"Don't cry, Anne darling; it isn't your fault. I made you."
"You didn't. You didn't. I wanted you and I made you come to me. And I knew what it would be like and you didn't."
"Nobody could have known. Don't go back on it."
"I'm not going back on it. If only I'd never seen Maisie—then I wouldn't have cared. We could have gone on."
"Do you mean we can't now?"
"Yes. How can we when she's such an angel to us and trusts us so?"
"It does make it pretty beastly," he said.
"It makes me feel absolutely rotten."
"So it does me, when I think about it."
"It's knowing her, Jerry. It's having to love her, and knowing that she loves me; it's knowing what she is…. Why did you make me see her?"
"You know why."
"Yes. Because it made it safer. That's the beastliness of it. I knew how it would be. I knew she'd beat us in the end—with her goodness."
"Darling, itisn'tyour fault."
"Itis. It's all my fault. I'm not going back on it. I'd do it again to-morrow if it weren't for Maisie. Even now I don't know whether it's right or wrong. I only know it's the most real and valuable part of me that loves you, and it's the most real and valuable part of you that loves me; and I feel somehow that that makes it right. I'd go on with it if it made you happy. But you aren't happy now."
"I'm not happy because you're not. I don't mind for myself so much. Only I hate the beastly way we've got to do it. Covering it all up and pretending that we're not lovers. Deceiving her. That's what makes it all wrong. Hiding it."
"I know. And I made you do that."
"You didn't. We did it for Maisie. Anyhow, we must stop it. We can't go on like this any more. We must simply tell her."
"Tellher?"
"Yes; tell her, and get her to divorce me, so that I can marry you. It's the only straight thing."
"How can we? It would hurt her so awfully."
"Not so much as you think. Remember, she doesn't care for me. She's not like you, Anne. She's frightfully cold."
As he said it there came to her a sudden awful intimation of reality, a sense that behind all their words, all the piled-up protection of their outward thinking, there hid an unknown certainty, a certainty that would wreck them if they knew it. It was safer not to know, to go on hiding behind those piled-up barriers of thought. But an inward, ultimate honesty drove her to her questioning.
"Are you sure she's cold?"
"Absolutely sure. You go on thinking all the time that she's like you, that she takes things as hard as you do; but she doesn't. She doesn't feel as you do. It won't hurt her as it would hurt you if I left you for somebody else."
"But—it'll hurt her."
"It's better to hurt her a little now than to go on humbugging and shamming till she finds out. That would hurt her damnably. She'd hate our not being straight with her. But if we tell her the truth she'll understand. I'm certain she'll understand and she'll forgiveyou. She can't be hard on you for caring for me."
"Even if she doesn't care?"
"She cares foryou," he said.
She couldn't push it from her, that importunate sense of a certainty that was not his certainty. If Maisie did care for him Jerrold wouldn't see it. He never saw what he didn't want to see.
"Supposing shedoescare all the time? How do you know she doesn't?"
"I don't think I can tell you."
"But Imustknow, Jerrold. It makes all the difference."
"It makes none to me, Anne. I'd want you whether Maisie cared for me or not. But she doesn't."
"If I thought she didn't—then—then I shouldn't mind her knowing. Why are you so certain? You might tell me."
Then he told her.
After all, that sense of hidden certainty was an illusion.
"When was that, Jerrold?"
"Oh, a night or two after she came down here in April. She didn't know, poor darling, how she let me off."
"April—September. And she's stuck to it?"
"Oh—stuck to it. Rather."
"And before that?"
"Before that we were all right."
"And she'd been away, too."
"Yes. Ages. That made it all the funnier."
"I wish you'd told me before."
"I wish I had, if it makes you happier."
"It does. Still, we can't go on, Jerrold, till she knows."
"Of course we can't. It's too awful. I'll tell her. And we'll go away somewhere while she's divorcing me, and stay away till I can marry you…. It'll be all different when we've got away."
"When you've told her. We ought to have told her long ago, before it happened."
"Yes. But now—what the devilamI to tell her?"
He saw, as if for the first time, what telling her would mean.
"Tell her the truth. The whole truth."
"How can I—when it'syou?"
"It's because itisme that you've got to tell her. If you don't,Jerrold, I'll tell her myself."
"All right. I'll tell her at once and get it over. I'll tell her tonight."
"No. Not tonight, while she's so tired. Wait till she's rested."
And Jerrold waited.
i
Jerrold waited, and Maisie got her truth in first.
It was on the Wednesday, a fine bright day in September, and Jerrold was to have driven Maisie and Anne over to Oxford in the car. And, ten minutes before starting, Maisie had declared herself too tired to go. Anne wouldn't go without her, and Jerrold, rather sulky, had set off by himself. He couldn't understand Maisie's sudden fits of fatigue when there was nothing the matter with her. He thought her capricious and hysterical. She was acquiring his mother's perverse habit of upsetting your engagements at the last moment; and lately she had been particularly tiresome about motoring. Either they were going too fast or too far, or the wind was too strong; and he would have to turn back, or hold himself in and go slowly. And the next time she would refuse to go at all for fear of spoiling their pleasure. She liked it better when Anne drove her.
And today Jerrold was annoyed with Maisie because of Anne. If it hadn't been for Maisie, Anne would have been with him, enjoying a day's holiday for once. Really, Maisie might have thought of Anne and Anne's pleasure. It wasn't like her not to think of other people. Yet he owned that she hadn't wanted Anne to stay with her. He could hear her pathetic voice imploring Anne to go "because Jerry won't like it if you don't." Also he knew that if Anne was determined not to do a thing nothing you could say would make her do it.
He had had time to think about it as he sat in the lounge of the hotel at Oxford waiting for the friends who were to lunch with him. And suddenly his annoyance had turned to pity.
