws through all my meals—it is a darkness that may be felt, a light too blinding to be borne...."
His shoulders shook, and tears rushed scalding into Janet's eyes. With one hand she stroked and tangled his coarse hair, the other he had seized and laid under his cheek—and she felt one burning tear upon it. Her whole heart seemed to open itself to her lover in tender pity, and not only to him, but to all men—men, with their fierceness in desire and gentleness in satiety, with their terrible sudden temptations, their weakness and nobleness, their beasthood and their godhead. Men struck her—had always struck her—as intensely pathetic; and now Quentin and his love wrung her breast with tears. Before that storm of hungry love she bowed her head in mute homage—she worshipped him as he lay there on her knees.
He lifted himself suddenly. Darkness was creeping fast into the woods, with little shivering gasps.
"Janey, before you go, there's something I want particularly to ask you. Next Tuesday week my father's going to London for the day. He won't be back till late—I want you to come to Redpale when he's gone."
"Redpale ... but there are the servants, Quentin."
"They're all right. I'll send the girls over toGrinstead in the afternoon; there'll only be the men about the farm, and they needn't trouble us."
"But...."
"Oh, there's your brothers, of course," he cried harshly; "can't you get away from them for one afternoon?"
"Yes, I can.... I don't know why I said 'But.'"
"You mustn't say 'But'—Janey, do you realise that you and I have never had a meal together?"
"No."
"We must have a meal together—I want to see you eat—I want to drink with you."
"Very well, I'll come. I'll get over early in the afternoon.... Now I must say good-bye."
"When I see you next I may have heard from Baker. Then we shall know our fate."
"Our fate...?"
"Yes, for if Baker can't take my stuff, no one else will, and my last chance is gone."
"Don't think of such a thing, dear."
"No, I won't. I'll think of you, dream of you—whenever you are so gracious as to let me sleep."
He stood up, and drew her head down to his shoulder, holding it there with trembling hands, while his lips sought her face. Her mouth was against his sleeve, and she kissed it while he kissed her cheek and neck. For a full minute they stood together thus, and when they drew apart, the first star hung a timid candle above the burnt-out fires of the west.
October dropped from red to brown in a sudden night of rain, and the Three Counties began to draw over themselves their fallow cloaks of sleep. In every view the ploughed fields spread brown and wet and empty, some with a ruddy touch of Kentish clay, others with a white gleam of Surrey chalk.
Nigel flung himself into the farmyard toil, and complained because it was too scanty. Their ten acres of grass and orchard, with three or four cows and some poultry, did not give nearly enough work, he thought, to two able-bodied men. He remembered the days when the acres of Sparrow Hall had rolled through marsh and coppice into Kent—when fifteen sweet-mouthed cows had gathered at the gates at milking-time, and golden rye from their high fields had gone in their waggon to Honey Mill. He was miserably aware that he had no one but himself to blame for this, though his brother and sister never reproached him. He had been impatient of the slow bounties of the fields, he had plunged into quick, adventurous dealings; for a few months he had brought wealth, hurry and excitement into his life—then had come poverty, and the ageless monotony of prison.
When he looked round on their reduced estate it was not so much humiliation that ate into his heart as a sense of treachery. He had betrayedthe country. Impatient of its slow, honest ways, he had sought others, crooked, swift, defiled. He had turned renegade to the quiet fields round his home, and entered a rival camp of reckless strivings and meanness. This had been his sin, and he was being punished for it still. The punishment of the State for his sin against the State was over ... but the punishment for his sin against his home, the country, and himself was still being meted out to him by all three.
The high spirits that had seized him on that first rainy morning of his freedom often came and snatched him up again, but they always dropped him back into a depression that was almost horror. He had moments of crazy gaiety and uproariousness, of sheer animal delight in his bodily freedom; but behind them all lurked the consciousness that he was still in prison. He had been sentenced for life. He was shut up in some dreary place, away from the farm, away from Len and Janey. He might work on the farm the whole day, and fool with his brother and sister the whole evening, but he knew none the less that he was shut up away from them all.
During this time he had peculiar dreams. He often fell asleep full of fury and despair, but his dreams were always of sunlit spaces, children and flowers. Again and again in them appeared the little girl Ivy—not dirty and cross, but lovely and fresh and winsome, smiling and beckoning. It seemed as if behind all the horrors and fogs of his life something divine and innocent was calling—attimes it was comfort and peace and healing to him, at others it was the chief of his torments.
The Furlongers had always lived aloofly at Sparrow Hall—scorned, even before their downfall, by their own class, they had nevertheless not sought comrades in the classes beneath them. They had always sufficed one another, and had not cared for the distractions of over-the-fence gossip or the public-house.
However, since his return from Parkhurst, Nigel had realised a certain tendency on the part of labourers and small farmers to seek him out and claim equal terms. This was not merely due to the consciousness of his degradation, the delight of patronising the proud Furlonger—its chief motive was a strange sort of deference. Socially, his crime had reduced him to their level, but morally it had given him an exaltation which had never been his before. He now belonged to that world of which they caught rare dazzling glimpses in their Sunday papers. He was only a rank below Crippen in their hero-worship, and when they met him in the village they stared at him in much the same way as they stared at the murderer's photograph inThe People.
At first Nigel hung back from them, sick and confused with shame, but as the days went by, the emptiness of his life beat him into conciliation. Humiliated to the dust, he longed for some sort of regard, however spurious, just as a starving man will eat dung. His brother and sister gave him love and kindness in plenty, but they weremuch too practical in their emotions any longer to give him deference. Before he went to prison he had been, though the youngest, the leader of the family—his stronger brain, his quicker wits had made him the captain of their exploits. But now his brain and wits were discredited. Len and Janey did not despise him, they were not ashamed of him before men—but he had forfeited his position in the household. They no longer looked upon him as their superior, he was just the younger brother. At first he had scarcely noticed this—everything had been strange, and he had let slip former realities. But as the days went by, and Parkhurst became more and more of a horrible and suggestive parenthesis, he was able to recall the old ways and see how things had changed. He made no complaint, but his spirit was chafed, and sought crazily for balms.
