Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 10

"Beastly, isn't it? Still, I'm not worrying. Daddy's frightfully healthy, thank Heaven. He'll live to be eighty at the very least. Why--I should be fifty."

"_You're_ all right," said Anne. "But it's awful for me. Grandpapa might die any day. He's seventy-five _now_. It'll be ages before you're fifty."

"And I may never be it. India may polish me off long before that." He laughed his happy laugh. The idea of his own death seemed to Jerrold irresistibly funny.

"_India_?"

He laughed again at her dismay.

"Rather. I'm going in for the Indian Civil."

"Oh Jerrold--you'll be away years and years, nearly all the time, like Daddy, and I shan't ever see you."

"I shan't start for ages. Not for five years. Lots of time to see each other in."

"Lots of time for _not_ seeing each other ever again."

She sat staring mournfully, seeing before her the agony of separation.

"Nonsense," said Jerrold. "Why on earth shouldn't you come out to India too? I say, that would be a lark, wouldn't it? You would come, wouldn't you?"

"Like a shot," said Anne.

"Would you give up your farm to come?"

"I'd give up anything."

"_That's_ all right. Let's go and play tennis."

They played for two hours straight on end, laughing and shouting.

Adeline, intensely bored by Eliot and his absurd affairs, came down the lawn to look at them. She loved their laughter. It was good to have Anne there. Anne was so happy.

John Severn came to her.

"Did you ever see anything happier than that absurd boy?" she said. "Why can't Eliot be jolly and contented, too, like Jerrold?"

"Don't you think the chief reason may be that he _isn't_ Jerrold?"

"Jerrold's adorable. He's never given me a day's trouble since he was born."

"No. It's other women he'll give trouble to," said John, "before he's done."

iii

Colin was playing. All afternoon he had been practising with fury; first scales, then exercises. Then a pause; and now, his fingers slipped into the first movement of the Waldstein Sonata.

Secretly, mysteriously he began; then broke, sharply, impatiently, crescendo, as the pa.s.sion of the music mounted up and up. And now as it settled into its rhythm his hands ran smoothly and joyously along.

The west window of the drawing-room was open to the terrace. Eliot and Anne sat out there and listened.

"He's wonderful, isn't he?" she said.

Eliot shook his head. "Not so wonderful as he was. Not half so wonderful as he ought to be. He'll never be good enough for a professional. He knows he won't."

"What's happened?"

"Nothing. That's just it. Nothing ever will happen. He's stuck. It's the same with his singing. He'll never be any good if he can't go away and study somewhere. If it isn't Berlin or Leipzig it ought to be London.

But father can't live there and the mater won't go anywhere without him.

So poor Col-Col's got to stick here doing nothing, with the same rotten old masters telling him things he knew years ago.... It'll be worse next term when he goes to Cheltenham. He won't be able to practice, and n.o.body'll care a d.a.m.n.... Not that that would matter if he cared himself."

Colin was playing the slow movement now, the grave, pure pa.s.sion, pressed out from the solemn ba.s.s, throbbed, tense with restraint.

"Oh Eliot, he _does_ care."

"In a way. Not enough to keep on at it. You've got to slog like blazes, if you want to get on."

"Jerrold won't, ever, then."

"Oh yes he will. _He'll_ get on all right, because he _doesn't_ care; because work comes so jolly easy to him. He hasn't got to break his heart over it.... The trouble with Colin is that he cares, awfully, for such a lot of other things. Us, for instance. He'll leave off in the middle of a movement if he hears Jerrold yelling for him. He ought to be able to chuck us all; we're all of us in his way. He ought to hate us.

He ought to hate Jerrold worst of all."

Adeline and John Severn came round the corner of the terrace.

"What's all this about hating?" he said.

"What do you mean, Eliot?" said she.

Eliot raised himself wearily. "I mean," he said, "you'll never be any good at anything if you're not prepared to commit a crime for it."

"I know what I'd commit a crime for," said Anne. "But I shan't tell."

"You needn't. _You'd_ do it for anybody you were gone on."

"Well, I would. I'd tell any old lie to make them happy. I'd steal for them if they were hungry. I'd kill anybody who hurt them."

"I believe you would," said Eliot.

"We know who Anne would commit her crimes for."

"We don't. We don't know anything she doesn't want us to," said Eliot, s.h.i.+elding her from his mother's mischief.

"That's right, Eliot, stick up for her," said John. He knew what she was thinking of. "Would Jerrold commit a crime?" he said.

"Sooner than any of us. But not for the Indian Civil. He'd rob, butcher, lie himself black in the face for anything he really cared for."

"He would for Colin," said Anne.

"Rob? Butcher and lie?" Her father meditated.