"Oh, doesn't she!… Is that mother? You might tell her I'm sleeping."
For Colin was afraid of his mother, too. He was afraid that she would talk, that she would talk about the War and about Jerrold. Colin had been home six weeks and he had not once spoken Jerrold's name. He read his letters and handed them to Anne and Adeline without a word. It was as if between him and the thought of Jerrold there was darkness and a supreme, nameless terror.
One morning at dawn Anne was wakened by Colin's voice in her room.
"Anne, are you awake?"
The room was full of the white dawn. She saw him standing in it by her bedside.
"My head's awfully queer," he said. "I can feel my brain shaking and wobbling inside it, as if the convolutions had come undone. Could they?"
"Of course they couldn't."
"The noise might have loosened them."
"It isn't your brain you feel, Colin. It's your nerves. It's just the shock still going on in them."
"Is it never going to stop?"
"Yes, when you're stronger. Go back to bed and I'll come to you."
He went back. She slipped on her dressing-gown and came to him. She sat by his bed and put her hand on his forehead.
"There—it stops when you put your hand on."
"Yes. And you'll sleep."
Presently, to her joy, he slept.
She stood up and looked at him as he lay there in the white dawn. He was utterly innocent, utterly pathetic in his sleep, and beautiful. Sleep smoothed out his vexed face and brought back the likeness of the boy Colin, Jerrold's brother.
That morning a letter came to her from Jerrold. He wrote: "Don't worry too much about Col-Col. He'll be all right as long as you'll look after him."
She thought: "I wonder whether he remembers that he asked me to."
But she was glad he was not there to hear Colin scream.
iii
"Anne, canyousleep?" said Adeline. Colin had gone to bed and they were sitting together in the drawing-room for the last hour of the evening.
"Not very well, when Colin has such bad nights."
"Do you think he's ever going to get right again?"
"Yes. But it'll take time."
"A long time?"
"Very long, probably."
"My dear, if it does, I don't know how I'm going to stand it. And if I only knew what was happening to Jerrold and Eliot. Sometimes I wonder how I've lived through these five years. First, Robert's death; then the War. And before that there was nothing but perfect happiness. I think trouble's worse to bear when you've known nothing but happiness before…. If I could only die instead of all these boys, Anne. Why can't I? What is there to live for?"
"There's Jerrold and Eliot and Colin."
"Oh, my dear, Jerrold and Eliot may never come back. And look at poor Colin.Thatisn't the Colin I know. He'll never be the same again. I'd almost rather he'd been killed than that he should be like this. If he'd lost a leg or an arm…. It's all very well for you, Anne. He isn't your son."
"You don't know what he is," said Anne. She thought: "He's Jerrold's brother. He's what Jerrold loves more than anything."
"No," said Adeline. "Everything ended for me when Robert died. I shall never marry again. I couldn't bear to put anybody in Robert's place."
"Of course you couldn't. I know it's been awful for you, Auntie."
"I couldn't bear it, Anne, if I didn't believe that there is SomethingSomewhere. I can't think how you get on without any religion."
"How do you know I haven't any?"
"Well, you've no faith in Anything. Have you, ducky?"
"I don't know what I've faith in. It's too difficult. If you love people, that's enough, I think. It keeps you going through everything."
"No, it doesn't. It's all the other way about. It's loving people that makes it all so hard. If you didn't love them you wouldn't care what happened to them. If I didn't love Colin I could bear his shell-shock better."
"IfIdidn't love him, I couldn't bear it at all."
"I expect," said Adeline, "we both mean the same thing."
Anne thought of Adeline's locked door; and, in spite of her love for her, she had a doubt. She wondered whether in this matter of loving they had ever meant the same thing. With Adeline love was a passive state that began and ended in emotion. With Anne love was power in action. More than anything it meant doing things for the people that you loved. Adeline loved her husband and her sons, but she had run away from the sight of Robert's haemorrhage, she had tried to keep back Eliot and Jerrold from the life they wanted, she locked her door at night and shut Colin out. To Anne that was the worst thing Adeline had done yet. She tried not to think of that locked door.
"I suppose," said Adeline, "you'll leave me now your father's coming home?"
John Severn's letter lay between them on the table. He was retiring after twenty-five years of India. He would be home as soon as his letter.
"I shall do nothing of the sort," said Anne. "I shall stay as long as you want me. If father wants me he must come down here."
In another three days he had come.
iv
He had grey hair now and his face was a little lined, a little faded, but he was slender and handsome still—handsomer, more distinguished, Adeline thought, than ever.
Again he sat out with her on the terrace when the October days were warm; he walked with her up and down the lawn and on the flagged paths of the flower garden. Again he followed her from the drawing-room to the library where Colin was, and back again. He waited, ready for her.
Again Adeline smiled her self-satisfied, self-conscious smile. She had the look of a young girl, moving in perfect happiness. She was perpetually aware of him.
One night Colin called out to Anne that he couldn't sleep. People were walking about outside under his window. Anne looked out. In the full moonlight she saw Adeline and her father walking together on the terrace. Adeline was wrapped in a long cloak; she held his arm and they leaned toward each other as they walked. His man's voice sounded tender and low.
Anne called to them. "I say, darlings, would you mind awfully going somewhere else? Colin can't sleep with you prowling about there."
Adeline's voice came up to them with a little laughing quiver.
"All right, ducky; we're going in."
v
It was the end of October; John Severn had gone back to London. He had taken a house in Montpelier Square and was furnishing it.
One morning Adeline came down smiling, more self-conscious than ever.
"Anne," she said, "do you think you could look after Colin if I went up to Evelyn's for a week or two?"
Evelyn was Adeline's sister. She lived in London.
"Of course I can."
"You aren't afraid of being alone with him?"
"Afraid? Of Col-Col? What do you take me for?"
"Well—" Adeline meditated. "It isn't as if Mrs. Benning wasn't here."
Mrs. Benning was the housekeeper.