"Come, don't be stand-offish, Mus' Furlonger," said the shepherd of Little Cow Farm, who, meeting him outside the Bells at Lingfield, had suggested a drink.
"No, you're a better man than me now—aren't you?" said Nigel, showing his teeth.
"I wurn't hinting such, Mus' Furlonger—only t'other chaps in there do want to hear about the prison."
"Why?"
"Oh, it's always interesting to hear about prison—specially from chaps wot has bin there. We git a lot about 'em inLloyd'sandThe People, but there's nothing like a fust-hand story—surelye!"
Nigel laughed crudely.
"And it's a treat to meet a real convict—none of your petty larceny and misdemeanour fellers...."
"Well, here's greatness thrust upon me," said Furlonger, and swaggered into the bar.
The fuggy atmosphere affected him in much the same way as the smell of ether and dressings affects a man entering a hospital—the spirit of the place, assisted by crude outward manifestations, cowed him and made him its slave.
"Name it," said the shepherd.
"Porter."
It was three years since he had had a really stiff drink. He had never cared for liquor, indeed he had always been a man of singularly temperate life, a spare eater, a water drinker. But to-day a sudden desire consumed him—not only to drink, but to be drunken. He remembered the one occasion which he had been drunk. It was the day he had known definitely of the collapse of Wickham's scheme, and his own inevitable disgrace. He had sat in the kitchen at Sparrow Hall, drinking brandy till his head had fallen forward on the table and his legs trailed back behind his chair. Afterwards, there had been a shameful waking, but he could never forget how peace had crept in some mysterious physical way up his spine, from the base of his neck to his brain, with a soft tingling—it had been purely physical at first, then it had passed on to mental dulling and dimming.
To-day, as the frothy brown porter ran down his throat, he felt that gracious tingling, thatcreeping upwards of relief. He looked round the bar. It was full of labouring men and smallholders, who stared at him with round eyes that were curious and would be ingratiating—they wanted to know him, because in their opinion he was better worth knowing than before he went to gaol.
"This is Mus' Breame of Gulledge," said the Little Cow shepherd. "How are you, Mus' Breame?—This is Mus' Furlonger of Sparrow Hall."
Mus' Breame held out a dark and hairy hand. Nigel's lips were twitching. Somehow he felt much more humiliated by the beery approval of these men than by the cold looks of their betters. However, he gave his short, dry laugh, and shook hands.
"And here's Mus' Dunk of Golden Compasses, and Mus' Boorer of Kenthouse Hatch—this here is old Adam Harmer, as has been cowman at Langerish this sixty year."
Nigel had seen all the men before, and had once sold a calf to Adam Harmer, but he realised that now he was meeting them on new terms.
"I wur wunst in the lock-up meself for a week," drawled old Harmer. "'Twas summat to do wud poaching, but so long ago as I forget 'xactly wot. Surelye!"
"Reckon prisons have changed unaccountable since your day," said Dunk, throwing a glance at Nigel, as if to show that an opening had been tactfully made for him. But Harmer clung to speech.
"Reckon they have: surelye. In my days you'd hemmed liddle o' whitewash and all that—it wur starve and straw and bugs in my day, and two or three fellers together in a cell, either larkin' or murderin' each other."
The Little Cow shepherd looked uneasily at Furlonger.
"Yus—and the constables too, so different. Not near so haughty as they is now, but comfortable chaps, as 'ud let yer see yer gal fur a drink, and walk out o' the plaace fur half a sovereign."
The conversation was obviously getting into the wrong hands. The only person who looked interested was Nigel.
"Reckon all that's changed now," hastily put in Dunk—"they say now as gaol's lik a hotel—but not so free and easy, I take it, not so free and easy. Name it, Mus' Furlonger—see your glass is empty."
This time Nigel named a brandy.
"Reckon you can't order wot you lik fur dinner—and got to do your little bit o' work. But the gaol-buildings themselves, they're just lik hotels, they're palisses—handsomer than a workhouse."
"They're damned stinking hells," said Nigel—the brandy had loosed his tongue.
A murmur of approval ran through the bar. The great Furlonger had at last been drawn into the conversation. He sat at a small table, his fingers round his empty glass—about half a dozen voices begged him to "name it."
At first he hesitated. He was now a hero—for the first time for years—and yet it was ahero-worship he could not swallow sober. But he wanted it. He wanted to be looked up to, for a change—to be deferred to, and exalted; and if he could not stand it sober, he must get drunk, that was all. He named another brandy.
The patrons of the bar were drawing round him. The barmaid was patting and pulling at her hair; even "Charley," the seedy nondescript that haunts all bars, and, unsalaried and ignored, brings the dirty glasses to the counter from the outlying tables—even "Charley" came forward with a deprecating grin and heel-taps of stout.
Nigel had gulped down the brandy, and, without exactly knowing why, had sprung to his feet.
"Give us a speech, Mus' Furlonger!" cried Boorer of the Kenthouse. "Tell us about gaol, and why it's damned and stinking."
"Have something to cool you fust," suggested Breame.
Nigel shook his head. He was in that convenient state when a man is sober enough to know he is drunk.
"Gaol's damned and stinking," he began, glaring sharply round him, "in the same way that this bar is damned and stinking—because it's full of men. But in gaol they're divided into two classes, top scoundrels and bottom scoundrels. The top scoundrels are the warders, with their eye at your door, and their hand inside your coat—in case you've got baccy."
A murmur of sympathy ran through his listeners, who had been a little taken aback by his opening phrases.
"Baccy's one of the things you aren't allowed. There's lots of others—drink, and girls, and your own body and soul—the body your mother gave you, and the soul God gave you," he finished sententiously with a hiccup.
Some one thrust another glass into his hand, and he gulped it down. It burnt his throat.