It was no wonder if Maisie was hysterical. His life with her was all wrong, all horribly unnatural. She ought to have had children. Or he ought never to have married her. It had been all wrong from the beginning. Perhaps she had been aware that there was something missing. Perhaps not. Maisie had seemed always singularly unaware. That was because she didn't care for him. Perhaps, if he had loved her passionately she would have cared more. Perhaps not. Maisie was incurably cold. She shrank from the slightest gesture of approach; she was afraid of any emotion. She was one of those unhappy women who are born with an aversion from warm contacts, who cannot give themselves. What puzzled him was the union of such a temperament with Maisie's sweetness and her charm He had noticed that other men adored her. He knew that if it had not been for Anne he might have adored her, too. And again he wondered whether it would have made any difference to Maisie if he had.
He thought not. She was happy, as it was, in her gentle, unexcited way. Happy and at peace. Giving happiness and peace, if peace were what you wanted. It was that happiness and peace of Maisie's that had drawn him to her when he gave Anne up three years ago.
And again he couldn't understand this combination of hysteria and perfect peace. He couldn't understand Maisie.
Perhaps, after all, she had got what she had wanted. She wouldn't have been happy and at peace if she had been married to some brute who would have had no pity, who would have insisted on his rights. Some faithful brute; or some brute no more faithful to her than he, who had been faithful only to Anne.
As he thought of Anne darkness came down over his brain. His mind struggled through it, looking for the light.
The entrance of his friends cut short his struggling.
ii
Maisie lay on the couch in the library, and Anne sat with her. Maisie's eyes had been closed, but now they had opened, and Anne saw them looking at her and smiling.
"You are a darling, Anne; but I wish you'd gone with Jerrold."
"I don't. I wouldn't have liked it a bit."
"Hewould, though."
"Not when he thought of you left here all by yourself."
Maisie smiled again.
"Jerry doesn't think, thank Goodness."
"Why 'thank Goodness'?"
"Because I don't want him to. I don't want him to see."
"To see what?"
"Why, that I can't do things like other people."
"Maisie—whycan't you? You used to. Jerrold's told me how you used to rush about, dancing and golfing and playing tennis."
"Why? Did he say anything?"
"Only that you took a lot of exercise, and he thinks it's awfully bad for you knocking it all off now."
"Dear old Jerry. Of course he must think it frightfully stupid. But I can't help it, Anne. I can't do things now like I used to. I've got to be careful."
"But—why?"
"Because there's something wrong with my heart. Jerry doesn't know it. I don't want him to know."
"You don't mean seriously wrong?"
"Not very serious. But it hurts."
"Hurts?"
"Yes. And the pain frightens me. Every time it comes I think I'm going to die. But I don't die."
"Oh—Maisie—what sort of pain?"
"A disgusting pain, Anne. As if it was full of splintered glass, mixed up with bubbling blood, cutting and tearing. It grabs at you and you choke; you feel as if your face would burst. You're afraid to breathe for fear it should come again."
"But, Maisie, that's angina."
"It isn't real angina; but it's awful, all the same. Oh, Anne, what must the real thing be like?"
"Have you seen a doctor?"
"Yes, two. A man in London and a man in Torquay."
"Do they say it isn't the real thing?"
"Yes. It's all nerves. But it's every bit as bad as if it was real, except that I can't die of it."
"Poor little Maisie—I didn't know."
"I didn't mean you to know. But Ihadto tell somebody. It's so awful being by yourself with it and being frightened. And then I'm afraid all the time of Jerrold finding out. I'm afraid of hisseeingme when it comes on."
"But, Maisie darling, he ought to know. You ought to tell him."
"No. I haven't told my father and mother because they'd tell him. Luckily it's only come on in the night, so that he hasn't seen. But it might come on anywhere, any minute. If I'm excited or anything … That's the awful thing, Anne; I'm afraid of getting excited. I'm afraid to feel. I'm afraid of everything that makes me feel. I'm afraid of Jerrold's touching me, even of his saying something nice to me. The least thing makes my silly heart tumble about, and if it tumbles too much the pain comes. I daren't let Jerrold sleep with me."
"Yet you haven't told him."
"No; I daren't."
"Youmusttell him, Maisie."
"I won't. He'd mind horribly. He'd be frightened and miserable, and I can't bear him to be frightened and miserable. He's had enough. He's been through the war. I don't mean that that frightened him; but this would."
"Do you mean to say he doesn't see it?"
"Bless you, no. He just thinks I'm tiresome and hysterical. I'd rather he thought that than see him unhappy. Nothing in the world matters but Jerrold. You see I care for him so frightfully…. You don't know how awful it is, caring like that, and yet having to beat him back all the time, never to give him anything. I daren't let him come near me because of that ghastly fright. I know you oughtn't to be afraid of pain, but it's a pain that makes you afraid. Being afraid's all part of it. So I can't help it."
"Of course you can't help it."
"I wouldn't mind if it wasn't for Jerry. I ought never to have married him."
"But, Maisie, I can't understand it. You're always so happy and calm.How can you be calm and happy withthathanging over you?"
"I've got to be calm for fear of it. And I'm happy because Jerrold's there. Simply knowing that he's there…. I can't think what I'd do, Anne, if he wasn't such an angel. Some men wouldn't be. They wouldn't stand it. And that makes me care all the more. He'll never know how I care."
"You must tell him."
"There it is. I daren't even try to tell him. I just live in perpetual funk."
"And you're the bravest thing that ever lived."
"Oh, I've got to cover it up. It wouldn't do to show it. But I'm gladI've told you."
She leaned back, panting.
"I mustn't talk—any more now."
"No. Rest."
"You won't mind?… But—get a book—and read. You'll be—so bored."
She shut her eyes.
Anne got a book and tried to read it; but the words ran together, grey lines tangled on a white page. Nothing was clear to her but the fact that Maisie had told the truth about herself.
It was the worst thing that had happened yet. It was the supreme reproach, the ultimate disaster and defeat. Yet Maisie had not told her anything that surprised her. This was the certainty that hid behind the defences of their thought, the certainty she had foreseen when Jerrold told her about Maisie's coldness. It meant that Jerrold couldn't escape, and that his punishment would be even worse than hers. Nothing that Maisie could have done would have been more terrible to Jerrold than her illness and the way she had hidden it from him; the poor darling going in terror of it, lying in bed alone, night after night, shut in with her terror. Jerrold was utterly vulnerable; his belief in Maisie's indifference had been his only protection against remorse. How was he going to bear Maisie's wounding love? How would he take the knowledge of it?
