CHAPTER III ONLY A BOY

It was about four o'clock, and in spite of what Leonard said, not much cooler than at noon. The sun scorched on the hay-grass, drawing out of it a drowsy perfume, which a faint, hot breeze scattered into the hedges. The trees scarcely moved, and their shadows were rusted with the curling sorrel. Clumps of dog-roses and elder flowers splashed the bushes with sudden pinks and whites, while vetches trailed their purples less startlingly in the hedgerows.

Janey walked fast, and every now and then she ran for little sprints. Her breath sobbed in her throat, her eyes were fixed and her hands clenched. She climbed recklessly over gates, and plunged through copses; her hair was soon almost on her shoulders, flying from her face in wisps, straggling round her ears; her face became flushed and moist with the heat—she tore her sleeve, and scraps of bramble hung on her skirt. What woman but Janey would have rushed to confront a faithless lover in such a state? But even now, when almost any one would have realised how much depended on her appearance, she was careless and oblivious. She did not feel in the least dismayed at the start given by the servant who admitted her, nor, later, by her own reflection in a mirror in the study.

It was the same little book-lined room in which[Pg 214] she had had tea with Quentin on her first visit to Redpale. There was the glorious Eastern rug which he had said "had her tintings—her browns and whites and reds." There was the big pewter jar that had then held chrysanthemums, but held roses now. They were delicate white roses, faintly, sweetly scented. Janey went over to them and laid her hot face against them. She could hardly tell why, but they seemed to bring into the room an alien atmosphere. Quentin had never given her white roses—as a matter of fact he had given her scarcely any garden flowers, except chrysanthemums—he had once said that only wild flowers were for wild things. She thought of bunches of buttercups, of broom with bursting pods, of hazel sprays and tawny grasses. Now she suddenly wished that he would give her a white rose. She took one out of the jar, and was trying to fasten it in her breast when footsteps sounded outside the room.

She turned deadly pale, and dropped the rose. For the first time she felt that she had been foolish to come. Quentin might be angry with her, for her coming would rouse his father's suspicions. Her hurry and desperation might prejudice him against her. In an unaccustomed qualm she realised that she was flushed, dishevelled and perspiring. She felt at a disadvantage, and drew back as the door opened, seeking the shadows by the hearth.

"Janey!"

He stood in the doorway, his hand on the latch, his chin thrust forward, his pale face bright in the[Pg 215] gleaming afternoon. His youth struck her with a sudden appeal—his youth and delicacy, both emphasised in the soft yellow light—and a sob tore up through her breast.

"Oh ..." she said, and moved towards him.

He shut the door.

"Oh, I'm sorry I came!" she cried.

He did not speak, but came forward, stopping abruptly a few feet away.

"Janey—I want to explain...."

"Explain...." She had not thought there would be any explanation needed—or, if needed, possible.

"Yes—I ought to have written, but I couldn't, somehow—or rather, I wrote you a dozen letters, and tore them all up."

She wondered why she felt so calm.

"I—I asked my father to call and see you."

"You mean to say—he knows?"

"Yes."

"Oh, my God!"

Her calmness staggered, and all but collapsed. For the first time her doubts gave way to even bitterer realisation. This confession to Quentin's father, this betrayal of the secret she had spent her health and happiness for four years to keep, made her grasp what an hour ago had seemed beyond the reach even of credulity.

"Quentin—why did you tell him?—how could you!—after all we've suffered...."

"I—I—I was desperate, Janey, I had to tell some one, and he was so sympathetic—much more than I'd expected."

[Pg 216]

"When did you tell him?"

"The night I came back from town."

"After the—the rest was settled?"

He nodded.

"Quentin, have you told her?" She was accepting the impossible quite meekly now.

"No, no!—I can't tell her."

She waited a moment for what she thought the inevitable entreaty not to betray him. Thank God!—it did not come.

"She would never forgive you," she said slowly. "Young girls don't."

"And you, Janey...."

She drew back from him.

"You can't ask me that now."

"Why?"

"Well—well, can't you see I hardly realise things as yet. An hour ago I preferred to doubt my own senses rather than doubt you. Now——"

"You doubt me."

"No, I don't doubt you. I'm convinced—that you're a cad."

