Anne Severn and the Fieldings - May Sinclair
"Whether you care for me at all. Not much, of course, but just enough
not to hate marrying me."
Anne turned her face full on him and looked at him with her innocent,
candid eyes. And all she said was, "You _do_ know about Jerrold, don't
you?"
"Oh God, yes. I know all about him."
"He's why I can't."
"I tell you, I know all about Jerrold. He isn't a good enough reason."
"Good enough for me."
"Not unless--" But he couldn't say it.
"Not unless he cares for me. That's why you're asking me, then, because
you know he doesn't."
"Well, it wouldn't be much good if I knew he did."
"Eliot, it's awful of me to talk about it, as if he'd said he did. He
never said a word. He never will."
"I'm afraid he won't, Anne."
"Don't imagine I ever thought he would. He never did anything to make me
think it for a minute, really."
"Are you quite sure he didn't?"
"Quite sure. I made it all up out of my head. My silly head. I don't
care what you think of me so long as you don't think it was Jerry's
fault. I should go on caring for him whatever he did or didn't do."
"I know you would. But it's possible--"
"To care for two people and marry one of them, no matter which? It isn't
possible for me. If I can't have the person I want I won't have
anybody."
"It isn't wise, Anne. I tell you I could make you care for me. I know
all about you. I know how you think and how you feel. I understand you
better than Jerrold does. You'd be happy with me and you'd be safe."
"It's no use. I'd rather be unhappy and in danger if it was with
Jerrold."
"You'll be unhappy and in danger without him."
"I don't care. Besides, I shan't be. I shall work. You'll work, too.
It'll be so exciting that you'll soon forget all about me."
"You know I shan't. And I'll never give you up, unless Jerrold gets
you."
"Eliot--I only told you about Jerrold, because I thought you ought to
know. So that you mightn't think it was anything in you."
"It isn't something in me, then? Tell me--if it hadn't been for Jerry,
do you think you might have cared for me?"
"Yes. I do. I quite easily might. And I think it would be a jolly good
thing if I could, now. Only I can't. I can't."
"Poor little Anne."
"Does it comfort you to think I'd have cared if it hadn't been for
Jerry?"
"It does, very much."
"Eliot--you're the only person I can talk to about him. Do you mind
telling me whether he said that to you, or whether you just guessed it."
"What?"
"Why, that he wouldn't--ever--"
"I asked him, Anne, because I had to know. And he told me."
"I thought he told you."
"Yes, he told me. But I'm a cad for letting you think he didn't care for
you. I believe he did, or that he would have cared--awfully--if my
father hadn't died just then. Your being in the room that day upset him.
If it hadn't been for that--"
"Yes, but there _was_ that. It was like he was when Binky died and he
couldn't stand Yearp. Don't you remember how he wouldn't let me go with
him to see Yearp because he said he didn't want me mixed up with it.
Well--I've been mixed up, that's all."
"Still, Anne, I'm certain he'd have cared--if that's any comfort to you.
You didn't make it up out of your dear little head. We all thought it.
Father thought it. I believe he wanted it. If he'd only known!"
She thought: If he'd only known how he had hurt her, he who had never
hurt anybody in all his beautiful life.
"Dear Uncle Robert. There's no good talking about it. I knew, the minute
Jerry said he didn't want me to go to India with him."
"Is that why you didn't go?"
"Yes."
"That was a mistake, Anne. You should have gone."
"How could I, after that? And if I had, he'd only have kept away."
"You should have let him go first and then gone after him. You should
have turned up suddenly, in wonderful clothes, looking cheerful and
beautiful. So that you wiped out the memory he funked. As it is you've
left him nothing else to think of."
"I daresay that's what I should have done. But it's too late. I can't do
it now."
"I'm not so sure."
"What, go _after_ Jerrold? Hunt him down? Dress up and scheme to make
him marry me?"
"Yes. Yes. Yes."
"Eliot, you know I couldn't."
"You said once you'd commit a crime for anybody you cared about."
"A crime, yes. But not that. I'd rather die."
"You're too fastidious. It's only the unscrupulous people who get what
they want in this world. They know what they want and go for it. They
stamp on everything and everybody that gets in their way."
"Oh, Eliot dear, I know what I want, and I'd go for it. If only Jerrold
knew, too."
"He would know if you showed him."
"And that's just what I can't do."
"Well, don't say I didn't give you the best possible advice, against my
own interests, too."
"It was sweet of you. But you see how impossible it is."