Anne saw what must come of his knowing. It would be the end of their happiness. After this they would have to give each other up; he would never take her in his arms again; he would never come to her again in the fields between midnight and dawn. They couldn't go on unless they told Maisie the truth; and they couldn't tell Maisie the truth now, because the truth would bring the pain back to her poor little heart. They could never be straight with her; they would have to hide what they had done for ever. Maisie had silenced them for ever when she got her truth in first. To Anne it was not thinkable, either that they should go on being lovers, knowing about Maisie, or that she should keep her knowledge to herself. She would tell Jerrold and end it.
iii
She stayed on with Maisie till the evening.
Jerrold had come back and was walking home with her through the Manor fields when she made up her mind that she would tell him now; at the next gate—the next—when they came to the belt of firs she would tell him.
She stopped him there by the fence of the plantation. The darkness hid them from each other, only their faces and Anne's white coat glimmered through.
"Wait a minute, Jerrold. I want to tell you something. About Maisie."
He drew himself up abruptly, and she felt the sudden start and check of his hurt mind.
"You haven't told her?" he said.
"No. It's something she told me. She doesn't want you to know. But you've got to know it. You think she doesn't care for you, and she does; she cares awfully. But—she's ill."
"Ill? She isn't, Anne. She only thinks she is. I know Maisie."
"You don't know that she gets heart attacks. Frightful pain, Jerrold, pain that terrifies her."
"My God—you don't mean she's gotangina?"
"Not the real kind. If it was that she'd be dead. But pain so bad that she thinks she's dying every time. It's what they call false angina. That's why she doesn't want you to sleep with her, for fear it'll come on and you'll see her."
Through the darkness she could feel the vibration of his shock; it came to her in his stillness.
"You said she didn't feel. She's afraid to feel because feeling brings it on."
He spoke at last. "Why on earth couldn't she tell me that?"
"Because she loves you so awfully. The poor darling didn't want you to be unhappy about her."
"As if that mattered."
"It matters more than anything to her."
"Do you really mean that she's got that hellish thing? Who told her what it was?"
"Some London doctor and a man at Torquay."
"I shall take her up to-morrow and make her see a specialist."
"If you do you mustn't let her know I told you, or she'll never tell me anything again."
"What am I to say?"
"Say you've been worried about her."
"God knows I ought to have been."
"You're worried about her, and you think there's something wrong. If she says there isn't, you'll say that's what you want to be sure of."
"Look here; how do those fellows know it isn't the real thing?"
"Oh, they can tell that by the state of her heart. I don't suppose for a moment it's the real thing. She wouldn't be alive if it was. And you don't die of false angina. It's all nerves, though it hurts like sin."
He was silent for a second.
"Anne—she's beaten us. We can't tell her now."
"No. And we can't go on. If we can't be straight about it we've got to give each other up."
"I know. We can't go on. There's nothing more to be said."
His voice dropped on her aching heart with the toneless weight of finality.
"We've got to end it now, this minute," she said. "Don't come any farther."
"Let me go to the bottom of the field."
"No. I'm not going that way."
He had come close to her now, close, as though he would have taken her in his arms for the last night, the last time. He wanted to touch her, to hold her back from the swallowing darkness. But she moved out of his reach and he did not follow her. His passion was ready to flame up if he touched her, and he was afraid. They must end it clean, without a word or a touch.
The grass drive between the firs led to a gate on the hill road that skirted the Manor fields. He knew that she would go from him that way, because she didn't want to pass by their shelter at the bottom. She couldn't sleep in it tonight.
He stood still and watched her go, her white coat glimmering in the darkness between the black rows of firs. The white gate glimmered at the end of the drive. She stood there a moment. He saw her slip like a white ghost between the gate and the gate post; he heard the light thud of the wooden latch falling back behind her, and she was gone.
i
Maisie lay in bed, helpless and abandoned to her illness. It was no good trying to cover it up and hide it any more. Jerrold knew.
The night when he left Anne he had gone up to Maisie in her room. He couldn't rest unless he knew that she was all right. He had stooped over her to kiss her and she had sat up, holding her face to him, her hands clasped round his neck, drawing him close to her, when suddenly the pain gripped her and she lay back in his arms, choking, struggling for breath.
Jerrold thought she was dying. He waited till the pain passed and she was quieted, then he ran downstairs and telephoned for Ransome. He looked on in agony while Ransome's stethoscope wandered over Maisie's thin breast and back. It seemed to him that Ransome was taking an unusually long time about it, that he must be on the track of some terrible discovery. And when Ransome took the tubes from his ears and said, curtly, "Heart quite sound; nothing wrong there," he was convinced that Ransome was an old fool who didn't know his business. Or else he was lying for Maisie's sake.
Downstairs in the library he turned on him.
"Look here; there's no good lying to me. I want truth."
"My dear Fielding, I shouldn't dream of lying to you. There's nothing wrong with your wife's heart. Nothing organically wrong."
"With that pain? She was in agony, Ransome, agony. Why can't you tell me at once that it's angina?"
"Because it isn't. Not the real thing. False angina's a neurosis, not a heart disease. Get the nervous condition cured and she'll be all right. Has she had any worry? Any shock?"
"Not that I know."
"Any cause for worry?"
He hesitated. Poor Maisie had had cause enough if she had known. But she didn't know. It seemed to him that Ransome was looking at him queerly.
"No," he said. "None."
"You're quite certain? Has she ever had any?"
"Well, I suppose she was pretty jumpy all the time I was at the front."
"Before that? Years ago?"
"That I don't know. I should say not."
"You won't swear?"
"No. I won't swear. It would be years before we were married."
