CHAPTER IV FATE'S AFTERTHOUGHT
Janet did not open her bill till her brothers had gone out to the farm. Then she tore the envelope. The bill ran—
"Janey Sweet,
"Curse it!—I have to go to Brighton on Saturday. It's for my father, so I daren't object, in case he should ask too many questions. But I must see you, dear one—it's nearly a month since we met, and I'm dying for the sight of you and the touch of you. Can't you come to-day? I'm sure you can get away for an hour or two—your brothers must not take you from me. I'll be waiting in Furnace Wood, in the old place down by the hedge, at five. Come to me, Janey sweet. I dreamed of you last night—dreamed of you with your hands full of flowers.
"Your lover,
"Quentin."
Janey stuffed the letter into her pocket.
"It's dreadful of me," she repeated, in the same tone as she had said it to the boys. Those poor boys! How innocently and trustfully they had swallowed her lie—it was like deceiving children.
But she could not tell them—though Nigel's strange new reserve made her long all the more to be frank and without secret—they would be furious if they knew her story, now the story of three years. Once she had tried hinting it to Len, but though he had not half understood her, he had made his feelings about Quentin Lowe pretty plain, and Janet had been only too glad to change the subject before the danger line was passed. Nigel would, of course, side with Leonard. They would look upon her love as treachery, for though there was no outward breach between the Furlongers and the Lowes, the former had always suspected the latter of sharp dealing over the Kent land—old Lowe would never have offered that absurd price if he had not known that the Furlongers were absolutely obliged to sell.
Old Lowe was a retired clergyman who had come with his son to Redpale Farm, just over the Kentish border. From the first he had cast a longing eye on the Furlonger acres, which touched his on the Surrey side. A row of cottages in obvious disrepair and insanitation had given his longing the necessary smack of righteousness. At that time Nigel was in prison on remand, and the news soon trickled through the neighbourhood that his brother and sister were in desperate money difficulties, and would have to sell most of their land. Lowe at once came forward with what he considered a fair offer, which the Furlongers, as no one else seemed inclined to bid, were bound to accept. The negotiations had been carried on chiefly through a solicitor, but young Lowe had paid two or three visits to Sparrow Hall.
Janet would never forget one of these. Leonard was not in that day, but though she had told Quentin she could decide nothing without her brother, he had insisted on sitting with her in the kitchen, arguing some obscure point. She remembered it all—the table between them, the firelight on the walls, the square of darkness and stars seen through the uncurtained window, the pipe and rattle of the wind. He had risen to go, and suddenly she had seen that he was trembling—and before she had time to be surprised she saw that she was trembling too. They faced each other for a minute, shaking from head to foot, and dumb. Then they stooped together swiftly in a burning kiss, their hearts full of uncontrollable ecstasy and despair.
It had all been so sudden. She could not remember having felt the faintest thrill in his presence till that moment. He said the same. When he had sat down opposite her at the table, she had been merely a woman with whom he was doing business. It seemed as if fate had brought them together as an afterthought, and at first Janey believed it could not last. But it lasted. It had lasted all through those years, in spite of much wretchedness and a killing need for secrecy on both sides. This need was more vital for Quentin than for Janey. He was utterly dependent on his father, who, of course, looked on the Furlongers with righteous disgust. So for three years meetings had been stolen, letters smuggled, and happiness snatched out of sudden hours.