"That'll make it all right and proper. The fact is, I must have a rest and change before the winter. I hardly ever get away, as you know. And Evelyn would like to have me. I think I must go."
"Of course you must go," Anne said.
And Adeline went.
At the end of the first week she wrote:
12 Eaton Square. November 3d, 1915.
Darling Anne,—Will you be very much surprised to hear that your father and I are going to be married? You mayn't know it, but he has loved me all his life. Wewereto have married once (you knewthat), and I jilted him. But he has never changed. He has been so faithful and forgiving, and has waited for me so patiently—twenty-seven years, Anne—that I hadn't the heart to refuse him. I feel that I must make up to him for all the pain I've given him.
We want you to come up for the wedding on the 10th. It will be very quiet. No bridesmaids. No party. We think it best not to have it at Wyck, on Colin's account. So I shall just be married from Evelyn's house.
Give us your blessing, there's a dear.
Your loving
Adeline Fielding.
Anne's eyes filled with tears. At last she saw Adeline Fielding completely, as she was, without any fascination. She thought: "She's marrying to get away from Colin. She's left him to me to look after. How could she leave him? How could she?"
Anne didn't go up for the wedding. She told Adeline it wasn't much use asking her when she knew that Colin couldn't be left.
"Or, if you like, thatIcan't leave him."
Her father wrote back:
Your Aunt Adeline thinks you reproach her for leaving Colin. I told her you were too intelligent to do anything of the sort. You'll agree it's the best thing she could do for him. She's no more capable of looking after Colin than a kitten. She wants to be looked after herself, and you ought to be grateful to me for relieving you of the job.
But I don't like your being alone down there with Colin. If he isn't better we must send him to a nursing home.
Are you wondering whether we're going to be happy?
We shall be so long as I let her have her own way; which is what I mean to do.
Your very affectionate father,
And Anne answered:
DEAREST DADDY,—I shouldn't dream of reproaching Aunt Adeline any morethan I should reproach a pussycat for catching birds.
Look after her as much as you please—Ishall look after Colin.Whether you like it or not, darling, you can't stop me. And I won't letColin go to a nursing home. It would be the worst possible place forhim. Ask Eliot. Besides, heisbetter.
I'm ever so glad you're going to be happy.
Your loving
i
Autumn had passed. Colin's couch was drawn up before the fire in the drawing-room. Anne sat with him there.
He was better. He could listen for half an hour at a time when Anne read to him—poems, short stories, things that were ended before Colin tired of them. He ate and drank hungrily and his body began to get back its strength.
At noon, when the winter sun shone, he walked, first up and down the terrace, then round and round the garden, then to the beech trees at the top of the field, and then down the hill to the Manor Farm. On mild days she drove him about the country in the dog-cart. She had tried motoring but had had to give it up because Colin was frightened at the hooting, grinding and jarring of the car.
As winter went on Anne found that Colin was no worse in cold or wet weather. He couldn't stand the noise and rush of the wind, but his strange malady took no count of rain or snow. He shivered in the clear, still frost, but it braced him all the same. Driving or strolling, she kept him half the day in the open air.
She saw that he liked best the places they had gone to when they were children—the Manor Farm fields, High Slaughter, and Hayes Mill. They were always going to the places where they had done things together. When Colin talked sanely he was back in those times. He was safe there. There, if anywhere, he could find his real self and be well.
She had the feeling that Colin's future lay somewhere through his past. If only she could get him back there, so that he could be what he had been. There must be some way of joining up that time to this, if only she could find a bridge, a link. She didn't know that she was the way, she was the link binding his past to his present, bound up with his youth, his happiness, his innocence, with the years before Queenie and the War.
She didn't know what Queenie had done to him. She didn't know that the war had only finished what Queenie had begun. That was Colin's secret, the hidden source of his fear.
But he was safe with Anne because they were not in love with each other. She left his senses at rest, and her affection never called for any emotional response. She took him away from his fear; she kept him back in his childhood, in his boyhood, in the years before Queenie, with a continual, "Do you remember?"
"Do you remember the walk to High Slaughter?"
"Do you remember the booby-trap we set for poor Pinkney?"
That was dangerous, for poor Pinkney was at the War.
"Do you remember Benjy?"
"Yes, rather."
But Benjy was dangerous, too; for Jerrold had given him to her. She could feel Colin shying.
"He had a butterfly smut," he said. "Hadn't he? …Do you remember how I used to come and see you at Cheltenham?"
"And Grannie and Aunt Emily, and how you used to play on their piano.And how Grannie jumped when you came down crash on those chords in theWaldstein."
"Do you mean thepresto?"
"Yes. The last movement."
"No wonder she jumped. I should jump now." He turned his mournful face to her. "Anne—I shall never be able to play again."
There was danger everywhere. In the end all ways led back to Colin's malady.
"Oh yes, you wall when you're quite strong."
"I shall never be stronger."
"You will. You're stronger already."
She knew he was stronger. He could sleep three hours on end now and he had left off screaming.
And still the doors were left open between their rooms at night. He was still afraid to sleep alone; he liked to know that she was there, close to him.
Instead of the dreams, instead of the sudden rushing, crashing horror, he was haunted by a nameless dread. Dread of something he didn't know, something that waited for him, something he couldn't face. Something that hung over him at night, that was there with him in the morning, that came between him and the light of the sun.
Anne kept it away. Anne came between it and him. He was unhappy and frightened when Anne was not there.
It was always, "You'renotgoing, Anne?"
"Yes. But I'm coming back."
"How soon?"
And she would say, "An hour;" or, "Half an hour," or, "Ten minutes."
"Don't be longer."
"No."
And then: "I don't know how it is, Anne. But everything seems all right when you're there, and all wrong when you're not."
ii
The Manor Farm house stands in the hamlet of Upper Speed. It has the grey church and churchyard beside it and looks across the deep road towards Sutton's farm.
