Anne Severn and the Fieldings - May Sinclair
ANNE SEVERN AND THE FIELDINGS
By
MAY SINCLAIR
1922
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I Children
II Adolescents
III Anne and Jerrold
IV Robert
V Eliot and Anne
VI Queenie
VII Adeline
VIII Anne and Colin
IX Jerrold
X Eliot
XI Interim
XII Colin, Jerrold, and Anne
XIII Anne and Jerrold
XIV Maisie
XV Anne, Jerrold, and Maisie
XVI Anne, Maisie, and Jerrold
XVII Jerrold, Maisie, Anne, Eliot
XVIII Jerrold and Anne
XIX Anne and Eliot
XX Jerrold, Maisie, and Anne
ANNE SEVERN AND THE FIELDINGS
I
CHILDREN
i
Anne Severn had come again to the Fieldings. This time it was because
her mother was dead.
She hadn't been in the house five minutes before she asked "Where's
Jerrold?"
"Fancy," they said, "her remembering."
And Jerrold had put his head in at the door and gone out again when he
saw her there in her black frock; and somehow she had known he was
afraid to come in because her mother was dead.
Her father had brought her to Wyck-on-the-Hill that morning, the day
after the funeral. He would leave her there when he went back to India.
She was walking now down the lawn between the two tall men. They were
taking her to the pond at the bottom where the goldfish were. It was
Jerrold's father who held her hand and talked to her. He had a nice
brown face marked with a lot of little fine, smiling strokes, and his
eyes were quick and kind.
"You remember the goldfish, Anne?"
"I remember everything."
She had been such a little girl before, and they said she had forgotten.
But she remembered so well that she always thought of Mr. Fielding as
Jerrold's father. She remembered the pond and the goldfish. Jerrold held
her tight so that she shouldn't tumble in. She remembered the big grey
and yellow house with its nine ball-topped gables; and the lawn, shut in
by clipped yew hedges, then spreading downwards, like a fan, from the
last green terrace where the two enormous peacocks stood, carved out of
the yew.
Where it lay flat and still under the green wall she saw the tennis
court. Jerrold was there, knocking balls over the net to please little
Colin. She could see him fling back his head and laugh as Colin ran
stumbling, waving his racquet before him like a stiff flag. She heard
Colin squeal with excitement as the balls flew out of his reach.
Her father was talking about her. His voice was sharp and anxious.
"I don't know how she'll get on with your boys." (He always talked about
Anne as if she wasn't there.) "Ten's an awkward age. She's too old for
Colin and too young for Eliot and Jerrold."
She knew their ages. Colin was only seven. Eliot, the clever one, was
very big; he was fifteen. Jerrold was thirteen.
She heard Jerrold's father answering in his quiet voice.
"You needn't worry. Jerry'll look after Anne all right."
"And Adeline."
"Oh yes, of course, Adeline." (Only somehow he made it sound as if she
wouldn't.)
Adeline was Mrs. Fielding. Jerrold's mother.
Anne wanted to get away from the quiet, serious men and play with
Jerrold; but their idea seemed to be that it was too soon. Too soon
after the funeral. It would be all right to go quietly and look at the
goldfish; but no, not to play. When she thought of her dead mother she
was afraid to tell them that she didn't want to go and look at the
goldfish. It was as if she knew that something sad waited for her by the
pond at the bottom. She would be safer over there where Jerrold was
laughing and shouting. She would play with him and he wouldn't be
afraid.
The day felt like a Sunday, quiet, quiet, except for the noise of
Jerrold's laughter. Strange and exciting, his boy's voice rang through
her sadness; it made her turn her head again and again to look after
him; it called to her to forget and play.
Little slim brown minnows darted backwards and forwards under the olive
green water of the pond. And every now and then the fat goldfish came
nosing along, orange, with silver patches, shining, making the water
light round them, stiff mouths wide open. When they bobbed up, small
bubbles broke from them and sparkled and went out.
Anne remembered the goldfish; but somehow they were not so fascinating
as they used to be.
A queer plant grew on the rock border of the pond. Green fleshy stems,
with blunt spikes all over them. Each carried a tiny gold star at its
tip. Thick, cold juice would come out of it if you squeezed it. She
thought it would smell like lavender.
It had a name. She tried to think of it.
Stonecrop. Stonecrop. Suddenly she remembered.
Her mother stood with her by the pond, dark and white and slender. Anne
held out her hands smeared with the crushed flesh of the stonecrop; her
mother stooped and wiped them with her pockethandkerchief, and there was
a smell of lavender. The goldfish went swimming by in the olive-green
water.