"Try and find out," said Ransome. "And keep her quiet and happy. She'd better stay in bed for a week or two."
So Maisie stayed in bed, and Jerrold and Anne sat with her, together or in turn. He had a bed made up in her room and slept there when he slept at all. But half the night he lay awake, listening for the sound of her panting and the little gasping cry that would come when the pain got her. He kept on getting up to look at her and make sure that she was sleeping.
He was changed from his old happy, careless self, the self that used to turn from any trouble, that refused to believe that the people it loved could be ill and die. He was convinced that Maisie's state was dangerous. He sent for Dr. Harper of Cheltenham and for a nerve specialist and a heart specialist from London and they all told him the same thing. And he wouldn't believe them. Because Maisie's death was the most unbearable thing that his remorse could imagine, he felt that nothing short of Maisie's death would appease the powers that punished him. He was the more certain that Maisie would die because he had denied that she was ill. For Jerrold's mind remembered everything and anticipated nothing. Like most men who refuse to see or foresee trouble, he was crushed by it when it came.
The remorse he felt might have been less intolerable if he had been alone in it; but, day after day, his pain was intensified by the sight of Anne's pain. She was exquisitely vulnerable, and for every pang that stabbed her he felt himself responsible. What they had done they had done together, and they suffered for it together, but in the beginning she had done it for him, and he had made her do it. Nobody, not even Maisie, could have been more innocent than Anne. He had no doubt that, left to herself, she would have hidden her passion from him to the end of time. He, therefore, was the cause of her suffering.
It was as if Anne's consciousness were transferred to him, day after day, when they sat together in Maisie's room, one on each side of her bed, while Maisie lay between them, sleeping her helpless and reproachful sleep, and he saw Anne's piteous face, white with pain. His pity for Maisie and his pity for Anne, their pity for each other were mixed together and held them, close as passion, in an unbearable communion.
They looked at each other, and their wounded eyes said, day after day, the same thing: "Yes, it hurts. But I could bear it if it were not for you." Their pity took the place of passion. It was as if a part of each other passed into them with their suffering as it had passed into them with their joy.
ii
And through it all their passion itself still lived its inextinguishable and tortured life. Pity, so far from destroying it, only made it stronger, pouring in its own emotion, wave after wave, swelling the flood that carried them towards the warm darkness where will and thought would cease.
And as Jerrold's soul had once stirred in the warm darkness under the first stinging of remorse, so now it pushed and struggled to be born; all his will fought against the darkness to deliver his soul. His soul knew that Anne saved it. If her will had been weaker his would not have been so strong. At this moment an unscrupulous Anne might have damned him to the sensual hell by clinging to his pity. He would have sinned because he was sorry for her.
But Anne's will refused his pity. When he showed it she was angry. Yet it was there, waiting for her always, against her will.
One day in October (Maisie's illness lasting on into the autumn) they had gone out into the garden to breathe the cold, clean air while Maisie slept.
"Jerrold," she said, suddenly, "do you think she knows?"
"No. I'm certain she doesn't."
"I'm not. I've an awful feeling that she knows and that's why she doesn't get better."
"I don't think so. If she knew she'd have said something or done something."
"She mightn't. She mightn't do anything. Perhaps she's just being angelically good to us."
"Sheisangelically good. But she doesn't know. You forget her illness began before therewasanything to know. It isn't the sort of thing she'd think of. If somebody told her she wouldn't believe it. She trusts us absolutely…. That's bad enough, Anne, without her knowing."
"Yes. It's bad enough. It's worse, really."
"I know it is…. Anne—I'm awfully sorry to have let you in for all this misery."
"You mustn't be sorry. You haven't let me in for it. Nobody could have known it would have happened. It wouldn't, if Maisie had been different. We wouldn't have bothered then. Nothing would have mattered. Think how gloriously happy we were. All my life all my happiness has come through you or because of you. We'd be happy still if it wasn't for Maisie."
"I don't see how we're to go on like this. I can't stand it when you're not happy. And nothing makes any difference, really. I want you so awfully all the time."
"That's one of the things we mustn't say to each other."
"I know we mustn't. Only I didn't want you to think I didn't."
"I don't think it. I know you'll care for me as long as you live. Only you mustn't say so. You mustn't be sorry for me. It makes me feel all weak and soft when I want to be strong and hard."
"Youarestrong, Anne."
"So are you. I shouldn't love you if you weren't. But we mustn't make it too hard for each other. You know what'll happen if we do?"
"What? You mean we'd crumple up and give in?"
"No. But we couldn't ever see each other alone again. Never see each other again at all, perhaps. I'd have to go away."
"You shan't have to. I swear I won't say another word."
"Sometimes I think it would be easier for you if I went."
"It wouldn't. It would be simply damnable. You can't go, Anne. Thatwouldmake Maisie think."
iii
After weeks of rest Maisie passed into a period of painless tranquillity. She had no longer any fear of her illness because she had no longer any fear of Jerrold's knowing about it. He did know, and yet her world stood firm round her, firmer than when he had not known. For she had now in Jerrold's ceaseless devotion what seemed to her the absolute proof that he cared for her, if she had ever doubted it. And if he had doubted her, hadn't he the absolute proof that she cared, desperately? Would she have so hidden the truth from him, would she have borne her pain and the fear of it, in that awful lonely secrecy, if she had not cared for him more than for anything on earth? She had been more afraid to sleep alone than poor Colin who had waked them with his screaming. Jerrold knew that she was not a brave woman like Anne or Colin's wife, Queenie; it was out of her love for him that she had drawn the courage that made her face, night after night, the horror of her torment alone. If he had wanted proof, what better proof could he have than that?