The beautiful Jacobean house, the church and church-yard, Sutton's farm and the rectory, the four cottages and the Mill, the river and its bridge, lie close together in the small flat of the valley. Green pastures slope up the hill behind them to the north; pink-brown arable lands, ploughed and harrowed, are flung off to either side, east and west.
Northwards the valley is a slender slip of green bordering the slender river. Southwards, below the bridge, the water meadows widen out past Sutton's farm. From the front windows of the Manor Farm house you see them, green between the brown trunks of the elms on the road bank. From the back you look out across orchard and pasture to the black, still water and yellow osier beds above the Mill. Beyond the water a double line of beeches, bare delicate branches, rounded head after rounded head, climbs a hillock in a steep curve, to part and meet again in a thick ring at the top.
The house front stretches along a sloping grass plot, the immense porch built out like a wing with one ball-topped gable above it, a smaller gable in the roof behind. On either side two rows of wide black windows, heavy browed, with thick stone mullions.
Barker, Jerrold Fielding's agent, used to live there; but before the spring of nineteen sixteen Barker had joined up, Wyck Manor had been turned into a home for convalescent soldiers, and Anne was living with Colin at the Manor Farm.
Half of her Ilford land had been taken by the government; and she had let the rest together with the house and orchard. Instead of her own estate she had the Manor to look after now. It had been impossible in war-time to fill Barker's place, and Anne had become Jerrold's agent. She had begun with a vague promise to give a look round now and then; but when the spring came she found herself doing Barker's work, keeping the farm accounts, ordering fertilizers, calculating so many hundredweights of superphosphate of lime, or sulphate of ammonia, or muriate of potash to the acre; riding about on Barker's horse, looking after the ploughing; plodding through the furrows of the hill slopes to see how the new drillers were working; going the round of the sheep-pens to keep count of the sick ewes and lambs; carrying the motherless lambs in her arms from the fold to the warm kitchen.
She went through February rain and snow, through March wind and sleet, and through the mists of the low meadows; her feet were loaded with earth from the ploughed fields; her nostrils filled with the cold, rich smell of the wet earth; the rank, sharp smell of swedes, the dry, pungent smell of straw and hay; the thick, oily, woolly smell of the folds, the warm, half-sweet, half sour smell of the cattle sheds, of champed fodder, of milky cow's breath; the smell of hot litter and dung.
At five and twenty she had reached the last clear decision of her beauty. Dressed in riding coat and breeches, her body showed more slender and more robust than ever. Rain, sun and wind were cosmetics to her firm, smooth skin. Her eyes were bright dark, washed with the clean air.
On her Essex farm and afterwards at the War she had learned how to handle men. Sulky Curtis, who grumbled under Barker's rule, surrendered to Anne without a scowl. When Anne came riding over the Seven Acre field, lazy Ballinger pulled himself together and ploughed through the two last furrows that he would have left for next day in Barker's time. Even for Ballinger and Curtis she had smiles that atoned for her little air of imperious command.
And Colin followed her about the farmyard and up the fields till he tired and turned back. She would see him standing by the gate she had passed through, looking after her with the mournful look he used to have when he was a little boy and they left him behind.
He would stand looking till Anne's figure, black on her black horse, stood up against the skyline from the curve of the round-topped hill. It dipped; it dipped and disappeared and Colin would go slowly home.
At the first sound of her horse's hoofs in the yard he came out to meet her.
One day he said to her, "Jerrold'll be jolly pleased with what you've done when he comes home."
And then, "If he ever can be pleased with anything again."
It was the first time he had said Jerrold's name.
"That's what's been bothering me," he went on. "I can't think howJerrold's going to get over it. You remember what he was like whenFather died?"
"Yes." She remembered.
"Well—what's the War going to do to him? Look what it's done to me. He minds things so much more than I do."
"It doesn't take everybody the same way, Colin."
"I don't suppose Jerrold'll get shell-shock. But he might get something worse. Something that'll hurt him more. He must mind so awfully."
"You may be sure he won't mind anything that could happen to himself."
"Of course he won't. But the things that'll happen to other people.Seeing the other chaps knocked about and killed."
"He minds most the things that happen to the people he cares about. To you and Eliot. They're the sort of things he can't face. He'd pretend they couldn't happen. But the war's so big that he can't say it isn't happening; he's got to stand up to it. And the things you stand up to don't hurt you. I feel certain he'll come through all right."
That was the turning point in Colin's malady. She thought: "If he can talk about Jerrold he's getting well."
The next day a letter came to her from Jerrold. He wrote: "I wish to goodness I could get leave. I don't want itallthe time. I'm quite prepared to stick this beastly job for any reasonable period; but a whole year without leave, it's a bit thick…"
"About Colin. Didn't I tell you he'd be all right? And it's allyou, Anne. You've made him; you needn't pretend you haven't. I want most awfully to see you again. There are all sorts of things I'd like to say to you, but I can't write 'em."
She thought: "He's got over it at last, then. He won't be afraid of me any more."
Somehow, since the war she had felt that Jerrold would come back to her. It was as if always, deep down and in secret, she had known that he belonged to her and that she belonged to him as no other person could; that whatever happened and however long a time he kept away from her he would come back at some time, in some way. She couldn't distinguish between Jerrold and her sense of Jerrold; and as nothing could separate her from the sense of him, nothing could separate her from Jerrold himself. He had part in the profound and secret life of her blood and nerves and brain.
i
At last, in March, nineteen-sixteen, Jerrold had got leave.
