BOOK II THE WORLD AGAINST THE THREE CHAPTER I GLIMPSES AND DREAMS

I

There was a foam of anemones in the hollows of Furnace Wood. The wind crept over the heads of the hazel bushes, bowing them gently, and shaking out of them the scent of their budding. From the young grass and tender, vivid mosses crept up more scents, faint, moist and earthy. The sky was grey behind the stooping hazels, but glimmered with the yellow promise of noon.

Janet Furlonger and Quentin Lowe had met to say good-bye in Furnace Wood. The scent of spring was in Janey's clothes, and when her lover drew her head down to his shoulder he tasted spring in her hair. But there was not spring on her lips when he sought them—only the salt wash of sorrow.

"Why do you cry, little Janey? This is the beginning of hope."

Another tear slid down towards her mouth, but she wiped it away—he must not drink her tears.

"Quentin ... I hope it won't be for long."

"No, no—not long, little Janey, sweet, not long. It can't be. In six months, perhaps in less, you'll have a letter asking you to come up to town and marry a poor but independent journalist."

"You really think that this time you're going to succeed?"

[Pg 188]

"Of course. Do you imagine I'd touch Rider's idiotic rag with the tongs if I didn't look on it as a stepping-stone to better things. There's a mixed metaphor, Janey. Didn't you notice it?"

"No, dear."

"You're not critical enough, little one. You're worthy of good prose—when I'm too weak and heavy-hearted for poetry."

The wind sighed towards them, bringing the scent of hidden water.

"I must leave you, my own—or I shall be late. Now for months of hard work and hungry dreams of Janey, who will be given at last to my great hunger. Little heart, do you know what it is to hunger?"

She trembled. "Yes."

"Then pity me. Pity me from the fields when you walk in them, as you and I have so often walked, over fallen leaves—pity me from your fire when you sit by it and see in the embers things too beautiful to be—from your meals when you eat them—you and I have had only one meal together, Janey—and from your bed when you lie waking in it. Janey, Janey—pity me."

"Pity ... yes...."

He was holding her in his arms, looking into her beautiful, haggard face. A sudden pang contracted her limbs, then released them into an abandonment of weakness.

"Quentin ... promise me that you will never forget how much you loved me."

"Janey!"

"Promise me."

[Pg 189]

"Janey, how dare you!—'loved you'! What do you mean?"

"Oh, please promise!"

She was crying. He had never seen her like this. Hitherto at their meetings she had left the stress and earthquake of love to him, fronting it with a sweet, half-timid calm. Now she clung to him, twisted and trembled.

"Promise, Quentin."

"Well, since you're such a silly little thing, I will. Listen. 'I promise never to forget how much I loved you.' There, you darling fool."

"Thank you ..." she said weakly.

He drew her close, kissed her, and laughed at her.

"Janey—you're the spring, with its doubts and distresses. You were the autumn when autumn was here, all tanned and flushed and rumpled, with September in your eyes. Now you're the spring, thin, soft, aloof and wondering—you're sunshine behind a cloud—you're the promise of August and heavy apple-boughs."

"And you'll never forget how much you loved me...."
II

The golden lights of late afternoon were kindled in London, warring with the smoky remnants of an April day. They shone on the wet pavements and mud-slopped streets—down Oxford Street poured the full blaze of the sunset, flamy, fogged, mysterious, crinkling into dull purples behind the Circus and the spire in Langham Place.

[Pg 190]

The Queen's Hall was emptying—crowds poured out, taxi-horns answered taxi-whistles, and the surge of the streets swept by, gathering up the units, and whirling them into the nothingness of many people. It gathered up Nigel Furlonger, and rushed him, like a bubble on a torrent, down Regent Street, with his face to the darkness of the south—lit from below by the first flash of the electric advertisements in Piccadilly Circus, from above by the first pale, useless glimmer of a star.

He walked quickly, his chin lifted, but mechanically taking his part in the general hustle, not too much in dreamland to make way, shift, pause, or plunge, as the ballet of the pavements might require. His hands were clenched in his pockets. He, perhaps alone among those hundreds, saw the timid star.