Anne's sadness came over her again; sadness so heavy that it kept her
from crying; sadness that crushed her breast and made her throat ache.
They went back up the lawn, quietly, and the day felt more and more like
Sunday, or like--like a funeral day.
"She's very silent, this small daughter of yours," Mr. Fielding said.
"Yes," said Mr. Severn.
His voice came with a stiff jerk, as if it choked him. He remembered,
too.
ii
The grey and yellow flagstones of the terrace were hot under your feet.
Jerrold's mother lay out there on a pile of cushions, in the sun. She
was very large and very beautiful. She lay on her side, heaved up on one
elbow. Under her thin white gown you could see the big lines of her
shoulder and hip, and of her long full thigh, tapering to the knee.
Anne crouched beside her, uncomfortably, holding her little body away
from the great warm mass among the cushions.
Mrs. Fielding was aware of this shrinking. She put out her arm and drew
Anne to her side again.
"Lean back," she said. "Close. Closer."
And Anne would lean close, politely, for a minute, and then stiffen and
shrink away again when the soft arm slackened.
Eliot Fielding (the clever one) lay on his stomach, stretched out across
the terrace. He leaned over a book: _Animal Biology_. He was absorbed in
a diagram of a rabbit's heart and took no notice of his mother or of
Anne.
Anne had been at the Manor five days, and she had got used to Jerrold's
mother's caresses. All but one. Every now and then Mrs. Fielding's hand
would stray to the back of Anne's neck, where the short curls, black as
her frock, sprang out in a thick bunch. The fingers stirred among the
roots of Anne's hair, stroking, stroking, lifting the bunch and letting
it fall again. And whenever they did this Anne jerked her head away and
held it stiffly out of their reach.
She remembered how her mother's fingers, slender and silk-skinned and
loving, had done just that, and how their touch went thrilling through
the back of her neck, how it made her heart beat. Mrs. Fielding's
fingers didn't thrill you, they were blunt and fumbling. Anne thought:
"She's no business to touch me like that. No business to think she can
do what mother did."
She was always doing it, always trying to be a mother to her. Her father
had told her she was going to try. And Anne wouldn't let her. She would
not let her.
"Why do you move your head away, darling?"
Anne didn't answer.
"You used to love it. You used to come bending your funny little neck
and turning first one ear and than the other. Like a little cat. And now
you won't let me touch you."
"No. No. Not--like that."
"Yes. Yes. Like this. You don't remember."
"I _do_ remember."
She felt the blunt fingers on her neck again and started up. The
beautiful, wilful woman lay back on her cushions, smiling to herself.
"You're a funny little thing, aren't you?" she said.
Anne's eyes were glassed. She shook her head fiercely and spilled tears.
Jerrold had come up on to the terrace. Colin trotted after him. They
were looking at her. Eliot had raised his head from his book and was
looking at her.
"It _is_ rotten of you, mater," he said, "to tease that kid."
"I'm not teasing her. Really, Eliot, you do say things--as if nobody but
yourself had any sense. You can run away now, Anne darling."
Anne stood staring, with wild animal eyes that saw no place to run to.
It was Jerrold who saved her.
"I say, would you like to see my new buck rabbit?"
"Rather!"
He held out his hand and she ran on with him, along the terrace, down
the steps at the corner and up the drive to the stable yard where the
rabbits were. Colin followed headlong.
And as she went Anne heard Eliot saying, "I've sense enough to remember
that her mother's dead."
In his worst tempers there was always some fierce pity.
iii
Mrs. Fielding gathered herself together and rose, with dignity, still
smiling. It was a smile of great sweetness, infinitely remote from all
discussion.
"It's much too hot here," she said. "You might move the cushions down
there under the beech-tree."
That, Eliot put it to himself, was just her way of getting out of it. To
Eliot the irritating thing about his mother was her dexterity in getting
out. She never lost her temper, and never replied to any serious
criticism; she simply changed the subject, leaving you with your
disapproval on your hands.
In this Eliot's young subtlety misled him. Adeline Fielding's mind was
not the clever, calculating thing that, at fifteen, he thought it. Her
one simple idea was to be happy and, as a means to that end, to have
people happy about her. His father, or Anne's father, could have told
him that all her ideas were simple as feelings and impromptu. Impulse
moved her, one moment, to seize on the faithful, defiant little heart of
Anne, the next, to get up out of the sun. Anne's tears spoiled her
bright world; but not for long. Coolness was now the important thing,
not Anne and not Anne's mother. As for Eliot's disapproval, she was no
longer aware of it.
"Oh, to be cool, to be cool again! Thank you, my son."
