"The fact remains that she's married him."
"No. Not him. Only a bit of him. Some bit that doesn't matter."
"Anne darling, I'd try not to think that."
"I don't think it. I feel it. Down there, deep inside me. I've always felt that Jerrold would come back to me and he came back. Then there was Colin. He'll come back again."
"Then there'll be Maisie."
"No, then there won't be Maisie. There won't be anything if he really comes…Now you see how mad I am. Now you see how awful it would be to marry me."
"No, Anne. I see it's the only way to keep you safe."
"Safe from what? Safe from Jerrold? I don't want to be safe from him. Eliot, I'm telling you this because you trust me. I want you to see me as I really am, so that you won't want to marry me any more."
"Ah, that's not the way to make me. Nothing you say makes any difference. Nothing you could do would make any difference."
"Supposing it had been true what your mother said, wouldn't that?"
"No. If you'd given yourself to Colin I should only have thought it was your goodness. It would have been good because you did it."
"How queer. That's what Jerrold said. Then hedidlove me."
"I told you he loved you."
"Then I don't care. Nothing else matters."
"That's all you have to say to me?"
"Yes. Unless I lie."
"You'd lie for Jerrold."
"For him. Not to him. I should never need to."
"You've no need to lie to me, dear. I know you better than he does. You forget that I didn't think what he thought."
"That only shows that he knew."
"Knew what?"
"What I am. What I might do if I really cared."
"There are things you'd never do. You'd never do anything mean or dishonourable or cruel."
"Oh, you don't know what I'd do…Don't worry, Eliot. I shall be too busy with the land and with Colin to do very much."
"I'm not worrying."
All the same he wondered which of them knew Anne best, he or Anne herself, or Jerrold.
i
Colin thought with terror of the time when Queenie would come back from the war. At any moment she might get leave and come; if she had not had it yet that only made it more likely that she would have it soon.
The vague horror that waited for him every morning had turned into this definite fear of Queenie. He was afraid of her temper, of her voice and eyes, of her crude, malignant thoughts, of her hatred of Anne. More than anything he was afraid of her power over him, of her vehement, exhausting love. He was afraid of her beauty.
One morning, early in September, the wire came. Colin shook with agitation as he read it.
"What is it?" Anne said.
"Queenie. She's got leave. She'll be here today. At four o'clock."
"Don't you want to see her?"
"No, I don't."
"Then you'd better drive over to Kingden and look at those bullocks ofLedbury's."
"I don't know anything about bullocks. They ought to be straight lines from their heads to their tails. That's about all I know."
"Never mind, you'll have gone to look at bullocks. And you can tellLedbury I'm coming over to-morrow. Do you mind driving yourself?"
Colin did mind. He was afraid to drive by himself; but he was much more afraid of Queenie.
"You can take Harry. And leave me to settle Queenie."
Colin went off with Harry to Chipping Kingden. And at four o'clockQueenie came. Her hard, fierce eyes stared past Anne, looking for Colin.
"Where's Colin?" she said.
"He had to go out, but he'll be back before dinner."
Presently Queenie asked if she might go upstairs. As they went you could see her quick, inquisitive eyes sweeping and flashing.
The door of Colin's room stood open.
"Is that Colin's room?"
"Yes."
She went in, opened the inner door and looked into the gable room.
"Who sleeps here?" she said.
"I do," said Anne.
"You?"
"Have you any objection?"
"You might as well sleep in my husband's room."
"Oh no, this is near enough. I can tell whether he's asleep or awake."
"Canyou? And, please, how long has this been going on?"
"I've been sleeping in this room since November. Before that we had our old rooms at the Manor. There was a passage between, you remember. But I left the doors wide open."
"Oh no, this is near enough. I can tell whether he's asleep or awake."
"Can you? And, please, how long has this been going on?"
"I've been sleeping in this room since November. Before that we had our old rooms at the Manor. There was a passage between, you remember. But I left the doors wide open."
"I suppose," said Queenie, with furious calm, "you want me to divorce him?"
"Divorce him? Why on earth should you? Just because I looked after him at night? Ihadto. There wasn't anybody else. And he was afraid to sleep alone. He is still. But he's all right as long as he knows I'm there."
"You expect me to believe that's all there is in it?"
"No, I don't, considering what your mind's like."
"Oh yes, when people do dirty things it's always other people's dirty minds. Do you imagine I'm a fool, Anne?"
"You're an awful fool if you think Colin's my lover."
"I think it, and I say it."
"If you think it you're a fool. If you say it you're a liar. A damned liar."
"And is Colin's mother a liar, too?"
"Yes, but not a damned one. It would serve you jolly well right,Queenie, if hewasmy lover, after the way you left him to me."
"I didn't leave him to you. I left him to his mother."
"Anyhow, you left him."
"I couldn't help it.Youwere not wanted at the front and I was. I couldn't leave hundreds of wounded soldiers just for Colin."
"Ihad to. He was in an awful state. I've looked after him day and night; I've got him almost well now, and I think the least you can do is to keep quiet and let him alone."
"I shall do nothing of the sort. I shall divorce him as soon as the war's over."
"It isn't over yet. And I don't advise you to try. No decent barrister would touch your case, it's so rotten."
"Not half so rotten as you'll look when it's in all the papers."
"You can't frighten me that way."
"Can't I? I suppose you'll say you were looking, poor darling, if you do bring your silly old action. Only please don't do it till he's quite well, or he'll be ill again…I think that's tea going in. Will you go down?"