A dream was threading through his heart, knitting up the tags of longing, regret and hope that fluttered there. A definite scheme seemed now to explain the sorrow of the world. The armies of the sorrowful had received marching orders, had marched to music, had been given a nation, and a song. Nigel had heard the Eroica Symphony.

In his ears was still the bourdon of drums, the sigh of strings, the lilt of wood-wind, the restless drone of brasses. He had heard sorrow claim its charter of rights, vindicate its pleadings, fight, triumph and crown itself. He had seen the life-story of the sorrowful man, presented not as a tragedy or a humiliation, a shame to be veiled, but[Pg 191] as a pageant, a tremendous spectacle, set to music, lighted, staged, applauded.

At first the sorrowful man was half afraid, he sought refuge and disguise in laughter, he pined for distraction and a long sleep. But each time he touched his desire, the wailings of heavenly wood-wind called him onward to holier, darker things. He had dropped the dear, dustless prize, and gone boldly on into the fire and blackness.... A thick, dark cloud swagged on the precipices of frozen mountains, frowned over deserts of snow. The sorrowful man stumbled in the dark, and his loud crying and the flurry of his seeking rose in a wail against the thudding drums of fate. Gold crept into the cloud, curling out from under it like a flame, and the sorrowful man seemed to see a human face looking down on him, and a hand that held seven stars.... "Who made the Seven Stars and Orion...." It was by the light of those stars in the Hero's hand that the sorrowful man saw, in a sudden awful wonder, that he was not alone—he marched in the ranks of a huge army. All round him, over the frozen plain, under the cloud with its lightnings, towards the blackness of the boundless void, marched the army of the sorrowful, unafraid. They marched in mail, helmeted, plated, with drawn swords. The ground shook with the thunder of their tread, the mountains quaked, the darkness smoked, the heavens heeled over, toppled and scattered before the conquering host whom the Lord had stricken—triumphant, fearless, proud, crowned and pierced....

[Pg 192]

Footsteps overtook Nigel, and he heard the greeting of a fellow student.

"You're in the clouds, old man. Who sent you there? Beethoven?"

Nigel stared.

"But the only cosmic genius is Offenbach."

"You mean the 'Orphée'?"

"Yes—and 'Hoffmann.' Life isn't a triumphal march, for all Beethoven would make it—it's comic opera, with just a pinch of the bizarre and a spice of the macabre. That's Offenbach."

Furlonger was still marching with the stricken army.

"When a man suffers," continued the student, "the gods laugh, the world laughs, and last of all—if he's a sport—the man laughs too."

"Sorrow is a triumph," said Nigel, dreamily.

"Not at all, old man—sorrow is a commonplace. The question is, what are we to make of the commonplace—a pageant or a joke? I'm not sure that Offenbach hasn't given a better answer than Beethoven."
III

In a small room in Gower Street a man lay on his bed, his face crammed into the pillow, his shoulders high against his ears, his legs twisted in a rigid lock of endurance. Now and then a shudder went through him, but it was the shudder of something taut and stiff, over which the merest surface tremble can pass.

In his hand he crushed a letter. Behind his teeth words were forming, and fighting through to[Pg 193] his colourless lips. "Janey!—my Janey! Oh, my God! I can't bear this."

He suddenly twisted himself round on to his back, and faced the aching, yellow square of the window, where a May day was mocked by rain. There was a pipe close to the window, and the water poured from it in a quick tinkling trickle, cheering in rhythm, tragic in tone. Quentin unfolded Janey's letter.

He read it—but that word is inadequate, for he read it in the same spirit as an Egyptian priest might read the glyphs of his divinity, seeing in each sign a volume of esoteric meaning, so that every jot and tittle was worthy of long minutes' contemplation.