Anne was right; Jerrold had come through because he had had to stand up to the War and face it. He couldn't turn away. It was too stupendous a fact to be ignored or denied or in any way escaped from. And as he had to "take" it, he took it laughing. Once in the thick of it, Jerrold was sustained by his cheerful obstinacy, his inability to see the things he didn't want to see. He admitted that there was a war, the most appalling war, if you liked, that had ever been; but he refused, all the time, to believe that the Allies would lose it; he refused from moment to moment to believe that they could be beaten in any single action; he denied the possibility of disaster to his own men. Disaster to himself—possibly; probably, in theory; but not in practice. Not when he turned back in the rain of the enemy's fire to find his captain who had dropped wounded among the dead, when he swung him over his shoulder and staggered to the nearest stretcher. He knew he would get through. It was inconceivable to Jerrold that he should not get through. Even in his fifth engagement, when his men broke and gave back in front of the German parapet, and he advanced alone, shouting to them to come on, it was inconceivable that they should not come on. And when they saw him, running forward by himself, they gathered again and ran after him and the trench was taken in a mad rush.
Jerrold got his captaincy and two weeks' leave together. He had meant to spend three days in London with his mother, three days in Yorkshire with the Durhams, and the rest of his time at Upper Speed with Anne and Colin. He was not quite sure whether he wanted to go to the Durhams. More than anything he wanted to see Anne again.
His last unbearable memory of her was wiped out by five years of India and a year of war. He remembered the child Anne who played with him, the girl Anne who went about with him, and the girl woman he had found in her room at dawn. He tried to join on to her the image of the Anne that Eliot wrote to him about, who had gone out to the war and come back from it to look after Colin. He was in love with this image of her and ready to be in love again with the real Anne. He would go back now and find her and make her care for him.
There had been a time, after his father's death, when he had tried to make himself think that Anne had never cared for him, because he didn't want to think she cared. Now that he did want it he wasn't sure.
Not so sure as he was about little Maisie Durham. He knew Maisie cared. That was why she had gone out to India. It was also why she had been sent back again. He was afraid it might be why the Durhams had asked him to stay with them as soon as he had leave. If that was so, he wasn't sure whether he ought to stay with them, seeing that he didn't care for Maisie. But since they had asked him, well, he could only suppose that the Durhams knew what they were about. Perhaps Maisie had got over it. The little thing had lots of sense.
It hadn't been his fault in the beginning, Maisie's caring. Afterwards, perhaps, in India, when he had let himself see more of her than he would have done if he had known she cared; but that, again, was hardly his fault since he didn't know. You don't see these things unless you're on the lookout for them, and you're not on the lookout unless you're a conceited ass. Then when he did see it, when he couldn't help seeing, after other people had seen and made him see, it had been too late.
But this was five years ago, and of course Maisie had got over it. There would be somebody else now. Perhaps he would go down to Yorkshire. Perhaps he wouldn't.
At this point Jerrold realised that it depended on Anne.
But before he saw Anne he would have to see his mother. And before he saw his mother his mother had seen Anne and Colin.
ii
And while Anne in Gloucestershire was answering Jerrold's letter, Jerrold sat in the drawing-room of the house in Montpelier Square and talked to his mother. They talked about Colin and Anne.
"What's Colin's wife doing?" he said.
"Queenie? She's driving a field ambulance car in Belgium."
"Why isn't she looking after Colin?"
"That isn't in Queenie's line. Besides—"
"Besides what?"
"Well, to tell the truth, I don't suppose she'll live with Colin after—"
"Afterwhat?"
"Well, after Colin's living with Anne."
Jerrold stiffened. He felt the blood rushing to his heart, betraying him. His face was God only knew what awful colour.
"You don't mean to say they—"
"I don't mean to say I blame them, poor darlings. What were they to do?"
"But" (he almost stammered it) "you don't know—you can't know—it doesn't follow."
"Well, of course, my dear, they haven'ttoldme. You don't shout these things from the house-tops. But what is one to think? There they are; there they've been for the last five months, living together at the Farm, absolutely alone. Anne won't leave him. She won't have anybody there. If you tell her it's not proper she laughs in your face. And Colin swears he won't go back to Queenie. Whatisone to think?"
Jerrold covered his face with his hands. He didn't know.
His mother went on in a voice of perfect sweetness. "Don't imagine I think a bit the worse of Anne. She's been simply splendid. I never saw anything like her devotion. She's brought Colin round out of the most appalling state. We've no business to complain of a situation we're all benefitting by. Some people can do these things and you forgive them. Whatever Anne does or doesn't do she'll always be a perfect darling. As for Queenie, I don't consider her for a minute. She's been simply asking for it."
He wondered whether it were really true. It didn't follow that Anne and Colin were lovers because his mother said so; even supposing that she really thought it.
"You don't go telling everybody, I hope?" he said.
"My dear Jerrold, what do you think I'm made of? I haven't even toldAnne's father. I've only told you because I thought you ought to know."
"I see; you want to put me off Anne?"
"I don'twantto. But it would, wouldn't it?"
"Oh Lord, yes, if it was true. Perhaps it isn't."
"Jerry dear, it may be awfully immoral of me, but for Colin's sake I can't help hoping that it is. I did so want Anne to marry Colin—really he's only right when he's with her—and if Queenie divorces him I suppose she will."
"But, mother, youaregoing ahead. You may be quite wrong."
"I may. You can only suppose—"
"How on earth am I to know? I can't ask them."
"No, you can't ask them."
Of course he couldn't. He couldn't go to Colin and say, "Are you Anne's lover?" He couldn't go to Anne and say, "Are you Colin's mistress?"
"If they wanted us to know," said Adeline, "they'd have told us. There you are."
"Supposing it isn't true, do you imagine he cares for her?"
"Yes, Jerrold. I'm quite, quite sure of that. I was down there last week and saw them. He can't bear her out of his sight one minute. He couldn't not care."
"And Anne?"
"Oh, well, Anne isn't going to give herself away. But I'm certain… Would she stick down there, with everybody watching them and thinking things and talking, if she didn't care so much that nothing matters?"
"But would she—would she—"
The best of his mother was that in these matters her mind jumped to meet yours halfway. You hadn't got to put things into words.
"My dear, if you think she wouldn't, supposing she cared enough, you don't know Anne."
"I shall go down," he said, "and see her."
