"Not even in a dream hast thou known compassion ... thou knowest not even the phantom of pity; but the silver hair will remind thee of all this by and by."—Callimachus.
The Dower House stands so near to the church that Janey Manvers sitting by her bedroom window in the dusk could hear fragments of the choir practice over the low ivied wall which separates the churchyard from the garden. She could detect Annette's voice taking the same passage over and over again, trying to lead the trebles stumbling after her. Presently there was a silence, and then her voice rose sweet and clear by itself—
"They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat."
The other voices surged up, and Janey heard no more.
Was it possible there really was a place somewhere where there was no more hunger and thirst, and beating, blinding heat? Or were they only pretty words to comfort where no comfort was? Janey looked out where one soft star hung low in the dusk over the winding river and its poplars. It seemed to her that night as if she had reached the end of her strength.
For years, since her father died, she had nursed and sustained her mother, the invalid in the next room, through what endless terrible days and nights, through what scenes of anger and bitterness and despair. Janey had been loyal to one who had never been loyal to her, considerate to one who had ridden rough-shod over her, tender to one who was harsh to her, who had always been harsh. And now her mother, not content with eating up the best years of her daughter's life, had laid her cold hand upon the future, and had urged Janey to promise that after her death she would always keep Harry, her half-witted younger brother, in the same house with her, and protect him from the world on one side and a lunatic asylum on the other. Something desperate had surged up in Janey's heart, and she had refused to give the promise. She could see still her mother's look of impotent anger as she turned her face to the wall, could hear still her hysterical sobbing. She had not dared to remain with her, and Anne the old housemaid was sitting with her till the trained nurse returned from Ipswich, a clever, resourceful woman, who had made herself indispensable to Lady Louisa, and had taken Harry to the dentist—always heretofore a matter difficult of accomplishment.
Janey realized with sickening shame this evening that she had unconsciously looked forward to her mother's death as a time when release would come from this intolerable burden which she had endured for the last seven years. Her poor mother would die some day, and a home would be found for Harry, who never missed anyone if he was a day away from them. And she would marry Roger, dear kind Roger, whom she had loved since she was a small child and he was a big boy. That had been her life, in a prison whose one window looked on a green tree: and poor manacled Janey had strained towards it as a plant strains to the light. Something fierce had stirred within her when she saw her mother's hand trying to block the window. That at any rate must not be touched. She could not endure it. She knew that if she married Roger he would never consent that Harry and his attendants should live in the house with them. What man would? She felt sure that her mother had realized that contingency and the certainty of Roger's refusal, and hence her determination to wrest a promise from Janey.
She was waiting for her cousin Roger now. He had not said whether he would dine or come in after dinner,—it depended on whether he caught the five o'clock express from Liverpool Street,—but in any case he would come in some time this evening to tell her the result of his mission to Paris. Roger lived within a hundred yards, in the pink cottage with the twirly barge boarding almost facing the church, close by the village stocks.
Janey had put on what she believed to be a pretty gown on his account, it was at any rate a much-trimmed one, and had re-coiled her soft brown hair. The solitude and the darkness had relieved somewhat the strain upon her nerves. Perhaps Roger might after all have accomplished his mission, and her mother might be pacified. Sometimes there had been quiet intervals after these violent outbreaks, which nearly always followed opposition of any kind. Perhaps to-morrow life might seem more possible, not such a nightmare. To-morrow she would walk up to Red Riff and see Annette—lovely, kind Annette—the wonderful new friend who had come into her life. Roger ought to be here, if he were coming to dinner. The choir was leaving the church. Choir practice was never over till after eight. The steps and voices subsided. She lit a match and held it to the clock on the dressing-table. Quarter-past eight. Then Roger was certainly not coming. She went downstairs and ordered dinner to be served.
It was a relief that for once Harry was not present, that she could eat her dinner without answering the futile questions which were his staple of conversation, without hearing the vacant laugh which heralded every remark. She heard the carriage rumble out of the courtyard to meet him. His teeth must have taken longer than usual. Perhaps even Nurse, who had him so entirely under her thumb as a rule, had found him recalcitrant.