CHAPTER VIII VIGIL

The doctor called early the next morning, and looked serious. Leonard had had a restless night, and his symptoms were becoming very grave. He still kept up his efforts at conversation, though they were more painful than ever.

"I—I'm not going to die, Doc," he panted.

"Well, keep quiet, and we'll see about it," said the doctor.

"But have you heard about my brother?... the one who fills the Albert Hall?... Oh, 'ninety-nine,' since you insist."

Nigel had been sent over to Dormans the first thing in the morning, to buy up all the papers he could. Several of them had a report of von Gleichroeder's concert, and most of these mentioned Nigel's performance favourably.

"Mr. Furlonger has undoubtedly a great deal to learn on the mechanical side of his art, but he has a wonderful force of temperament, which last night compensated in many ways for faulty technique. He even managed to work some emotional beauty into Scriabin's bundle of tricks, and one can imagine that in music which depended on the beautiful instead of on the bizarre for its appeal, he would have the chance, which was denied him last night, of a really fine performance. We do not say that Mr. Furlonger will ever be a master, but if he will avoid fashionable[Pg 269] gymnastics and not despise such out-of-date considerations as beauty and harmony, he may become a temperamental violinist of the first order." All the critics, more or less, had a hit at the "advanced" type of music, and Nigel imagined von Gleichroeder's wrath.

Len insisted on having all the criticisms read to him, and a thrill of pride went through even Janey's numb breast. She had never tried to speak to Nigel alone, and he gave her no hint that he knew she was in trouble. But when his heart was not bursting with anxiety for Len, it brimmed with compassion for Janey. She might have been nursing her brother for weeks instead of hours to judge by her haggard face, white lips, and faded eyes. Her movements were listless, and her figure in rest had the droop of utter exhaustion.

She and Nigel divided the nursing between them. Len was never left alone. He had to be fed every two hours, and it generally took both of them to do it, as he was very perverse in the matter of meals, saying that the food choked him. In the afternoon he became a little delirious. He seemed to be trying to ask for things, and yet to be unable to say what he really meant, often saying something quite different. He was intensely pathetic in his weakness. This dulling, or rather disturbance, of his faculties seemed to distress him far more than his difficult breathing or the pain in his side. Now and then he would hold out his hands piteously to Nigel and Janey, and would lie for some time holding the hand of each, his brown eyes staring at them imploringly, as if they were[Pg 270] fighting for the powers of speech which the tongue had lost—in the way that the eyes of animals often fight.

They tried to make him go to sleep, but he was always restless and awake. They read to him, talked to him and to each other, with no success. Outside, the day was dull, yet warm and steamy. Every now and then a shower would rustle noisily on the leaves, and after it passed there would be many drippings.

Nigel went out for an hour or two's work on the farm when evening fell. It seemed extraordinary that only some eighteen hours lay between him and the concert at the Bechstein Hall. That part of his life had been put aside—not for ever, perhaps, but none the less temporarily banished by a usurping present. Some day, no doubt, he would put on the last six months again, just as he would put on the dress clothes he had folded away, but now he wore corduroys and the last eighteen hours.

At six the doctor called again. He shook his head at the sight of Leonard.

"He must have a nurse," he said.

"Oh, no ... for heaven's sake!" groaned Len.

"Nigel and I can nurse him," said Janey.

"My dear young lady, have you seen your own face in the glass?"

Len raised himself with difficulty on his pillows.

"Lord, Janey!—you look quite cooked up.... I say, old girl, I won't have it.... Doctor, I surrender."

[Pg 271]

"I don't know whether I can send any one in to-night—but I'll try. Anyhow, to-morrow morning—now 'ninety-nine,' please."

Nigel went over to East Grinstead for ice and fruit. Len was dreadfully thirsty all the evening. They put bags of ice on his forehead and sides, but it did not seem to cool him much. The doctor had left a sleeping-draught, to be administered the last thing at night.

"If I take it," said Len, "will you two go to bed?"

"Janey will," said Nigel. "I'll have a shake-down in here."

"Well, it'll keep me quiet, I suppose ... so I'll take the beastly thing.... I want to sleep ... but I don't want to die.... I won't die, in fact."

"Don't talk of it, old man."

He lifted Len in his strong arms, and settled him more comfortably in the bedclothes. Then he gave him the sleeping-draught.

