CHAPTER XIV WOODS AT DAWN

Nigel reached home only half-an-hour before supper-time. Len and Janey did not receive him cordially, but he was too much preoccupied with his adventure to notice their coldness or take their hints. He poured it all out at the evening meal—the subtle sense of outrage which for some unknown reason von Gleichroeder's offer had stirred up, contending in his voice with a ridiculous, childish pride.

Len and Janey were unfeignedly surprised. It had never occurred to them that Nigel's playing was even tolerable—they had sometimes liked it in the distance, that was all.

"Fancy his wanting you to go and study in London," said Janey. "I'm glad you refused."

"So'm I"!

"It would have been beastly losing you again, old man—we haven't had you back three months."

"Wouldn't you like to see me fill the Albert Hall?"

"Well—er—if you could really do it, it might be interesting to watch—just for once in a way. But I don't see that it would be worth breaking up the 'appy 'ome, only for that."

Nigel would have liked them to be more impressed, but they voiced his own feelings exactly.

"No—nor do I. Well, I've settled the old[Pg 162] geyser, anyway—and now let's forget all about him."

Which they did at once.

That night Nigel had restless dreams. He dreamed he was playing to crowded audiences in great nightmare-like halls that stretched away to infinity. The circumstances were always unfavourable—sometimes he would have only one string on his violin, and sometimes he would find himself struggling with some horrible dream-begotten instrument with as many strings as a harp. Once he dreamed that all the audience got up and danced a hideous rigadoon, another time they all had the same face—a dark, florid face that leered.

Towards morning he dreamed a quieter dream. He was playing in a very large place, but he had a rational instrument, and he was playing "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls." The melody floated all through his dreams—the same as in waking hours, and yet not quite the same—celestial, rarefied, wistful in heart and ears. He was also conscious of a presence—he knew he was near Tony Strife; he felt her close to him, and it was magic in his blood. The melody drifted on—sometimes pouring out of his violin, sometimes seeming to come from very far away.
"And I also dreamed, which pleased me most,
That you loved me still the same ..."

The music ceased abruptly, and he dropped his bow, looking round to see Tony. She was not there; the great hall was empty—nothing but[Pg 163] empty seats stretching away into dimness—except that in the front row of all sat two figures huddled together. He looked down at them, and at first he did not know them, then he saw that they were Len and Janey, staring up at him with hungry, loving eyes....

He woke and sat up, shivering a little. It must be late, for the winter sky was white beyond the woods. Yet he did not feel inclined to rise. He lay back, and folded his hands behind his head, staring out at the dull line of brown that lay against the quivering, dawn-filled clouds.

Those woods always put strange thoughts into his head. They made him think of his own life, lonely, windy and sere. But some day the spring would throb in them, their branches would shine with green, their thickets would thrill with song; in their waste, desolate places primroses would push through the dead leaves of last year.... He sat up again with a jerk—for the first time he realised that the woods would not be always brown.

The thought gave him a faint shock of surprise. Ever since the day he left prison he had looked out on brown woods, rocked by autumn and winter winds, so that he had almost forgotten that autumn and winter would not last for ever. He had never thought of spring, of March and tender green, of April and first flowers, of sweet, quickening rains, and winds full of warmth and the scent of young leaves. It was strange that he should have forgotten spring.

Now in the darkest day of the year, spring held out its promise to the woods—and to him. The[Pg 164] yellow of a hidden sunrise was filling the clouds like hope unbounded—and Nigel's dream came back to him, his dream of marble halls and of love that was "still the same." He saw himself playing to thronged audiences, with Tony close to him, unseen, intangible, but there—with all the sweet memories of Lingfield and Brambletye revived and re-established, her friendship, candour, and tenderness "still the same."

Then he understood. Gulfs unbridgeable might lie between the convict with his stained and broken life and the simple little schoolgirl of Shovelstrode. But the well-known violinist who played for "big salaries," who "filled the Albert Hall."... A terrible thing had happened to Nigel—he had begun to hope. When hope has been a long time away, the return of it is like the return of sensation to a frost-bitten limb. It pricks, it burns, it tortures. It tortured Nigel till a cry of anguish burst from him, bitterer than in any of his fits of despair. He bent forward, clapping his hand to his side.

Hope showed him the doors of his prison flung wide at last. For long years he had never dreamed of escape, he was a captive, so fast in prison that he could not get forth—free only among the dead. But now the doors were open and he could go out. His music would raise him up out of the pit, bring him back to an earth washed in rain and spring, to touch the trembling innocence of the lilies, and drink the sweetness of the eternal May.

