CHAPTER IV FATE'S AFTERTHOUGHT

Janet did not open her bill till her brothers had gone out to the farm. Then she tore the envelope. The bill ran—

    "Janey Sweet,

    "Curse it!—I have to go to Brighton on Saturday. It's for my father, so I daren't object, in case he should ask too many questions. But I must see you, dear one—it's nearly a month since we met, and I'm dying for the sight of you and the touch of you. Can't you come to-day? I'm sure you can get away for an hour or two—your brothers must not take you from me. I'll be waiting in Furnace Wood, in the old place down by the hedge, at five. Come to me, Janey sweet. I dreamed of you last night—dreamed of you with your hands full of flowers.

    "Your lover,
    "Quentin."

Janey stuffed the letter into her pocket.

"It's dreadful of me," she repeated, in the same tone as she had said it to the boys. Those poor boys! How innocently and trustfully they had swallowed her lie—it was like deceiving children.

But she could not tell them—though Nigel's strange new reserve made her long all the more to be frank and without secret—they would be[Pg 41] furious if they knew her story, now the story of three years. Once she had tried hinting it to Len, but though he had not half understood her, he had made his feelings about Quentin Lowe pretty plain, and Janet had been only too glad to change the subject before the danger line was passed. Nigel would, of course, side with Leonard. They would look upon her love as treachery, for though there was no outward breach between the Furlongers and the Lowes, the former had always suspected the latter of sharp dealing over the Kent land—old Lowe would never have offered that absurd price if he had not known that the Furlongers were absolutely obliged to sell.

Old Lowe was a retired clergyman who had come with his son to Redpale Farm, just over the Kentish border. From the first he had cast a longing eye on the Furlonger acres, which touched his on the Surrey side. A row of cottages in obvious disrepair and insanitation had given his longing the necessary smack of righteousness. At that time Nigel was in prison on remand, and the news soon trickled through the neighbourhood that his brother and sister were in desperate money difficulties, and would have to sell most of their land. Lowe at once came forward with what he considered a fair offer, which the Furlongers, as no one else seemed inclined to bid, were bound to accept. The negotiations had been carried on chiefly through a solicitor, but young Lowe had paid two or three visits to Sparrow Hall.

Janet would never forget one of these. Leonard[Pg 42] was not in that day, but though she had told Quentin she could decide nothing without her brother, he had insisted on sitting with her in the kitchen, arguing some obscure point. She remembered it all—the table between them, the firelight on the walls, the square of darkness and stars seen through the uncurtained window, the pipe and rattle of the wind. He had risen to go, and suddenly she had seen that he was trembling—and before she had time to be surprised she saw that she was trembling too. They faced each other for a minute, shaking from head to foot, and dumb. Then they stooped together swiftly in a burning kiss, their hearts full of uncontrollable ecstasy and despair.

It had all been so sudden. She could not remember having felt the faintest thrill in his presence till that moment. He said the same. When he had sat down opposite her at the table, she had been merely a woman with whom he was doing business. It seemed as if fate had brought them together as an afterthought, and at first Janey believed it could not last. But it lasted. It had lasted all through those years, in spite of much wretchedness and a killing need for secrecy on both sides. This need was more vital for Quentin than for Janey. He was utterly dependent on his father, who, of course, looked on the Furlongers with righteous disgust. So for three years meetings had been stolen, letters smuggled, and happiness snatched out of sudden hours.

To-day Janet was not sure how she could arrange a meeting. Meetings with Quentin generally[Pg 43] needed the most careful planning, and on this occasion he had not given her much time. However, she thought, the boys would very probably go shooting in the early evening, and she could then run over to Furnace Wood.

This was what happened. A little man?uvring sent Nigel and Leonard out to pot rabbits, and a minute or so later Janey stole from Sparrow Hall, climbing the gate opposite into the fields of Wilderwick. She did not wear a hat—she never did—and over her dress was a disreputable old jacket. She went gaily and innocently to meet her lover in garments many women would not have swept the floor in.

It was a long tramp to Furnace Wood. The rain had cleared, but the grass was wet, and the trees shook down rain-drops and wet leaves. Autumn was late that year, still in the fiery stage—whole hedges flamed, and backgrounds were mostly yellow. But everywhere now were the dead leaves, damp as well as dead. Her feet splashed through them, they caked her boots, they filled every corner with their smell of sweet rottenness.

Furnace Wood marked the beginning of the chain of hammer ponds below Holtye Common. For a long time the fields had been sloping eastward, till at last they dropped into a tangled valley stretching from Old Surrey Hall to Sweetwoods Farm. Here was a great stillness and a great solitude—woods, and thick old orchards, with now and then an oast-house or a chimney struggling up among them. In this valley lay Redpale Farm,[Pg 44] Clay Farm, and Scarlet Farm, all old, alone, forsaken, beside the gleaming hammer ponds.

The waters of the first pond flashed like a shield through the half-naked branches of Furnace Wood. Janet's quick eyes saw Quentin standing by the hedge, and she began to run. She splashed over the drenched field, climbed the hedge with an agility she owed to a total disregard for her clothes—and crept warm and panting into his arms, as he stood there among the drifted leaves.

