Anne Severn and the Fieldings - May Sinclair
"If it was, would they be? Don't look at me as if I wasn't."
"I wasn't thinking of you, ducky... You might tell Pinkney to take _all_
those tea-things off the terrace and put them _back_ into the lounge."
ii
The beech-trees stood in a half ring at the top of the highest field.
Jerrold had come back. He and Anne sat in the bay of the beeches,
looking out over the hills.
Curve after curve of many-coloured hills, rolling together, flung off
from each other, an endless undulation. Rounded heads carrying a clump
of trees like a comb; long steep groins packed with tree-tops; raking
necks hog-maned with stiff plantations. Slopes that spread out fan-wise,
opened wide wings. An immense stretching and flattening of arcs up to
the straight blue wall on the horizon. A band of trees stood up there
like a hedge.
Calm, clean spaces emerging, the bright, sharp-cut pattern of the
fields; squares and fans and pointed triangles, close fitted; emerald
green of the turnips; yellow of the charlock lifted high and clear; red
brown and pink and purple of ploughed land and fallows; red gold of the
wheat and white green of the barley; shimmering in a wash of thin air.
Where Anne and Jerrold sat, green pastures, bitten smooth by the sheep,
flowed down below them in long ridges like waves. On the right the
bright canary coloured charlock brimmed the field. Its flat, vanilla and
almond scent came to them.
"What's Yorkshire like?"
"Not a patch on this place. I can't think what there is about it that
makes you feel so jolly happy."
"But you'd always be happy, Jerrold, anywhere."
"Not like that. I mean a queer, uncanny feeling that you sort of can't
make out."
"I know. I know... There's nothing on earth that gets you like the smell
of charlock."
Anne tilted up her nose and sniffed delicately.
"Fancy seeing this country suddenly for the first time," he said.
"There's such a lot of it. You wouldn't see it properly. It takes ages
just to tell one hill from another."
He looked at her. She could feel him meditating, considering.
"I say, I wonder what it would feel like seeing each other for the first
time."
"Not half so nice as seeing each other now. Why, we shouldn't remember
any of the jolly things we've done: together."
He had seen Maisie Durham for the first time. She wondered whether that
had made him think of it.
"No, but the effect might be rather stunning--I mean of seeing _you_."
"It wouldn't. And you'd be nothing but a big man with a face I rather
liked. I suppose I should like your face. We shouldn't _know_ each
other, Jerrold."
"No more we should. It would be like not knowing Dad or Mummy or Colin.
A thing you can't conceive."
"It would be like not knowing anything at all ... Of course, the best
thing would be both."
"Both?"
"Knowing each other and not knowing."
"You can't have it both ways," he said.
"Oh, can't you! You don't half know me as it is, and I don't half know
you. We might both do anything any day. Things that would make each
other jump."
"What sort of things?"
"That's the exciting part of it--we wouldn't know."
"I believe you _could_, Anne--make me jump."
"Wait till I get out to India."
"You're really going?"
"Really going. Daddy may send for me any day."
"I may be sent there. Then we'll go out together."
"Will Maisie Durham be going too?"
"O Lord no. Not with us. At least I hope not ... Poor little Maisie, I
was a beast to say that."
"Is she little?"
"No, rather big. But you think of her as little. Only I don't think of
her."
They stood up; they stood close; looking at each other, laughing. As he
laughed his eyes took her in, from head to feet, wondering, admiring.
Anne's face and body had the same forward springing look. In their very
stillness they somehow suggested movement. Her young breasts sprang
forwards, sharp pointed. Her eyes had no sliding corner glances. He was
for ever aware of Anne's face turning on its white neck to look at him
straight and full, her black-brown eyes shining and darkening and
shining under the long black brushes of her eyebrows. Even her nose
expressed movement, a sort of rhythm. It rose in a slender arch, raked
straight forward, dipped delicately and rose again in a delicately
questing tilt. This tilt had the delightful air of catching up and
shortening the curl of her upper lip. The exquisite lower one sprang
forward, sharp and salient from the little dent above her innocent,
rounded chin. Its edge curled slightly forward in a line firm as ivory
and fine as the edge of a flower. As long as he lived he would remember
the way of it.
And she, she was aware of his body, slender and tense under his white
flannels. It seemed to throb with the power it held in, prisoned in the
smooth, tight muscles. His eyes showed the colour of dark hyacinths, set
in his clear, sun-browned skin. He smiled down at her, and his mouth and
little fawn brown moustache followed the tilted shadow of his nostrils.
Suddenly her whole body quivered as if his had touched it. And when she
looked at him she had the queer feeling that she saw him for the first
time. Never before like that. Never before.