They went down. Tea was laid in the big bare hall. The small round oak table brought them close together. Anne waited on Queenie with every appearance of polite attention. Queenie ate and drank in long, fierce silences; for her hunger was even more imperious than her pride.
"I don'twantto eat your food," she said at last. "I'm only doing it because I'm starving. I dined with Colin's mother last night. It was the first dinner I've eaten since I went to the war."
"You needn't feel unhappy about it," said Anne. "It's Eliot's house andJerrold's food. How's Cutler?"
"Much the same as when you saw him." Queenie answered quietly, but her face was red.
"And that Johnnie—what was his name?—who took my place?"
Queenie's flush darkened. She was holding her mouth so tight that the thin red line of the lips faded.
"Noel Fenwick," said Anne, suddenly remembering.
"What about him?" Queenie's throat moved as if she swallowed something big and hard.
"Is he there still?"
"He was when I left."
Her angry, defiant eyes were fixed on the open doorway. You could see she was waiting for Colin, ready to fall on him and tear him as soon as he came in.
"Am I to see Colin or not?" she said as she rose.
"Have you anything to say to him?"
"Only what I've said to you."
"Then you won't see him. In fact I think you'd better not see him at all."
"You mean he funks it?"
"I funk it for him. He isn't well enough to be raged at and threatened with proceedings. It'll upset him horribly and I don't see what good it'll do you."
"No more do I. I'm not going to live with him after this. You can tell him that. Tell him I don't want to see him or speak to him again."
"I see. You just came down to make a row."
"You don't suppose I came down to stay with you two?"
Queenie was so far from coming down to stay that she had taken rooms for the night at the White Hart in Wyck. Anne drove her there.
ii
Two and a half years passed. Anne's work on the farm filled up her days and marked them. Her times were ploughing time and the time for sowing: wheat first, and turnips after the wheat, barley after the turnips, sainfoin, grass and clover after the barley. Oats in the five-acre field this year; in the seven-acre field the next. Lambing time, calving time, cross-ploughing and harrowing, washing and shearing time, time for hoeing; hay time and harvest. Then threshing time and ploughing again.
All summer the hard fight against the charlock, year after year the same. You harrowed it out and ploughed it down and sprayed it with sulphate of copper; you sowed vetches and winter corn to crowd it out; and always it sprang up again, flaring in bright yellow stripes and fans about the hills. The air was sweet with its smooth, delicious smell.
Always the same clear-cut pattern of the fields; but the colors shifted. The slender, sharp-pointed triangle that was jade-green last June, this June was yellow-brown. The square under the dark comb of the plantation that had been yellow-brown was emerald; the wide-open fan beside it that had been emerald was pink. By August the emerald had turned to red-gold and the jade-green to white.
These changes marked the months and the years, a bright patterned, imperceptibly moving measure, rolling time off across the hills.
Nineteen-sixteen, seventeen. Nineteen-eighteen and the armistice.Nineteen-nineteen and the peace.
iii
In the spring of that year Anne and Colin were still together at the Manor Farm. He was stronger. But, though he did more and more work every year, he was still unfit to take over the management himself. Responsibility fretted him and he tired soon. He could do nothing without Anne.
He was now definitely separated from his wife. Queenie had come back from the war a year ago. As soon as it was over she had begun to rage and consult lawyers and write letters two or three times a week, threatening to drag Anne and Colin through the Divorce Court. But Miss Mullins (once the secretary of Dr. Cutler's Field Ambulance Corps), recovering at the Farm from an excess of war work, reassured them. Queenie, she said, was only bluffing. Queenie was not in a position to bring an action against any husband, she had been too notorious herself. Miss Mullins had seen things, and she intimated that no defence could stand against the evidence she could give.
And in the end Queenie left off talking about divorce and contented herself with a judicial separation.
Colin still woke every morning to his dread of some blank, undefined disaster; but, as if Queenie and the war had made one obsession, he was no longer haunted by the imminent crash of phantom shells. It was settled that he was to live with Jerrold and Maisie when they came back to the Manor, while Anne stayed on by herself at the Farm.
Every now and then Eliot came down to see them. He had been sent home early in nineteen-seventeen with a shrapnel wound in his left leg, the bone shattered. He obtained his discharge at the price of a permanent limp, and went back to his research work.
For the last two years he had been investigating trench fever, with results that were to make him famous. But that was not for another year.
In February, nineteen-nineteen, Jerrold had come back. He and Maisie had been living in London ever since he had left the Army, filling in time till Wyck Manor would be no longer a Home for Convalescent Soldiers. He had tried to crowd into this interval all the amusement he hadn't had for four years. His way was to crush down the past with the present; to pile up engagements against the future, party on party, dances on suppers and suppers on plays; to dine every evening at some place where they hadn't dined before; to meet lots of nice amusing people with demobilised minds who wouldn't talk to him about the war; to let himself go in bursts of exquisitely imbecile laughter; never to be quiet for an hour, never to be alone with himself, never to be long alone with Maisie.
After the first week of it this sort of thing ceased to amuse him, but he went on with it because he thought it amused Maisie.
There was something he missed; something he wanted and hadn't got. At night, when he lay awake, alone with himself at last, he knew that it was Anne.
And he went on laughing and amusing Maisie; and Maisie, with a heart-breaking sweetness, laughed back at him and declared herself amused. She had never had such a jolly time in all her life, she said.