"I see how adorable you are. You always were."
iv
For the first time in her life Adeline was furious.
She had asked Eliot whether he was or was not going to marry Anne
Severn, and was told that he had asked her to marry him that afternoon
and that she wouldn't have him.
"Wouldn't have you? What's she thinking of?"
"You'd better ask her," said Eliot, never dreaming that she would.
But that was what Adeline did. She came that night to Anne's room just
as Anne was getting into bed. Unappeased by her defenseless attitude,
she attacked with violence.
"What's all this about Eliot asking you to marry him?"
Anne uncurled herself and sat up on the edge of her bed.
"Did he tell you?"
"Yes. Of course he told me. He says you refused him. Did you?"
"I'm afraid I did."
"Then Anne, you're a perfect little fool."
"But Auntie, I don't love him."
"Nonsense; you love him as much as most people love the men they marry.
He's quite sensible. He doesn't want you to go mad about him."
"He wants more than I can give him."
"Well, all I can say is if you can't give him what he wants you'd no
business to go about with him as you've been doing."
"I've been going about with him all my life and I never dreamed he'd
want to marry me."
"What did you suppose he'd want?"
"Why, nothing but just to go about. As we always did."
"You idiot."
"I don't see why you should be so cross about it."
Adeline sat down in the armchair at the head of the bed, prepared to
"have it out" with Anne.
"I suppose you think my son's happiness is nothing to me? Didn't it
occur to you that if you refuse him he'll stick for years in that awful
place he's going to? Whereas if he had a wife in England there'd be a
chance of his coming home now and then. Perhaps he'd never go out
again."
"I'm sorry, Auntie. I can't marry Eliot even to keep him in England.
Even to please you."
"Even to save his life, you mean. You don't care if he dies of some
hideous tropical disease."
"I care awfully. But I can't marry him. He knows why."
"It's more than I do. If you're thinking of Jerrold, you needn't. I
thought you'd done with that schoolgirlish nonsense."
"I'm not 'thinking' of him. I'm not 'thinking' of anybody and I wish
you'd leave me alone."
"My dear child, how can I leave you alone when I see you making the
mistake of your life? Eliot is absolutely the right person for you, if
you'd only the sense to see it. He's got more character than anybody I
know. Much more than dear Jerry. He'll be ten times more interesting to
live with."
"I thought Jerrold was your favourite."
"No, Eliot, my dear. Always Eliot. He was my first baby."
"Well, I'm awfully sorry you mind so much. And I'd marry Eliot if I
could. I simply hate him to be unhappy. But he won't be. He'll live to
be frightfully glad I didn't...What, aren't you going to kiss me
good-night?"
Adeline had risen and turned away with the great dignity of her
righteous anger.
"I don't feel like it," she said. "I think you've been thoroughly
selfish and unkind. I hate girls who go on like that--making a man mad
about you by pretending to be his comrade, and then throwing him over.
I've had more men in love with me, Anne, than you've seen in your life,
but I never did _that_."
"Oh Auntie, what about Father? And you were engaged to him."
"Well, anyhow," said Adeline, softened by the recollection, "I _was_
engaged."
She smiled her enchanting smile; and Anne, observing the breakdown of
dignity, got up off the bed and kissed her.
"I don't suppose," she said, "that Father was the only one."
"He wasn't. But then, with _me_, my dear, it was their own risk. They
knew where they were."
v
In March, nineteen eleven, Eliot went out to Central Africa. He stayed
there two years, investigating malaria and sleeping sickness. Then he
went on to the Straits Settlements and finally took a partnership in a
practice at Penang.
Anne left Wyck at Easter and returned in August because of Colin. Then
she went back to her Ilford farm.
The two years passed, and in the spring of the third year, nineteen
fourteen, she came again.
VI
QUEENIE
i
Something awful had happened. Adeline had told Anne about it.
It seemed that Colin in his second year at Cambridge, when he should
have given his whole mind to reading for the Diplomatic Service, had had
the imprudence to get engaged. And to a girl that Adeline had never
heard of, about whom nothing was known but that she was remarkably
handsome and that her family (Courthopes of Leicestershire) were, in
Adeline's brief phrase, "all right."
From the terrace they could see, coming up the lawn from the goldfish
pond, Colin and his girl.
Queenie Courthope. She came slowly, her short Russian skirt swinging out
from her ankles. The brilliance of her face showed clear at a distance,
vermilion on white, flaming; hard, crystal eyes, sweeping and flashing;
bobbed hair, brown-red, shining in the sun. Then a dominant, squarish
jaw, and a mouth exquisitely formed, but thin, a vermilion thread drawn
between her staring, insolent nostrils and the rise of her round chin.
