The Three Furlongers

by Sheila Kaye-Smith

Half-an-hour later the three Furlongers sat down to a cold breakfast. They were almost silent, for there was nothing more to be said. The matter was settled. Nigel had found an unexpected ally in Janet, and had carried his point. Directly after breakfast he wrote to von Gleichroeder. It was a difficult letter, for it meant nothing less than eating humble pie, but for that very reason he did not take long over it. An envelope addressed in his large, scrawling hand was soon ready to be posted.

It was a clear, cold day, this feast of Stephen. A frosty sunshine crisped the grass, scattering the damps of yesterday's fog. The lane smelled of frost as Nigel walked up it to the post-office. But he did not see it as it was—in the duress and beggarliness of winter; he saw it as it would be, bursting with spring, full of scent and softness and song. He pictured those naked bushes when spring had clothed them, those grey banks when spring had fired them—the hedges were full of future song, the hollows of primroses to be.

He posted his letter, then stood for a moment, looking southward. The sunshine was so clear that the rims of distant windows gleamed with white across the fields. He could see the windows of Shovelstrode....

Dared he?

After all, he would have to. He could not leave Sparrow Hall without seeing Tony. He would not tell her of her place in his plans, but he owed it to her and to himself that she should think of him as a man living uprightly, striving after honour. Now she was thinking of him as a scoundrel and an outcast—he came into her thoughts with a shudder. It must not be.

At the same time he was afraid. It gave him a strange, cold qualm to think he was afraid of Tony, once his comrade, now his love—but he was. If he meant to see her, he must go at once, before his resolve lost strength with spontaneity. He turned towards the south, where the sunshine lay.

As he came near Shovelstrode his quakings grew. After all, by the time he had made himself worthy to think of her, she would have given herself to another. He could not even hint that he wanted her to wait. He must trust to her aloofness to keep her free, and the memory of their friendship to keep alive in her heart a little spark that he could some day fan into flame. But it was all rather hopeless, a leap in the dark.

Perhaps, even, she would refuse to see him. He remembered the look in her eyes when she had turned from him by Goatsluck Farm. All the steel-cold virtue, all the ignorant horror, all the cruelty of youth had been in that look. Perhaps she had turned from him for ever. Perhaps nothing that he could ever achieve or be would wipe out from her memory his foul betrayal of others and herself.