Then, very early in the spring, Maisie went down to her people inYorkshire to recover from the jolly time she had had. The convalescentsoldiers had all gone, and Wyck Manor, rather worn and shabby, was WyckManor again.
Jerrold came back to it alone.
i
He went through the wide empty house, looking through all the rooms, trying to find some memory of the happiness he had had there long ago. The house was full of Anne. Anne's figure crossed the floors before him, her head turned over her shoulder to see if he were coming; her voice called to him from the doorways, her running feet sounded on the stairs. That was her place at the table; that was the armchair she used to curl up in; just there, on the landing, he had kissed her when he went to school.
They had given his mother's room to Maisie, and they had put his things into the room beyond, his father's room. Everything was in its place as it had been in his father's time, the great wardrobe, the white marble-topped washstand, the bed he had died on. He saw him lying there and Anne going to and fro between the washstand and the bed. The parrot curtains hung from the windows, straight and still.
Jerrold shuddered as he looked at these things.
They had thought that he would want to sleep in that room because he was married, because Maisie would have the room it led out of.
But he couldn't sleep in it. He couldn't stay in it a minute; he would never pass its door without that sickening pang of memory. He moved his things across the gallery into Anne's room.
He would sleep there; he would sleep in the white bed that Anne had slept in.
He told himself that he had to be near Colin; there was only the passage between and their doors could stand open; that was why he wanted to sleep there. But he knew that was not why. He wanted to sleep there because there was no other room where he could feel Anne so near him, where he could see her so clearly. When the dawn came she would be with him, sitting in her chair by the window. The window looked to the west, to Upper Speed and the Manor Farm house. The house was down there behind the trees, and somewhere there, jutting out above the porch, was the window of Anne's room.
He looked at his watch. One o'clock. At two he would go and see Anne.
ii
When Jerrold called at the Manor Farm house Anne was out. Old Ballinger came slouching up from the farmyard to tell him that Miss Anne had gone up to the Far Acres field to try the new tractor.
The Far Acres field lay at the western end of the estate. Jerrold followed her there. Five furrows, five bright brown bands on the sallow stubble, marked out the Far Acres into five plots. In the turning space at the top corner he saw Anne on her black horse and Colin standing beside her.
With a great clanking and clanging the new American, tractor struggled towards them up the hill, dragging its plough. It stopped and turned at the "headland" as Jerrold came up.
A clear, light wind blew over the hill and he felt a sudden happiness and excitement. He was beginning to take an interest in his land. He shouted:
"I say, Anne, you look like Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo."
"Oh, not Waterloo, I hope. I'm going to winmybattle."
"Well, Marengo—Austerlitz—whatever battles he did win. Does Curtis understand that infernal thing?"
Young Curtis, sulky and stolid on his driver's seat, stared at his new master.
"Yes. He's been taught motor mechanics. He's quite good at it … If only he'd do what you tell him. Curtis, I said you were not to use those disc coulters for this field. I've had three smashed in two weeks. They're no earthly good for stony soil."
"Tis n' so bad 'ere as it is at the east end, miss."
"Well, we'll see. You can let her go now."
With a fearful grinding and clanking the tractor started. The revolving disc coulter cut the earth; the three great shares gripped it and turned it on one side. But the earth, instead of slanting off clear from the furrows, fell back again. Anne dismounted and ran after the tractor and stopped it.
"He hasn't got his plough set right," she said. "It's too deep in."
She stooped, and did something mysterious and efficient with a lever; the wheels dipped, raising the shares to their right level, and the tractor set off again. This time the earth parted clean from the furrows with the noise of surge, and three slanting, glistening waves ran the length of the field in the wake of the triple plough.
"Oh, Jerrold, look at those three lovely furrows. Look at the pace it goes. This field will be ploughed up in a day or two. Colin, aren't you pleased?"
The tractor was coming towards them, making a most horrible noise.
"No," he said, "I don't like the row it makes. Can't I go, now I've seen what the beastly thing can do?"
"Yes. You'd better go if you can't stand it."
Colin went with quick, desperate strides down the field away from the terrifying sound of the tractor.
They looked after him sorrowfully.
"He's not right yet. I don't think he'll ever be able to stand noises."
"You must give him time, Anne."
"Time? He's had three years. It's heart-breaking. I must just keep him out of the way of the tractors, that's all."
She mounted her horse and went riding up and down the field, abreast of the plough.
Jerrold waited for her at the gate of the field.
iii
It was Sunday evening between five and six.
Anne was in the house, in the great Jacobean room on the first floor. Barker had judged it too large and too dilapidated to live in, and it had been left empty in his time. Eliot had had it restored and Jerrold had furnished it. Black oak bookcases from the Manor stretched along the walls, for Jerrold had given Eliot half of their father's books. This room would be too dilapidated to live in, and it had been left empty in his time. Eliot had had it restored and Jerrold had furnished it. Black oak bookcases from the Manor stretched along the walls, for Jerrold had given Eliot half of their father's books. This room would be Eliot's library when he came down. It was now Anne's sitting-room.
The leaded windows were thrown open to the grey evening and a drizzling rain; but a fire blazed on the great hearth under the arch of the carved stone chimney-piece. Anne's couch was drawn up before it. She lay stretched out on it, tired with her week's work.
