Anne Severn and the Fieldings - May Sinclair
"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 do _not_ believe. 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're _not_," 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.
"We'll have to sit tight till it stops," he said.
Silence again, long, inveterate, dangerous. Every now and then Anne
coughed, the short, hard cough that hurt and frightened him. He knew he
ought to leave her; every minute increased their danger. But he couldn't
go. He felt that, after all they might have done and hadn't done, heaven
had some scheme of compensation in which it owed them this moment.
She turned from him coughing, and that sign of her weakness, the sight
of her thin shoulders shaking filled him with pity that was passion
itself. He thought of the injustice life had heaped on Anne's innocence;
of the cruelty that had tracked her and hunted her down; of his own
complicity with her suffering. He thought of his pity for Maisie as
treachery to Anne, of his honour as cowardice. Instead of piling up wall
after wall, he ought never to have let anything come between him and
Anne. Not even Maisie. Not even his honour. His honour belonged to Anne
far more than to Maisie. The rest had been his own blundering folly, and
he had no right to let Anne be punished for it.
An hour ago the walls had stood solid between them. Now a furious
impulse seized him to tear them down and get through to her. This time
he would hold her and never let her go.
His thoughts went the way his passion went. Then suddenly she turned and
they looked at each other and he thought no more. All his thoughts went
down in the hot rushing darkness of his blood.
"Anne," he said, "Anne"--His voice sounded like a cry.
They stood up suddenly and were swept together; he held her tight, shut
in his arms, his body straining to her. They clung to each other as if
only by clinging they could stand against the hot darkness that drowned
them; and the more they clung the more it came over them, wave after
wave.
Then in the darkness he heard her crying to him to let her go.
"Don't make me, Jerrold, don't make me."
"Yes. Yes."
"No. Oh, why did we ever come here?"
He pressed her closer and she tried to push him off with weak hands that
had once been strong. He felt her breakable in his arms, and utterly
defenceless.
"I can't," she cried. "I should feel as if Maisie were there and looking
at us.... Don't make me."
Suddenly he let her go.
He was beaten by the sheer weakness of her struggle. He couldn't fight
for his flesh, like a brute, against that helplessness.
"If I go, you'll stay here till the rain stops?"
"Yes. I'm sorry, Jerry. You'll get so wet."
That made him laugh. And, laughing, he left her. Then tears came,
cutting through his eyelids like blood from a dry wound. They mixed with
the rain and blinded him.
And Anne sat on the little grey bed in her shelter and stared out at the
rain and cried.
XIX
ANNE AND ELIOT
i
She knew what she would do now.
She would go away and never see Jerrold again, never while their youth
lasted, while they could still feel. She would go out of England, so far
away that they couldn't meet. She would go to Canada and farm.
All night she lay awake with her mind fixed on the one thought of going
away. There was nothing else to be done, no room for worry or
hesitation. They couldn't hold out any longer, she and Jerrold, strained
to the breaking-point, tortured with the sight of each other.
As she lay awake there came to her the peace that comes with all immense
and clear decisions. Her mind would never be torn and divided any more.
And towards morning she fell asleep.
She woke dulled and bewildered. Her mind struggled with a sense of
appalling yet undefined disaster. Something had happened overnight, she
couldn't remember what. Something had happened. No. Something was going
to happen. She tried to fall back into sleep, fighting against the
return of consciousness; it came on, wave after wave, beating her down.
Now she remembered. She was going away. She would never see Jerrold
again. She was going to Canada.
The sharp, clear name made the whole thing real and irrevocable. It was
something that would actually happen soon. To her. She was going. And
when she had gone she would not come back.
She got up and looked out of the window. She saw the green field sloping
down to the river and the road, and beyond the road, to the right, the
rise of the Manor fields and the belt of firs. And in her mind, more
real than they, the Manor house, the garden, and the many-coloured hills
beyond, rolling, curve after curve, to the straight, dark-blue horizon.
The scene that held her childhood, all her youth, all her happiness;
that had drawn her back, again and again, in memory and in dreams,
making her heart ache. How could she leave it? How could she live with
that pain?