So Maisie remained tranquil, secure in her love for Jerrold, and in his love for her, while Anne and Jerrold were tortured by their love for each other. They were no longer sustained in their renunciation by the sight of Maisie's illness and the fear of it which more than anything had held back their passion. Without that warning fear they were exposed at every turn. It might be there, waiting for them in the background, but, with Maisie going about as if nothing had happened, even remorse had lost its protective poignancy. They suffered the strain of perpetual frustration. They were never alone together now. They had passed from each other, beyond all contact of spirit with spirit and flesh with flesh, beyond all words and looks of longing; they had nothing of each other but sight, sight that had all the violence of touch without its satisfaction, that served only to excite them, to torture them with desire. They might be held at arm's length, at a room's length, at a field's length apart, but their eyes drew them together, set their hearts beating; in one moment of seeing they were joined and put asunder.
And, day after day, their minds desired each other with a subtle, incessant, intensely conscious longing, and were utterly cut off from all communion. They met now at longer and longer intervals, for their work separated them. Colin had come home in October, perfectly recovered, and he and Jerrold managed the Manor estate together while Anne looked after her own farm. Jerrold never saw her, he never tried to see her unless Colin or Maisie or some of the farm people were present; he was afraid and Anne knew that he was afraid. Her sense of his danger made her feel herself fragile and unstable. She, too, avoided every occasion of seeing him alone.
And this separation, so far from saving them, defeated its own end. Every day it brought them nearer to the breaking point. It was against all nature and all nature was against it. They had always before them that vision of the point at which they would give in. Always there was one thought that drew them to the edge of surrender: "I can bear it for myself, but I can't bear it for him," "I can bear it for myself, but I can't bear it for her."
And to both of them had come another fear, greater than their dread of Maisie's pain, the fear of each other's illness. Their splendid physical health was beginning to break down. They worked harder than ever on the land; but hard work exhausted them at the end of the day. They went on from a sense of duty, dull and implacable, but they had no more pleasure in it. Anne became every night more restless, every day more tired and anaemic. Jerrold ate less and slept less. They grew thin, and their faces took on the same look of fatigue and anxiety and wonder, as if, more than anything, they were amazed at a world whose being connived at and tolerated their pain.
Maisie saw it and felt the first vague disturbance of her peace. Her illness had worried everybody while it lasted, but she couldn't think why, when she was well again, Anne and Jerrold should go on looking like that. Maisie thought it was physical; the poor dears worked too hard.
The change had been so gradual that she saw it without consternation, but when Eliot came down in November he couldn't hide his distress. To Eliot the significant thing was not Anne's illness or Jerrold's illness but the likeness in their illnesses, the likeness in their faces. It was clear that they suffered together, with the same suffering, from the same cause. And when on his last evening Jerrold took him into the library to consult him about Maisie's case, Eliot had a hard, straight talk with him about his own.
"My dear Jerrold," he said, "there's nothing seriously wrong withMaisie. I've examined her heart. It isn't a particularly strong heart,but there's no disease in it. If you took her to all the specialists inEurope they'd tell you the same thing."
"I know, but I keep on worrying."
"That, my dear chap, is because you're ill yourself. I don't like it.I'm not bothered about Maisie, but I am bothered about you and Anne."
"Anne? Do you thinkAnne'sill?"
"I think she will be, and so will you if… What have you been doing?"
"We've been doing nothing."
"That's it. You've got to do something and do it pretty quick if it's to be any good."
Jerrold started and looked up. He wondered whether Eliot knew. He had a way of getting at things, you couldn't tell how.
"What d'you mean? What are you talking about?" His words came with a sudden sharp rapidity.
"You know what I mean."
"I don't know howyouknow anything. And, as a matter of fact, you don't."
"I don't know much. But I know enough to see that you two can't go on like this."
"Maisie and me?"
"No. You and Anne. It's Anne I'm talking about. I suppose you can make a mess of your own life if you like. You've no business to make a mess of hers."
"My God! as if I didn't know it. What the devil am I to do?"
"Leave her alone, Jerrold, if you can't have her."
"Leave her alone? Iamleaving her alone. I've got to leave her alone, if we both die of it."
"She ought to go away," Eliot said.
"She shan't go away unless I go with her. And I can't."'
"Well, then, it's an impossible situation."
"It's a damnable situation, but it's the only decent one. You forget there's Maisie."
"No, I don't. Maisie doesn't know?"
"Oh Lord, no. And she never will."
"You ought to tell her."
Jerrold was silent.
"My dear Jerrold, it's the only sensible thing. Tell her straight and get her to divorce you."
"I was going to. Then she got ill and I couldn't."
"She isn't ill now."
"She will be if I tell her. It'll simply kill her."
"It won't. It may—even—cure her."
"It'll make her frightfully unhappy. And it'll bring back that infernal pain. If you'd seen her, Eliot, you'd know how impossible it is. We simply can't be swine. And if I could, Anne couldn't…. No. We've got to stick it somehow, Anne and I."
"It's all wrong, Jerrold."
"I know it's all wrong. But it's the best we can do. You don't supposeAnne would be happy if we did Maisie down."
"No. No. She wouldn't. You're right there. But it's a damnable business."
"Oh, damnable, yes."
Jerrold laughed in his agony. Yet he saw, as if he had never seen it before, Eliot's goodness and the sadness and beauty of his love for Anne. He had borne for years what Jerrold was bearing now, and Anne had not loved him. He had never known for one moment the bliss of love or any joy. He had had nothing. And Jerrold remembered with a pang of contrition that he had never cared enough for Eliot. It had always been Colin, the young, breakable Colin, who had clung to him and followed him. Eliot had always gone his own queer way, keeping himself apart.
And now Eliot was nearer to him than anything in the world, except Anne.
"I'm sorry, Jerrold."
"You're pretty decent, Eliot, to be sorry—I believe you honestly want me to have Anne."
"I wouldn't go so far as that, old man. But I believe I honestly wantAnne to have you…. I say, she hasn't gone yet, has she?"
"No. Maisie's keeping her for dinner in your honour. You'll probably find her in the drawing-room now."
"Where's Maisie?"
"She won't worry you. She's gone to lie down."
Eliot went into the drawing-room and found Anne there.
She looked at him. "You've been talking to Jerrold," she said.
"Yes, Anne. I'm worried about him."
"So am I."
"And I'm worried about you."