She was all alone in the house. The gardener and his wife went out together every Sunday to spend the evening with their families at Medlicote or Wyck. She was not sorry when they were gone; the stillness of the house rested her. But she missed Colin. Last Sunday he had been there, sitting beside her in his chair by the hearth, reading. Today he was with Jerrold at the Manor. The soft drizzle turned to a quick patter of rain; a curtain of rain fell, covering the grey fields between the farm and the Manor, cutting her off.
She was listening to the rain when she heard the click of the gate and feet on the garden path. They stopped on the flagstones under her window. Jerrold's voice called up to her.
"Anne—Anne, are you there? Can I come up?"
"Rather."
He came rushing up the stairs. He was in the room now.
"How nice of you to come on this beastly evening."
"That's why I came. I thought it would be so rotten for you all alone down here."
"What have you done with Colin?"
"Left him up there. He was making no end of a row on the piano."
"Oh Jerrold, if he's playing again he'll be all right."
"He didn't sound as if there was much the matter with him."
"You never can tell. He can't stand those tractors."
"We must keep him away from the beastly things. I suppose we've got to have 'em?"
"I'm afraid so. They save no end of labour, and labour's short and dear."
"Is that why you've been working yourself to death?"
"I haven't. Why, do I look dead?"
"No. Eliot told me. He saw you at it."
"I only take a hand at hay time and harvest. All the rest of the year it's just riding about and seeing that other people work. And Colin does half of that now."
"All the same, I think it's about time you stopped."
"But if I stop the whole thing'll stop. The men must have somebody over them."
"There's me."
"You don't know anything about farming, Jerry dear. You don't know a teg from a wether."
"I suppose I can learn if Colin's learnt. Or I can get another Barker."
"Not so easy. Don't you like my looking after your land, then? Aren't you pleased with me? I haven't done so badly, you know. Seven hundred acres."
"You've been simply splendid. I shall never forget what you've done. And I shall never forgive myself for letting you do it. I'd no idea what it meant."
"It's only meant that Colin's better and I've been happier than I ever thought I could have been."
"Happier? Weren't you happy then?"
She didn't answer. They were on dangerous ground. If they began talking about happiness—
"If I gave it up to-morrow," she said, "I should only go and work on another farm."
"Would you?"
"Jerrold—do you want me to go?"
"Want you?"
"Yes. You did once. At least, you wanted to get away fromme."
"I didn't know what I was doing. If I had known I shouldn't have done it. I can't talk about that, Anne. It doesn't bear thinking about."
"No. But, Jerrold—tell me the truth. Do you want me to go because ofColin?"
"Colin?"
"Yes. Because of what your mother told you?"
"How do you know what she told me?"
"She told Eliot."
"And he toldyou? Good God! what was he thinking of?"
"He thought it better for me to know it. Itwasbetter."
"How could it be?"
"I can't tell you…Jerrold, it isn't true."
"I know it isn't."
"But you thought it was."
"When did I think?"
"Then; when you came to see me."
"Did I?"
"Yes. And you're not going to lie about it now."
"Well, if I did I've paid for it."
(What did he mean? Paid for it? It was she who had paid.)
"When did you know it wasn't true?" she said.
"Three months after, when Eliot wrote and told me. It was too late then…. If only you'd told me at the time. Why didn't you?"
"But I didn't know you thought it. How could I know?"
"No. How could you? Who would have believed that things could have happened so damnably as that?"
"But it's all right now. Why did you say it was too late?"
"Because itwastoo late. I was married."
"Whatdoyou mean?"
"I mean that I lied when I told you it made no difference. It made that difference. If I hadn't thought that you and Colin were…if I hadn't thought that, I wouldn't have married Maisie. I'd have married you."
"Don't say that, Jerrold."
"Well—you asked for the truth, and there it is."
She got up and walked away from him to the window. He followed her there. She spread out her hands to the cold rain.
"It's raining still," she said.
He caught back her hands.
"Would you have married me?"
"Don't, Jerrold, don't. It's cruel of you."
He was holding her by her hands.
"Wouldyou? Tell me. Tell me."
"Let go my hands, then."
He let them go. They turned back to the fireplace. Anne shivered. She held herself to the warmth.
"You haven't told me," he said.
"No, I haven't told you," she repeated, stupidly.
"That's because youwould. That's because you love me. You do love me."
"I've always loved you."
She spoke as if from some far-off place; as if the eternity of her love removed her from him, put her beyond his reach.
"But—what's the good of talking about it?" she said.
"All the good in the world. We owed each other the truth. We know it now; we know where we are. We needn't humbug ourselves and each other any more. You see what comes of keeping back the truth. Look how we've had to pay for it. You and me. Would you rather go on thinking I didn't care for you?"
"No, Jerrold, no. I'm only wondering what we're to do next."
"Next?"
"Yes.That'swhy you want me to go away."
"It isn't. It's why I want you to stay. I want you to leave off working and do all the jolly things we used to do."
"You mustn't make me leave off working. It's my only chance."
They turned restlessly from the fireplace to the couch. They sat one at each end of it, still for a long time, without speaking. The fire died down. The evening darkened in the rain. The twilight came between them, poignant and disquieting, dimming their faces, making them strange and wonderful to each other. Their bodies loomed up through it, wonderful and strange. The high white stone chimney-piece glimmered like an arch into some inner place.
Outside, from the church below the farm house, the bell tinkled for service.
It ceased.
Suddenly they rose and he came towards her to take her in his arms. She beat down his hands and hung on them, keeping him off.