This face in its approach expressed a profound, arrogant indifference to
Adeline and Anne. Only as it turned towards Colin its grey-black eyes
lowered and were soft dark under the black feathers of their brows.
Colin looked back at it with a shy, adoring tenderness.
Queenie could be even more superbly uninterested than Adeline. In
Adeline's self-absorption there was a passive innocence, a candor that
disarmed you, but Queenie's was insolent and hostile; it took possession
of the scene and challenged every comer.
"Hallo, Anne!" Colin shouted. "How did you get here?"
"Motored down."
"I say, have you got a car?"
"Only just."
"Drove yourself?"
"Rather."
Queenie scowled as if there were something disagreeable to her in the
idea that Anne should have a car of her own and drive it. She endured
the introduction in silence and addressed herself with an air of
exclusiveness to Colin.
"What are we going to do?"
"Anything you like," he said.
"I'll play you singles, then."
"Anne might like to play," said Colin. But he still looked at Queenie,
as she flamed in her beauty.
"Oh, three's a rotten game. You can't play the two of us unless Miss
Severn handicaps me."
"She won't do that. Anne could take us both on and play a decent game."
Queenie picked up her racquet and stood between them, beating her skirts
with little strokes of irritated impatience. Her eyes were fixed on
Colin, trying, you could see, to dominate him.
"We'd better take it in turns," he said.
"Thanks, Col-Col. I'd rather not play. I've driven ninety-seven miles."
"Really rather?"
Queenie backed towards the court.
"Oh, come on, Colin, if you're coming."
He went.
"What do you think of Queenie?" Adeline said.
"She's very handsome."
"Yes, Anne. But it isn't a nice face. Now, is it?"
Anne couldn't say it was a nice face.
"It's awful to think of Colin being married to it. He's only twenty-one
now, and she's seven years older. If it had been anybody but Colin. If
it had been Eliot or Jerrold I shouldn't have minded so much. They can
look after themselves. He'll never stand up against that horrible girl."
"She does look terribly strong."
"And cruel, Anne, as if she might hurt him. I don't want him to be hurt.
I can't bear her taking him away from me. My little Col-Col....I did
hope, Anne, that if you wouldn't have Eliot--"
"I'd have Colin? But Auntie, I'm years older than he is. He's a baby."
"If he's a baby he'll want somebody older to look after him."
"Queenie's even better fitted than I am, then."
"Do you think, Anne, she proposed to Colin?"
"No. I shouldn't think it was necessary."
"I should say she was capable of anything. My only hope is they'll tire
each other out before they're married and break it off."
All afternoon on the tennis court below Queenie played against Colin.
She played vigorously, excitedly, savagely, to win. She couldn't hide
her annoyance when he beat her.
"What was I to do?" he said. "You don't like it when I beat you. But if
I was beaten you wouldn't like _me_."
ii
Adeline's only hope was not realized. They hadn't had time to tire of
each other before the War broke out. And Colin insisted on marrying
before he joined up. Their engagement had left him nervous and unfit,
and his idea was that, once married, he would present a better
appearance before the medical examiners.
But after a month of Queenie, Colin was more nervous and unfit than
ever.
"I can't think," said Adeline, "what that woman does to him. She'll wear
him out."
So Colin waited, trying to get fitter, and afraid to volunteer lest he
should be rejected.
Everybody around him was moving rapidly. Queenie had taken up motoring,
so that she could drive an ambulance car at the front. Anne had gone up
to London for her Red Cross training. Eliot had left his practice to his
partner at Penang and had come home and joined the Army Medical Corps.
Eliot, home on leave for three days before he went out, tried hard to
keep Colin back from the War. In Eliot's opinion Colin was not fit and
never would be fit to fight. He was just behaving as he always had
behaved, rushing forward, trying insanely to do the thing he never could
do.
"Do you mean to say they won't pass me?" he asked.
"Oh, they'll pass you all right," Eliot said. "They'll give you an
expensive training, and send you into the trenches, and in any time from
a day to a month you'll be in hospital with shell-shock. Then you'll be
discharged as unfit, having wasted everybody's time and made a damned
nuisance of yourself....I suppose I ought to say it's splendid of you to
want to go out. But it isn't splendid. It's idiotic. You'll be simply
butting in where you're not wanted, taking a better man's place, taking
a better man's commission, taking a better man's bed in a hospital. I
tell you we don't want men who are going to crumple up in their first
action."
