Janey was in bed for the first few days; she had collapsed utterly. The two blows which had fallen on her almost together had smitten her into a kind of numbness, in which she lay, white and stiff and tearless, through the windy hours. Nigel scarcely ever left her, and he scarcely ever spoke to her—they just crouched together, she on the bed, he on a chair beside it, their fingers twined, both dumbly busy with the problems of death and anguish that had assaulted their lives.
Meantime the routine of the house and farm remained unbroken. The "man" looked after the latter, and through the former moved a figure that seemed strangely out of place. When "Tottie Coughdrop" arrived the morning after Len's death, she proved to be no more or less than a novice from St. Margaret's Convent, and finding her ministrations as truly needed as if her patient had been alive, she did not leave on finding him dead.
She nursed Janey—at least she did for her the little that Nigel could not do; she dusted and cooked; she made Furlonger eat, the stiffest duty of all. It used to hurt Nigel when he thought how Len would have enjoyed seeing him sit down to supper every night with a nun.
Novice Unity Agnes also undertook all the arrangements for the funeral—which had always been a nightmare to Nigel and Janey. Moreover, the day before, she went to East Grinstead and bought a black skirt and blouse and hat for Janey, who but for her would never have thought of going into mourning at all; and though her charity was not able to overcome her diffidence and buy a mourning suit for Nigel, she sewed black bands on all his coats.
That was how it happened that the funeral of Leonard Furlonger was such a surprise to the inhabitants of the Three Counties. The coffin was met at the church door by the choir headed by a crucifix, and the service was read by a priest in a black cope. There were hymns too—Novice Unity Agnes's favourites, all about as appropriate as "How doth the little busy bee"—and incense, and a little collection of nuns, persuaded by the kind-hearted novice to swell the scanty number of mourners. In fact, as Nigel remarked bitterly, the whole thing was a joke, and it was a shame Len had missed it.
He and Janey walked home alone, arm in arm, through the wet lanes. As usual, they did not speak, but they strained close together as the solitude of the fields crept round them. The rain had cleared, but the wind was still romping in the hedges—little tearful spreads of sky showed among the clouds, very pale and rain-washed, soon swallowed up by moving shapes of storm.
Janet went to bed early. She had suddenly found that she could sleep, and her appetite for sleep became abnormal. She woke each morning greedily counting the hours till night. In the old careless days she had never set such store on sleep, because it had meant merely strengthening and resting and refreshing; now it meant what was more to her than anything else in life—forgetting.
Nigel could not sleep. In his heart the lights were not yet all put out. There were flashes of terror and sparks of desire, and dull flares of conjecture. He had sometimes hesitated whether he should tell Janey his secret, but had drawn back on each occasion, urged partly by the thought of adding to her burden, but principally by a feeling of shame. His wonderful dream, which had sustained him so triumphantly during six months of work and sacrifice, had now shrivelled into a poor little secret, such as school-girls nurture—a love which must always be hidden and silent and unconsummated.
His brain ached with regrets and revisualisations, quaked with apprehension and the knowledge of his own utter helplessness in the face of circumstances. The thought of Lowe's perfidy to Janet would rouse in him a sweat of rage from his poor attempts at sleep. Janey stood to Nigel for all that was noble, meek and understanding, and that she should be treated heartlessly and lightly by a scoundrel not worthy to black her boots, was a thought that drove him nearly rabid with hate. What was he to do to save Tony from this swine? He knew perfectly well how she would look upon him if she heard his story. He remembered the hard, stiff little figure in the garden of Shovelstrode—"You won my friendship under false pretences." What would she say to the cad who had won by false pretences not only her friendship but her body, her heart and her soul? Yet he could never tell her the truth. He would not betray Janet even to this girl he loved, and a vague accusation could easily be denied by Lowe, and was not likely to be believed by Tony.