Her voice, clear at the beginning of the sentence, had sunk almost to a whisper. He shrank back, wincing before her gentleness.

She herself wondered how long it would last, this unnatural calm. It came to her quite easily, she did not have to fight for it, and yet the general sensation was of being under an an?sthetic. She only half realised her surroundings, this horrible new earth on which she was wandering homeless; her emotions seemed dull and inadequate to the situation—it would be a relief if she could feel more.

[Pg 217]

Then suddenly feeling came—it came in a tide, a tempest, a whirlwind. It shook her like an earthquake and blasted her like a furnace. She staggered sideways, as a great gloom darkled on her eyes. Then the shadows parted, and she saw Quentin's face, half turned away—pale, fragile, sullen, the face of a boy—of a boy in despair.

"Quentin!" she cried. "Oh, my boy—my little boy! You aren't going to behave like a cad."

"But I am a cad, my dear Janey."

He spoke brutally, in the stress of feeling.

"Oh, Quentin!—Quentin!"

She was losing not only her calm, but her dignity—yet she did not heed it. She sprang towards him, seized his hands, and gasped her words close to his ear, as unconsciously he turned his head from her.

"Quentin, you can't forsake me—not now—not after all I've given you—you can't, you can't! You loved me so much—you love me still. You can't have stopped loving me all of a sudden like this. And if you love me, you can't forsake me. Quentin, I shall die if you forsake me."

"Janey—let me explain. I can't explain if you're so frenzied. Oh, Janey, don't faint."

She fell back from him suddenly, and he caught her in his arms.

The soft weight of her, her warmth, the familiar scent of her hair and her tumbled gown, snatched him back into departing days. He suddenly lost his self-command, or rather his sense of the present. He clasped her to him, and kissed her and kissed her—as eagerly, passionately and tenderly as[Pg 218] ever in Furnace Wood. She did not resist or shrink, her eyes were closed, and she lay back a dead weight in his arms, drinking her last despairing draught of happiness.... His clasp grew tighter—oh, that he would crush the life out of her as she lay there under his lips!...

Then suddenly he dropped his arms, and they staggered back from each other, piteously conscious once more of the present and its doom.

"Janey, Janey ... I can't—I mustn't love you."

"But you do love me——"

She sank into a chair, and covered her face.

"Yes—I love you. But it's in byways of love. Can't you understand?"

She shook her head.

"Don't you see that, all through, my love for you has been unworthy—the worst in me?..."

She tried to speak, but her words were unintelligible.

"You and I have never been happy together——"

"Never?..."

"Yes—at times. But it was a blasting, scorching happiness—there was no peace in it. We doubted each other."

"I never doubted you."

"Yes, you did. When I said good-bye to you before going to London, you made me promise never to forget how much I'd loved you."

"But it wasn't you I doubted then. I doubted fate, chance, God, anything you like—but not you."

She had recovered her self-control, and her voice was hard and even.

"Oh, don't, Janey!"

[Pg 219]

"Why not?—why should I spare you? You haven't spared me."

"You mustn't think I intended you to—to hear things in this way. I'd meant to give you an explanation first. But the news leaked out——"

"Well, you can give me an explanation now."

"I'll try—but it will be very difficult," he said falteringly. "You're like a flood to me—I feel giddy and helpless when I'm with you. I don't think I'll ever be able to make you understand. I wish you hadn't come like this—I wish——"

"Please go on, Quentin."

Her manner disconcerted him. He could not understand her alternations between hysteria and stolid calm.

"You mustn't think I don't realise I've behaved like a skunk. But I don't want to dwell on it—it would only be putting mud on my face to make you pity me—but I do ask you to try to understand me.... Janey, I've done this for your good as well as mine. You shared the misery and ruin of my love. In saving myself, I've saved you too. Janey, Janey—don't you see that our love was nothing but a rotten sickness of the soul?"

He looked at her anxiously, but her face was expressionless as wood.

"You and I have always been more or less wretched together, and though at first I felt our unhappiness was doing us good—strengthening us and purifying us—of late I felt it was doing us harm, it was disorganising and unmanning us...."

[Pg 220]

He paused—even an outburst of fury or denial would have been welcome.