"I once had a body, and I once had a soul, but they aren't mine any longer now. They belong to the state—hic—they're number seventy-six—that's me who's speaking to you—number seventy-six—no other name for three yearsh ... go and see the p'lice every month—convict seventy-six ... made me no better'n a child—hic—what'er you to do with a man when he's got too clever for you?—turn him into a child—a crying child—a damn crying child—like me——"
And Furlonger burst into tears.
The bar looked disconcerted. Nigel stood leaning up against the table, sobbing and hiccuping. The barmaid offered him her handkerchief, which was strongly scented, and edged with lace. Breame muttered—"We're unaccountable sorry, Mus' Furlonger," and Dunk suggested another brandy.
Suddenly Nigel flung round on them, his lips shrinking from his teeth, his eyes blazing.
"Damn you!" he cried thickly—"damn you all—you cheap cads—gaping and cringing and pumping—feeding on my misery and my shame—hic ... look at you all grinning ... you're pleased because I'm in hell. You'll go home and gas about me, and say 'poor fellow'—blast you!—I'mbetter than anything inLloyd'sor theNews of the World—hic—let me go—you're dirt, all of you—let me go——"
He plunged forward, and elbowed his way through them to the door. He was very unsteady, and crashed into the doorpost, bruising his forehead. But at last he was out in the sun-spattered afternoon—with a cool breeze bringing the scent of rain from the forest, and little clouds flying low.
When Len and Janey came in from the yard that evening they found Nigel in the kitchen, sitting at the table scowling. His hair was damp on the temples, and his cheeks were flushed.
"Hullo, old man!" cried Janey, "when did you come in?"
He did not answer, but supplemented his scowl by a grin. It was characteristic of him to scowl and grin at the same time.
Len went up to his brother, and looked at him closely and rather sternly.
"What have you been up to?"
Still Nigel did not speak. Then suddenly he dropped his head, rolling it on his arms.
"Is he drunk?" whispered Janey.
"What d'you think?"
Len tried to pull up his brother's head, but Nigel growled and shook him off.
"Nigel!" cried Janey.
He made no answer.
She tried to slip her hand under his forehead, and lift it.
"Nigel, what have you been doing?"
He snarled something at her, and she remembered the other awful occasion when she had seen her brother drunk.
"Leave him alone, and he'll come to himself," said Len. "It's natural for him to get drunk—he's the sort."
"Oh, no, he isn't!—Nigel, come upstairs with me, and let me put something cool on your head."
"Damn you!" growled the boy, "leave me alone."
"Oh, Nigel, don't hate me—I'm not blaming you—I think I know why you got drunk, and I——"
Her sentence was never finished. With a yell of fury he sprang to his feet, knocking over his chair, and seized her in a grip of iron.
"Hold your tongue, you ——!"
"Oh!" cried Janet.
Leonard vaulted across the table, grasped his brother's collar, and struck him on the side of the head. Nigel loosed his grip of Janet, and turned to close with Len, who was, however, much the better man of the two. He forced Nigel down on the table, and proceeded to punish him with all his might.
"Apologise, you brute ... beg her pardon on your knees," he shouted.
Nigel did not speak—his lips were tight shut, a thin red streak in the whiteness of his face.
"Len ... stop!—you'll kill him!" cried Janet. She stood petrified, trembling from head to foot. Never in her whole life had she witnessed such a scene in the Furlonger family. The boys were fighting. She had seen them spar before, but never anything like this. And Nigel's drunkenness ... and his words to her ... a sickly, stifling horror crept up her throat and nearly choked her.
"Len—stop!—he's had enough."
"Not till he apologises—apologise, you damn brute!"
Nigel's teeth were set. He struggled mechanically, Len had hold of his right wrist, and his left hand was bent under him. Suddenly, however, he managed to wrench them both free—the next minute he seized his brother's throat. For a moment or two they struggled desperately, Leonard half strangled, and in the end Nigel rolled off the table to the floor, where both young men lay together.
Leonard was the first to rise.
"Good Lord, Janey," he said weakly.
"Nigel—he's dead."
"Not he!"
They both knelt down, and raised him a little. Blood began to run out of the corner of his mouth.
"You've killed him!" cried Janey.
"No—he's only bitten his tongue. Look"—lifting the corner of his brother's lip—"his teeth are locked like a vice."
"Oh, all this has been too horrible!"
"Run and fetch some water—we'll bring him to in a minute."
She filled a jug at the tap, and together they bathed Nigel's forehead and neck. Len's rage had entirely cooled, and he handled his unconscious brother almost tenderly.
At last the boy opened his eyes. To the surprise of both Len and Janet his first glance was quite mild.
"Oh ..." he said weakly.
Then suddenly remembrance seemed to come.He shook off his brother's hand, scowled at Janey, and struggled to his feet.
"I'm going to bed," he muttered, leaning unsteadily against the table.
"You mustn't stand," said Janet, trying to soothe him, "come and sit here for a minute, and then Len shall help you up to bed."
"I don't want Len, damn him!"
He staggered towards the door.
"Len—go after him."
"Not if I know it."
"He'll never get upstairs without you."
"He's much better alone."
They heard Nigel slipping and stumbling on the stairs. Once he fell with a crash, but at last he reached the top. Luckily his door was open, and he lurched in. The next minute they heard a thud and a creak as he flung himself on the bed.
He woke at dawn from what seemed an eternity of sleep—not one of those swift, deep sleeps which we are unconscious of till we find their healing touch on our lids at waking, but a series of sleeps, heavy, yet tossed, continually broken by grey glimmers of consciousness, by sudden heats and pains, quick stabs of memory, blind spaces of forgetfulness—that feverish, aching forgetfulness, which is memory in its acutest form.
He sat up in bed, his temples throbbing, his face flushed and damp. He pushed his hair back from his forehead, and stared out at the morning with eyes that burned. He fully remembered all that had happened, without such reminders as hisheadache, his sickness, and the rumpled clothes in which he had slept all night. His brain throbbed to the point of torture. Sharp cuts of pain tore through it, hideous revisualisations seemed to scorch whole surfaces of it with sudden flames. Facts hammered at it with monotonous mercilessness.