"Oh, God! Oh, God!—I want to be free! I want to be free!"

[Pg 165]

The cry was not a prayer so much as the cry of his great hunger, finding voice at last—"I want to be free! I want to be free!"

His mind dropped hastily to practical details. He had seen von Gleichroeder's address on his card, and that tough memory of his, which was sometimes a curse to him, held it fast. He would write and tell him he had changed his mind. It would be humiliating, but it must be done. Then he would go to London, and work—and work. It was not only the topmost pinnacle that could lift him out of his old life, the name he would make for himself need not be a great name—as long as it was a fair name. That was what he wanted, and would struggle for—a fair name. Hard work, an honest livelihood, self-denial, constant communion with the beautiful and inspired, would purge his soul of its defilement. The hideous stain of his crime would be wiped off. When he had lived for years in poverty and honesty, when he had brought by his music a little sunshine into poor lives like those he had smitten, when the fields of three counties had ceased to reproach him for his treachery, and the name of Furlonger had some faint lustre from his bearing it—then he would be free. And when he was free he would allow himself—not to claim Tony's friendship or anything else beyond him, but just to think of her—think of her with hope.

Oh, Tony, little Tony! his little love!

For weeks now he had known that he loved her. Though he had never dared think of her as a woman, he wanted her. He had wanted[Pg 166] women before, he had had his adventures with them—though not perhaps as many as the average man—but they had all been stale and ordinary, the stock line, the job lot, which eager, extravagant youth pays high for as a novelty. Now he had something new. He loved a little girl, scarcely more than a child, parted from him by a dozen barriers of his own erecting. He loved her because she was good and innocent, and had given him perfect comradeship; most of all he loved her because of the barriers between them, because she lived utterly apart from him, in a foreign land of liberty and hope and uprightness, towards which he must strive hourly if he were to gain even the frontiers.

He scowled a little. He was not blind, and he knew that he would have to go into slavery, perhaps for a long time, before this new freedom was won. Even in an hour he had been able to see that von Gleichroeder was a technique-fiend, and would make matters hot for his clumsy pupil. He also realized that though the German had borne good humouredly with his insolence, he would not be so patient when he became his master. Yes—he would have a master—he would have to practise scales and exercises—he would be reprimanded, lectured, ordered about. Herr von Gleichroeder would be his master, and the tacit sympathy between them would but make their relations more galling.

There would be other sacrifices too. He would have to say good-bye to Sparrow Hall, and to Len and Janey. He caught his breath—God! how[Pg 167] he loved Len and Janey! He had been brutal and heartless to them again and again, but he loved them with a love that was half pain in its intensity. He would have to be away from them perhaps for years. Yet when he came back he would bring them a gift—the same gift that he would bring Tony—a fair name. That was what he owed every one—the world, his brother and sister, his little love.

The very fact that he was taking his "stinking past" with him into the future would to some extent remove its offensiveness. It was all very well to talk of "starting afresh under another name." What he wanted was to raise his old name—the name of Furlonger—out of the dust. The convict should not just quietly disappear, he should be transfigured into the artist, publicly, before the whole world. As his degradation had been public, the comment of cheap newspapers, so should his exaltation.

A thundering knock at the door broke into his dreams.

"Nigel, in the devil's name, get up!—breakfast's waiting."

The next moment Len was in the room, tearing the bed-clothes off him.

"You are a fat lot of use on the farm!—I've got through half the morning's work without you."

"Then you won't miss me so much when I'm gone."

"Gone where?"

"To London."

Nigel began to dress himself—Len stared at him gaping.

[Pg 168]

"To London! why, you aren't going there, are you?"

"I am."

"To that man von what's-his-name?"

"Of course."

Len stared harder than ever. Then he suddenly lost his temper.

"'Of course'!—there's no 'of course' about it—except 'of course not.' Why, you told him you wouldn't hear of such a thing."

"But I may change my mind, mayn't I?"

"No—you mayn't. Look here, Nigel, you've led sister and self an infernal dance for the last three months. Can't you chuck it?"

"I'm going to chuck it—by leaving this place."

Leonard saw his brother was in earnest. He came quickly towards him, and laid his hand on his shoulder.

"What have we done to upset you, old man?"

"Nothing—you've always been sports."

"Then why are you going?"