"Do you think I'm going to funk then?" said poor Colin.
"Funk? Oh, Lord no. You'll stick it till you drop, till you're
paralyzed, till you've lost your voice and memory, till you're an utter
wreck. There'll be enough of 'em, poor devils, without you, Col-Col."
"But why should I go like that more than anybody else?"
"Because you're made that way, because you haven't got a nervous system
that can stand the racket. The noises alone will do for you. You'll be
as right as rain if you keep out of it."
"But Jerrold's coming back. _He_'ll go out at once. How can I stick at
home when he's gone?"
"Heaps of good work to be done at home."
"Not by men of my age."
"By men of your nervous organization. Your going out would be sheer
waste."
"Why not?" Does it matter what becomes of me?"
"No. It doesn't. It matters, though, that you'll be taking a better
man's place."
Now Colin really did want to go out and fight, as he had always wanted
to follow Jerrold's lead; he wanted it so badly that it seemed to him a
form of self-indulgence; and this idea of taking a better man's place so
worked on him that he had almost decided to give it up, since that was
the sacrifice required of him, when he told Queenie what Eliot had said.
"All I can say is," said Queenie, "that if you don't go out I shall give
_you_ up. I've no use for men with cold feet."
"Can't you see," said Colin (he almost hated Queenie in that moment),
"what I'm afraid of? Being a damned nuisance. That's what Eliot says
I'll be. I don't know how he knows."
"He doesn't know everything. If _my_ brother tried to stop my going to
the front I'd jolly soon tell him to go to hell. I swear, Colin, if you
back out of it I won't speak to you again. I'm not asking you to do
anything I funk myself."
"Oh, shut up. I'm going all right. Not because you've asked me, but
because I want to."
"If you didn't I should think you'd feel pretty rotten when I'm out with
my Field Ambulance," said Queenie.
"Damn your Field Ambulance!... No, I didn't mean that, old thing; it's
splendid of you to go. But you'd no business to suppose I funked. I
_may_ funk. Nobody knows till they've tried. But I was going all right
till Eliot put me off."
"Oh, if you're put off as easily as all that----"
She was intolerable. She seemed to think he was only going because she'd
shamed him into it.
That evening he sang:
"'What are you doing all the day, Rendal, my son?
What are you doing all the day, my pretty one?'"
He understood that song now.
"'What will you leave to your lover, Rendal, my son?
What will you leave to your lover, my pretty one?
A rope to hang her, mother,
A rope to hang her, mother....'"
"Go it, Col-Col!" Out on the terrace Queenie laughed her harsh, cruel
laugh.
"'For I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down.'"
"'I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down,'" Queenie echoed, with
clipped words, mocking him.
He hated Queenie.
And he loved her. At night, at night, she would unbend, she would be
tender and passionate, she would touch him with quick, hurrying
caresses, she would put her arms round him and draw him to her, kissing
and kissing. And with her young, beautiful body pressed tight to him,
with her mouth on his and her eyes shining close and big in the
darkness, Colin would forget.
iii
Dr. Cutler's Field Ambulance, British Hospital, Antwerp.
_September 20th, 1914._
Dearest Auntie Adeline,--I haven't been able to write before.
There's been a lot of fighting all round here and we're
frightfully busy getting in wounded. And when you've done you're
too tired to sit up and write letters. You simply roll into bed
and drop off to sleep. Sometimes we're out with the ambulances
half the night.
You needn't worry about me. I'm keeping awfully fit. I _am_
glad now I've always lived in the open air and played games and
ploughed my own land. My muscles are as hard as any Tommie's. So
are Queenie's. You see, we have to act as stretcher bearers as
well as chauffeurs. You're not much good if you can't carry your
own wounded.
Queenie is simply splendid. She really _doesn't_ know what
fear is, and she's at her very best under fire. It sort of
excites her and bucks her up. I can't help seeing how fine she
is, though she was so beastly to poor old Col-Col before he
joined up. But talk of the War bringing out the best in people,
you should simply see her out here with the wounded. Dr. Cutler
(the Commandant) thinks no end of her. She drives for him and I
drive for a little doctor man called Dicky Cartwright. He's
awfully good at his job and decent. Queenie doesn't like him. I
can't think why.
Good-bye, darling. Take care of yourself.
Your loving
Anne.
Antwerp. _October 3rd._
... You ask me what I really think of Queenie at close quarters.