He fell back on the pillow, and for some minutes lay quite still, staring out at the woods. There they lay in their straight brown line, those woods. He could almost hear the rock of the wind in them, creeping to him over the stillness of the fields. They seemed to whisper peace—peace to his throbbing pulses and burning skin and aching body and breaking heart. All his universe was shattered, except those quiet external things—the woods and fields round his home. They stood unchanged through all his turmoils, they responded only to their own remote influences—the warming and cooling of winds, the waxing and waning of the sun's heat, the frostiness of vapours. He might rage, despair, scream, and curse in them without changing the colour of one leaf.
He longed stupidly for tears, but those easy tears of his humiliation would not come. He felt that if he thought of Len and Janey he might cry. But he would not think of them, though in his heart was an infinite tenderness. Len and Janey were like the woods, they did not change—then suddenly he realised that nothing had changed, it was only he. He had changed, and could not fit in with his old environment. Curse it! Damn it! Where could he find peace?
Perhaps he had formally renounced peace on that day he plunged his hands into the pitchy mess of money-making. He had known peace before then—soft dreams that flew to him from the lattices of dawn. He remembered days when he had lain in the corner of some field, among the rustling hay-grass, his soul lost in the eternities of peace within it. But now—he had renounced peace. He had turned from pure things to defiled—and he had sharpened his brain, whetted it on artificialities. For the man with brains there is seldom peace, but an eternal questing. The man without brains suffers only the problem of "what?" It is the man with brains who has to face the seven-times hotter problem of "why?"
Why was a man, alone of all creatures, allowed to be at war with his environment—a prey to changes that were independent of, and unable to reproduce themselves in, the world around him? Why was a man the meeting-place of god and brute, the battle-ground of the two with their unending wars?—and so made that if one should triumph and drive out the other, the vanquished, whether god or brute, took away part of his manhood with him, and peace was won only at the price of incompleteness?... Why was consummation only a prelude to destruction?—the lustreless horns of the daylight moon seemed to be telling him that it waxed full only to wane. Why was a man given desires that were gratified only at their own expense? Why did his young blood call—call into the fire and dark—with only the fire and dark to answer it?
It was in this turmoil of "whys" that Nigel's longing for the woods became desperate. He raised himself on his elbow, and stared out at them—Swites Wood, Summer Wood, and the woods of Ashplats and Hackenden. He found himself dreaming of their narrow, soaking paths, of their brown undergrowth, and carpet of dead leaves—he seemed to see the long rows of ash, with here and there a yellow leaf fluttering on a bough. He would go to the woods, he would find rest in their silent thickness.
He sprang out of bed and across the room, with what seemed one movement of his big, graceful body. He lifted his water-jug from the floor, and drank deeply—then he washed himself and put on fresh clothes. He felt clean and cool, and the mere physical sensation gave him new strength and dignity. He went quietly downstairs. Len was up and in the yard, Janet was in the kitchen—but neither saw him as he stole out of the house and up the lane.
He left it soon after passing Wilderwick, and plunged into a field. The grass was covered with frost-crystals, beginning to melt in the lemon glare of the sun. It was a strange, yellow dawn, dream-like, pathetic—a little wind fluttered with it from the east, and smote the hedges into ghostly rustlings. Nigel crept through the pasture as if he feared to wake some one asleep, and entered the first of his woods.
The rim was touched with flame—one or two fiery maples blazed out of the hedge against a background of yellow. Creeping through thosegolds and scarlets into the sober browns was symbolic. He went a few steps, then flung himself down upon the leaves. On the top they were dry, underneath he felt and smelt their gracious dampness.
The fires in his heart seemed to die. He felt bruises where Len had struck him, but they galled him no longer; the half-forgotten peace and liberty of other days was beginning to drift like a shower into his breast. Why could he not live always in the woods, instead of among people whom he hurt and who hurt him, though he loved them and they loved him? There was no love in the woods—love had passed out of them in September, leaving them very quiet, very peaceful, in a great brown hush of sleep. Love was what hurt in life—love and brains; take away these and you take away suffering. Oh, if love and thought could go together out of his life as they had gone out of the woods—and leave him in a great brown hush of sleep.
For nearly an hour he lay in the brake, hidden by golden tangles of bracken and stiff clumps of tansy. He had begun to drowse, and capture rags of happiness in dreams, when suddenly he heard a rustling in the bushes. Hang it all! He could not have peace, even in the woods. The rustling came nearer, and he heard the panting of a dog—with a mumbled oath he sat up in the fern.
"Oh!..."
Nigel's head and shoulders were not a reassuring sight to confront one suddenly on a lonelywoodland walk, and though Tony did not scream her voice was full of alarm. At first Nigel did not recognise her, she stirred up in him merely impersonal feelings of annoyance, but the next moment he seemed to see her face in a glow of lamplight on East Grinstead platform. This was the lone girl-kid he had befriended—and thought no more of since then.
"I beg your pardon," he said hastily, scrambling to his feet, "I'm afraid I startled you."
"Oh, no"—she looked awkward and embarrassed. "You're Mr. Smith, aren't you?"
Nigel stared at her in some bewilderment, then suddenly remembered another of the half-forgotten incidents of that night.
"Yes—I'm Smith," he said slowly. "I—I hope you got home all right in the taxi."
"Quite all right, thank you—and mother said I ought to be very grateful to you for taking such care of me."
There was something about this school-girl, who evidently took him for a man of her own class and position, which filled him with an infinite pain—a pain that was half a wistful pleasure. She stood before him in the path, a slim, unripe promise of womanhood, her long hair plaited simply on her back, her face glowing with health, her eyes bright and shy. He felt unfit, uncouth—and yet she did not seem to see anything strange in his appearance, sudden as it had been. He realised that now at last he was face to face with a human being between whom and him the barrier of his disgrace did not stand. This child did not exalthim for his evil story, neither did she despise him—his crime simply did not exist. Its hideousness was not tricked out with tinsel and scarlet, as by the cads in the bar—it was just invisible, put away. Strange words thrilled faintly into his mind—"the remission of sins."