But to him she was the same Anne. He knew her face as he knew his
mother's face or Colin's. He knew, he remembered all her ways.
And this was not what he wanted. He wanted some strange wonder and
excitement; he wanted to find it in Anne and in nobody but Anne, and he
couldn't find it. He wanted to be in love with Anne and he wasn't. She
was too near him, too much a part of him, too well-known, too
well-remembered. She made him restless and impatient, looking, looking
for the strangeness, the mystery he wanted and couldn't find.
If only he could have seen her suddenly for the first time.
iii
It was extraordinary how happy it made her to be with Aunt Adeline,
walking slowly, slowly, with her round the garden, stretched out beside
her on the terrace, following her abrupt moves from the sun into the
shade and back again; or sitting for hours with her in the big darkened
bedroom when Adeline had one of the bad headaches that attacked her now,
brushing her hair, and putting handkerchiefs soaked in eau-de-cologne on
her hot forehead.
Extraordinary, because this inactivity did violence to Anne's nature;
besides, Auntie Adeline behaved as if you were uninteresting and
unimportant, not attending to a word you said. Yet her strength lay in
her inconsistency. One minute her arrogance ignored you and the next she
came humbly and begged for your caresses; she was dependent, like a
child, on your affection. Anne thought that pathetic. And there was
always her fascination. That was absolute; above logic and morality,
irrefutable as the sweetness of a flower. Everybody felt it, even the
servants whom she tormented with her incalculable wants. Jerrold and
Colin, even Eliot, now that he was grown-up, felt it. As for Uncle
Robert he was like a young man in the beginning of first love.
Adeline judged people by their attitude to her. Anne, whether she
listened to her or not, was her own darling. Her husband and John Severn
were adorable, Major Markham of Wyck Wold and Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicote,
who admired her, were perfect dears, Sir John Corbett of Underwoods, who
didn't, was that silly old thing. Resist her and she felt no mean
resentment; you simply dropped out of her scene. Thus her world was
peopled with her adorers.
Anne couldn't have told you whether she felt the charm on its own
account, or whether the pleasure of being with her was simply part of
the blessed state of being at Wyck-on-the-Hill. Enough that Auntie
Adeline was there where Uncle Robert and Eliot and Colin and Jerrold
were; she belonged to them; she belonged to the house and garden; she
stood with the flowers.
Anne was walking with her now, gathering roses for the house. The garden
was like a room shut in by the clipped yew walls, and open to the sky.
The sunshine poured into it; the flagged walks were pale with heat.
Anne's cat, Nicky, was there, the black Persian that Jerrold had given
her last birthday. He sat in the middle of the path, on his haunches,
his forelegs straight and stiff, planted together. His face had a look
of sweet and solemn meditation.
"Oh Nicky, oh you darling!" she said.
When she stroked him he got up, arching his back and carrying his tail
in a flourishing curve, like one side of a lyre; he rubbed against her
ankles. A white butterfly flickered among the blue larkspurs; when Nicky
saw it he danced on his hind legs, clapping his forepaws as he tried to
catch it. But the butterfly was too quick for him. Anne picked him up
and he flattened himself against her breast, butting under her chin with
his smooth round head in his loving way.
And as Adeline wouldn't listen to her Anne talked to the cat.
"Clever little thing, he sees everything, all the butterflies and the
dicky-birds and the daddy-long-legs. Don't you, my pretty one?"
"What's the good of talking to the cat?" said Adeline. "He doesn't
understand a word you say."
"He doesn't understand the words, he says, but he feels the feeling ...
He was the most beautiful of all the pussies, he was, he was."
"Nonsense. You're throwing yourself away on that absurd animal, for all
the affection you'll get out of him."
"I shall get out just what I put in. He expects to be talked to."
"So do I."
"I've been trying to talk to you all afternoon and you won't listen. And
you don't know how you can hurt Nicky's feelings. He's miserable if I
don't tell him he's a beautiful pussy the minute he comes into my room.
He creeps away under the washstand and broods. We take these darling
things and give them little souls and hearts, and we've no business to
hurt them. And they've such a tiny time to live, too... Look at him,
sitting up to be carried, like a child."
"Oh wait, my dear, till you _have_ a child. You ridiculous baby."
"Oh come, Jerrold's every bit as gone on him."
"You're a ridiculous pair," said Adeline.
"If Nicky purred round _your_ legs, you'd love him, too," said Anne.
iv
Uncle Robert was not well. He couldn't eat the things he used to eat; he
had to have fish or chicken and milk and beef-tea and Benger's food.