Eliot had moved all the cushions down under the tree, scowling as he did
it, for he knew that when his mother was really cool he would have to
get up and move them back again.
With the perfect curve of a great supple animal, she turned and settled
in her lair, under her tree.
Presently, down the steps and across the lawn, Anne's father came
towards her, grave, handsome, and alone.
Handsome even after fifteen years of India. Handsomer than when he was
young. More distinguished. Eyes lighter in the sallowish bronze. She
liked his lean, eager, deerhound's face, ready to start off, sniffing
the trail. A little strained, leashed now, John's eagerness. But that
was how he used to come to her, with that look of being ready, as if
they could do things together.
She had tried to find his youth in Anne's face; but Anne's blackness and
whiteness were her mother's; her little nose was still soft and vague;
you couldn't tell what she would be like in five years' time. Still,
there was something; the same strange quality; the same
forward-springing grace.
Before he reached her, Adeline was smiling again. A smile of the
delicate, instinctive mouth, of the blue eyes shining between curled
lids, under dark eyebrows; of the innocent white nose; of the whole
soft, milk-white face. Even her sleek, dark hair smiled, shining. She
was conscious of her power to make him come to her, to make herself felt
through everything, even through his bereavement.
The subtle Eliot, looking over the terrace wall, observed her and
thought, "The mater's jolly pleased with herself. I wonder why."
It struck Eliot also that a Commissioner of Ambala and a Member of the
Legislative Council and a widower ought not to look like Mr. Severn. He
was too lively, too adventurous.
He turned again to the enthralling page. "The student should lay open
the theoracic cavity of the rabbit and dissect away the thymous gland
and other tissues which hide the origin of the great vessels; so as to
display the heart..."
Yearp, the vet, would show him how to do that.
iv
"His name's Benjy. He's a butterfly smut," said Jerrold.
The rabbit was quiet now. He sat in Anne's arms, couching, his forepaws
laid on her breast. She stooped and kissed his soft nose that went in
and out, pushing against her mouth, in a delicate palpitation. He was
white, with black ears and a black oval at the root of his tail. Two
wing-shaped patches went up from his nose like a moustache. That was his
butterfly smut.
"He _is_ sweet," she said.
Colin said it after her in his shrill child's voice: "He is sweet."
Colin had a habit of repeating what you said. It was his way of joining
in the conversation.
He stretched up his hand and stroked Benjy, and Anne felt the rabbit's
heart beat sharp and quick against her breast. A shiver went through
Benjy's body.
Anne kissed him again. Her heart swelled and shook with maternal
tenderness.
"Why does he tremble so?"
"He's frightened. Don't touch him, Col-Col."
Colin couldn't see an animal without wanting to stroke it. He put his
hands in his pockets to keep them out of temptation. By the way Jerrold
looked at him you saw how he loved him.
About Colin there was something beautiful and breakable. Dusk-white
face; little tidy nose and mouth; dark hair and eyes like the minnows
swimming under the green water. But Jerrold's face was strong; and he
had funny eyes that made you keep looking at him. They were blue. Not
tiresomely blue, blue all the time, like his mother's, but secretly and
surprisingly blue, a blue that flashed at you and hid again, moving
queerly in the set squareness of his face, presenting at every turn a
different Jerrold. He had a pleasing straight up and down nose, his one
constant feature. The nostrils slanted slightly upward, making shadows
there. You got to know these things after watching him attentively. Anne
loved his mouth best of all, cross one minute (only never with Colin),
sweet the next, tilted at the corners, ready for his laughter.
He stood close beside her in his white flannels, straight and slender.
He was looking at her, just as he looked at Colin.
"Do you like him?" he said.
"Who? Colin?"
"No. Benjy."
"I _love_ him."
"I'll give him to you if you'd like to have him."
"For my own? To keep?"
"Rather."
"Don't you want him?"
"Yes. But I'd like you to have him."
"Oh, Jerrold."
She knew he was giving her Benjy because her mother was dead.
"I've got the grey doe, and the fawn, and the lop-ear," he said.
"Oh--I _shall_ love him."
"You mustn't hold him too tight. And you must be careful not to touch
his stomach. If you squeeze him there he'll die."
"Yes. If you squeeze his stomach he'll die," Colin cried excitedly.
"I'll be ever so careful."
They put him down, and he ran violently round and round, drumming with
his hind legs on the floor of the shed, startling the does that couched,
like cats, among the lettuce leaves and carrots.
"When the little rabbits come half of them will be yours, because he'll
be their father."
"Oh--"
For the first time since Friday week Anne was happy. She loved the
rabbit, she loved little Colin. And more than anybody or anything she
loved Jerrold.