"Don't, Jerry, please, please don't hold me."
"Oh Anne, let me. You let me once. Don't you remember?"
"We can't now. We mustn't."
And yet she knew that it would happen in some time, in some way. But not now. Not like this.
"We mustn't."
"Don't you want me to take you in my arms?"
"No. Not that."
"What, then?" He pressed tighter.
"I want you not to hurt Maisie."
"It's too late to think of Maisie now."
"I'm not thinking of her. I'm thinking of you. You'll hurt yourself frightfully if you hurt her." She wrenched his hands apart and went from him to the door.
"What are you going to do?" he said.
"I'm going to fetch the lamp."
She left him standing there.
A few minutes later she came back carrying the lighted lamp. He took it from her and set it on the table.
"And now?"
"Now you're going back to Colin. And we're both going to be good…You do want to be good—don't you?"
"Yes. But I don't see how we're going to manage it."
"We could manage it if we didn't see each other. If I went away."
"Anne, you wouldn't. You can't mean that. I couldn't stand not seeing you. You couldn't stand it, either."
"I have stood it. I can stand it again."
"You can't. Not now. It's all different. I swear I'll be decent. I won't say another word if only you won't go."
"I don't see how I can very well. There's the land… No. Colin must look after that. I'll go when the ploughing's done. And some day you'll be glad I went."
"Go. Go. You'll find out then."
Their tenderness was over. Something hard and defiant had come in to them with the light. He was at the door now.
"And you'll come back," he said. "You'll see you'll come back."
i
When he was gone she turned on herself in fury. What had she done it for? Why had she let him go? She didn't want to be good. She wanted nothing in the world but Jerrold.
She hadn't done it for Maisie. Maisie was nothing to her. A woman she had never seen and didn't want to see. She knew nothing of her but her name, and that was sweet and vague like a perfume coming from some place unknown. She had no sweet image of Maisie in her mind. Maisie might never have existed for all that Anne thought about her.
What did she do it for, then? Why didn't she take him when he gave himself? When she knew that in the end it must come to that?
As far as she could see through her darkness it was because she knew that Jerrold had not meant to give himself when he came to her. She had driven him to it. She had made him betray his secret when she asked for the truth. At that moment she was the stronger; she had him at a disadvantage. She couldn't take him like that, through the sudden movement of his weakness. Before she surrendered she must know first whether Jerrold's passion for her was his weakness or his strength. Jerrold didn't know yet. She must give him time to find out.
But before all she had been afraid that if Jerrold hurt Maisie he would hurt himself. She must know which was going to hurt him more, her refusal or her surrender. If he wanted "to be good" she must go away and give him his chance.
And before the ploughing was all over she had gone.
She went down into Essex, to see how her own farm was getting on. The tenant who had the house wanted to buy it when his three years' lease was up. Anne had decided that she would let him. The lease would be up in June. Her agent advised her to sell what was left of the farm land for building, which was what Anne had meant to do. She wanted to get rid of the whole place and be free. All this had to be looked into.
She had not been gone from Jerrold a week before the torture of separation became unbearable. She had said that she could bear it because she had borne it before, but, as Jerrold had pointed out to her, it wasn't the same thing now. There was all the difference in the world between Jerrold's going away from her because he didn't want her, and her going away from Jerrold because he did. It was the difference between putting up with a dull continuous pain you had to bear, and enduring a sharp agony you could end at any minute. Before, she had only given up what she couldn't get; now, she was giving up what she could have to-morrow by simply going back to Wyck.
She loathed the flat Essex country and the streets of little white rough cast and red-tiled houses on the Ilford side where the clear fields had once lain beyond the tall elm rows. She was haunted by the steep, many-coloured pattern of the hills round Wyck, and the grey gables of the Manor. Love-sickness and home-sickness tore at her together till her heart felt as if it were stretched out to breaking point.
She had only to go back and she would end this pain. Then on the sixth day Jerrold's wire came: "Colin ill again. Please come back. Jerrold."
ii
It was not her fault and it was not Jerrold's. The thing had been taken out of their hands. She had not meant to go and Jerrold had not meant to send for her. Colin must have made him. They had lost each other through Colin and now it was Colin who had brought them together.
Colin's terror had come again. Again he had the haunting fear of the tremendous rushing noise, the crash always about to come that never came. He slept in brief fits and woke screaming.
Eliot had been down to see him and had gone. And again, as before, nobody could do anything with him but Anne.
"I couldn't," Jerrold said, "and Eliot couldn't. Eliot made me send for you."
They had left Colin upstairs and were together in the drawing-room. He stood in the full wash of the sunlight that flooded in through the west window. It showed his face drawn and haggard, and discoloured, as though he had come through a long illness. His mouth was hard with pain. He stared away from her with heavy, wounded eyes. She looked at him and was frightened.
"Jerrold, have you been ill?"
"No. What makes you think so?"
"You look ill. You look as if you hadn't slept for ages."
"I haven't. I've been frightfully worried about Colin."
"Have you any idea what set him off again?"
"I believe it was those infernal tractors. He would go out with them after you'd left. He said he'd have to, as long as you weren't there. And he couldn't stand the row. Eliot said it would be that. And the responsibility, the feeling that everything depended on him."
"I see. I oughtn't to have left him."
"It looks like it."
"What else did Eliot say?"