"If you do, for goodness' sake be careful. Even supposing there's nothing in it, you mustn't let Colin see you think there is. He'd feel then that he ought to leave her for fear of compromising her. And if he leaves her he'll be as bad as ever again. AndIcan't manage him. Nobody can manage him but Anne. That's how they've tied our hands. We can't say anything."
"I see."
"After all, Jerrold, it's very simple. If they're innocent we must leave them in their innocence. And if they're not——"
"If they're not?"
"Well, we must leave them inthat."
Jerrold laughed. But he was not in the least amused.
iii
He went down to Wyck the next day; he couldn't wait till the day after.
Not that he had the smallest hope of Anne now. Even if his mother's suspicion were unfounded, she had made it sufficiently clear to him that Anne was necessary to Colin; and, that being so, the chances were that Colin cared for her. In these matters his mother was not such a fool as to be utterly mistaken. On every account, therefore, he must be prepared to give Anne up. He couldn't take her away from Colin, and he wouldn't if he could. It was his own fault. What was done was done six years ago. He should have loved Anne then.
Going down in the train he thought of her, a little girl with short black hair, holding a black-and-white rabbit against her breast, a little girl with a sweet mouth ready for kisses, who hung herself round his neck with sudden, loving arms. A big girl with long black hair tied in an immense black bow, a girl too big for kisses. A girl sitting in her room between her white bed and the window with a little black cat in her arms. Her platted hair lay in a thick black rope down her back. He remembered how he had kissed her; he remembered the sliding of her sweet face against his, the pressure of her darling head against his shoulder, the salt taste of her tears. It was inconceivable that he had not loved Anne then. Why hadn't he? Why had he let his infernal cowardice stop him? Eliot had loved her.
Then he remembered Colin. Little Col-Col running after them down the field, calling to them to take him with them; Colin's hands playing; Colin's voice singingLord Rendal. He tried to think of Queenie, the woman Colin had married. He had no image of her. He could see nothing but Colin and Anne.
She was there alone at the station to meet him. She came towards him along the platform. Their eyes looked for each other. Something choked his voice back. She spoke first.
"Jerrold———"
"Anne." A strange, thick voice deep down in his throat.
Their hands clasped one into the other, close and strong.
"Colin wanted to come, but I wouldn't let him. It would have been too much for him. He might have cried or something … You mustn't mind if he cries when he sees you. He isn't quite right yet."
"No, but he's better."
"Ever so much better. He can do things on the farm now. He looks after the lambs and the chickens and the pigs. It's good for him to have something to do."
Jerrold agreed that it was good.
They had reached the Manor Farm now.
"Don't take any notice if he cries," she said.
Colin waited for him in the hall of the house. He was trying hard to control himself, but when he saw Jerrold coming up the path he broke down in a brief convulsive crying that stopped suddenly at the touch of Jerrold's hand.
Anne left them together.
iv
"Don't go, Anne."
Colin called her back when she would have left them, again after dinner.
"Don't you want Jerrold to yourself?" she said.
"We don't want you to go, do we, Jerrold?"
"Rather not."
Jerrold found himself looking at them all the time. He had tried to persuade himself that what his mother had told him was not true. But he wasn't sure. Look as he would, he was not sure.
If only his mother hadn't told him, he might have gone on believing in what she had called their innocence. But she had shown him what to look for, and for the life of him he couldn't help seeing it at every turn: in Anne's face, in the way she looked at Colin, the way she spoke to him; in her kindness to him, her tender, quiet absorption. In the way Colin's face turned after her as she came and went; in his restlessness when she was not there; in the peace, the sudden smoothing of his vexed brows, when having gone she came back again.
Supposing it were true that they—
He couldn't bear it to be true; his mind struggled against the truth of it, but if itweretrue he didn't blame them. So far from being untrue or even improbable, it seemed to Jerrold the most likely thing in the world to have happened. It had happened to so many people since the war that he couldn't deny its likelihood. There was only one thing that could have made it impossible—if Anne had cared for him. And what reason had he to suppose she cared? After six years? After he had told her he was trying to get away from her? He had got away; and he saw a sort of dreadful justice in the event that made it useless for him to come back. If anybody was to blame it was himself. Himself and Queenie, that horrible girl Colin had married.
When he asked himself whether it was the sort of thing that Anne would be likely to do he thought: Why not, if she loved him, if she wanted to make him happy? How could he tell what Anne would or would not do? She had said long ago that he couldn't, that she might do anything.
They spent the evening talking, by fits and starts, with long silences in between. They talked about the things that happened before the war, before Colin's marriage, the things they had done together. They talked about the farm and Anne's work, about Barker and Curtis and Ballinger, about Mrs. Sutton who watched them from her house across the road.
Mrs. Sutton had once been Colin's nurse up at the Manor: she had married old Sutton after his first wife's death; old Sutton who wouldn't die and let Anne have his farm. And now she watched them as if she were afraid of what they might do next.
"Poor old Nanna," Jerrold said.
"Goodness knows what she thinks of us," said Anne.
"It doesn't matter what she thinks," said Colin.
And they laughed; they laughed; and Jerrold was not quite sure, yet.
But before the night was over he thought he was.
They had given him the little room in the gable. It led out of Colin's room. And there on the chimneypiece he saw an old photograph of himself at the age of thirteen, holding a puppy in his arms. He had given it to Anne on the last day of the midsummer holidays, nineteen hundred. Also he found a pair of Anne's slippers under the bed, and, caught in a crack of the dressing-table, one long black hair. This room leading out of Colin's was Anne's room.
And Colin called out to him, "Do you mind leaving the door open, Jerry?I can't sleep if it's shut."
v
It was Jerrold's second day. He and Anne climbed the steep beech walk to the top of the hillock and sat there under the trees. Up the fields on the opposite rise they could see the grey walls and gables of the Manor, and beside it their other beech ring at the top of the last field.
They were silent for a while. He was intensely aware of her as she turned her head round, slowly, to look at him, straight and full.