Nigel hesitated. He could not bring himself to tell even this brother of his sacred, half-formed plans.

"You won't miss me," he faltered.

"Won't miss you! Won't miss you!—what the devil d'you mean?"

"I'm no use on the farm—I laze and I slack. You'll get on much better without me."

"Gammon! You're tumbling into it nicely, and if you go, I'll have to hire a man—and there'll be the expense of your keep in London. No, no, old chap—that won't wash."

[Pg 169]

"Wait till you've tried it."

"Haven't I been trying it for three years? Besides, my boy, this is only beating round the bush. The main fact is that Janey and I would miss you simply damnably."

"Not really," said Nigel, his mouth drooping with a great tenderness, "you'd soon feel the relief of being rid of me and my tantrums."

There was a knock at the door.

"That's Janey," cried Len. "Come in, old girl—I want you."

Janey came in. Nigel was nearly dressed, and had begun to shave.

"Breakfast's——" began Janey.

"Yes—I know all about breakfast. That isn't what's the matter. Len wants you to join him in trying to persuade me not to go to London."

"But you're not going to London!..."

"I'm writing this morning to von Gleichroeder to say I've changed my mind."

"No!... Nigel!" cried Janey.

For a moment she stood as if paralyzed, then suddenly she darted towards him, and flung her arms round him, looking up beseechingly into his face.

"Nigel! no!—you mustn't leave us—I can't bear it. Oh, say you won't!"

"Damn you, Janey!—can't you see I've got a razor in my hand?"

She was taking it even worse than he had expected. She seemed actually terrified.

[Pg 170]

"I can't live here without you," she cried brokenly, "indeed I can't."

He gently disengaged himself.

"Most people's difficulty," he said, deliberately lathering his chin, "has not been how to live without me, but how to live with me."

"But I can't live without you."

"You've got Len."

"But he's only—only half."

"The better half. I'm a rotten lot, Janey. You'll be far happier when I'm gone. I'm a sulky brute—don't contradict me; I know it. I'm a sulky, bad-tempered brute. Again and again I've spoiled your happiness and the lad's—I've done nothing but snap and snarl at you, and I've gone whining about the place when you wanted to be cheerful. You've both been utter sports to put up with me so long—you'll notice the difference when I'm away, if you can't realise it now."

Janey was sitting on the bed, drowned in tears.

"Aren't you happy with us?" asked Leonard.

"Hardly—or I shouldn't be going."

He spoke with all the exaggerated brutality of the man who sees himself obliged to hurt those he loves.

"It's not your fault," he continued in a gentler voice, "it's mine. I'm such a waster. I'm a miserable, restless rotter, bound to make myself and every one else unhappy. Now if I go to London, I shall work—I shall have something to live for."

"Fame, you mean," sobbed Janey.

"Well, something of that kind."

He had finished shaving, and came and sat down[Pg 171] by her on the bed, forcing her drowned eyes to look into his.

"Janey, don't you want me to be famous? Wouldn't you like to be the sister of a well-known violinist instead of Convict Seventy-six? Wouldn't you like to see me fill the Albert Hall?"

"Fill hell!" shouted Leonard. "D'you really believe all the rot that old bounder spoke?"

"Well, it isn't likely he'd teach me for nothing if he didn't expect to make something out of me."

"Yes—that'll be just what he'll do—and he'll make a fat lot more than you will."

"Oh, don't go!" sobbed Janey.

Nigel looked wretchedly from one to the other.

"Janey," he cried, drawing her close to him, and quivering in the agony of his appeal, "Janey, can't you understand?—I want to start a new life, I want to throw off all my beastly past. I want to make my name—your name—clean and honourable. I dragged it into the mud, and I must pull it out again. Oh, I've suffered so, Janey. I can't get out of prison, I feel more helplessly shut up than ever I did at Parkhurst. But now I—can be—free."

The last words burst from him in a choking cry. He flung himself back from her, and looked into her eyes. Then he was surprised, for he saw in them, swimming in tears, a glimmer of understanding.

"Janey," he continued, putting his lips close to her face, and mumbling his appeal almost incoherently, "I can't expect you to grasp all that this means to me. You're good, you're pure—you[Pg 172] don't know what it is to have a horrible stain on your heart, which all your tears don't seem able to wash away. But can't you put yourself for a moment in my place and realise what it is to hunger for a decent life, to dream of whiteness and purity and innocence, and burn to make them yours?—to be willing to give the whole world—just to be—clean?"

"I think I can," said Janey.