"To begin with," he continued in an uncertain voice, "I thought it was the hopelessness of it all that was making it so dreadful, but when our marriage was actually in sight—of hope, at least—I felt matters were only getting worse. My thoughts were like sand and fire—my love was like the salt water I compared it to long ago, with madness in each draught. I felt our marriage would be a bigger hell than anything that had gone before it—and yet, I wanted you! Oh, God! I wanted you!"

She bowed forward suddenly, over her clenched hands.

"Janey, Janey—I don't want to hurt you more than I must. It's not your fault that every thought of you was fire and poison to me. You were just a weapon in fate's hands to wound me—we were both in fate's hands, to wound each other."

Paradoxically it was at that moment the old impulse returned. He came forward, holding out his arms to her. But this time she shrank back, cowering into the chair. Her movement brought him to his senses.

"You see how I can hardly speak to you. I must get on, and get done. I want to tell you how I met her ... Tony."

Janey shuddered. She had now come to the most awful pain of all.

"Tony ..." repeated Quentin. She noticed how he dwelt on the word, as if he were drawing strength from it, and at the same time she saw a[Pg 221] slight change in his manner. He lifted his head and spoke more steadily.

"I met her at a literary function, and I sat beside her all the evening. I remember every minute—I didn't speak much, nor did she, but a wonderful simplicity and calm seemed to radiate from her, a beautiful innocence—— What is it, Janey?"

"Nothing—go on."

"She was so young, scarcely more than a child—young and sweet. When I got home that night I felt for the first time an infinite peace in my soul—I felt all quiet and simple. I didn't worry or brood any more. I wasn't in love with her then—oh, no!—but I wanted to meet her again, just for the quiet of it. I did meet her shortly afterwards, and it was as beautiful as before. Then suddenly it all rushed over me—I wanted her, for my own; because she was pure and childlike and simple and inexperienced."

The confidence of his voice had grown, and in his eyes was something Janey had never seen there before. She now realised a little what Tony meant to him—what she, Janey, had never meant. She knew now that she could never win him back, and more, that she did not particularly want to. Tony stood to Quentin for all that was lovely and heroic in womanhood, whereas she, his Janey, had never been more to him than the incarnation of his own desperate passions. She stepped back, and the action was symbolical—she stepped out of his way. Her pleadings would no longer harass and shake him, she would leave him to his [Pg 222]salvation, since he loved it better than the woman who had meekly renounced hers for his sake.

"I grew desperate for her," continued Quentin, in the new assured voice. "Oh, don't think I gave you up without a struggle!—I had a dreadful time. I suffered horribly. But what will not a man do for his soul? I felt that my soul was at stake. It's damned rot to talk of men turning away from salvation—no man can get a real chance of salvation and not grasp it at once. Oh, don't think it didn't cut me to the heart to treat you as I did! I felt a swine and a cad, but I saw that I was grasping my only chance of redemption—and yours too. I couldn't help it, I tell you—no man can. Oh, don't think that if I could have saved myself with you, I wouldn't have done it rather than.... Oh, my God!—but I couldn't."

There are moments in a woman's life when she is simply staggered by the selfishness of the male, and yet to every woman there is something inevitable about it, so that it does not stir up her rage and contempt, as it would if she saw it in her own sex. Janey felt no anger with Quentin, she only thought how pitifully young he looked.

There was a pause—a long pause, broken by the rustling of the wind in the garden. Janey's eyes were fixed on Quentin's face, her whole being seemed concentrated upon it, all her thoughts, all her passion, all her pity. Poor child! poor, poor boy!

"Tony is very young," she said suddenly.

"Yes, only seventeen."

"And she's very good and gentle and well-bred."

[Pg 223]

He nodded.

"And she's never done anything really wrong."

"No."

There was another silence. This time it was Quentin who stared at Janey. He was still strong in the assurance Tony gave him; he was glad that they had begun to discuss her—he had not that feeling of being left alone with Janey, which at first had threatened to make the interview so terrible. At one time it had seemed almost as if the past had risen to swamp him—but now Tony had come to hold back the floods. The thought of her changed everything somehow, altered the old values, weakened what before had been invincible. Janey's face stood out from the shadows, washed in the indiscreet light of the afternoon, and for the first time he noticed a certain age and weariness about it. She was twenty-eight, nearly four years older than he, but he had never thought of her in relation to years and time. She had been to him an eternity of youth, her age was as irrelevant as the age of a play of Shakespeare or a symphony of Beethoven. But now he realised that she was twenty-eight—and looked it. There were hollows under her cheek-bones, where full, firm flesh should have been; there were tiny lines branching from the corners of her eyes, very faint, still undoubtedly there; and the autumnal colour on her cheeks did not lie as evenly as it might.