It was some time since Janey's letters had ceased to be for Quentin what she hoped. Literally they were rather bald and laboured, for Janey was no penwoman, but she put a wealth of thought and passion into the straggling lines, and for a long while he had seen this. But now he saw much more, she would have trembled to think of the meaning he read into her words—he tested each phrase for the insincerity he felt sure it must conceal, he hunted up and down the pages for that monster unknown to Janet, the arrière pensée. Her letters were a torture to him—they tortured his brain with shadows and seekings, they tortured his heart with blue fires of misgiving and scorchings of jealousy. She did not write oftener than once a week, but the torment of a single letter lasted till its successor at once varied and renewed it.

Lying there in the hideous dusk of what should[Pg 194] have been a summer afternoon, Quentin wondered if the doom of love and lovers had not been spoken him—"thou canst not see My Face and live."

It was a vital fear. Before he had brought his love to its consummation, snatched the veil from its mysteries, and looked it in the face, it had, in spite of hours of anguish, been his comfort, the strongest, tenderest, purest thing in his life. But now he saw, without much searching, that this love, though deeper and fiercer than ever, belonged somehow to his lower self. To realise it brought despair instead of comfort, wreckage instead of calm. He dared not, as in former days, plunge his sick heart into it as into a spring of healing waters—rather it was a scalding fountain, bubbling and seething out of death.

He had hoped that perhaps separation would make him calmer. Of late he had often denied himself the sight of Janey in that same vain hope. But now, as then, he found her letters almost as disintegrating as her presence—indeed more so, since they gave wider scope to his familiar demon of doubt. He wondered if he would ever find rest. Would marriage give it to him? He started up suddenly on the bed. An awful thought was thrust like a sword against his heart—the thought that even in marriage he would not find peace.

He had fallen into the habit of looking on marriage as the end of sorrows—and now, when fate and hard work seemed to have brought it within gazing-distance of hope, he suddenly saw that it would be as full of torment as his present state; or rather, more so—just as his present state was[Pg 195] an intensification of the pain of earlier days. He realised—hardly definitely, but with horrible acuteness—that he had allowed love to frustrate love, and that by his demand to look into that great dread Face, he had brought on himself scorching and blindness and doom.

"Thou canst not see my Face and live."

He sprang off the bed. His pulses were hammering, his blood was thick, a kind of film obscured his eyes, so that he groped his way to the dressing-table. A clock struck four, and he suddenly remembered an engagement he had that afternoon. He would go—it would distract him. He might forget Janey—if only for an hour, he would be free of the torment that each thought of her carried like poison in a golden bowl. It was strange, it was terrible, that he should ever have come to want to forget Janey—and it was not because he did not love her; he loved her a hundred times more passionately than ever. But the love which had once been his strength and salve had now become a rotten sickness of the soul.

He dressed himself, removed as far as possible the stains of sorrow and exhaustion from his face, and plunged out to take his place in the restless, ill-managed pageant of the pavements, where threads are tangled, characters lost, and cues unheard. He was going to a semi-literary gathering at a friend's flat in Coleherne Gardens. He did not look forward to it particularly, but it might help him in his twofold struggle—to win Janey in the future and forget her for the present.

The room was crowded. Hallidie was presiding[Pg 196] over a mixed assembly of more-or-less celebrities with that debonair self-confidence which had helped make him a famous novelist in spite of his novels. There were one or two great ones present, just to raise the level—he did not introduce them to Lowe. He knew exactly whom they would like to meet, and Lowe, he felt, would let the conversation down, just when it was becoming yeasty with literary wit. There were other people in the room who showed a tendency to do this, and Hallidie had carefully introduced them to one another, so that they could all fail mutually in a well-upholstered corner.

"Ah—Lowe. Glad to see you. Come, let me introduce you to Miss Strife"—and sweeping Quentin past the renowned author of Life and How to Bear It, and Dompter, the little, insignificant, world-famous sea-poet, he presented him to a very young girl, sitting alone on a divan.

Quentin's first feeling was one of outrage. What right had Hallidie to drag him away from the pulse of things, so vital to his struggling ambition, and condemn him to atrophy with a flapper. He stared down at her disapprovingly—then something in her wistful look disarmed him.

"I believe our fathers are neighbours in the country," he said stiffly.

