The Three Furlongers

by Sheila Kaye-Smith

Nigel wondered if his June had not gone too, and if he had not better burn at once those few sweet, dead, tangled thoughts it had left him. He thought of the dim lane by Goatsluck Farm, with the glare of two motor lights on the hedges. He saw the puddles gleam, and Tony erect in the trickery of light and darkness, shapeless in his coat. Then across the aching silence of his heart came her words—"I can't bear it!—I—I'm so—disappointed."

That was the end of June—and he ought to have expected it. His friendship with Tony Strife could never have lasted in a neighbourhood where both were known and talked about. It had ended a little suddenly, that was all. He did not reproach himself for deceiving her; he did not even regret it, though he guessed what she must think. The doorway of the house of light had stood open, and he had crept in like a beggar, knowing that he must soon be turned out, but resolute meanwhile to bask and be glad.

But he wished she had not been "disappointed," that was so pathetic. Poor little girl! the memory of him would eat into her heart for a while. Girls of her age were righteous, and he had cheated her into friendship with unrighteousness. She would hate him for a bit. "I am so disappointed"—it seemed as if all his seething desires for goodness and peace had died into that little wail of outraged girlhood, and come back to haunt the empty house of his heart.

During the first few days of separation he childishly hoped that he might hear from her—surely she would write if only to upbraid. But no letter came. His coat was returned the next morning, but he searched the parcel in vain for a message. How cruel of Tony!—and yet all children, even girl-children, are cruel. Their experience of sorrow is limited to its tempestuous side—they do not know its aching calms; they quench their thirst with great gulps, and do not know the relief of small drops of water. This was the price he had to pay for seeking his comfort in the gaiety of boys and girls instead of in the more stable sympathy of his contemporaries.

The next two weeks were heartsick and lonely. All day long a piteous consciousness of Tony was present in the background of his thoughts, waiting till night to creep into the foreground of his dreams, and torment him with hungry wakings. Everything that reminded him even of her type was painful. Little ridiculous things twanged chords of plaintive memory—a picture of the Roedean hockey-team, with their short skirts and pig-tails, the demure flappers he sometimes met in his walks, a correspondence on "moral training in girls' schools" which was being waged in a daily paper—everything that reminded him of healthy, growing, undeveloped girlhood, reminded him of Tony, and made his heart ache and yearn and grieve after her.

He wandered about by himself a good deal in the lanes, snatching his few free moments after dusk. He no longer tramped furiously—he roamed, with slow steps and dreaming eyes, drinking a faint peace from the darkness of the fields. He found comfort, too, in his fiddle, and every evening he would play through his banal repertory, "O Caro Nome," from Rigoletto, "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls," the overtures to Zampa and La Gazza Ladra, the Finale from Lucia di Lammermoor. He became wonderfully absorbed in his fiddling, and had recovered a certain amount of his old skill and flexibility.

One day he took his violin to East Grinstead, as the sounding post had fallen down. He came back by a long road—through Hophurst and New Chapel and Blindley Heath. He stopped at the last to have a drink—it was a dreary collection of cottages, scattered round a flat, windswept heath. There were ponds in the corners of the heath, and their waters were always ruffled by a strange wind. Right in the middle of the waste was a little house squatting in its own patch of tillage, an island, a tumble-down oasis, in the great dreariness.

The scene, with the grey, scudding sky behind it, became stamped on Nigel's brain, as he stood with his beer in the pothouse door. It was one of those days when it seems as if our own hopelessness has at last impressed the unfeeling mask of Nature, and caused it to put on the grimace of our despair.

One or two children were playing in the road in front of the tavern, the wind fluttering their pinafores, and blowing their clothes against their limbs. A little boy with a mouth-organ was playing a vague and plaintive tune, to which two little girls were dancing. Nigel stood listening for some minutes, till both the moaning wind and the creaking tune had woven themselves together into a symphony of wretchedness.

Then he put down his beer, and took up his violin. He unfastened the case, unrolled the chrysalis of wrappings, and laid the instrument against his shoulder. The next minute a shrill wail rose up and challenged the wind.