These discoveries brought him a strange sense of relief. He had hitherto looked on her loveliness as unapproachable, and the thought of her physical perfection had been a mighty factor in[Pg 224] the war that had raged so devastatingly in his heart. But now he saw that it was no longer to be reckoned with. Tony was, in point of fact, more beautiful than Janey. His eyes travelled down from her face, and saw her collar all askew, her blouse hanging sloppily out at the waist, her shoe-string untied. Tony always wore such dainty muslins, such soft, pretty white things.... Then he noticed Janey's hair. For the first time he wondered whether she brushed it often enough.

His spirits revived wonderfully during this contemplation, and with them a surge of tender pity towards her. He did not want her to feel humiliated by his unfaithfulness.

"Janey, you mustn't think I don't thank you and honour you for all you've been to me."

"You don't know what I've been to you."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't realise what I've sacrificed for you. You talk of Tony Strife's purity and innocence as if it was more to her credit to have them than for me to have given them up—for your sake."

"Janey——"

"Listen, Quentin. There's one thing this girl will never do for you—I did it—and I think that now you despise me for it, in spite of your words. You don't know what it cost me. I did my best to hide my pain from you, because you were happy; but now I think you ought to know that this thing for which you despise me was—was the greatest act of self-sacrifice in my whole life. Oh, Quentin, I always meant to keep straight, because of my[Pg 225] brothers, and because—because I wanted to be pure and good. Oh, I loved goodness and purity—I love them still, quite as much as Tony Strife loves them—and there were the poor boys, with only my example to restrain them. And then I loved you—and you asked me to climb over the gates of Paradise with you, because they would never be unlocked. Oh, God! I yielded because I loved you so. I gave up what was dearer to me than anything else in the world, the one thing I was struggling to keep unspotted, for my own sake and the boys'. I gave it up to you—and now ... and now ... you talk about another woman's purity and innocence."

Her voice died into tearless silence.

"Janey, you mustn't feel like that—you mustn't think that I reproach you. It's myself I blame—not you."

"But you do—you do—and I ought to have known it from the first."

He could not speak, the words stuck to his tongue—he wanted to fall at her feet, but could not, for he knew it would be mockery.

"I can't say anything," he stammered huskily; "we're just the victims of a damnable mistake, and the less we say about it the better. Each word one of us speaks is a wound for the other. There's only this left—
'And throughout all eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me—
As our dear Redeemer said:
This the wine and this the bread.'"

[Pg 226]

"You don't believe in the dear Redeemer, do you?"

"Of course not—but it's poetry."

They had neither of them realised that the interview was near an end, but these last words seemed to have finished it somehow. They were both standing, and the silence remained unbroken.

Then suddenly Janey moved. An absolutely new impulse had seized her. She went over to the glass, and looked at herself in it. Then she smoothed her hair, arranged her gown, made it tidy at the waist, and buttoned it at the wrists. Quentin watched her in blank wonder—he had never before seen her pay the slightest heed to her appearance. But to-day she stood a full five minutes before the glass, patting, smoothing, arranging—settling every fold of her careless garments with minutest care. Then she turned to him.

"Good-bye, Quentin."

Her head was held high—one would scarcely know her in her sleekness and order.

"Janey—you forgive me."

She did not speak.

"Janey—for God's sake!—oh, please forgive me!—because I've suffered so much, because I've wanted you so, because I've struggled to find redemption...."

His eyes burned, full of entreaty. But at first she could not answer him. She moved slowly[Pg 227] towards the door, but stopped on the threshold, and looked back at him, her heart hot and sick in her breast with pity. She had never realised Quentin's youth so absolutely and heartrendingly as to-day.

"I forgive you," she said, "but not for any of those reasons. I forgive you because you are—oh, God!—only a boy."