CHAPTER III IN THE RAIN

From Nigel's bed as well as Janey's one could see woods, and in summer he had often lain listening to the night-jar in them—that mysterious whirring, dull and restless, as if ghosts were spinning.

That night all was windless silence, and there was no motion in the dark patch of window-view, except the flashing of the stars. Towards morning a delicious sense of cold stole over Nigel's sleep. Soft airs seemed to be baffing him, rippling round him, and there seemed to be water—water and wind. Then suddenly a bell rang in his brain. The dream collapsed, pulverised. He sprang up in bed, then scrambled out—then opened his eyes, to see himself still surrounded by his dream.

It was five o'clock, and the Parkhurst bell had rung in his head just as it had rung at that hour for hundreds of mornings. But he was not at Parkhurst, he was still in his dream—water and wind. Against the horizon stretched a long dim line of woods, and above them the sky was lucent with the first hope of dawn. Into the fields splashed a gentle rain, and in at his window blew the west wind, soft, damp and cold.

For the first time Nigel realised that he was home, and that he was free.

[Pg 32]

Yesterday had all been so strange, he had not had time to think of things. After years of confinement and discipline it had been a terrifying ordeal to walk through the crowded streets of a town and take a long train journey, involving several changes. He had wished then that he had allowed Len to come and meet him at Parkhurst—the dull fears that had made him insist on his brother coming no nearer than East Grinstead had seemed nothing to this terror of carts and horses and motors and trams and trains, these constantly shifting faces and strident voices, this hurry, this disorder, this horrible respect of people who called him "Sir," and said "I beg your pardon," if they fell over his big feet.

When he came to Sparrow Hall, it had been worse still—not at first, but afterwards, when Janet and Leonard had said all those terrible things to him, and hurt him so. They had hurt him, and he had frightened them, and it had all been miserable.

But this morning everything had changed. He no longer felt terrified of his independence or of what his brother and sister might say. His heart was warm and happy—his lungs were full of the sweet moist morning air.

He crossed the room. It was ecstasy to feel that no one was watching him, that there was no ugly observation hole in the door. Why, privacy was as sweet as independence, and not nearly so startling. He pulled off his sleeping-suit, and stood naked by the bed. For the first time in three years he felt the pride of his young manhood, the splendour of his body. The lust of life frothed up in his[Pg 33] heart. The dawn, his strong bare limbs, the rain, plunged him into a rapture of thanksgiving. He was home, and he was free.

He knelt down by the window, the rain spattering softly on him, and stared out at the woods—Ashplats Wood and Hackenden Wood and Summer Wood, with Swites Wood in the west. The woods, the dear brown wind-rocked woods!—he would walk in them that morning, there was no one to hinder him—he was home, and he was free among the woods.

He rose lightly, and began to dress. He put on old rough clothes that he had worn before he went to prison. They had been old then, and now they were positively disreputable, for Janet had folded them away carelessly, so that they had creased and frayed. But he loved them, they seemed even now to smell of the cows he had milked and the soft loam of the fields.

He ran downstairs whistling—some music-hall song that had been popular three years ago, but was long forgotten now. To Leonard in the yard and Janet in the dairy he sounded like a cheerful ghost. They both thought of going to meet him, but both at last decided to leave him alone.

The house was full of the delicious smell of rain, and the wind crooned through it tenderly, rattling the doors and windows, and fluttering the untidy rags of wall-paper that here and there hung loose on the walls. Nigel went into the kitchen, where the fire was burning. He sat down by it and warmed his hands, though he was not really cold. He had not seen a fire for three years.

[Pg 34]

Then suddenly he noticed something in the corner—it was his fiddle-case, wrapped in green baize. Nigel had always passed for something of a musician, and during a few stormy years spent in London with his father had been fairly well taught. Farming and scheming had never made him forget his fiddle, though occasionally it had lain for weeks as it lay now, wrapped up in dusty cloths in the corner.

He stooped down and took it out of its many covers. It was a fairly good instrument of modern make, best in its low tones. All the strings were broken except the G, but he found a coil of the D in the case, and screwed it on. By means of harmonics and the seventh position he could manage fairly well with two strings.

It seemed a terribly long time since he had felt a fiddle under his chin, and sniffed its peculiar smell of sweet varnished wood and rosin. He lifted his arm slowly, and the bow dropped on the strings. It was scratchy, and he felt horribly stiff, but in course of time matters improved a little, and Len and Janey, together in the Dutch barn, smiled at each other as the strains of Handel's "Largo" drifted out to them.

"He'll feel better now," said Leonard.

Nigel forgot the "Largo" in the middle, and started "O Caro Nome," from Rigoletto. His taste in music had always been the despair of his teachers. He had never seemed able to appreciate the modern school, or, indeed, the more advanced of the ancients. He had a desperate fondness for Balfe and Donizetti, for the most sugary moods of Verdi[Pg 35] and Gounod. He revelled in high notes, trills and tremolo—"O Caro Nome" and "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls" appealed to a side of him which was definitely sentimental. He stood there by the window, swaying sentimentally from side to side, shaking shrill colorature from his violin, regardless of the squeaking of a nearly rosinless bow.