"I'm glad you came to me at East Grinstead," said Tony, a little embarrassed by the long pause. "You see, mother never got my postcard, so no wonder there wasn't any one to meet me."
"I'm glad I was any use." He spoke stiffly, in a mortal fear lest, for some reason unspecified, her attitude of fragrant ignorance should collapse.
"Do you live near here?" she asked naïvely.
He hesitated. "Not very."
"I do—quite near. I think I must be going home now."
She held out her hand to say good-bye, when suddenly a shrill wailing scream rose from the field outside the wood.
"Oh!" cried Tony.
They both turned and listened, their hands still clasped. The next minute it came again—shrill, frantic.
"What is it?" asked the girl, shuddering, "it sounds just like a baby."
"I think it's a rabbit—perhaps it's caught in a trap."
He left hold of her hand and looked over the hedge. The next minute he sprang into it, forcing his way through, while she stared after him with troubled eyes.
"Yes, it's a rabbit," he cried thickly, "caught in one of those spring traps, poor little devil!"
She scrambled after him into the field.
"Oh, let it out!—poor little thing!—oh, save it!"
But he was already struggling with the trap, and she saw blood on his hands where the teeth had caught them.
"I'll do it, never fear," he muttered, grinding his teeth. "Can you hold the poor little chap?—He'll hurt himself worse than ever if he struggles so."
She grasped the soft mass of fur, damp and draggled with its agony, while Nigel tried to prise open the steel jaws.
"There!"
The rabbit bounded out of the trap, but the next minute fell down struggling.
"It's leg's broken," cried Nigel. "Poor little beast!—what a damned infernal shame!"
He picked it up tenderly.
"Hadn't you better destroy it?" asked Tony, gulping her tears.
"I think perhaps I had—look the other way."
She moved off a few steps, and heard nothing till Nigel said, "Poor little beggar!"
He came up to her, holding the dead rabbit by its ears.
"That's all you're good for when you've been in a trap—to die. Being in a trap breaks parts of you that can never be mended. It's always kind to kill broken things."
He stood hesitating a moment, then suddenlyhe flushed awkwardly, pulled off his cap and turned away.
Tony stared after him. She saw him go with bowed head across the field. Half way he dropped the rabbit, but he did not stop. He walked straight to the fence, and climbed over it into the lane.
An impulse seized her—she could not account for it, but she suddenly turned to follow him. She wanted to thank him again, perhaps—to ask him something, she scarcely knew what. But he was gone. There was only the dead rabbit, lying still warm in the grass.
The next day was the day Janet had promised to have tea with Quentin at Redpale Farm. She had prepared for it carefully, telling her brothers she was going shopping in East Grinstead, and would not be home till late.
As soon as dinner was over, she slipped upstairs to dress. She was in a state of fever, and for the first time thought of her clothes. She had never troubled about them when she went to meet Quentin in the woods, but now she was going to his house—a thrill ran through her; she had never in her life been inside Redpale Farm, but now she would see the room where Quentin sat and thought of her in the long, dark evenings—which he had told her of so often—when the stars crawled through veils of wrack, and the wind piped down the valley of the hammer ponds.
Memories of his few pronouncements on clothes rose to guide her. He liked her to come to him as a fragment of the day on which he waited. To-day was a brown day, hiding under rags of mist from a pale, sun-washed sky—so she put on a brown dress, of a long-past fashion, and mended in places, but beautiful in clinging folds about her—and in her breast she pinned the last yellow rose of the garden.
"Good-bye, Janey," called Len from the orchard.
"Good-bye," sang out Nigel.
She waved her hand to them, not trusting herself to speak.
As soon as she was out of sight, she climbed into the fields, and walked across them to Old Surrey Hall. Here were the tangled borders of Kent—she plunged through a hedge of elder and crack-willow, and was in the next county. Quentin always used to say that there was a difference between the three counties, even where they touched in this corner. Surrey was park-like, and more sophisticated than the other two; one had wide, green spaces and dotted trees. Sussex was moor-like, covered with wild patches and pines, hilly and bare; Kent was untidy, tangled and lush, full of small, twisting lanes, weighted orchards and huddled farms. Janet passed the flat gable-end of Anstiel, buried in the thickets of its garden, and came out on the Gated Road. This wound down the valley of the hammer ponds to Redpale, Scarlets and Clay. It was seldom used, as there were gates every few hundred yards to prevent the cattle from straying, and in winter the hammer ponds sometimes overflowed.
Redpale was the first of the valley farms, and stood in a reed-grown hollow beside a wood. It was an old house, with a carnival of reds in its huge, sloping roof. Janet stole quickly through the yard and came up the garden to the door. It was opened before she reached it, and Quentin seized her hands.
"You've come at last—I've been watching for you."
He dragged her into the passage, banged the door, and kissed her in the dark.
"Come into the study," he cried eagerly. "Come and hallow me a hundred lonely evenings in one hour."
He took her into a low, book-lined room, where a fire was burning. A chair was pulled up to the fire, and over it was spread a gorgeous Eastern rug.
"You're to sit there, Janey. I prepared that rug for you—it has your tintings, your browns and whites and reds. Sit down, and I'll sit at your feet."
She sat down, but before he did so, he fetched a jug of chrysanthemums, and put them on the table beside her.
"Now you're posed, Janey sweet—posed for me to gaze at and worship. You don't know how often I've dreamed of you in that chair, with old oak at your back, flowers at your elbow, and firelight in your eyes. One night I really thought I saw you there, and I fell at your knees—as I do now—and took your hand—as I do now. But it was only a dream, and I sat on in my own chair and watched our two fetches sitting there before me, you in the chair and I at your feet."