The window was wide open, and one could hear the rain pattering on the lilac bushes. The wind, sweet-smelling with damp and hay, puffed the curtains into the room, then sucked them back. A fire was burning low on the hearth. Janey went and sat beside it. Nigel sat by the bed, for between sleeping and waking his brother suffered from strange fears.

At last, after a few sighs and struggles, Len fell asleep, still high on his pillows, the lines of his face very tired and grim. There was a little light in the room, or rather the mingled lights of a dying[Pg 272] fire and a fighting moon. Nigel rose softly, and went over to Janet.

"You must go to bed."

"No—I'd rather stay here."

"You must have some sleep, or you'll be worn out."

"I couldn't sleep."

The words broke from her in a strangling sigh, and the next minute his arm crept round her, for he remembered Leonard's words.

"Dear Janey ..." he whispered.

She began to cry.

For a moment or two he held her to him, helping her to choke her sobs against his breast.

"Won't you tell me what it is?"

"How do you know there's anything more than that?" and she pointed towards the bed.

"Len told me."

"About Quentin?..."

"Quentin!"

"Yes—I thought you said he'd told you."

"He told me you were wretched about something. But who's Quentin?—not Quentin Lowe?"

They were the very words Len had used, and Janey shuddered.

"Yes ..." she said faintly, "Quentin Lowe."

"But——"

"You'll never understand.... I hid it from you for three years."

"Hid what, Janey?"

"My—my love."

Nigel's arm dropped from her waist, but hers[Pg 273] was round his neck, and she clung to him feverishly.

"Yes, I loved him. I loved him and I pitied him ... and I wanted, I tried, to help him—and—and I've been his ruin—and another woman has saved him."

Nigel was speechless. What astonished him, the man of secrets, most, was that Janey should have had a secret from him for three years.

"Don't tremble so, darling—but tell me about it. I won't be hard on you."

"You will—when you know all."

"Does Len know all?"

"Yes."

He glanced over to the sleeping man, then put back his arm round Janey's waist.

"Now tell me—all."

Janey told him—all.

For some moments there was silence. The rain was still beating on the leaves, but the moon had torn through the clouds, and flung a white patch over Leonard's feet. The fire was just a red lump, and Janey and Nigel, sitting outside the moonrays, were lost in darkness.

Janey wondered when her brother would speak. She could see the outline of his face, blurred in the shadows. He held his head high, and he had not dropped his arm from her waist, but his free hand was clenched—then she felt the other clench against her side. Sickening fears assailed her. Why did he not speak? Only that arm round her gave her hope....

[Pg 274]

Then suddenly he took it away, and put both his hands over his face. She saw his shoulders quiver, just for a moment, then for what seemed long moments he did not move.

A paralysis of horror was creeping towards her heart. He was taking things even worse than she had expected, but they did not seem to fill him with anger so much as with grief. His body was crumpled as if under a load, and when he suddenly dropped his hands and looked up at her, she drew back shuddering from what she saw in his eyes.

"My poor boy!—I wish I hadn't told you."

"Oh, God!—oh, God!"

Something in his cowering, hopeless attitude woke all the divine motherhood in Janey. She forgot her fear of unforgiveness, her danger of a rebuff, and put her arms round him, drawing his head to her breast.

"My poor Nigel ... my poor, poor lad!"—so she comforted him for the shame he felt for her.

After a time, when thought was not quite swallowed up in tenderness, she began to wonder why he let her hold him so.

Then suddenly he rose, and began to pace up and down the room—up and down, up and down, swinging round sharply at the corners, but always, she noticed with a gulp, treading softly for fear of waking Len. She watched him in numb despair. The minutes dragged on. Now and then he put his hand over his brow, as if he fought either for or against some memory, now and then he bent his head so low that she could not see his[Pg 275] face. She wondered how much longer she would be able to endure it.

"Nigel——" she whispered at last.

He stopped and turned towards her.

"Nigel ..."

"What is it?"

"For heaven's sake ... don't keep me in suspense."

"Suspense about what?"

"Your forgiveness."

In a moment he was at her side.

"Janey—if I thought you could be doubting that——"

He put his arms round her, and the relief was so sudden that she burst into tears.

"What a selfish hound I am!—wrapped up in my own beastly feelings, and forgetting yours. But I never imagined you could think——"

"I thought ... perhaps you couldn't."

"Janey, how dare you!"

"When you got up and walked about ..."