What appealed to Nigel was never the technique of a composition, but its emotional quality. Music was to him not so much sound as feeling—he did not value a piece for its own intrinsic beauty, but for the emotions it was able to call forth. As he played that morning whole cycles of experience passed before him. All the old dreams that for three years had lain dead in his violin now revived—but a new quality was added to them, a soft twang of sorrow. Before his imprisonment his dreams had been winged and shod with fire, wild things compounded of desire and endeavour, tender only in their background of the seasons' moods, rain and sunshine and wind and shadows and stars. But to-day longing took in them the place of endeavour, and all their desire was for forgetfulness. Stars and rain were in them still, but the stars and rain of the new heavens and the new earth which suffering had created—the rain which is tears, and the stars which spring from the dumb desire of sorrow brooding over the formless deep of its own immensity—"Let there be light." And there was light—one or two faint dream-like constellations, burning over and reflected in the swirling waters of the abyss.... A great wind passed[Pg 36] over the face of the waters, and parted them, and out of them rose a little island for a man to stand upon—so the dry land came out of the water. And the suffering man can stand on the island, where there is just room for his feet, and he can see the stars above him—and when he is too weary to lift his head he sees them reflected in the surging waters beneath....

Nigel dropped his violin, and looked out with dream-filled eyes at the fields, seen dimly through the rain-drops dripping from the eaves. In the front garden stood a little girl—a little dirty girl with a milk-can.

"Hullo!" said Nigel.

He felt an unaccountable desire to talk to this child; not because he liked her particularly—indeed, she was rather an unattractive object—but because he realised suddenly that he was very fond of children. He had never known it before, never imagined that he cared about kids; but, whether it was his long exile in prison he could not tell, he felt quite overwhelmed this morning by his love for them, and realised that he absolutely must make friends with the highly unfavourable specimen before him.

"Hullo!" he repeated.

The maiden vouchsafed no reply.

"Have you come for the milk?" he asked conversationally.

She nodded. Then she pointed to his violin.

"Did the noise come out of that box?"

"Yes—would you like to hear it again?"

"No."

[Pg 37]

He was not to be daunted.

"Come in, and I'll show you a pussy."

"Is there a pussy in that box?"

"No—but there's a beauty in the chair by the fire."

Nigel dived out of the window, and caught her up bodily. Her clothes smelt strongly of milk and garden mould, not an altogether pleasing combination. But for some reason or other he felt delighted, and carried her in triumph round the kitchen before he introduced her to a large placid-looking cat.

"Don' like it."

This was humiliating, but Nigel persevered.

"Have some of this—" and he offered her a spoonful of jam out of the pot on the table.

The little girl sniffed it with the air of a connoisseur.

"Don' like it."

"Well, try this—" plunging the same spoon into the sugar basin.

"Don' like it."

Fortunately at that moment Janey came in.

"Nigel, what on earth are you doing?—Hullo, Ivy!"

She looked surprised at the scowling infant perched on her brother's shoulder.

"She's come for the milk, and I'm giving her some breakfast."

"Wan'er go 'ome!" shrieked Ivy.

Nigel looked so mortified that Janey could hardly help laughing—till suddenly she realised that there was something rather pathetic about it all. Nigel[Pg 38] had never used to struggle for the good-will of dirty children.

"She'd better come with me," she said, "and I'll give her the milk. Her mother won't like it if she's kept."

Ivy alighted with huge satisfaction on the floor, and left the room with Janey, after throwing a bit of box-lid at the cat.

Janey came back in a few minutes.

"Like to help me get the breakfast, old man?" she asked cheerily.

Nigel was pacing up and down the kitchen.

"What a dear little thing she is!" he said.

"Who? Ivy? I think she's a regular little toad. How funny you are, Nigel!"

Half-an-hour later the three Furlongers were at breakfast. Nigel had always been subject to moods just like a girl, and sometimes his changes from heights to depths had been irritating. But to-day his brother and sister saw the advantages of such a nature. The two boys fooled together all through the meal, and Janet watched them, smiling. Nigel had found his tongue to some purpose. Strange to say, he was more than ready to talk of his prison experiences, though, as he had already hinted to Janey, he had two sets of these. One set, typified by his fumigated clothes, he seemed positively to revel in; the other set he never mentioned of his free will, though he obviously used to brood over them.

"Hullo! there's the postman!" cried Janet suddenly.

[Pg 39]

She rose to go to the door, but Nigel was nearest it, and sprang out before her.

"Morning, Winkworth!" he shouted hilariously. "I'm back again."

"Glad to see you, Mus' Furlonger," chuckled the postman. "You look in pretty heart."

"Never was better in my life," and waving a letter in his hand he swung back into the kitchen.

"A letter for Janey!—Janey's the lucky devil"—as he flung it across the table.

"I wonder who it's from," said Leonard; "open it, Janey, and see."

Letters were always an excitement in the Furlonger family—they were few enough to be that.

"Know the writing, Janey?"

Janey turned the letter over. "It's a bill."

The boys' faces fell.

"How dull," said Leonard, "and how immoral, Janet!—another of those ten-guinea hats, I suppose."

"And you promised us solemnly," said Nigel, "not to buy any more."

"It's dreadful of me," said Janet.

The boys glanced at her in surprise—for she looked as if she meant it.