He kissed her hands repeatedly, and his poor, hot kisses seemed to drain love and pity in a torrent from her heart.
"Quentin, I'm so glad I came. Is this whereyou sit in the evenings? Now I shall know how to imagine you when I think of you after supper."
"'When you think of me after supper'—you quaint woman! how funnily you speak!"
He laughed, and hid his face in her knees. But the next moment his head shot up tragically.
"I've bad news for you, dear."
"Oh, what is it?..."
"Baker has returned my poems."
"Oh!..."
"Yes—there they are."
He pointed to the grate, where one or two fragments of charred paper showed among the cinders.
She bowed her face over his.
"I thought you were happy when I came."
"Happy! of course I was happywhen you came. Janey, if you come to me on my death-bed, I'll be happy—if you come to me in hell, I'll sing for joy."
"Did Baker write about the poems?"
"No—only a damned printed slip; he doesn't think 'em worth a letter. It's all over with me, Janey—with us both. I'll never be good for anything—I'm a rotter, a waster, a Spring Poet. We're both done for—our love isn't any more use."
"Can't you hope, dear?"
"Can you?"
She began to cry.
She had always fought hard against tears when she was with Quentin, but this afternoon her disappointment was too bitter. She realised the sour facts to which hope and trust had long blindedher—that Quentin would never win his independence, and therefore that marriage with him was impossible till his father's death. She saw how much she had unconsciously relied on Baker's acceptance of the poems, their last hope. Quentin's words had scattered a crowd of little delicate dreams, scarcely realised while she entertained them, known only as they fled like angels from the door. After those three weary years of waiting she had dreamed of being his at last—his wife, his housemate—no longer meeting him in the dark corners of woods, but his before the world, honoured and acknowledged. Now that dream was shattered—the three weary years would become four weary years, and the four, five—and on and on to six and seven. The woods would still rustle with their stealthy footsteps, their tongues still burn with lies ... she covered her face, and wept bitterly—with all the impassioned weakness of the strong.
"Oh, I'm so ashamed...."
"Why?"
"Because I'm crying. But, Quentin, I feel broken, somehow. Our love's so great, and we're parted by such little things."
"Janey, Janey...."
She sobbed more dryly now—anguish was stiffening her throat.
"Must we wait all those years?" he whispered.
"What else can we do?"
He whispered again. "Must we wait all those years?"
She lifted her face, understanding him suddenly.
"Quentin, you and I must do nothing to—degrade our love."
"But it's degraded already—it's thwarted, and all thwarted things are degraded. If we fling aside our fears and triumph over circumstances, then it will be exalted, not degraded."
She did not speak.
"Janey," he continued, his voice muffled in her hands, which he held against his mouth. "You and I have been locked out of Paradise—but we can climb over the gates."
She was still silent. Quentin had never spoken to her so openly before—after earlier disappointments he had sometimes hinted what he now expressed; but his love had never made her tremble; violent as it was, it was reverent.
"Janey ... will you climb over the gates of Paradise with me?"
"No, dear."
"Why?"
"Because our love's not that sort."
"It's the sort that waits and is trampled on."
"It's strong enough to wait."
"How white your face is, Janey!—you speak brave words, but you're trembling."
"Yes, I'm trembling."
"Because you're not speaking the truth; you're lying—in the face of Love. You see plainly that if you and I wait till we can marry, we shall wait for ever. Our only chance is to take matters into our own hands, and let circumstances and opportunities be damned. You make out that you'redenying Love for its own good—that's another lie. 'Wait,' you say, because you're afraid. Why, what have we been doing all these years but 'wait'?—wait, wait; wait till our hearts are sick and our hopes are dust. If we wait any longer our love will die—and then will you find much comfort in the thought that we have 'waited'?"
"But there's the boys, Quentin."
An oath burst from young Lowe.
"The boys! the boys!—that's your war-cry, Janey. I'm nearly sick of it now. And how appropriate!—your brothers are such models of good behaviour, ain't they?"
"Don't, Quentin—it's for that very reason...."
"Yes," he said bitterly, "I remember how your reasons go—the boys have their secrets, so you must be without one; the boys have made a pretty general hash of law and order, so you must be a kind of Sunday-school ma'am. Really, Janet!"
"You don't understand what it is to live with people who think you ever so much better than you really are—you have to keep it up somehow."
"But surely you don't think you'll be committing a crime by giving our love a chance. You can't be such a prude as to stickle for a ceremony—a few lines scribbled, a few words muttered."
"It wouldn't be so bad if that were all. But it's no good trying to prove that you're simply offering me marriage with the ceremony left out. In some cases that might be true, but not in ours. You can't give the name of marriage to a few hurried meetings, all secrecy and lies. Things arebad enough as they are, without adding—that mockery."
Quentin sighed.
"You're an extraordinary woman, Janey; you breathe the pure spirit of recklessness and paganism—and then suddenly you give vent to feelings that would become Hesba Stretton. You're a moralist at bottom—every woman is. There's no use looking for the Greek in a woman—they're all Semitic at heart, every one of 'em. You'll begin to quote the Ten Commandments in a minute."
Janey said nothing, and for some time they did not move. The wind rushed up to the farmhouse, blustered round it, and sighed away. The sunshine began to slant on the woods, tarnishing their western rims.
Then suddenly the kettle began to sing. They both lifted their heads as they heard it—it reminded them of the meal they were to have together.
"Janey, will you make tea?"
She stood up quickly as his arms fell from her waist. This sudden, most domestic, diversion was a relief. She began to prepare the meal, and he crouched by the fire and watched her.
"You shall pour out tea, love—then we'll do things in the grand style, and smash the tea-pot."
While she waited for the tea to draw she came over to the mirror above the fireplace and began to arrange her hair. The firelight played on her as she stood there, her arms lifted, her head thrown back, half her face in shadow, half flushed in the glow.
