Leonard thought to himself—
"It's nearly time for Nigel's concert—I wonder if he's thinking of Janey and me."
CHAPTER V COWSANISH
Leonard dozed a little, but he did not sleep. A leaden weariness was in his limbs, but his heart and brain were horribly active, forbidding rest. His heart was full of rage, and his brain was full of images—he could doze only till these last crystallised in dreams, when their vividness woke him up at once. He woke each time with a start and a vague feeling of uneasiness and alarm. He feared he was going to be ill—just when Janey needed him so badly. He must bear up till to-morrow; by then she would be better, to-night she was helpless without him. He looked at the cramped figure on the bed, and his throat tightened with sorrow, shame and rage.
She should be avenged—he swore it. Lowe should be made to realise that it was not with impunity that one dragged women like Janey into the mud and then climbed out over their shoulders. He should be made to grovel to her and implore her forgiveness. Len had not quite settled his course of action, but he had fixed the results. Lowe was a worm, a miserable, loathly, little, wriggling worm, and he had slimed a lily—he should squirm under a decent man's boot....
The room darkened. The curtains, fluttering in the dusk-wind, were like ghosts. The line of woods on the horizon became dim, and an owl called from them suddenly. Then a procession of clouds began to flit solemnly across the window—driven from the south-west. They were brown against the bottomless grey, and there was a kind of majestic rhythm in their march before the wind.
Len rose with a shudder—somehow he could not sit still. He went to the window and looked out. Then he remembered that he had not shut in the fowls for the night or stalled the cows. He would have to leave Janey for a little and attend to the farm. He stepped back and looked at her. Her bed was in darkness, and all he could see was a long, black mass on the paleness of the bed-clothes. She was sleeping heavily, with quick, stertorous breathing, and it was not likely that she would wake for some time—he had certainly better go now, while she slept so well.
He crept quietly from the room and down the dark stairs. Outside the breeze puffed healingly upon him, cooling him with a sweet dampness as he climbed into the stream-field where the cows were pastured. The mists were too high and clammy for them to be left out at night, and the man had gone home after milking them. He called to them softly, and great shadows began to move out of the fogs towards him. The peace of the twilight and of his work with the calm, milk-smelling beasts, was so great that, in spite of rage and suffering, a kind of dreamy comfort came to Len—a quiet he felt only in the fields. He began to whistle as he drove the cows home before him. Then suddenly the whistling made him remember Nigel's concert.