"And he's worried about Maisie."
"Yes. I suppose he began by not seeing she was ill, and now he does see it he thinks she's going to die. I've been trying to explain to him that she isn't."
"Can you explain why she's got into this state? It's not as if she wasn't happy. Sheishappy."
"She wasn't always happy. Jerrold must have made her suffer damnably."
"When?"
"Oh, long before he married her."
"Buthowdid he make her suffer?"
"Oh, by just not marrying her. She found out he didn't care for her. Her people took her out to India, I believe, with the idea that he would marry her. And when they saw that Jerry wasn't on in that act they sent her back again. Poor Maisie got it well rammed into her then that he didn't care for her, and the idea's stuck. It's left a sort of wound in her memory."
"But she must have thought he cared for her when he did marry her. She thinks he cares now."
"Of course she thinks it. I don't suppose he's ever let her see."
"I know he hasn't."
"But the wound's there, all the same. She's never got over it, though she isn't conscious of it now. The fact remains that Maisie's marriage is incomplete because Jerry doesn't care for her. Part of Maisie, the adorable part we know, isn't aware of any incompleteness; it lives in a perpetual illusion. But the part we don't know, the hidden, secret part of her, is aware of nothing else…. Well, her illness is simply camouflage for that. Maisie's mind couldn't bear the reality, so it escaped into a neurosis. Maisie's behaving as though she wasn't married, so that her mind can say to itself that her marriage is incomplete because she's ill, not because Jerry doesn't care for her. It's substituted a bearable situation for an unbearable one."
"Then, you don't think sheknows?"
"That Jerrold doesn't care for her? No. Only in that unconscious way.Her mind remembers andshedoesn't."
"I mean, she doesn't know about Jerrold and me?"
"I'm sure she doesn't. If she did she'd do something."
"That's what Jerrold said. What would she do?"
"Oh something beautiful, or it wouldn't be Maisie. She'd let Jerrold go."
"Yes. She'd let him go. And she'd die of it."
"Oh no, she wouldn't. I told Jerrold just now it might cure her."
"Howcouldit cure her?"
"By making her face reality. By making her see that her illness simply means that she hasn't faced it. All our neuroses come because we daren't live with the truth."
"It's no good making Maisie well if we make her unhappy. Besides, I don't believe it. If Maisie's unhappy she'll be worse, not better."
"Thereisjust that risk," he said. "But it's you I'm thinking about, not Maisie. You see, I don't know what's happened."
"Jerrold didn't tell you?"
"He only told me what I know already."
"After all, whatdoyou know?"
"I know you were all right, you and he, when I saw you together here in the spring. So I suppose you were happy then. Jerrold looked wretchedly ill all the time he was at Taormina. So I suppose he was unhappy then because he was away from you. He looks wretchedly ill now. So do you. So I suppose you're both unhappy."
"Yes, we're both unhappy."
"Do you want to tell me about it, Anne?"
"No. I don't want to tell you about it. Only, if I thought you still wanted to marry me——"
"I do want to marry you. I shall always want to marry you. I told you long ago nothing would ever make any difference.
"Even if——?"
"Even if—Whatever you did or didn't do I'd still want you. But I told you—don't you remember?—that you could never do anything dishonourable or cruel."
"And I told you I wasn't sure."
"And I am sure. That's enough for me. I don't want to know anything more. I don't want to know anything you'd rather I didn't know."
"Oh, Eliot, youareso good. You're good like Maisie. Don't worry about Jerry and me. We'll see it through somehow."
"And if you can't stand the strain of it?"
"But I can."
"And ifhecan't? If you want to be safe——"
"I told you I should never want to be safe."
"If you wanthimto be safe, then, would you marry me?"
"That's different. I don't know, Eliot, but I don't think so."
He went away with a faint hope. She had said it would be different; what she would never do for him she might do for Jerrold.
She might, after all, marry him to keep Jerrold safe.
Nothing made any difference. Whatever Anne did she would still be Anne. And it was Anne he loved. And, after all, what did he know about her and Jerrold? Only that if they had been lovers that would account for their strange happiness seven months ago; if they had given each other up this would account for their unhappiness now. He thought: How they must have struggled.
Perhaps, some day, when the whole story was told and Anne was tired of struggling, she would come to him and he would marry her.
Even if——
i
The Barrow Farm house, long, low and grey, stood back behind the tall elms and turned its blank north gable end to the road and the Manor Farm. Its nine mullioned windows looked down the field to the river. And the great barns were piled behind it, long roof-trees, steep, mouse-coloured slopes and peaks above grey walls.
Anne didn't move into the Barrow Farm house all at once. She had to wait while Jerrold had the place made beautiful for her.
This was the only thing that roused him to any interest. Through all his misery he could still find pleasure in the work of throwing small rooms into one to make more space for Anne, and putting windows into the south gable to give her the sun.
Anne's garden absorbed him more than his own seven hundred acres. Maisie and he planned it together, walking round the rank flower-beds, and bald wastes scratched up by the hens.
There was to be a flagged court on one side and a grass plot on the other, with a flower garden between. Here, Maisie said, there should be great clumps of larkspurs and there a lavender hedge. They said how nice it would be for Anne to watch the garden grow.
"He's going to make it so beautiful that you'll want to stay in it forever," she said.
And Anne went with them and listened to them, and told them they were angels, and pretended to be excited about her house and garden, while all the time her heart ached and she was too tired to care.
The house was finished by the end of November and Jerrold and Maisie helped her to furnish it. Maisie sent to London for patterns and brought them to Anne to choose. Maisie thought perhaps the chintz with the cream and pink roses, or the one with the green leaves and red tulips and blue and purple clematis was the prettiest. Anne tried to behave as if all her happiness depended on a pattern, and ended by choosing the one that Maisie liked best. And the furniture went where Maisie thought it should go, because Anne was too tired to care. Besides, she was busy on her farm. Old Sutton in his decadence had let most of his arable land run to waste, and Anne's job was to make good soil again out of bad.