If she was going to be a coward, if she was going to be afraid of
pain--How was she to escape it, how was Jerrold to escape? If she stayed
on they would break down together and give in; they would be lovers
again, and again Maisie's sweet, wounding face would come between them;
they could never get away from it; and in the end their remorse would be
as unbearable as their separation. She couldn't drag Jerrold through
that agony again.
No. Life wasn't worth living if you were a coward and afraid. And under
all her misery Anne had still the sense that life was somehow worth
living even if it made you miserable. Life was either your friend or
your enemy. If it was your friend you served it; if it was your enemy
you stood up to it and refused to let it beat you, and your enemy became
your servant. Whatever happened, your work remained. Still there would
be ploughing and sowing, and reaping and ploughing again. Still the
earth waited. She thought of the unknown Canadian earth that waited for
her tilling.
Jerrold was not a coward. He was not afraid--well, only afraid of the
people he loved getting ill and dying; and she was not going to get ill
and die.
She would have to tell him. She would go to him in the fields and tell
him.
But before she did that she must make the thing irrevocable. So Anne
wrote to the steamship company, booking her passage in two weeks' time;
she wrote to Eliot, asking him to call at the company's office and see
if he could get her a decent cabin. She went to Wyck and posted her
letters, and then to the Far Acres field where Jerrold was watching the
ploughing.
They met at the "headland." They would be safe there on the ploughed
land, in the open air.
"What is it, Anne?" he said.
"Nothing. I want to talk to you."
"All right."
Her set face, her hard voice gave him a premonition of disaster.
"It's simply this," she said. "What happened yesterday mustn't happen
again."
"It shan't. I swear it shan't. I was a beast. I lost my head."
"Yes, but it may happen again. We can't go on like this, Jerry. The
strain's too awful."
"You mean you can't trust me."
"I can't trust myself. And it isn't fair to you."
"Oh, me. That doesn't matter."
"Well, then, say _I_ matter. It's the same for me. I'm never going to
let that happen again. I'm going away."
"Going away--"
"Yes. And I'm not coming back this time."
His voice struggled in his throat. Something choked him. He couldn't
speak.
"I'm going to Canada in a fortnight."
"Good God! You can't go to Canada."
"I can. I've booked my passage."
His face was suddenly sallow white, ghastly. His heart heaved and he
felt sick.
"Nothing on earth will stop me."
"Won't Maisie stop you? If you do this she'll know. Can't you see how it
gives us away?"
"No. It'll only give _me_ away. If Maisie asks me why I'm going I shall
tell her I'm in love with you, and that I can't stand it; that I'm too
unhappy. I'd rather she thought I cared for you than that she should
think you cared for me."
"She'll think it all the same."
"Then I shall have to lie. I must risk it.... Oh Jerry, don't look so
awful! I've got to go. We've settled it that we can't go on deceiving
her, and we aren't going to make her unhappy. There's nothing else to be
done."
"Except to bear it."
"And how long do you suppose that'll last? We _can't_ bear it. Look at
it straight. It's all so horribly simple. If we were beasts and only
thought of ourselves and didn't think of Maisie it wouldn't matter to us
what we did. But we can't be beasts. We can't lie to Maisie, and we
can't tell her the truth. We can't go on seeing each other without
wanting each other--unbearably--and we can't go on wanting each other
without--some day--giving in. It comes back the first minute we're
alone. And we don't mean to give in. So we mustn't see each other,
that's all. Can you tell me one other thing I can do?"
"But why should it be _you_? Why should you get the worst of it?"
"Because one of us has got to clear out. It can't be you, so it's got to
be me. And going away isn't the worst of it. It'll be worse for you
sticking on here where everything reminds you--At least I shall have new
things to keep my mind off it."
"Nothing will keep your mind off it. You'll fret yourself to death."
"No, I shan't. I shall have too much to do. You're _not_ to be sorry for
me, Jerrold."
"But you're giving up everything. The Barrow Farm. The place you wanted.