Yet afterwards, in her bed in the night nursery, when she thought of her
dead mother, she lay awake crying; quietly, so that nobody could hear.
v
It was Robert Fielding's birthday. Anne was to dine late that evening,
sitting beside him. He said that was his birthday treat.
Anne had made him a penwiper of green cloth with a large blue bead in
the middle for a knob. He was going to keep it for ever. He had no
candles on his birthday cake at tea, because there would have been too
many.
The big hall of the Manor was furnished like a room.
The wide oak staircase came down into it from a gallery that went all
around. They were waiting there for Mrs. Fielding who was always a
little late. That made you keep on thinking about her. They were
thinking about her now.
Up there a door opened and shut. Something moved along the gallery like
a large light, and Mrs. Fielding came down the stairs, slowly,
prolonging her effect. She was dressed in her old pearl-white gown. A
rope of pearls went round her neck and hung between her breasts. Roll
above roll of hair jutted out at the back of her head; across it, the
foremost curl rose like a comb, shining. Her eyes, intensely blue in her
milk-white face, sparkled between two dark wings of hair. Her mouth
smiled its enchanting and enchanted smile. She was aware that her
husband and John watched her from stair to stair; she was aware of their
men's eyes, darkening. Then suddenly she was aware of John's daughter.
Anne was coming towards her across the hall, drawn by the magic, by the
eyes, by the sweet flower smell that drifted (not lavender, not
lavender). She stood at the foot of the staircase looking up. The
heavenly thing swept down to her and she broke into a cry.
"Oh, you're beautiful. You're beautiful."
Mrs. Fielding stopped her progress.
"So are you, you little darling."
She stooped quickly and kissed her, holding her tight to her breast,
crushed down into the bed of the flower scent. Anne gave herself up,
caught by the sweetness and the beauty.
"You rogue," said Adeline. "At last I've got you."
She couldn't bear to be repulsed, to have anything about her, even a cat
or a dog, that had not surrendered.
vi
Every evening, soon after Colin's Nanna had tucked Anne up in her bed
and left her, the door of the night nursery would open, letting a light
in. When Anne saw the light coming she shut her eyes and burrowed under
the blankets, she knew it was Auntie Adeline trying to be a mother to
her. (You called them Auntie Adeline and Uncle Robert to please them,
though they weren't relations.)
Every night she would hear Aunt Adeline's feet on the floor and her
candle clattering on the chest of drawers, she would feel her hands
drawing back the blankets and her face bending down over her. The mouth
would brush her forehead. And she would lie stiff and still, keeping her
eyes tight shut.
To-night she heard voices at the door and somebody else's feet going
tip-toe behind Aunt Adeline's. Somebody else whispered "She's asleep."
That was Jerrold. Jerrold. She felt him standing beside his mother,
looking at her, and her eyelids fluttered; but she lay still.
"She isn't asleep at all," said Aunt Adeline. "She's shamming, the
little monkey."
Jerrold thought he knew why. He turned into the old nursery that was the
schoolroom now, and found Eliot there, examining a fly's leg under his
microscope. It was Eliot that he wanted..
"I say, you know, Mum's making a jolly mistake about that kid. Trying to
go on as if she was Anne's mother. You can see it makes her sick. It
would me, if my mother was dead."
Eliot looked as if he wasn't listening, absorbed in his fly's leg.
"Somebody's got to tell her."
"Are you going to," said Eliot, "or shall I?"
"Neither. I shall get Dad to. He'll do it best."
vii
Robert Fielding didn't do it all at once. He put it off till Adeline
gave him his chance. He found her alone in the library and she had begun
it.
"Robert, I don't know what to do about that child."
"Which child?"
"Anne. She's been here five weeks, and I've done everything I know, and
she hasn't shown me a scrap of affection. It's pretty hard if I'm to
house and feed the little thing and look after her like a mother and get
nothing. Nothing but half a cold little face to kiss night and morning.
It isn't good enough."
"For Anne?"
"For me, my dear. Trying to be a mother to somebody else's child who
doesn't love you, and isn't going to love you."
"Don't try then."
"Don't try?"
"Don't try and be a mother to her. That's what Anne doesn't like."
They had got as far as that when John Severn stood in the doorway. He
was retreating before their appearance of communion when she called him
back.
"Don't go, John. We want you. Here's Robert telling me not to be a
mother to Anne."
"And here's Adeline worrying because she thinks Anne isn't going to love
her."
Severn sat down, considering it.
"It takes time," he said.
She looked at him, smiling under lowered brows.
"Time to love me?"
"Time for Anne to love you. She--she's so desperately faithful."