Maisie was pleased like a child and excited with her planning. Her idea was that Anne should come in from her work on the land and find the house all ready for her, everything in its place, chairs and sofas dressed in their gay suits of chintz, the books on their shelves, the blue-and-white china in rows on the oak dresser.
Tea was set out on the gate-legged table before the wide hearth-place. The lamps were lit. A big fire burned. Colin and Jerrold and Maisie were there waiting for her. And Anne came in out of the fields, tired and white and thin, her black hair drooping. Her rough land dress hung slack on her slender body.
Jerrold looked at her. Anne's tired face, trying to smile, wrung his heart. So did the happiness in Maisie's eyes. And Anne's voice trying to sound as if she were happy.
"You darlings! How nice you've made it."
"Do you like it?"
Maisie was breathless with joy.
"I love it. I adore it! But—aren't there lots of things that weren't here before? Where did that table come from?"
"From the Manor Farm. Don't you remember it? That's Eliot."
"And the bureau, and the dresser, and those heavenly rugs?"
"That's Jerrold."
And the china was Colin, and the chintz was Maisie. The long couch for Anne to lie down on was Maisie. Everything that was not Anne's they had given her.
"You shouldn't have done it," she said.
"We did it for ourselves. To keep you with us," said Maisie.
"Did you think it would take all that?"
She wondered whether they saw how hard she was trying to look happy, not to be too tired to care.
Then Maisie took her upstairs to show her her bedroom and the white bathroom. Colin carried the lamp. He left them together in Anne's room. Maisie turned to her there.
"Darling, how tired you look. Are you too tired to be happy?"
"I'd be a brute if I weren't happy," Anne said.
But she wasn't happy. The minute they were gone her sadness came upon her, crushing her down. She could hear Colin and Maisie, the two innocent ones, laughing out into the darkness. She saw again Jerrold's hard, unhappy face trying to smile; his mouth jerking in the tight, difficult smile that was like an agony. And it used to be Jerrold who was always happy, who went laughing.
She turned up and down the beautiful lighted room; she looked again and again at the things they had given her, Colin and Jerrold and Maisie.
Maisie. She would have to live with the cruelty of Maisie's gifts, with Maisie's wounding kindness and her innocence. Maisie's curtains, Maisie's couch, covered with flowers that smiled at her, gay on the white ground. She thought of the other house, of the curtains that had shut out the light from her and Jerrold, of the couch where she had lain in his arms. Each object had a dumb but poignant life that reminded and reproached her.
This was the scene where her life was to be cast. Henceforth these things would know her in her desolation. Jerrold would never come to her here as he had come to the Manor Farm house; they would never sit together talking by this fireside; those curtains would never be drawn on their passion; he would never go up to that lamp and put it out; she would never lie here waiting, thrilling, as he came to her through the darkness.
She had wanted the Barrow Farm and she had got what she had wanted, and she had got it too late. She loved it. Yet how was it possible to love the place that she was to be so unhappy in? She ought to hate it with its enclosing walls, its bright-eyed, watching furniture, its air of quiet complicity in her pain.
She drew back the curtains. The lamp and its yellow flame hung out there on the darkness of the fields. The fields dropped away through the darkness to the river, and there were the black masses of the trees.
There the earth waited for her. Out there was the only life left for her to live. The life of struggling with the earth, forcing the earth to yield to her more than it had yielded to the men who had tilled it before her, making the bad land good. Ploughing time would come and seed time, and hay harvest and corn harvest. Feeding time and milking time would come. She would go on seeing the same things done at the same hour, at the same season, day after day and year after year. There would have been joy in that if it had been Jerrold's land, if she could have gone on working for Jerrold and with Jerrold. And if she had not been so tired.
She was only twenty-nine and Jerrold was only thirty-two. She wondered how many more ploughing times they would have to go through, how many seed times and harvests. And how would they go through them? Would they go on getting more and more tired, or would something happen?
No. Nothing would happen. Nothing that they could bear to think of. They would just go on.
In the stillness of the house she could feel her heart beating, measuring out time, measuring out her pain.
ii
That winter Adeline and John Severn came down to Wyck Manor forChristmas and the New Year.
Adeline was sitting in the drawing-room with Maisie in the heavy hour before tea time. All afternoon she had been trying to talk to Maisie, and she was now bored. Jerrold's wife had always bored her. She couldn't imagine why Jerrold had married her when it was so clear that he was not in love with her.
"It's funny," she said at last, "staying in your own house when it isn't your own any more."
Maisie hoped that Adeline would treat the house as if it were her own.
"I probably shall. Don't be surprised if you hear me giving orders to the servants. I really cannot consider that Wilkins belongs to anybody but me."
Maisie hoped that Adeline wouldn't consider that he didn't.
And there was a pause. Adeline looked at the clock and saw that there was still another half-hour till tea time. How could they possibly fill it in? Then, suddenly, from a thought of Jerrold so incredibly married to Maisie, Adeline's mind wandered to Anne.
"Is Anne dining here tonight?" she said.
And Maisie said yes, she thought Adeline and Mr. Severn would like to see as much as possible of Anne. And Adeline said that was very kind of Maisie, and was bored again.
She saw nothing before her but more and more boredom; and the subject of Anne alone held out the prospect of relief. She flew to it as she would have fled from any danger.
"By the way, Maisie, if I were you I wouldn't let Anne see too much ofJerrold."
"Why not?"
"Because, my dear, it isn't good for her."
"I should have thought," Maisie said, "it was very good for both of them, as they like each other. I should never dream of interfering with their friendship. That's the way people get themselves thoroughly disliked. I don't want Jerry to dislike me, or Anne, either. I like them to feel that if heismarried they can go on being friends just the same."
"Oh, of course, if you like it——"
"I do like it," said Maisie, firmly.
Firm opposition was a thing that Adeline's wilfulness could never stand. It always made her either change the subject or revert to her original statement. This time she reverted.
"My point was that it isn't fair to Anne."
"Why isn't it?"
"Because she's in love with him."