You won't have a thing."
"I don't want 'things.' It's easier to chuck them than to hang on to them
when they'll remind me.... Really, if I could see any other way I'd take
it."
"But you can't go. You're not fit to go. You're ill."
"I shall be all right when I get there."
"But what do you think you're going to _do_ in Canada? It's not as if
you'd got anything to go for."
"I shall find something. I shall work on somebody's ranch first and
learn Canadian farming. Then I shall look out for land and buy it. I've
got stacks of money. All Grandpapa Everitt's, and the money for the
farm. Stacks. I shall get on all right."
"When did you think of all this?"
"Last night."
"I see. I made you."
"No. I made myself. After all, it's the easiest way."
"For you, or me?"
"For both of us. Honestly, it's the only straight thing. I ought to have
done it long ago."
"It means never seeing each other again. You'll never come back."
"Never while we're young. When we're both old, too old to feel any more,
then I'll come back some day, and we'll be friends."
And still his will beat against hers in vain, till at last he stopped;
sick and exhausted.
They went together down the ploughed land into the pastures, and through
the pastures to the mill water. In the opposite field they could see the
brown roof and walls of the shelter.
"What are you going to plant in the Seven Acres field?"
"Barley," he said.
"You can't. It was barley last year."
"Was it?"
They were silent then. Jerrold struggled with his feeling of deadly
sickness. Anne couldn't trust herself to speak. At the Barrow Farm gate
they parted.
ii
Maisie's eyes looked at him across the table, wondering. Her little
drooping mouth was half open with anxiety, as if any minute she was
going to say something. The looking-glass had shown him his haggard and
discoloured face, a face to frighten her. He tried to eat, but the sight
and smell of hot roast mutton sickened him.
"Oh, Jerrold, can't you eat it?"
"No, I can't. I'm sorry."
"There's some cold chicken. Will you have that?"
"No, thanks."
"Try and eat something."
"I can't. I feel sick."
"Don't sit up, then. Go and lie down."
"I will if you don't mind."
He went to his room and was sick. He lay down on his bed and tried to
sleep. His head ached violently and every movement made him heave; he
couldn't sleep; he couldn't lie still; and presently he got up and went
out again, up to the Far Acres field to the ploughing. He couldn't
overcome the physical sickness of his misery, but he could force himself
to move, to tramp up and down the stiff furrows, watching the tractor;
he kept himself going by the sheer strength of his will. The rattle and
clank of the tractor ground into his head, making it ache again. He was
stunned with great blows of noise and pain, so that he couldn't think.
He didn't want to think; he was glad of the abominable sensations that
stopped him. He went from field to field, avoiding the boundaries of the
Barrow Farm lest he should see Anne.
When the sun set and the land darkened he went home.
At dinner he tried to eat, sickened again, and leaned back in his chair;
he forced himself to sit through the meal, talking to Maisie. When it
was over he went to bed and lay awake till the morning.
The next day passed in the same way, and the next night; and always he
was aware of Maisie's sweet face watching him with frightened eyes and
an unuttered question. He was afraid to tell her that Anne was going
lest she should put down his illness to its true cause.
And on the third day, when he heard her say she was going to see Anne,
he told her.
"Oh, Jerrold, she can't really mean it."
"She does mean it. I said everything I could to stop her, but it wasn't
any good. She's taken her passage."
"But why--_why_ should she want to go?"
"I can't tell you why. You'd better ask her."
"Has anything happened to upset her?"
"What on earth should happen?"
"Oh, I don't know. When did she tell you this?"
He hesitated. It was dangerous to lie when Maisie might get the truth
from Anne.
"The day before yesterday."
Maisie's eyes were fixed on him, considering it. He knew she was saying
to herself, "That was the day you came home so sick and queer."
"Jerry--did you say anything to upset her?"
"No."
"I can't think how she could want to go."
"Nor I. But she's going."
"I shall go down and see if I can't make her stay."
"Do. But you won't if I can't," he said.
iii
Maisie went down early in the afternoon to see Anne.