And the sense of his nearness came over her, soaking in deeper, swamping her brain. Her wide open eyes darkened; her breathing came in tight, short jerks; her nerves quivered. She wondered whether he could feel their quivering, whether he could hear her jerking breath, whether he could see something queer about her eyes. But she had to look at him, not shyly, furtively, but straight and full, taking him in.
He was changed. The war had changed him. His face looked harder, the mouth closer set under the mark of the little clipped fawn-brown moustache. His eyes that used to flash their blue so gayly, to rest so lightly, were fixed now, dark and heavy with memory. They had seen too much. They would never lose that dark memory of the things they had seen. She wondered, was Colin right? Had the war done worse things to Jerrold than it had done to him? He would never tell her.
"Jerrold," she said, suddenly, "did you have a good time in India?"
"I suppose so. I dare say I thought I had."
"And you hadn't?"
"Well, I can't conceive how I could have had."
"You mean it seems so long ago."
"No, I don't mean that."
"You've forgotten."
"I don't mean that, either."
Silence.
"Look here, Anne, I want to know about Colin. Has he been very bad?"
"Yes, he has."
"How bad?"
"So bad that sometimes I was glad you weren't there to see him. You remember when he was a kid, how frightened he used to be at night. Well, he's been like that all the time. He's like that now, only he's a bit better. He doesn't scream now…. All the time he kept on worrying about you. He only told me that the other day. He seemed to think the war must have done something more frightful to you than it had done to him; he said, because you'd mind it more. I told him it wasn't the sort of thing you'd mind most."
"It isn't the sort of thing it's any good minding. I don't suppose I minded more than the other chaps. If anything had happened to you, or him, or Eliot, I'd have minded that."
"I know. That's what I told him. I knew you'd come through."
"Eliot was dead right about Colin. He knew he wouldn't. He ought never to have gone out."
"He wanted so awfully to go. But Eliot could have stopped him if it hadn't been for Queenie. She hunted and hounded him out. She told him he was funking. Fancy Colin funking!"
"What's Queenie like?"
"She's like that. She never funks herself, but she wants to make out that everybody else does."
"Do you like Queenie?"
"No. I hate her. I don't mind her hounding him out so much since she went herself; Idomind her leaving him. Do you know, she's never even tried to come and see him."
"Good God! what a beast the woman must be. What on earth made him marry her?"
"He was frightfully in love. An awful sort of love that wore him out and made him wretched. And now he's afraid for his life of her. I believe he's afraid of the war ending because then she'll come back."
"And if she does come back?"
"She may try and take Colin away from me. But she shan't. She can't take him if he doesn't want to go. She left him to me to look after and I mean to stick to him. I won't have him frightened and made all ill again just when I've got him well."
"I'm afraid you've had a very hard time."
"Not so hard as you think."
She smiled a mysterious, quiet smile, as if she contemplated some happy secret. He thought he knew it, Anne's secret.
"Do you think it's funny of me to be living here with Colin?"
He laughed.
"I suppose it's all right. You always had pluck enough for anything."
"It doesn't take pluck to stick to Colin."
"Moral pluck."
"No. Not even moral."
"You were always fond of him, weren't you?"
That was about as far as he dare go.
She smiled her strange smile again.
"Yes. I was always fond of him…. You see, he wants me more than anybody else ever did or ever will."
"I'm not so sure about that. But he always did get what he wanted."
"Oh, does he! How about Queenie?"
"Even Queenie. I suppose he wanted her at the time."
"He doesn't want her now. Poor Colin."
"You mustn't ask me to pity him."
"Ask you? He'd hate you to pity him. I'd hate you to pityme."
"I shouldn't dream of pitying you, any more than I should dream of criticising you."
"Oh, you may criticise as much as you like."
"No. Whatever you did it would make no difference. I should know it was right because you did it."
"It wouldn't be. I do heaps of wrong things, butthisis right."
"I'm sure it is." "Here's Colin," she said.
He had come out to look for them. He couldn't bear to be alone.
vi
Jerrold had gone to Sutton's Farm to say good-bye to their old nurse,Nanny Sutton.
Nanny talked about the war, about the young men who had gone from Wyck and would not come back, about the marvel of Sutton's living on through it all, and he so old and feeble. She talked about Colin and Anne.
"Oh, Master Jerrold," she said, "I do think it's a pity she should be livin' all alone with Mr. Colin like this 'ere."
"They're all right, Nanny. You needn't worry."
"Well—well, Miss Anne was always one to go her own way and make it seem the right way."
"You may be perfectly sure it is the right way."
"I'm not sayin' as 'tisn't. And I dunnow what Master Colin'd a done without her. But it do make people talk. There's a deal of strange things said in the place."
"Don't listen to them."
"Eh dear, I'll not 'ear a word. When anybody says anything to me I tell 'em straight they'd oughter be ashamed of themselves, back-bitin' and slanderin'."
"That's right, Nanny, you give it them in the neck."
"If it'd only end in talk, but there's been harm done to the innocent. There's Mr. and Mrs. Kimber. Kimber, 'e's my 'usband's cousing." Nanny paused.
"What about him?"
"Well, 'tis this way. They're doin' for Miss Anne, livin' in the house with her. Kimber, 'e sees to the garden and Mrs. Kimber she cooks and that. And Kimber—that's my 'usband's cousin—'e was gardener at the vicarage. And now 'e's lost his job along of Master Colin and Miss Anne."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, sir, 'tis the vicar. 'E says they 'adn't oughter be livin' in the house with Miss Anne, because of the talk there's been. So 'e says Kimber must choose between 'em. And Kimber, 'e says 'e'd have minded what parson said if it had a bin a church matter or such like, but parson or no parson, 'e says 'e's his own master an' 'e won't have no interferin' with him and his missus. So he's lost his job."
"Poor old Kimber. What a beastly shame."
"Eh, 'tis a shame to be sure."
"Never mind; I can give him a bigger job at the Manor."