Jerrold said it was only indigestion and he'd be all right in a day or
two. But you could see by the way he walked now that there was something
quite dreadfully wrong. He went slowly, slowly, as if every step tired
him out.
"Sorry, Jerrold, to be so slow."
But Jerrold wouldn't see it.
They had gone down to the Manor Farm, he and Jerrold and Anne. He wanted
to show Jerrold the prize stock and what heifers they could breed from
next year. "I should keep on with the short horns. You can't do better,"
he said.
Then they had gone up the fields to see if the wheat was ready for
cutting yet. And he had kept on telling Jerrold what crops were to be
sown after the wheat, swedes to come first, and vetch after the swedes,
to crowd out the charlock.
"You'll have to keep the charlock down, Jerrold, or it'll kill the
crops. You'll have the devil of a job." He spoke as though Jerrold had
the land already and he was telling him the things he wanted him to
remember.
They came back up the steep pasture, very slowly, Uncle Robert leaning
on Jerrold's arm. They sat down to rest under the beech-trees at the
top. They looked at the landscape, the many-coloured hills, rolling
together, flung off from each other, an endless undulation.
"Beautiful country. Beautiful country," said Uncle Robert as if he had
never seen it before.
"You should see _my_ farm," Anne said. "It's as flat as a chess-board
and all squeezed up by the horrid town. Grandpapa sold a lot of it for
building. I wish I could sell the rest and buy a farm in the Cotswolds.
Do you ever have farms to sell, Uncle Robert?"
"Well, not to sell. To let, perhaps, if a tenant goes. You can have the
Barrow Farm when old Sutton dies. He can't last long. But," he went on,
"you'll find it very different farming here."
"How different?"
"Well, in some of those fields you'll have to fight the charlock all the
time. And in some the soil's hard. And in some you've got to plough
across the sun because of the slope of the land... Remember, Jerrold,
Anne's to have the Barrow Farm, if she wants it, when Sutton dies."
Jerrold laughed. "My dear father, I shall be in India."
"I'll remind you, Uncle Robert."
Uncle Robert smiled. "I'll tell Barker to remember," he said. Barker was
his agent.
It was as if he were thinking that when Sutton died he might not be
there. And he had said that Sutton wouldn't last long. Anne looked at
Jerrold. But Jerrold's face was happy. He didn't see it.
They left Uncle Robert in the library, drinking hot water for tea.
"Jerrold," Anne said, "I'm sure Uncle Robert's ill."
"Oh no. It's only indigestion. He'll be as right as rain in a day or
two."
V
Anne's cat Nicky was dying.
Jerrold struggled with his sleep, pushing it back and back before him,
trying to remember.
There was something; something that had hung over him the night before.
He had been afraid to wake and find it there. Something--.
Now he remembered.
Nicky was dying and Anne was unhappy. That was what it was; that was
what he had hated to wake to, Anne's unhappiness and the little cat.
There was nothing else. Nothing wrong with Daddy--only indigestion. He
had had it before.
The room was still dark, but the leaded squares of the window lattices
barred a sky pale with dawn. In her room across the passage Anne would
be sitting up with Nicky. He remembered now that he had to get up early
to make her some tea.
He lit a candle and went to her door to see if she were still awake. Her
voice answered his gentle tapping, "Who's there?"
"Me. Jerrold. May I come in?"
"Yes. But don't bring the light in. He's sleeping."
He put out the candle and made his way to her. Against the window panes
he could see the outline of her body sitting upright in a chair. She
glimmered there in her white wrapper and he made out something black
stretched straight and still in her lap. He sat down in the window-seat
and watched.
The room was mysterious, full of dusk air that thinned as the dawn
stirred in it palpably, waking first Anne's white bed, a strip of white
cornice and a sheet of watery looking-glass. Nicky's saucer of milk
gleamed white on the dark floor at Anne's feet. The pale ceiling
lightened; and with a sliding shimmer of polished curves the furniture
rose up from the walls. Presently it stood clear, wine-coloured, shining
in the strange, pure light.
And in the strange, pure light he saw Anne, in her white wrapper with
the great rope of her black hair, plaited, hanging down her back. The
little black cat lay in her white lap, supported by her arm.
She smiled at Jerrold strangely. She spoke and her voice was low and
strange.
"He's asleep, Jerry. He kept on looking at me and mewing. Then he tried
to climb into my lap and couldn't. And I took him up and he was quiet
then. I think he was pleased that I took him ... I've given him the
morphia pill and I don't think he's in pain. He'll die in his sleep."
"Yes. He'll die in his sleep."