"Janey, you are the symbol of Love—all lightand darkness and disarray. It's cruel of you to stand like that—it's profane. For you're not Love, you're morality."
"It's funny, Quentin, but you never can understand my reasons for what I do—it's because they're not poetic enough, I suppose."
"You don't seem to have any reasons at all—only a moral sense."
He rose and went to sit at the table, resting his chin on his hands. She came behind him and bent over him.
"Dear one, I've seen such a lot of unhappy love that I've made up my mind ours shall be different.... I refuse you because I love you too much."
Quentin sighed impatiently.
"If I did what you ask," continued Janey tremulously, "our love would die."
"Nonsense!—how dare you say such things! Why should it die?"
"I—I don't know—but I'm sure it would. Oh, Quentin, I know you don't understand my reasons, because I really haven't given them to you properly. They're things I feel more than things I know."
She went and sat down opposite him, and began to pour out tea.
"Let's talk of something that isn't love."
He laughed.
"Let's breathe something that isn't air. Everything's love—if we talked about flowers, or books, or animals, or stars, we should be talking about love. Without love even our daily newspapers wouldn't appear."
"Then don't let's talk of anything—let's hold our tongues."
"Very well, Janey."
He smiled at the simplicity of the woman who thought she could silence love by holding her tongue.
For some minutes they sat opposite each other, swallowing scalding tea, crumbling cake upon their plates. Their first meal together, on which they had both set such store, had become an ordeal of mistrust and silence. The sunset was now ruddy on the woods, and the sky became full of little burning wisps of cloud, like brands flung out of the west. They hurried over the sky, and dropped behind a grass-grown hill in the east, crowding after one another, kindling from flame to scarlet, from scarlet to crimson. The wind came and fluttered again round the house—darkness began to drop into the room. Outside, a rainbow of colours gleamed and flashed in the sunset, as it struck the hammer ponds and the wet flowers of the garden—but the window looked east, and there was nothing but the firelight to wrestle with the shadows that crept from the corners towards the table. Soon the table with the food on it became mysterious, gloomed with shadows and half-lights—then the dimness crept up the bodies of Quentin and Janey, leaving only their white faces staring at each other. They had given up even the pretence to eat—their eyes were burning, and yet washed in tears.
Suddenly Janey sprang to her feet.
"I must go."
"Go—why, it's barely five."
"But I must."
He rose hurriedly. For a moment they faced each other over the unfinished meal, then Quentin came towards her.
"You're frightened, Janey?"
"Yes."
"Of me?"
"No."
"But of yourself...."
She began to tremble violently, and suddenly his arms were round her, her sobs shaking them both.
"My little Janey...."
"Quentin, Quentin ... be merciful ... I'm in your power."
He looked down into her drowning eyes, at the pure outlines of her face, seen palely through the dusk.
"I'm in your power," she repeated vaguely.
"Janey ... Janey," he whispered, "you're in my power ... but I'm in Love's. Love is stronger than either of us—and Love says 'Over the gates!—over the gates!'"
The next few days were to Nigel like a piece of steep hill to a cart-horse. There was only one comfort—he felt no temptation to seek oblivion again as he had sought it at the Bells. He turned surlily from the men he had looked to for alleviation—he knew they could not give it. All they could do was to cover his wounds with septic rags—they had no oil and wine for him.
So he put down his head, seeing nothing but the little patch of ground over which he moved, planted his feet firmly, and pulled from the shoulder. Perhaps it was because he saw such a little of his way that he did not notice Janey was doing pretty much the same thing—with the difference that she fretted more, like a horse with a bearing-rein, which cannot pull from the collar. Side by side they were plunging up the hill of difficulty—and yet neither saw how the other strained.
Len vaguely realised that something was wrong with Janet, but he put it down to her anxiety about Nigel. An atmosphere of reticence and misunderstanding had settled on Sparrow Hall, frankness had gone and effects were put down to the wrong causes. Len tried to help Janey by helping Nigel. It struck him that his brother would be happier if he had less pottering work to do. So he took upon himself all the monotonous details of the yard, and asked Nigel to see to the largermatters, which involved much tramping in the country round.
One day towards the end of October, Len asked him to attend an auction at Forest Row. He went by train, but as the auction ended rather earlier than he expected, he decided to walk home.
It was a pale afternoon, smelling of rain. The sky was covered with soft mackerel clouds, dappled with light, and the distances were mysterious and tender. Nigel had a special love for distances—for three years he had not been able to look further than a wall some thirty yards off, except when he lifted his eyes to that one far view prison could not rob him of, the sky. Now the stretch of distant fields, the blur of distant woods, the gleam of distant windows in distant farms, even the distant gape of Oxted chalk-pit among the Surrey hills, filled him with an ineffable sense of quiet and liberty.
For this reason he walked home along the high road, ignoring the dusty cars—so that he might look on either side of him into distances, the shaded sleep of meadows in the east, the pine-bound brows of the Forest in the west.
He did not feel that resentment at Nature's indifference to human moods, which is a man's right and a token of his lordship. On the contrary, the beauty and happiness of the background to his travail gave him a vague sense of ultimate justice. The peace of the country against the restless misery of human life reminded him of those early Italian pictures of the Crucifixion—in which, behind all the hideous mediæval realism of thesubject, lies a tranquil background of vineyard and cypress, lazily shining waters, dream cities on the hills. That was Life—a crucifixion against a background of green fields.
He was roused from his meditations by being nearly knocked down by a big car. He sprang into the hedge, and cursed with his mouth full of dust. The dust drifted, and he saw some one else crouching in the hedge not a hundred feet away. It was a girl with her bicycle—somehow he felt no surprise when he saw that it was Tony Strife, the "girl-kid," again.
She was obviously in difficulties. One of her tyres was off, and her repairing outfit lay scattered by the roadside. She did not see him, but stooped over her work with a hot face. Nigel did not think of greeting her—though their last encounter had impressed him far more than the first; she had even come once or twice into his dreams, standing with little Ivy among fields of daisies, in that golden radiance which shines only in sleep.