"Oh, he thinks perhaps he might be better at the Farm than up here. He thinks it's bad for him sleeping in that room where he was frightened when he was a kid. He says it all hooks on to that. What's more, he says he may go on having these relapses for years. Any noise or strain or excitement'll bring them on. Do you mind his being at the Farm again?"
"Mind? Of course I don't. If I'm to look after himandthe land it'll be very much easier there than here."
For every night at Colin's bedtime Anne came up to the Manor. She slept in the room that was to be Maisie's. When Colin screamed she went to him and sat with him till he slept again. In the morning she went back to the Farm.
She had been doing this for a week now, and Colin was better.
But he didn't want to go back. If, he said, Jerrold didn't mind having him.
Jerrold wanted to know why he didn't want to go back and Colin told him.
"Hasn't it occurred to you that I've hurt Anne enough without beginning all over again? All these damned people here think I'm her lover."
"You can't help that. You're not the only one that's hurt her. We must try and make it up to her, that's all."
"How are we going to do it?"
"My God! I don't know. I shall begin by cutting the swine who've cut her."
"That's no good. She doesn't care if they do cut her. She only cares about us. She's done everything for us, and among us all we've done nothing for her. Absolutely nothing. We can't give her anything. We haven't got anything to give her that she wants."
Jerrold was silent.
Presently he said, "She wants Sutton's farm. Sutton's dying. I shall give it to her when he's dead."
"You think that'll make up?"
"No, Colin, I don't. Supposing we don't talk about it any more."
"All right. I say, when's Maisie coming home?"
"God only knows. I don't."
He wondered how much Colin knew.
iii
February had gone. They were in the middle of March, and still Maisie had not come back.
She wrote sweet little letters to him saying she was sorry to be so long away, but her mother wanted her to stay on another week. When Jerrold wrote asking her to come back (he did this so that he might feel that he had really played the game) she answered that they wouldn't let her go till she was rested, and she wasn't quite rested yet. Jerrold mustn't imagine she was the least bit ill, only rather tired after the winter's racketing. It would be heavenly to see him again.
Then when she was rested her mother got ill and she had to go with her to Torquay. And at Torquay Maisie stayed on and on.
And Jerrold didn't imagine she had been the least bit ill, or even very tired, or that Lady Durham was ill. He preferred to think that Maisie stayed away because she wanted to, because she cared about her people more than she cared about him. The longer she stayed the more obstinately he thought it. Here was he, trying to play the game, trying to be decent and keep straight, and there was Maisie leaving him alone with Anne and making it impossible for him.
Anne had been back at the Farm a week and he had not been to see her. But Maisie's last letter made him wonder whether, really, he need try any more. He was ill and miserable. Why should he make himself ill and miserable for a woman who didn't care whether he was ill and miserable or not? Why shouldn't he go and see Anne? Maisie had left him to her.
And on Sunday morning, suddenly, he went.
There had been a sharp frost overnight. Every branch and twig, every blade of grass, every crinkle in the road was edged with a white fur of rime. It crackled under his feet. He drank down the cold, clean air like water. His whole body felt cold and clean. He was aware of its strength in the hard tension of his muscles as he walked. His own movement exhilarated and excited him. He was going to see Anne.
Anne was not in the house. He went through the yards looking for her. In the stockyard he met her coming up from the sheepfold, carrying a young lamb in her arms. She smiled at him as she came.
She wore her farm dress, knee breeches and a thing like an old trench coat, and looked superb. She went bareheaded. Her black hair was brushed up from her forehead and down over her ears, the length of it rolled in on itself in a curving mass at the back. Over it the frost had raised a crisp web of hair that covered its solid smoothness like a net. Anne's head was the head of a hunting Diana; it might have fitted into the sickle moon.
The lamb's queer knotted body was like a grey ligament between its hind and fore quarters. It rested on Anne's arms, the long black legs dangling. The black-faced, hammer-shaped head hung in the hollow of her elbow.
"This is Colin's job," she said.
"What are you doing with it?"
"Taking it indoors to nurse it. It's been frozen stiff, poor darling. Do you mind looking in the barn and seeing if you can find some old sacks there?"
He looked, found the sacks and carried them, following her into the kitchen. Anne fetched a piece of old blanket and wrapped the lamb up. They made a bed of the sacks before the fire and laid it on it. She warmed some milk, dipped her fingers in it and put them into the lamb's mouth to see if it would suck.
"I didn't know they'd do that," he said.
"Oh, they'll suck anything. When you've had them a little time they'll climb into your lap like puppies and suck the buttons on your coat. Its mother's dead and we shall have to bring it up by hand."
"I doubt if you will."
"Oh yes, I shall save it. It can suck all right. You might tell Colin about it. He looks after the sick lambs."
She got up and stood looking down at the lamb tucked in its blanket, while Jerrold looked at her. When she looked down Anne's face was divinely tender, as if all the love in the world was in her heart. He loved to agony that tender, downward-looking face.
She raised her eyes and saw his fixed on her, heavy and wounded, and his face strained and drawn with pain. And again she was frightened.
"Jerrold, youareill. What is it?"
"Don't. They'll hear us." He glanced at the open door.
"They can't. He's in church and she's upstairs in the bedrooms."
"Can't you leave that animal and come somewhere where we can talk?"
"Come, then."
He followed her out through the hall and into the small, oak-panelled dining-room. They sat down there in chairs that faced each other on either side of the fireplace.
"What is it?" she repeated. "Have you got a pain?"
"A beastly pain."
"How long have you had it?"