The dressing-bell clanged from the belfry. Robert left them to finish a
discussion that he found embarrassing.
"I said I'd try to be a mother to her. I _have_ tried, John; but the
little thing won't let me."
"Don't try too hard. Robert's right. Don't--don't be a mother to her."
"What am I to be?"
"Oh, anything you like. A presence. A heavenly apparition. An impossible
ideal. Anything but that."
"Do you think she's going to hold out for ever?"
"Only against that. As long as she remembers. It puts her off."
"She doesn't object to Robert being a father to her."
"No. Because he's a better father than I am; and she knows it."
Adeline flushed. She understood the implication and was hurt,
unreasonably. He saw her unreasonableness and her pain.
"My dear Adeline, Anne's mother will always be Anne's mother. I was
never anywhere beside Alice. I've had to choose between the Government
of India and my daughter. You'll observe that I don't try to be a father
to Anne; and that, in consequence, Anne likes me. But she'll _love_
Robert."
"And 'like' me? If I don't try."
"Give her time. Give her time."
He rose, smiling down at her.
"You think I'm unreasonable?"
"The least bit in the world. For the moment."
"My dear John, if I didn't love your little girl I wouldn't care."
"Love her. Love her. She'll love you too, in her rum way. She's fighting
you now. She wouldn't fight if she didn't feel she was beaten. Nobody
could hold out against you long."
She looked at the clock.
"Heavens! I must go and dress."
She thought: "_He_ didn't hold out against me, poor dear, five minutes.
I suppose he'll always remember that I jilted him for Robert."
And now he wanted her to see that if Anne's mother would be always
Anne's mother, his wife would be always his wife. Was he desperately
faithful, too? Always?
How could he have been? It was characteristic of Alice Severn that when
she had to choose between her husband and her daughter she had chosen
Anne. It was characteristic of John that when he had to choose between
his wife and his Government, he had not chosen Alice. He must have had
adventures out in India, conducted with the discretion becoming in a
Commissioner and a Member of the Legislative Council, but adventures.
Perhaps he was going back to one of them.
Severn dressed hastily and went into the schoolroom where Anne sat
reading in her solitary hour between supper time and bed-time. He took
her on his knee, and she snuggled there, rubbing her head against his
shoulder. He thought of Adeline, teasing, teasing for the child's
caresses, and every time repulsed.
"Anne," he said, "don't you think you can love Auntie Adeline?"
Anne straightened herself. She looked at him with candid eyes. "I don't
know, Daddy, really, if I can."
"Can't you love her a little?"
"I--I would, if she wouldn't try--"
"Try?"
"To do like Mummy did."
Robert was right. He knew it, but he wanted to be sure.
Anne went on. "It's no use, you see, her trying. It only makes me think
of Mummy more."
"Don't you _want_ to think of her?"
"Yes. But I want to think by myself, and Auntie Adeline keeps on getting
in the way."
"Still, she's awfully kind to you, isn't she?"
"Awfully."
"And you mustn't hurt her feelings."
"Have I? I didn't mean to."
"You wouldn't if you loved her."
"_You_ haven't ever hurt her feelings, have you, Daddy?"
"No."
"Well, you see, it's because I keep on thinking about Mummy. I want her
back--I want her so awfully."
"I know, Anne, I know."
Anne's mind burrowed under, turning on its tracks, coming out suddenly.
"Do you love Auntie Adeline, Daddy?"
It was terrible, but he owned that he had brought it on himself.
"I can't say. I've known her such a long time; before you were born."
"Before you married Mummy!"
"Yes."
"Well, won't it do if I love Uncle Robert and Eliot and Colin? And
Jerrold?"
That night he said to Adeline, "I know who'll take my place when I'm
gone."
"Who? Robert?"
"No, Jerrold."
In another week he had sailed for India and Ambala.
* * * * *
viii
Jerrold was brave.
When Colin upset the schoolroom lamp Jerrold wrapped it in the
tablecloth and threw it out of the window just in time. He put the chain
on Billy, the sheep-dog, when he went mad and snapped at everybody. It
seemed odd that Jerrold should be frightened.
A minute ago he had been happy, rolling over and over on the grass,
shouting with laughter while Sandy, the Aberdeen, jumped on him,
growling his merry puppy's growl and biting the balled fists that pushed
him off.
They were all out on the lawn. Anne waited for Jerry to get up and take
her into Wyck, to buy chocolates.
Every time Jerrold laughed his mother laughed too, a throaty, girlish
giggle.
"I love Jerry's laugh," she said. "It's the nicest noise he makes."
Then, suddenly, she stopped it. She stopped it with a word.