She couldn't think how Anne could want to leave the Barrow Farm house
when she had just got into it, when they had all made it so nice for
her; she couldn't think how she could leave them when she cared for
them, when she knew how they cared for her.
"You _do_ care for us, Anne?"
"Oh yes, I care."
"And you _wanted_ the farm. I can't understand your going just when
you've got it, when you've settled, in and when Jerrold took all that
trouble to make it nice for you. It isn't like you, Anne."
"I know. It must seem awful of me; but I can't help it, Maisie darling.
I've _got_ to go. You mustn't try and stop me. It only makes it harder."
"Then it _is_ hard? You don't really want to go?"
"Of course I don't. But I must."
Maisie meditated, trying to make it out.
"Is it--is it because you're unhappy?"
Anne didn't answer.
"You _are_ unhappy. You've been unhappy ever so long. Can't we do
anything?"
"No. Nobody can do anything."
"It isn't," said Maisie at last, "anything to do with Jerrold?"
"You wouldn't ask me that, Maisie, if you didn't know it was."
"Perhaps I do know. Do you care for him very much, Anne?"
"Yes, I care for him, very much. And I can't stand it."
"It's so bad that you've got to go away?"
"It's so bad that I've got to go away."
"That's very brave of you."
"Or very cowardly."
"No. You couldn't be a coward.... Oh, Anne darling, I'm so sorry."
"Don't be sorry. It's my own fault. I'd no business to get into this
state. Don't let's talk about it, Maisie."
"All right, I won't. But I'm sorry.... Only one thing. It--it hasn't
made you hate me, has it?"
"You know it hasn't."
"Oh, Anne, you _are_ beautiful."
"I'm anything but, if you only knew."
She had got beyond the pain of Maisie's goodness, Maisie's trust. No
possible blow from Maisie's mind could hurt her now. Nothing mattered.
Maisie's trust and goodness didn't matter, since she had done all she
knew; since she was going away; since she would never see Jerrold again,
never till their youth was gone and they had ceased to feel.
iv
That afternoon Eliot arrived at Wyck Manor. His coming was his answer to
Anne's letter.
He went over to the Barrow Farm about five o'clock when Anne's work
would be done. Anne was still out, and he waited till she should come
back.
As he waited he looked round her room. This, he thought, was the place
that Anne had set her heart on having for her own; it was the home they
had made for her. Something terrible must have happened before she could
bring herself to leave it. She must have been driven to the
breaking-point. She was broken. Jerrold must have driven and broken her.
He heard her feet on the flagged path, on the threshold of the house;
she stood in the doorway of the room, looking at him, startled.
"Eliot, what are you doing there?"
"Waiting for you. You must have known I'd come."
"To say good-bye? That was nice of you."
"No, not to say good-bye. I should come to see you off if you were
going."
"But I am going. You've seen about my berth, haven't you?"
"No, I haven't. We've got to talk about it first."
He looked dead tired. She remembered that she was his hostess.
"Have you had tea?"
"No. You're going to give me some. Then we'll talk about it."
"Talking won't be a bit of good."
"I think it may be," he said.
She rang the bell and they waited. She gave him his tea, and while they
ate and drank he talked to her about the weather and the land, and about
his work and the book he had just finished on Amoebic Dysentery, and
about Colin and how well he was now. Neither of them spoke of Jerrold or
of Maisie.
When the tea things were cleared away he leaned back and looked at her
with his kind, deep-set, attentive eyes. She loved Eliot's eyes, and his
queer, clever face that was so like and so unlike his father's, so
utterly unlike Jerrold's.
"You needn't tell me why you're going," he said at last. "I've seen
Jerrold."
"Did he tell you?"
"No. You've only got to look at him to see."
"Do you think Maisie sees?"
"I can't tell you. She isn't stupid. She must wonder why you're going
like this."
"I told her. I told her I was in love with Jerrold."
"What did she say?"
"Nothing. Only that she was sorry. I told her so that she mightn't think
he cared for me. She needn't know that."