"Oh, Master Jerrold, if you would, it'd be a kindness, I'm sure. AndKimber 'e deserves it, the way they've stuck to Miss Anne."
"He does indeed. It's pretty decent of them. I'll see about that beforeI go."
"Thank you, sir. Sutton and me thought maybe you'd do something for him, else I shouldn't have spoken. And if there's anything I can do for Miss Anne I'll do it. I've always looked on her as one of you. But 'tis a pity, all the same."
"You mustn't say that, Nanny. I tell you it's all perfectly right."
"Well, I shall never say as 'tisn't. No, nor think it. You can trust me for that, Master Jerrold."
He thought: Poor old Nanny. She lies like a brick.
vii
He said to himself that he would never know the truth about Anne and Colin. If he went to them and asked them he would be no nearer knowing. They would have to lie to him to save each other. In any case, his mother had made it clear to him that as long as Anne had to look after Colin he couldn't ask them. If they were innocent their innocence must be left undisturbed. If they were not innocent, well—he had lost the right to know it. Besides, he was sure, as sure as if they had told him.
He knew how it would be. Colin's wife would come home and she would divorce Colin and he would marry Anne. So far as Jerrold could see, that was his brother's only chance of happiness and sanity.
As for himself, there was nothing he could do now but clear out and leave them.
And, as he had no desire to go back to his mother and hear about Anne and Colin all over again, he went down to the Durhams' in Yorkshire for the rest of his leave.
He hadn't been there five days before he and Maisie were engaged; and before the two weeks were up he had married her.
i
Eliot stood in the porch of the Manor Farm house. There was nobody there to greet him. Behind him on the oak table in the hall the wire he had sent lay unopened.
It was midday in June.
All round the place the air was sweet with the smell of the mown hay, and from the Broad Pasture there came the rattle and throb of the mowing-machines.
Eliot went down the road and through the gate into the hay-field. Colin and Anne were there. Anne at the top of the field drove the mower, mounted up on the shell-shaped iron seat, white against the blue sky. Colin at the bottom, slender and tall above the big revolving wheel, drove the rake. The tedding machine, driven by a farm hand, went between. Its iron-toothed rack caught the new-mown hay, tossed it and scattered it on the field. Beside the long glistening swaths the cut edge of the hay stood up clean and solid as a wall. Above it the raised plane of the grass-tops, brushed by the wind, quivered and swayed, whitish green, greenish white, in a long shimmering undulation.
Eliot went on to meet Anne and Colin as they turned and came up the field again.
When they saw him they jumped down and came running.
"Eliot, you never told us."
"I wired at nine this morning."
"There's nobody in the house and we've not been in since breakfast at seven," Colin said.
"It's twelve now. Time you knocked off for lunch, isn't it?"
"Are you all right, Eliot?" said Anne.
"Rather."
He gave a long look at them, at their sun-burnt faces, at their clean, slender grace, Colin in his cricketing flannels, and Anne in her land-girl's white-linen coat, knickerbockers, and grey wideawake.
"Colin doesn't look as if there was much the matter with him. He might have been farming all his life."
"So I have," said Colin; "considering that I haven't lived till now."
And they went back together towards the house.
ii
Colin's and Anne's work was done for the day. The hay in the Broad Pasture was mown and dried. Tomorrow it would be heaped into cocks and carried to the stackyard.
It was the evening of Eliot's first day. He and Anne sat out under the apple trees in the orchard.
"What on earth have you done to Colin?" he said. "I expected to find him a perfect wreck."
"He was pretty bad three months ago. But it's good for him being down here in the place he used to be happy in. He knows he's safe here. It's good for him doing jobs about the farm, too."
"I imagine it's good for him being with you."
"Oh, well, he knows he's safe with me."
"Very safe. He owes it to you that he's sane now. You must have been astonishingly wise with him."
"It didn't take much wisdom. Not more than it used to take when he was a little frightened kid. That's all he was when he came back from the war, Eliot."
"The point is that you haven't treated him like a kid. You've made a man of him again. You've given him a man's life and a man's work."
"That's what I want to do. When he's trained he can look after Jerrold's land. You know poor Barker died last month of septic pneumonia. The camp was full of it."
"I know."
"What do you think of my training Colin?"
"It's all right for him, Anne. But how about you?"
"Me? Oh,I'mall right. You needn't worry about me."
"I do worry about you. And your father's worrying."
"Dear old Daddy. Itissilly of him. As if anything mattered butColin."
"Youmatter. You see, your father doesn't like your being here alone with him. He's afraid of what people may think."
"I'm not. I don't care what people think. They've no business to."
"No; but they will, and they do…You know what I mean, Anne, don't you?"
"I suppose you mean they think I'm Colin's mistress. Is that it?"
"I'm afraid it is. They can't think anything else. It's beastly of them, I know, but this is a beastly world, dear, and it doesn't do to go on behaving as if it wasn't."
"I don't care. If people are beastly it's their look-out, not mine. The beastlier they are the less I care."
"I don't suppose you care if the vicar's wife won't call or if LadyCorbett and the Hawtreys cut you. But that's why."
"Is it? I never thought about it. I'm too busy to go and see them and I supposed they were too busy to come and see me. I certainly don't care."
"If it was people you cared about?"
"Nobody I care about would think things like that of me."
"Anne dear, I'm not so sure."
"Then it shows how much they care aboutme."
"But it's because they care."
"I can't help it. They may care, but they don't know. They can't know anything about me if they think that."
"And you honestly don't mind?"
"I mind whatyouthink. But you don't think it, Eliot, do you?"
"I? Good Lord no! Do you mind what mother thinks?"
"Yes, I mind. But it doesn't matter very much."
"It would matter if Jerrold thought it."
"Oh Eliot—doeshe?"
"I don't suppose he thinks precisely that. But I'm pretty sure he thought you and Colin cared for each other."
"What makes you think so?"
"His marrying Maisie like that."
"Why shouldn't he marry her?"
"Because it's you he cares about."