"Ever since you went away. I lied when I told you it was Colin. It isn't."
"What is it, then? Tell me. Tell me."
"It's not seeing you. It's this insane life we're leading. It's making me ill. You don't know what it's been like. And I can't keep my promise. I—I love you too damnably."
"Oh, Jerrold—does it hurt as much as that?"
"You know how it hurts."
"I don't want you to be hurt——But—darling—if you care for me like that how could you marry Maisie?"
"Because I cared for you. Because I was so mad about you that nothing mattered. I thought I might as well marry her as not."
"But if you didn't care for her?"
"I did. I do, in a way. Maisie's awfully sweet. Besides, it wasn't that. You see, I was going out to France, and I thought I was bound to be killed. Nobody could go on having the luck I'd had. I wanted to be killed."
"So you were sure it would happen. You always thought things would happen if you wanted them."
"I was absolutely sure. I was never more sold in my life than when it didn't. Even then I thought it would be all right till Eliot told me. Then I knew that if I hadn't been in such a damned hurry I might have married you."
"Poor Maisie."
"Poor Maisie. But she doesn't know. And if she did I don't think she'd mind much. I married her because I thought she cared about me—and because I thought I'd be killed before I could come back to her—But she doesn't care a damn. So you needn't bother about Maisie. And you won't go away again?"
"I won't go away as long as you want me."
"That's all right then."
He looked at his watch.
"I must be off. They'll be coming out of church. I don't want them to see me here now because I'm coming back in the evening. We shall have to be awfully careful how we see each other. I say—Imaycome this evening, mayn't I?"
"Yes."
"Same time as last Sunday? You'll be alone then?"
"Yes." Her voice sounded as if it didn't belong to her. As if some other person stronger than she, were answering for her.
When he had gone she called after him.
"Don't forget to tell Colin about the lamb."
She went upstairs and slipped off her farm clothes and put on the brown-silk frock she had worn when he last came to her. She looked in the glass and was glad that she was beautiful.
iv
She began to count the minutes and the hours till Jerrold came. Dinner time passed.
All afternoon she was restless and excited. She wandered from room to room, as if she were looking for something she couldn't find. She went to and fro between the dining-room and kitchen to see how the lamb was getting on. Wrapped in its blanket, it lay asleep after its meal of milk. Its body was warm to the touch and under its soft ribs she could feel the beating of its heart. It would live.
Two o'clock. She took up the novel she had been reading before Jerrold had come and tried to get back into it. Ten minutes passed. She had read through three pages without taking in a word. Her mind went back and back to Jerrold, to the morning of today, to the evening of last Sunday, going over and over the things they had said to each other; seeing Jerrold again, with every movement, every gesture, the sudden shining and darkening of his eyes, and his tense drawn look of pain. How she must have hurt him!
It was his looking at her like that, as if she had hurt him—Anne never could hold out against other people's unhappiness.
Half past two.
She kicked off her shoes, put on her thick boots and her coat, and walked two miles up the road towards Medlicote, for no reason but that she couldn't sit still. It was not four o'clock when she got back. She went into the kitchen and looked at the lamb again.
She thought: Supposing Colin comes down to see it when Jerrold's here?But he wouldn't come. Jerrold would take care of that. Or supposing theKimbers stayed in? They wouldn't. They never did. And if they did, whynot? Why shouldn't Jerrold come to see her?
Four o'clock struck. She had the fire lit in the big upstairs sitting-room. Tea was brought to her there. Mrs. Kimber glanced at her where she lay back on the couch, her hands hanging loose in her lap.
"You're tired after all your week's work, miss?"
"A little."
"And I dare say you miss Mr. Colin?"
"Yes, I miss him very much."
"No doubt he'll be coming down to see the lamb."
"Oh yes; he'll want to see the lamb."
"And you're sure you don't mind me and Kimber going out, miss?"
"Not a bit. I like you to go."
"It's a wonder to me," said Mrs. Kimber, "as you're not afraid to be left alone in this 'ere house. But Kimber says, Miss Anne, she isn't afraid of nothing. And I don't suppose you are, what with going out to the war and all."
"There's not much to be afraid of here."
"That there isn't. Not unless 'tis people's nasty tongues."
"Theydon't frighten me, Mrs. Kimber."
"No, miss. I should think not indeed. And no reason why they should."
And Mrs. Kimber left her.
A sound of pails clanking came from the yard. That was Minchin, the cow man, going from the dairy to the cow sheds. Milking time, then. It must be half past four.
Five o'clock, the slamming of the front door, the click of the gate, and the Kimbers' voices in the road below as they went towards Wyck.
Anne was alone.
Only half an hour and Jerrold would be with her. The beating of her heart was her measure of time now. What would have happened before he had gone again? She didn't know. She didn't try to know. It was enough that she knew herself, and Jerrold; that she hadn't humbugged herself or him, pretending that their passion was anything but what it was. She saw it clearly in its reality. They couldn't go on as they were. In the end something must happen. They were being drawn to each other, irresistibly, inevitably, nearer and nearer, and Anne knew that a moment would come when she would give herself to him. But that it would come today or to-morrow or at any fore-appointed time she did not know. It would come, if it came at all, when she was not looking for it. She had no purpose in her, no will to make it come.
She couldn't think. It was no use trying to. The thumping of her heart beat down her thoughts. Her brain swam in a warm darkness. Every now and then names drifted to her out of the darkness: Colin—Eliot—Maisie.