"Janey," he whispered, kissing her lips and her hair and her wrist wet with rain, "how I love you ... little Janey sweet."

It pleased Quentin to call her little, though as a matter of fact she was considerably taller than he. Quentin was a few years younger than Janey—delicate-looking, and yet thick-set. His face was pale, though the features were roughly hewn, and his shoulders were so high as to give him almost the appearance of a hunchback. In spite of this, he often struck people as handsome in a strange way—which was due, perhaps, to a certain nobility in the casting of his face, with its idealistic mouth, strong nose, and great bright eyes, which seemed to be burning under his heavy brows.

"Janey," he continued, "you're beautiful to-day—you're part of the evening. There's rain on your hair, and on your cheek, so that when I kiss it I taste rain—you're brown and red, just like the fields, you're windswept and rumpled like the woods."

Janey laughed.

[Pg 45]

"And your teeth gleam like that white pond through the trees."

"You should put that into a poem, Quentin," she said, still laughing, "it sounds funny in prose."

"Prose! Prose!—as if there could be any prose when you are near!"

A copper gleam of sunlight came suddenly from under the rim of a leaden cloud. For a moment it flared on the hedge, making the wet leaves shine. It gave a metallic look to the evening—instead of sweetening the soaked landscape it seemed only to make it sadder, with a harsh, reckless sadness it had not worn in the gloom. Quentin put up his hand and picked one of the shining sprays, to fasten it in Janey's jacket. Whenever he saw beautiful things in the hedges, he wanted to give them to Janey. He never wanted to give her the beautiful things he saw in shops; he did not, like so many men, stare into shop windows, longing to see her in those clothes, those jewels, and great hats like the moon. But if ever he found a sudden splash of bryony in the hedge, or a flush of bloody-twig, or honeysuckle, or nuts, he wanted to pick them for her. When it was May he had often met her in Furnace Wood with his arms full of hawthorn, in June he had brought her dog-roses, in August ripe ears of barley, in September wild-apple boughs; and now in October he picked her sprays of red, sodden leaves. There was a little nut on this spray—he picked it off and cracked it with his teeth, and put the kernel into her mouth. Then suddenly the sunlight faded, and a soft rush of gloom swept up the valley of the hammer ponds.

[Pg 46]

"Nigel came home last night," said Janet, breaking the silence that had lasted with the sun.

"How is he looking?"

"He's changed, Quentin."

"It's aged him, of course."

"That isn't so terrible—we could have endured that, we'd expected it. The awful thing is that it's made him so childish. Sometimes you'd really think he was a child, by the way he speaks—and goes on."

"He'll soon be all right—you'll heal him, Janey."

"I don't see how I'm going to. The worst thing is that he's so reserved with me and Len. It isn't that he doesn't talk and tell us things, but I know he doesn't tell us the things that really matter. Oh, Quentin"—turning suddenly to him—"I feel such a wretch, having a secret from the boys when Nigel's like this."

"You've lost your logic, sweet—or, rather, thank God, you never had any. Your brother's secrets ought to make you worry less about your own."

"You don't understand—it's just the other way round."

She sighed deeply, and her pain irritated him.

"You have the power to end it if you like—you're not so badly off as I am. You can tell your brothers any day you choose—they can't interfere."

"Of course not—but it would make them miserable. They'd be miserable enough at the idea of my marrying any one, and leaving them—and as for marrying you——"

[Pg 47]

"Oh, I know they hate me," broke in Quentin. "And they despise me because I haven't got their health and muscle. They hate me for what I have got—their land; and they despise me for what I haven't got—their muscle."

Janet's eyes filled. She knew that he was wretchedly jealous of her brothers, and it hurt her more than anything else. She laid her hand timidly on his arm.

"Quentin, I wish you wouldn't feel that way towards the boys. I can't help loving them."

"But you love them more than me."

"I don't, indeed I don't. And you mustn't think they hate you. They've got their hand against every one, you know, and of course they feel sick about the Kent lands, there's no denying it. If they knew you loved me, they might hate you then—they'd be jealous; and if I told them now—oh, it would be all misery at home!—for them as well as for me. I'd far rather have my secret—that hurts only me. When we've settled anything definitely, of course I shall tell them. But we may have to go on like this for years."

Quentin groaned.

"Yes, Janey, that's true—that's the damned truth. You should never have loved a helpless fool like me, all tied up in paper and strings. Good Lord! my father will have something to answer for—if there's any one to answer to for our muddlings in this muddled hell."

"But you'll win your independence."

"Yes; if two things happen: if my father dies, which he isn't likely to, and which, hang it all, I[Pg 48] don't want him to—or if I can make enough by my writing to support two people, which is never done by pessimistic poets in this world of optimistic prose. I ought to hear from Baker soon—he's had that manuscript over a month—he's the twenty-eighth man that's had it. Oh, damn it all, Janey!"

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—feel it, 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 spoiled[Pg 49] him, 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'm[Pg 50] the 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 the Epic of Gilgamesh—
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.

[Pg 51]

"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 to[Pg 52] Grinstead 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.