He hardly knew what he was saying. He was looking at Anne, and it was as
if now, at last, he saw her for the first time. This, this was what he
wanted, this mysterious, strangely smiling Anne, this white Anne with
the great plaited rope of black hair, who belonged to the night and the
dawn.
"I'm going to get you some tea," he said.
He went down to the kitchen where everything had been left ready for him
over-night. He lit the gas-ring and made the tea and brought it to her
with cake and bread and butter on a little tray. He set it down beside
her on the window-seat. But Anne could neither eat nor drink. She cried
out to him.
"Oh, Jerry, look at him. Do you think he's dying now?"
He knelt down and looked. Nicky's eyes were two slits of glaze between
half-shut lids. His fur stood up on his bulging, frowning forehead. His
little, flat cat's face was drawn to a point with a look of helpless
innocence and anguish. His rose-leaf tongue showed between his teeth as
he panted.
"Yes. I'm awfully afraid he's dying."
They waited half an hour, an hour. They never knew how long. Once he
said to her, "Would you rather I went or stayed?" And she said, "Stayed,
if you don't mind."
Through the open window, from the fields of charlock warm in the risen
sun, the faint, smooth scent came to them.
Then Nicky began to cough with a queer quacking sound. Jerrold went to
her, upsetting the saucer as he came.
"It's his milk," she said. "He couldn't drink it." And with that she
burst into tears.
"Oh, Anne, don't cry. Don't cry, Anne darling."
He put his arm round her. He laid his hand on her hair and stroked it.
He stooped suddenly and kissed her face; gently, quietly, because of the
dead thing in her lap.
It was as if he had kissed her for the first time.
For one instant she had her arm round his neck and clung to him, hiding
her face on his shoulder. Then suddenly she loosed herself and stood up
before him, holding out the body of the little cat.
"Take him away, please, Jerry, so that I don't see him."
He took him away.
All day the sense of kissing her remained with him, and all night, with
the scent of her hair, the sweet rose-scent of her flesh, the touch of
her smooth rose-leaf skin. That was Anne, that strangeness, that beauty
of the clear, cold dawn, that scent, that warm sweet smoothness, that
clinging of passionate arms. And he had kissed her gently, quietly, as
you kiss a child, as you kiss a young, small animal.
He wanted to kiss her close, pressing down on her mouth, deep into her
sweet flesh; to hold her body tight, tight, crushed in his arms. If it
hadn't been for Nicky that was the way he would have kissed her.
To-morrow, to-morrow, he would kiss Anne that way.
IV
ROBERT
i
But when to-morrow came he did not kiss her. He was annoyed with Anne
because she insisted on taking a gloomy view of his father's illness.
The doctors couldn't agree about it. Dr. Ransome of Wyck said it was
gastritis. Dr. Harper of Cheltenham said it was colitis. He had had that
before and had got better. Now he was getting worse, fast. For the last
three days he couldn't keep down his chicken and fish. Yesterday not
even his milk. To-day, not even his ice-water. Then they both said it
was acute gastritis.
"He's never been like this before, Jerrold."
"No. But that doesn't mean he isn't going to get better. People with
acute gastritis do get better. It's enough to make him die, everybody
insisting that he's going to. And it's rot sending for Eliot."
That was what Anne had done.
Eliot had written to her from London:
10 Welbeck St., _Sept. 35th, 1910._
My dear Anne:
I wish you'd tell me how Father really is. Nobody but you has
any intelligence that matters. Between Mother's wails and
Jerrold's optimism I don't seem to be getting the truth. If it's
serious I'll come down at once.
Always yours,
Eliot.
And Anne had answered:
My dear Eliot,
It _is_ serious. Dr. Ransome and Dr. Harper say so. They think
now it's acute gastritis. I wish you'd come down. Jerrold is
heart-breaking. He won't see it; because he couldn't bear it if
he did. I know Auntie wants you.
Always very affectionately yours,
Anne.
She addressed the letter to Dr. Eliot Fielding, for Eliot had taken his
degree.
And on that to-morrow of Jerrold's Eliot had come. Jerrold told him he
was a perfect idiot, rushing down like that, as if Daddy hadn't an hour
to live.
"You'll simply terrify him," he said. "He hasn't got a chance with all
you people grousing and croaking round him."
And he went off to play in the lawn tennis tournament at Medlicote as a
protest against the general pessimism. His idea seemed to be that if he,
Jerrold, could play in a lawn tennis tournament, his father couldn't be
seriously ill.
"It's perfectly awful of Jerrold," his mother said. "I can't make him
out. He adores his father, yet he behaves as if he hadn't any feeling."
She and Anne were sitting in the lounge after luncheon, waiting for
Eliot to come from his father's room.
