"And I also dreamed, which pleased me most,
That you loved me still the same ..."
The music ceased abruptly, and he dropped his bow, looking round to see Tony. She was not there; the great hall was empty—nothing but empty seats stretching away into dimness—except that in the front row of all sat two figures huddled together. He looked down at them, and at first he did not know them, then he saw that they were Len and Janey, staring up at him with hungry, loving eyes....
He woke and sat up, shivering a little. It must be late, for the winter sky was white beyond the woods. Yet he did not feel inclined to rise. He lay back, and folded his hands behind his head, staring out at the dull line of brown that lay against the quivering, dawn-filled clouds.
Those woods always put strange thoughts into his head. They made him think of his own life, lonely, windy and sere. But some day the spring would throb in them, their branches would shine with green, their thickets would thrill with song; in their waste, desolate places primroses would push through the dead leaves of last year.... He sat up again with a jerk—for the first time he realised that the woods would not be always brown.
The thought gave him a faint shock of surprise. Ever since the day he left prison he had looked out on brown woods, rocked by autumn and winter winds, so that he had almost forgotten that autumn and winter would not last for ever. He had never thought of spring, of March and tender green, of April and first flowers, of sweet, quickening rains, and winds full of warmth and the scent of young leaves. It was strange that he should have forgotten spring.
Now in the darkest day of the year, spring held out its promise to the woods—and to him. The yellow of a hidden sunrise was filling the clouds like hope unbounded—and Nigel's dream came back to him, his dream of marble halls and of love that was "still the same." He saw himself playing to thronged audiences, with Tony close to him, unseen, intangible, but there—with all the sweet memories of Lingfield and Brambletye revived and re-established, her friendship, candour, and tenderness "still the same."
Then he understood. Gulfs unbridgeable might lie between the convict with his stained and broken life and the simple little schoolgirl of Shovelstrode. But the well-known violinist who played for "big salaries," who "filled the Albert Hall."... A terrible thing had happened to Nigel—he had begun to hope. When hope has been a long time away, the return of it is like the return of sensation to a frost-bitten limb. It pricks, it burns, it tortures. It tortured Nigel till a cry of anguish burst from him, bitterer than in any of his fits of despair. He bent forward, clapping his hand to his side.
Hope showed him the doors of his prison flung wide at last. For long years he had never dreamed of escape, he was a captive, so fast in prison that he could not get forth—free only among the dead. But now the doors were open and he could go out. His music would raise him up out of the pit, bring him back to an earth washed in rain and spring, to touch the trembling innocence of the lilies, and drink the sweetness of the eternal May.
"Oh, God! Oh, God!—I want to be free! I want to be free!"