He did not notice her reply. It was not that which made him stop his furious glances at Hallidie and sit down beside her. She was evidently very young. There was a lack of [Pg 197]sophistication about her hair-dressing which proclaimed an early attempt, her frock was simple and girlish, her face alert and innocent.

Quentin found himself gulping in his throat, almost as if tears had found their way there at last; for he suddenly realised how new and beautiful it was to sit beside a woman and not be tormented. As he looked at her delicate profile, the pure curves of her chin and collarless neck, his heart became suddenly still. There was a great calm. Peace had come down on him like water. Simplicity rested on his parched thoughts like rain-clouds on a desert. He seemed suddenly to come back to life, to the world, and to see them in the calm, usual light of every day. The racket, the glare, the sense of being in an abnormal relation to his surroundings—all were gone. For the first time in his complicated, sophisticated, catastrophic life, Quentin Lowe was at peace.
IV

It was late in June. A haze wimpled the pine-trees of Shovelstrode, and the heather between their trunks was in full flower. The old house shimmered in the haze and sunshine, and stared away to yellow fields of buttercups and distances of brown and blue.

Tony and Awdrey Strife were lying in the shadow of a chestnut on the lawn. Two young gracious figures in muslins, they lay with their chins on their hands, and looked away towards the golden weald. They did not speak much, for the[Pg 198] post had just come, and they were reading their letters. Awdrey giggled to herself a good deal over hers, but Tony was serious—the corners of her mouth even drooped a little, but whether from sorrow or tenderness or both it would be hard to say. Suddenly she made an exclamation.

"What's the matter?" asked Awdrey.

"It's a letter from Furlonger."

"The Furlonger!"

"Yes—he's written me quite a long letter."

"What cheek. I thought you'd seen the last of him."

"He came to say good-bye before he went to London."

"Oh——"

Awdrey rolled over on her side, and stared hard at her sister.

"Did he know you were in town last month?"

"No—I've never written to him, and this is the first time he's written to me."

"Then he hasn't shown unseemly eagerness—it's nearly six months since he left. What does he say?—anything exciting?"

"Exciting for him. Von Gleichroeder is giving a pupils' concert at the Bechstein, and Mr. Furlonger is going to play."

"A solo?"

"Yes—something by Scriabin. He's only had six months' teaching, but von Gleichroeder's so pleased with him that he's going to let him play at this concert of his. Then he'll finish his course, and then he'll start professionally."

[Pg 199]

"Good Lord!—it sounds thrilling for an ex-convict. Let's see his letter."

"Here it is. No," changing suddenly, "I think I'd rather read it to you."

"Right-O! Excuse a smile."

"Don't be an idiot, Awdrey. Now listen; he says: 'Von Gleichroeder's concert is fixed for the twenty-seventh'—why, that's next Friday—'and it's been settled that I'm to play Scriabin's second Prelude. It sounds like cats fighting, but it's exciting stuff. Von Gleichroeder is tremendously keen on the ultra-moderns—nothing makes him madder than to hear Verdi or Gounod or Rossini. So I play d'Indy and Stravinsky and Strauss and Sibelius; except when I'm alone in my digs—and then I have the old tunes out, for I like them best.'"

She did not read the next paragraph aloud.

"I've been having a hard fight for it, Tony—but I'm pulling through. Music has helped me, and the memory of our friendship, and the thought that you're trying to understand me and forgive me."

"Well, I wish him luck," said Awdrey; "what a good thing von Gleichroeder found him out!"

"Yes, he'll have his chance now—his chance of a decent life."

"Nonsense, Tony! That's not what he's after—fame and dibs, my dear girl, fame and dibs."

"He told me he was accepting von Gleichroeder's offer because he wanted to be—good."

"Well, London's a queer place to go for that."

[Pg 200]

"He's gone there to work. He had no chance here."

"More chance than he'll have there—you bet he's painted the place pretty red by this time."

Her sister was about to retort sharply, when a man suddenly came round the corner of the house towards them.

"Awdrey!" cried Tony, springing up. "Here's Quentin!"