He was passing, when suddenly she lifted her head, and recognition at once filled her eyes—
"Oh, Mr. Smith!..."
Her voice had in it both relief and entreaty. He stopped at once.
"What's happened?"
"I've punctured my tyre—and I can't mend it."
He knelt down beside her, and searched among the litter on the road.
"Why, you haven't got any rubber!"
"That's just it. I haven't used my bicycle forso long that I never thought of looking to see if everything was there. What shall I do?"
"Let me wheel it for you to a shop."
"There's nowhere nearer than Forest Row, and that's three miles away."
"Are you in a great hurry?"
"Yes—terrible. The others have gone up to Fairwarp in the car for a picnic. There wasn't enough room for us all, so Awdrey and I were to bicycle; then she said her skirt was too tight, so they squeezed her in, and I bicycled alone. It's quite close really, but I had this puncture, and they all passed me in the car, and never saw me, they were going so fast. I don't know how I can possibly be at Fairwarp in time."
"No—nor do I. We can't mend your tyre without the stuff, and the nearest shop is two miles from here."
"I'll have to go home, that's all. They'll be awfully sick about it—for I've got the nicest cakes on my carrier."
Nigel laughed.
"Then perhaps you have the advantage, after all. Just think—you can eat them all yourself!"
"They're too many for one person. I say, won't you have some?"
"That would be a shame."
"Oh no—do have some. I hate eating alone—and I'm awfully hungry."
She began to unstrap the parcel from her carrier.
"This is a dusty place for a picnic," said Nigel, "let's go down the lane to Brambletye, and eat them there."
The idea and the words came almost together. He did not pause to think how funny it was that he should suddenly want to go for a picnic with a school-girl of sixteen. It seemed quite natural, somehow. However, he could not help being a little dismayed at his own boldness. This girl would freeze up at once if by any chance he betrayed who he really was. As for her people—but the thought of their scandalised faces was an incitement rather than otherwise.
"Where's Brambletye?" asked Tony.
"Don't you know it?—it's the ruin at the bottom of that lane. You must have passed it often."
"I've never been down the lane—only along the road in the car."
"And you live so near! Why, I've often been to Brambletye, and I live much further away than you."
"Where do you live?"
This was a settler, to which Nigel had laid himself open by his enthusiasm. He decided to face the situation boldly.
"I live over in Surrey—at a place called Fan's Court."
"Fan's Court," she repeated vaguely. "I don't think I've heard of it."
"Oh, it's a long way from you—beyond Blindly Heath—and only a little place. I'm not very well off, you know."
She glanced at his shabby clothes, and felt embarrassed, for she saw that he had noticed the glance.
He picked up the litter from the roadside, and began to wheel her bicycle down the hill.
"I say," she breathed softly, "this is an adventure."
So it was—for both, in very different ways. For her it was an incursion into lawlessness. Her father was tremendously particular, even her girl friends had to pass the censor before intimacy was allowed, and as for men—why, she had never really known a man in her life, and here she was, picnicing with one her parents had never seen! Nigel was in exactly the opposite position—he was adventuring into law and respectability. He was with a girl, a school-girl, of the upper middle classes, to whom he was simply a rather poverty-stricken country gentleman—to whom his disgrace was unknown, who admitted him to her society on equal terms, ignorant of the barriers that divided them. He looked down at her as she walked by his side, her soft hair freckled with light, her eyes bright with her thrills—and a faint glow came into his cheeks, a faint flutter to his pulses, nothing fierce or mighty, but a great quiet surge that seemed to pass over him like the sea, and leave him stranded in simplicity.
They walked down the steep lane which led from the road, and wound for some yards at the back of Brasses Wood. Here in a hollow stood the shell of a ruined manor, flanked by a moat. Two ivy-smothered towers rose side by side, crowned by strange, pointed caps of stone; the walls were lumped with ivy, grown to an enormous density and stoutness. The place looked deserted. There was a small water-mill behind it, and a farm, but no one was about.
Nigel wheeled Tony's bicycle in at the dismantled door. The roof was gone, and all the upper floors—the sky looked down freely at the grass hillocks which filled the inside of the ruins. There were one or two small rooms still partly ceiled, and these were full of farm implements and mangolds.
A tremulous peace brooded over Brambletye. Birds twittered in the ivy, the tall, capped turrets were outlined against a sky that flushed faintly in the heart of its grey, as the sunset crept up it from the hills. Both Nigel and Tony were silent for a moment, standing there in the peace.
"Fancy my never having been here before," said the girl at last. "How ripping it is!"
"I'm glad I brought you."
"It's strange," continued Tony, as she unfastened the cakes from her bicycle, "that I haven't seen you before—before I met you at East Grinstead, I mean."
"Oh, I've been away, I've not lived at home for some time. You haven't been here long, have you?" He was anxious to shift the conversation from dangerous ground.
"We came to Shovelstrode about three years ago. Before that we lived near Seaford. I go to school at Seaford, you know."
School seemed a fairly safe topic.
"Tell me about your school," he said, as they began to eat the cakes.
School was Tony's paramount absorption, and no one else ever asked her to speak of it. Indeed, on the rare occasions when she expanded of herown accord, her family would silence her with, "Tony, we're sick of that eternal school of yours—one would think it was the whole world, and your home just a corner of it." That was in fact the relative positions of home and school in Tony's mind. School was a world of kindred spirits, of things that mattered, home was a place of exile, to which three times a year one was bundled—and ignored. To her delight she realised that her new friend sympathised with her, and understood her feelings.
"You know, Mr. Smith, how beastly it is to be in a place where every one gets hold of the wrong end of what you say—where you don't seem to fit in, somehow."
"I do know—it's—it's exactly the same with me."
"Don't they like you being at home?"
"Rather!—they like it better than I deserve. But I don't fit in."
"And you've nowhere else to go?"
"I don't want to go anywhere else."