Well, the quarters are very close and I know she simply hates
me. She was fearfully sick when she found we were both in the
same Corps. She's always trying to get up a row about something.
She'd like to have me fired out of Belgium if she could, but I
mean to stay as long as I can, so I won't quarrel with her. She
can't do it all by herself. And when I feel like going back on
her I tell myself how magnificent she is, so plucky and so
clever at her job. I don't wonder that half the men in our Corps
are gone on her. And there's a Belgian Colonel, the one Cutler
gets his orders from, who'd make a frantic fool of himself if
she'd let him. But good old Queenie sticks to her job and
behaves as if they weren't there. That makes them madder. You'd
have thought they'd never have had the time to be such asses in,
but it's wonderful what a state you can get into in your few odd
moments. Dicky says it's the War whips you up and makes it all
the easier. I don't know....
FURNES.
_November._
That's where we are now. I simply can't describe the retreat. It
was too awful, and I don't want to think about it. We've
"settled" down in a house we've commandeered and I suppose we
shall stick here till we're shelled out of it.
Talking of shelling, Queenie is funny. She's quite annoyed if
anybody besides herself gets anywhere near a shell. We picked up
two more stretcher-bearers in Ostend and a queer little
middle-aged lady out for a job at the front. Cutler took her on
as a sort of secretary. At first Queenie was so frantic that she
wouldn't speak to her, and swore she'd make the Corps too hot to
hold her. But when she found that the little lady wasn't for the
danger zone and only proposed to cook and keep our accounts for
us, she calmed down and was quite decent. Then the other day
Miss Mullins came and told us that a bit of shell had chipped
off the corner of her kitchen. The poor old thing was ever so
proud and pleased about it, and Queenie snubbed her frightfully,
and said she wasn't in any danger at all, and asked her how
she'd enjoy it if she was out all day under fire, like us.
And she was furious with me because I had the luck to get into
the bombardment at Dixmude and she hadn't. She talked as if I'd
done her out of her shelling on purpose, whereas it only meant
that I happened to be on the spot when the ambulances were sent
out and she was away somewhere with her own car. She really is
rather vulgar about shells. Dicky says it's a form of war
snobbishness (he hasn't got a scrap of it), but I think it
really is because all the time she's afraid of one of us being
killed. It must be that. Even Dicky owns that she's splendid,
though he doesn't like her....
iv
Five months later.
The Manor, Wyck-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire.
_May 30th, 1915._
My darling Anne,--Queenie will have told you about Colin. He was
through all that frightful shelling at Ypres in April. He's been
three weeks in the hospital at Boulogne with shell-shock--had it
twice--and now he's back and in that Officers' Hospital in
Kensington, not a bit better. I really think Queenie ought to
get leave and come over and see him.
Eliot was perfectly right. He ought never to have gone out. Of
course he was as plucky as they make them--went back into the
trenches after his first shell-shock--but his nerves couldn't
stand it. Whether they're treating him right or not, they don't
seem to be able to do anything for him.
I'm writing to Queenie. But tell her she must come and see him.
Your loving
Adeline Fielding.
Three months later.
The Manor, Wyck-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire.
_August 30th._
Darling Anne,--Colin has been discharged at last as incurable.
He is with me here. I'm so glad to have him, the darling. But
oh, his nerves are in an awful state--all to bits. He's an utter
wreck, my beautiful Colin; it would make your heart bleed to see
him. He can't sleep at night; he keeps on hearing shells; and if
he does sleep he dreams about them and wakes up screaming. It's
awful to hear a man scream. Anne, Queenie must come home and
look after him. My nerves are going. I can't sleep any more than
Colin. I lie awake waiting for the scream. I can't take the
responsibility of him alone, I can't really. After all, she's
his wife, and she made him go out and fight, though she knew
what Eliot said it would do to him. It's too cruel that it
should have happened to Col-Col of all people. _Make_ that woman
come.
Your loving
Adeline Fielding.
Nieuport. _September 5th, 1915._
Darling Auntie,--I'm so sorry about dear Col-Col. And I quite
agree that Queenie ought to go back and look after him. But she
won't. She says her work here is much more important and that
she can't give up hundreds of wounded soldiers for just one man.
Of course she is doing splendidly, and Cutler says he can't
spare her and she'd be simply thrown away on one case. They
think Colin's people ought to look after him. It doesn't seem to
matter to either of them that he's her husband. They've got into
the way of looking at everybody as a case. They say it's not
even as if Colin could be got better so as to be sent out to
fight again. It would be sheer waste of Queenie.