Maisie. Only a name, a sound that haunted her always, like a vague, sweet perfume from an unknown place. But it forced her to think.
What about Maisie? It would have been awful to take Jerrold away from Maisie, if she cared for him. But she wasn't taking him away. She couldn't take away what Maisie had never had. And Maisie didn't care for Jerrold; and if she didn't care she had no right to keep him. She had nothing but her legal claim.
Besides, what was done was done. The sin against Maisie had been committed already in Jerrold's heart when it turned from her. Whatever happened, or didn't happen, afterwards, nothing could undo that. And Maisie wouldn't suffer. She wouldn't know. Her thoughts went out again on the dark flood. She couldn't think any more.
Half past five.
She started up at the click of the gate. That was Jerrold.
v
He came to her quickly and took her in his arms. And her brain was swamped again with the warm, heavy darkness. She could feel nothing but her pulses beating, beating against his, and the quick droning of the blood in her ears. Her head was bent to his breast; he stooped and kissed the nape of her neck, lightly, brushing the smooth, sweet, roseleaf skin. They stood together, pressed close, closer, to each other. He clasped his hands at the back of her head and drew it to him. She leaned it hard against the clasping hands, tilting it so that she saw his face, before it stooped again, closing down on hers.
Their arms slackened; they came apart, drawing their hands slowly, reluctantly, down from each other's shoulders.
They sat down, she on her couch and he in Colin's chair.
"Is Colin coming?" she said.
"No, he isn't."
"Well—the lamb's better."
"I never told him about the lamb. I didn't want him to come."
"Is he all right?"
"I left him playing."
The darkness had gone from her brain and the tumult from her senses. She felt nothing but her heart straining towards him in an immense tenderness that was half pity.
"Are you thinking about Colin?" he said.
"No. I'm not thinking about anything but you…Nowyou know why I was happy looking after Colin. Why I was happy working on the land. Because he was your brother. Because it was your land. Because there wasn't anything else I could do for you."
"And I've done nothing for you. I've only hurt you horribly. I've brought you nothing but trouble and danger."
"I don't care."
"No, but think. Anne darling, this is going to be a very risky business. Are you sure you can go through with it? Are you sure you're not afraid?"
"I've never been much afraid of anything."
"I ought to be afraid for you."
"Don't. Don't be afraid. The more dangerous it is the better I shall like it."
"I don't know. It was bad enough in all conscience for you and Colin. It'll be worse for us if we're found out. Of course we shan't be found out, but there's always a risk. And it would be worse for you than for me, Anne."
"I don't care. I want it to be. Besides, it won't. It'll be far worse for you because of Maisie. That's the only thing that makes it wrong."
"Don't think about that, darling."
"I don't. If it's wrong, it's wrong. I don't care how wrong it is if it makes you happy. And if God's going to punish either of us I hope it'll be me."
"God? The God doesn't exist who could punishyou."
"I don't care if he does punish me so long as you're let off."
She came over to him and slid to the floor and crouched beside him and laid her head against his knees. She clasped his knees tight with her arms.
"I don't want you to be hurt," she said. "I can't bear you to be hurt.But what can I do?"
"Stay like that. Close. Don't go."
She stayed, pressing her face down tighter, rubbing her cheek against his rough tweed. He put his arm round her shoulder, holding her there; his fingers stroked, stroked the back of her neck, pushed up through the fine roots of her hair, giving her the caress she loved. Her nerves thrilled with a sudden secret bliss.
"Jerrold, it's heaven when you touch me."
"I know. It's hell for me when I don't."
"I didn't know. I didn't know. If only I'd known."
"We know now."
There was a long silence. Now and again she felt him stirring uneasily. Once he sighed and her heart tightened. At last he bent over her and lifted her up and set her on his knee. She lay back gathered in his arms, with her head on his breast, satisfied, like a child.
"Jerrold, do you remember how you used to hold me to keep me from falling in the goldfish pond?"
"Yes."
"I've loved you ever since then."
"Do you remember how I kissed you when I went to school?"
"Yes."
"And the night that Nicky died?"
"Yes."
"I've been sleeping in that room, because it was yours."
"Have you? Did you love methen, that night?"
"Yes. But I didn't know I did. And then Father's death came and stopped it."
"I know. I know."
"Anne, what a brute I was to you. Can you ever forgive me?"
"I forgave you long ago."
"Talk of punishments—"
"Don't talk of punishments."
Presently they left off talking, and he kissed her. He kissed her again and again, with light kisses brushing her face for its sweetness, with quick, hard kisses that hurt, with slow, deep kisses that stayed where they fell; kisses remembered and unremembered, longed for, imagined and unimaginable.
The church bell began ringing for service, short notes first, tinkling and tinkling; then a hurrying and scattering of sounds, sounds falling together, running into each other, covering each other; one long throbbing and clanging sound; and then hard, slow strokes, measuring out the seconds like a clock. They waited till the bell ceased.
The dusk gathered. It spread from the corners to the middle of the room.The tall white arch of the chimney-piece jutted out through the dusk.
Anne stirred slightly.
"I say, how dark it's getting."
"Yes. I like it. Don't get the lamp."
They sat clinging together, waiting for the dark.
The window panes were a black glimmer in the grey. He got up and drew the curtains, shutting out the black glimmer of the panes. He came to her and lifted her in his arms and carried her to the couch and laid her on it.
She shut her eyes and waited.