"That," said Maisie, with increasing decision, "I donotbelieve. I've never seen any signs of it."
"You're the only person who hasn't then. It sticks out of her. If it was a secret I shouldn't have told you."
"It is a secret to me," said Maisie, "so I think you might let it alone."
"You ought to know it if nobody else does. We've all of us known about Anne for ages. She was always quite mad about Jerrold. It was funny when she was a little thing; but it's rather more serious now she's thirty."
"She isn't thirty," said Maisie, contradictiously.
"Almost thirty. It's a dangerous age, Maisie. And Anne's a dangerous person. She's absolutely reckless. She always was."
"I thought you thought she was in love with Colin."
"I never thought it."
Maisie hated people who lied to her.
"Why did you tell Jerrold they were lovers, then?" she said.
"Did I tell Jerrold they were lovers?"
"He thinks you did."
"He must have misunderstood what I said. Colin gave me his word of honour that there was nothing between them."
But Maisie had no mercy.
"Why should he do that if you didn't think there was? If you were mistaken then you may be mistaken now."
"I'm not mistaken now. Ask Colin, ask Eliot, ask Anne's father."
"I shouldn't dream of asking them. You forget, if Jerrold's my husband,Anne's my friend."
"Then for goodness sake keep her out of mischief. Keep her out of Jerrold's way. Anne's a darling and I'm devoted to her, but she always did love playing with fire. If she's bent on burning her pretty wings it isn't kind to bring her where the lamp is."
"I'd trust Anne's wings to keep her out of danger."
"How about Jerrold's danger? You might think of him."
"I do think of him. And I trust him. Absolutely."
"I don't. I don't trust anybody absolutely."
"One thing's clear," said Maisie, "that it's time we had tea."
She got up, with an annihilating dignity, and rang the bell. Adeline's smile intimated that she was unbeaten and unconvinced.
That evening John Severn came into his wife's room as she was dressing for dinner.
"I wish to goodness Anne hadn't this craze for farming," he said. "She's simply working herself to death. I never saw her look so seedy. I'm sorry Jerrold let her have that farm."
"So am I," said Adeline. "I never saw Jerry look so seedy, either. Maisie's been behaving like a perfect idiot. If she wanted them to go off together she couldn't have done better."
"You don't imagine," John said, "that's what they're after?"
"How do I know what they're after? You never can tell with people like Jerrold and Anne. They're both utterly reckless. They don't care who suffers so long as they get what they want. If Anne had the morals of a—of a mouse, she'd clear out."
"I think," John said, "you're mistaken. Anne isn't like that…. I hope you haven't said anything to Maisie?"
Adeline made a face at him, as much as to say, "What do you take me for?" She lifted up her charming, wilful face and powdered it carefully.
iii
The earth smelt of the coming rain. All night the trees had whispered of rain coming to-morrow. Now they waited.
At noon the wind dropped. Thick clouds, the colour of dirty sheep's wool, packed tight by their own movement, roofed the sky and walled it round, hanging close to the horizon. A slight heaving and swelling in the grey mass packed it tighter. It was pregnant with rain. Here and there a steaming vapour broke from it as if puffed out by some immense interior commotion. Thin tissues detached themselves and hung like a frayed hem, lengthening, streaming to the hilltops in the west.
Anne was going up the fields towards the Manor and Jerrold was coming down towards the Manor Farm. They met at the plantation as the first big drops fell.
He called out to her, "I say, you oughtn't to be out a day like this."
Anne had been ill all January with a slight touch of pleurisy after a cold that she had taken no care of.
"I'm going to see Maisie."
"You'renot," he said. "It's going to rain like fury."
"Maisie knows I don't mind rain," Anne said, and laughed.
"Maisie'd have a fit if she knew you were out in it. Look, how it's coming down over there."
Westwards and northwards the round roof and walls of cloud were shaken and the black rain hung sheeted between sky and earth. Overhead the dark tissues thinned out and lengthened. The fir trees quivered; they gave out slight creaking, crackling noises as the rain came down. It poured off each of the sloping fir branches like a jet from a tap.
"We must make a dash for it," Jerrold said. And they ran together, laughing, down the field to Anne's shelter at the bottom. He pushed back the sliding door.
The rain drummed on the roof and went hissing along the soaked ground; it sprayed out as the grass bent and parted under it; every hollow tuft was a water spout. The fields were dim behind the shining, glassy bead curtain of the rain.
The wind rose again and shook the rain curtain and blew it into the shelter. Rain scudded across the floor, wetting them where they stood. Jerrold slid the door to. They were safe now from the downpour.
Anne's bed stood in the corner tucked up in its grey blankets. They sat down on it side by side.
For a moment they were silent, held by their memory. They were shut in there with their past. It came up to them, close and living, out of the bright, alien mystery of the rain.
He put his hand on the shoulder of Anne's coat to feel if it was wet. At his touch she trembled.
"It hasn't gone through, has it?"
"No," she said and coughed again.
"Anne, I hate that cough of yours. You never had a cough before."
"I've never had pleurisy before."
"You wouldn't have had it if you hadn't been frightfully run down."
"It's all over now," she said.
"It isn't. You may get it again. I don't feel as if you were safe for one minute. Are you warm?"
"Quite."
"Are your feet wet?"
"No. No. No. Don't worry, Jerry dear; I'm all right."
"I wouldn't worry if I was with you all the time. It's not seeing you.Not knowing."
"Don't," she said. "I can't bear it."
And they were silent again.
Their silence was more real to them than the sounding storm. There was danger in it. It drew them back and back. It was poignant and reminiscent. It came to them like the long stillness before their passion. They had waited here before, like this, through moments tense and increasing, for the supreme, toppling instant of their joy.
Their minds went round and round, looking for words to break the silence and finding none. They were held there by their danger.
At last Anne spoke.
"Do you think it's over?"
"No. It's only just begun."
The rain hurled itself against the window, as if it would pluck them out into the storm. It brimmed over from the roof like water poured out from a bucket.