"I know—I know. But that wasn't anger against you—my poor, outraged, suffering darling," and he covered her face with kisses.

She clung to him in a passion of love and relief.

"Oh, you're good—you and Len!"

"Nonsense, Janey. You mustn't talk like that. We're not worthy to tie your shoes—we never shall be. How could you think we'd turn against you? It's him, that little, loathly cad, that——"

"Oh, hush, dear—I can't bear it."

His rage was stronger and fiercer than Len's, his whole body quivered in the passion of it. Then[Pg 276] suddenly it changed unaccountably to grief, and his head fell back against her shoulder, the eyes dull, the mouth old and drawn. She thought it was for her, and he hugged his poor, dead secret too tight to grant her the mercy of disillusion.

The night wore on, and they clung together on the hearthstone, where cinders fell and glowed, making the only sound, the only light, in the room. Two lost children, they huddled together in the only warm place they had left—each other's arms.

There was a feeble sigh, a feeble stirring in the bed—just as the first of the morning came between the curtains, and pointed like a finger into the gloom.

"Lenny...."

Janet and Nigel rose, wearily dropping their stiff arms from each other, and went over to the bed.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Only just woke up ... would you draw back the curtains?"

Nigel pulled them back, and a white dawn shuddered into the room.

"What time is it?"

"About three—can't you go to sleep again?"

"No—I've wakened for good ... I mean ... I mean ..."

"What, old man?"

"I think I am going to die after all."

"No, Lenny, no...."

"It's rather a come down ... after saying I wouldn't ... but I feel so tired."

His face was spread over with a ghastly pallor,[Pg 277] and something which Nigel and Janey could not exactly define, which indeed they hardly saw with their bodily sight, but which impressed them vaguely as a kind of film.

"I'm going to die," he repeated, plucking with cold fingers at the sheet.

"I'll go and fetch the doctor," cried Nigel.

"No ... I don't want you to leave me."

"But we must do something."

"There's nothing to do ... only talk to me ... and don't let me get funky."

"You might look out of the window, Nigel, and see if any one's passing," said Janey.

There was not likely to be any one at that hour, but he thrust his head out and eagerly scanned the lane. The rain had stopped, though the sky was shagged over with masses of cloud. One or two stars glimmered wanly above the woods. It was the constellation of Orion, setting.

"There's no one," said Nigel, "nor likely to be—I must go, Len."

"Oh, no ... don't ... don't leave me ... the doctor couldn't do anything.... Perhaps I won't die ... only I hate the dark."

A strangling pity seized Nigel. He went over to his brother, and sat down beside the bed, taking his hand.

"There, there, old boy, don't worry. We'll both stay with you. I'll hold this hand, and Janey 'ull hold the other, and you'll soon get over it."

Len lay shivering and gasping. Nigel and[Pg 278] Janey looked into each other's eyes across him, and swallowed their grief.

"I—I expect it's nothing," panted Leonard. "One often feels low at this time of night."

They leaned upon the bed each side of him, and suddenly Janey thrust out her hand and grasped Nigel's across him.

"Now we're all three holding hands," she said.

The minutes flew by. A clock was ticking—measuring them out.

"Kiss me ..." moaned Leonard suddenly.

They both stooped and kissed him.

He shut his eyes, then opened them, and a strange, piteous resignation was in their glazing depths.

"I'm sorry ... I must die.... I'm so tired."

"You will go to sleep, Len."

"No ... I'm too tired ... it wouldn't be enough."

Janey's tears fell on his face.

"Don't cry, Janey ... it's—it's all right.... Remember me to the doctor ... and say my last words were 'ninety-nine' ... laugh, Janey ... it's a joke."

"Lenny, Lenny...."

There was another silence, and a faint flush tinted the watery sky. A bird chirrupped in the eaves of Sparrow Hall.

"Hold my hands tighter," gasped Len.

They both gripped tighter.

"And give my love to Tottie Coughdrop ... and say I'm sorry to have missed her.... Tighter ... oh!... tighter."

[Pg 279]

His breath came in a fierce, whistling rush, and he sat bolt upright, gripping their hands and struggling.

"Nigel, fetch the doctor!" shrieked Janey.

But Len had his brother's hand in the agonised grip of dying.

"Tighter ... oh, tighter...."

There was another whistling rush of breath, but this time no struggle—only a sigh.

Len fell back on the pillow, and the terror passed suddenly from his face.