"Didn't you _tell_ him, Anne?"
"I did everything I know.... But darling, he isn't unfeeling. He does it
because he can't bear to think Uncle Robert won't get better. He's
trying to make himself believe he will. I think he does believe it. But
if he stayed away from the tournament that would mean he didn't."
"If only _I_ could. But I must. I _must_ believe it if I'm not to go
mad. I don't know what I shall do if he doesn't get better. I can't live
without him. It's been so perfect, Anne. It can't come to an end like
this. It can't happen. It would be too cruel."
"It would," Anne said. But she thought: "It just will happen. It's
happening now."
"Here's Eliot," she said.
Eliot came down the stairs. Adeline went to him.
"Oh Eliot, what do you think of him?"
Eliot put her off. "I can't tell you yet."
"You think he's very bad?"
"Very."
"But you don't think there isn't any hope?"
"I can't tell yet. There may be. He wants you to go to him. Don't talk
much to him. Don't let him talk. And don't, whatever you do, let him
move an inch."
Adeline went upstairs. Anne and Eliot were alone. "You _can_ tell," she
said. "You don't think there's any hope."
"I don't. There's something quite horribly wrong. His temperature's a
hundred and three."
"Is that bad?"
"Very."
"I do wish Jerry hadn't gone."
"So do I."
"It'll be worse for him, Eliot, than for any of us when he knows."
"I know. But he's always been like that, as long as I can remember. He
simply can't stand trouble. It's the only thing he funks. And his
funking it wouldn't matter if he'd stand and face it. But he runs away.
He's running away now. Say what you like, it's a sort of cowardice."
"It's his only fault."
"I know it is. But it's a pretty serious one, Anne. And he'll have to
pay for it. The world's chock full of suffering and all sorts of
horrors, and you can't go turning your back to them as Jerrold does
without paying for it. Why, he won't face anything that's even a little
unpleasant. He won't listen if you try to tell him. He won't read a book
that hasn't a happy ending. He won't go to a play that isn't a comedy...
It's an attitude I can't understand. I don't like horrors any more than
he does; but when I hear about them I want to go straight where they are
and do something to stop them. That's what I chose my profession for."
"I know. Because you're so sorry. So sorry. But Jerry's sorry too. So
sorry that he can't bear it."
"But he's got to bear it. There it is and he's got to take it. He's only
making things worse for himself by holding out and refusing. Jerrold
will never be any good till he _has_ taken it. Till he's suffered
damnably."
"I don't want him to suffer. I don't want it. I can't bear him to bear
it."
"He must. He's got to."
"I'd do anything to save him. But I can't."
"You can't. And you mustn't try to. It would be the best thing that
could happen to him."
"Oh no, not to Jerry."
"Yes. To Jerry. If he's ever to be any good. You don't want him to be a
moral invalid, do you?"
"No... Oh Eliot, that's Uncle Robert's door."
Upstairs the door opened and shut and Adeline came to the head of the
stairs.
"Oh Eliot, come quick----"
Eliot rushed upstairs. And Anne heard Adeline sobbing hysterically and
crying out to him.
"I can't--I can't. I can not bear it!"
She saw her trail off along the gallery to her room; she heard her lock
herself in. She had every appearance of running away from something.
From something she could not bear. Half an hour passed before Eliot came
back to Anne.
"What was it?" she said.
"What I thought. Gastric ulcer. He's had a haemorrhage."
That was what Aunt Adeline had run away from.
"Look here, Anne, I've got to send Scarrott in the car for Ransome. Then
he'll have to go on to Cheltenham to fetch Colin."
"Colin?" This was the end then.
"Yes. He'd better come. And I want you to do something. I want you to
drive over to Medlicote and bring Jerrold back. It's beastly for you.
But you'll do it, won't you?"
"I'll do anything."
It was the beastliest thing she had ever had to do, but she did it.
From where she drew up in the drive at Medlicote she could see the
tennis courts. She could see Jerrold playing in the men's singles. He
stood up to the net, smashing down the ball at the volley; his back was
turned to her as he stood.
She heard him shout. She heard him laugh. She saw him turn to come up
the court, facing her.
And when he saw her, he knew.
ii
He had waited ten minutes in the gallery outside his father's room.
Eliot had asked Anne to go in and help him while Jerrold stood by the
door to keep his mother out. She was no good, Eliot said. She lost her
head just when he wanted her to do things. You could have heard her all
over the house crying out that she couldn't bear it.
She opened her door and looked out. When she saw Jerrold she came to
him, slowly, supporting herself by the gallery rail. Her eyes were sore
with crying and there was a flushed thickening about the edges of her
mouth.