Eliot's voice was quiet and heavy. She knew that what he said was true.That quiet, heavy voice was the voice of her own innermost conviction.Yet under the shock of it she sat silent, not looking at him, lookingwith wide, fixed eyes at the pattern the apple boughs made on the sky.
"How do you know?" she said, presently.
"Because of the way he talked to mother before he came to see you here.She says he was frightfully upset when she told him about you andColin."
"She told himthat?"
"Apparently."
"What did she do it for, Eliot?"
"What does mother do anything for? I imagine she wanted to put Jerrold off so that you could stick on with Colin. You've taken him off her hands and she wants him kept off."
"So she told him I was Colin's mistress."
"Mind you, she doesn't think a bit the worse of you for that. She admires you for it no end."
"Do you suppose I care what she thinks? It's her making Jerrold think it…Eliot, how could she?"
"She could, because she only sees things as they affect herself."
"Do you believe she really thinks it?"
"She's made herself think it because she wanted to."
"But why—why should she want to?"
"I've told you why. She's afraid of having to look after Colin. I've no illusions about mother. She's always been like that. She wouldn't see what she was doing to you. Before she did it she'd persuaded herself that it was Colin and not Jerrold that you cared for. And she wouldn't do it deliberately at all. I know it has all the effect of low cunning, but it isn't. It's just one of her sudden movements. She'd rush into it on a blind impulse."
Anne saw it all, she saw that Adeline had slandered her to Jerrold and to Eliot, that she had made use of her love for Colin, which was her love for Jerrold, to betray her; that she had betrayed her to safeguard her own happy life, without pity and without remorse; she had done all of these things and none of them. They were the instinctive movements of her funk. Where Adeline's ease and happiness were concerned she was one incarnate funk. You couldn't think of her as a reasonable and responsible being, to be forgiven or unforgiven.
"It doesn't matter how she did it. It's done now," she said.
"Really, Anne, it was too bad of Colin. He oughtn't to have let you."
"He couldn't help it, poor darling. He wasn't in a state. Don't put that into his head. It just had to happen… I don't care, Eliot. If it was to be done again to-morrow I'd do it. Only, if I'd known, I could have told Jerrold the truth. The others can think what they like. It'll only make me stick to Colin all the more. I promised Jerrold I'd look after him and I shall as long as he wants me. It serves them all right. They all left him to me—Daddy and Aunt Adeline and Queenie, I mean—and they can't stop me now."
"Mother doesn't want to stop you. It's your father."
"I'll write and tell Daddy. Besides, it's too late. If I left Colin to-morrow it wouldn't stop the scandal. My reputation's gone and I can't get it back, can I?"
"Dear Anne, you don't know how adorable you are without it."
"Look here, Eliot, what did your mother tellyoufor?"
"Same reason. To put me off, too."
They looked at each other and smiled. Across their memories, across the years of war, across Anne's agony they smiled. Besides its courage and its young, candid cynicism, Anne's smile expressed her utter trust in him.
"As if," Eliot said, "it would have made the smallest difference."
"Wouldn't it have?"
"No, Anne. Nothing would."
"That's what Jerrold said. Andhethought it. I wondered what he meant."
"He meant what I mean."
The moments passed, ticked off by the beating of his heart, time and his heart beating violently together. Not one of them was his moment, not one would serve him for what he had to say, falling so close on their intolerable conversation. He meant to ask Anne to marry him; but if he did it now she would suspect him of chivalry; it would look as if he wanted to make up to her for all she had lost through Colin; as if he wanted more than anything to save her.
So Eliot, who had waited so long, waited a little longer, till the evening of his last day.
iii
Anne had gone up with him to Wyck Manor, to see the soldiers. Ever since they had come there she had taken cream and fruit to them twice a week from the Farm. Unaware of what was thought of her, she never knew that the scandal of young Fielding and Miss Severn had penetrated the Convalescent Home with the fruit and cream. And if she had known it she would not have stayed away. People's beastliness was no reason why she shouldn't go where she wanted, where she had always gone. The Convalescent Home belonged to the Fieldings, and the Fieldings were her dearest friends who had been turned into relations by her father's marriage. So this evening, absorbed in the convalescents, she never saw the matron's queer look at her or her pointed way of talking only to Eliot.
Eliot saw it.
He thought: "It doesn't matter. She's so utterly good that nothing can touch her. All the same, if she marries me she'll be safe from this sort of thing."
They had come to the dip of the valley and the Manor Farm water.
"Let's go up the beech walk," he said.
They went up and sat in the beech ring where Anne had sat with Jerrold three months ago. Eliot never realised how repeatedly Jerrold had been before him.
"Anne," he said, "it's more than five years since I asked you to marry me."
"Is it, Eliot?"
"Do you remember I said then I'd never give you up?"
"I remember. Unless Jerrold got me, you said. Well, he hasn't got me."
"I wouldn't want you to tie yourself up with me if there was the remotest chance of Jerrold; but, as there isn't, don't you think—"
"No, Eliot, I don't."
"But you do care for me, Anne, a little. I know you do."
"I care for you a great deal; but not in that sort of way."
"I'm not asking you to care for me in the way you care for Jerrold. You may care for me any way you please if you'll only marry me. You don't know how awfully little I'd be content to take."
"I shouldn't be content to give it, though. You oughtn't to have anything but the best."
"It would be the best for me, you see."
"Oh no, Eliot, it wouldn't. You only think it would because you're an angel. It would be awful of me to give so little when I take such a lot. I know what your loving would be."
"If you know you must have thought of it. And if you've thought of it—"
"I've only thought of it to see how impossible it is. It mightn't be if I could leave off loving Jerrold. But I can't…Eliot, I've got the queerest feeling about him. I know you'll think me mad, when he's gone and married somebody else, but I feel all the time as if he hadn't, as if he belonged to me and always had; and I to him. Whoever Maisie's married it isn't Jerrold. Not the real Jerrold."