Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 14

"After all, there's something in that idea of old Rawlings', that I'm bad for him. He's got to do without me."

"So have I."

"You're different. You'll stand it, if you've got to. Colin won't. And he doesn't chum up with the other chaps."

"No. But think of me and all those awful girls--after you and Eliot"

(she had forgotten Eliot's sulkiness) "and Uncle Robert. And Grannie and Aunt Emily after Auntie Adeline."

"Well, I'm glad Col-Col'll have you sometimes."

"So'm I... Oh, Jerrold, here's the beastly train."

It drew up along the platform.

Anne stood in her carriage, leaning out of the window to him.

His hand was on the ledge. They looked at each other without speaking.

The guard whistled. Carriage doors slammed one after another. The train moved forward.

Jerrold ran alongside. "I say, you'll let Col-Col play on that piano?"

Anne was gone.

III

ANNE AND JERROLD

i

"'Where have you been all the day, Rendal, my son?

Where have you been all the day, my pretty one?...'"

Five years had pa.s.sed. It was August, nineteen ten.

Anne had come again. She sat out on the terrace with Adeline, while Colin's song drifted out to them through the open window.

It was her first day, the first time for three years. Anne's calendar was blank from nineteen seven to nineteen ten. When she was seventeen she had left Cheltenham and gone to live with Grandpapa Everitt at the Ess.e.x farm. Grandpapa Everitt wanted her more than Grandmamma Severn, who had Aunt Emily; so Anne had stayed with him all that time. She had spent it learning to farm and looking after Grandpapa on his bad days.

For the last year of his life all his days had been bad. Now he was dead, dead three months ago, and Anne had the farm. She was going to train for five years under the man who had worked it for Grandpapa; after that she meant to manage it herself.

She had been trying to tell Aunt Adeline all about it, but you could see she wasn't interested. She kept on saying "Yes" and "Oh" and "Really"?

in the wrong places. She never could listen to you for long together, and this afternoon she was evidently thinking of something else, perhaps of John Severn, who had been home on leave and gone again without coming to the Fieldings.

"'I've been to my sweetheart, mother, make my bed soon, For I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down...'"

Mournful, and beautiful, Colin's song came through the windows, and Anne thought of Jerrold who was not there. He was staying in Yorks.h.i.+re with some friends of his, the Durhams. He would be back to-morrow. He would have got away from the Durhams.

..."'make my bed soon...'"

To-morrow. To-morrow.

"Who are the Durhams, Auntie?"

"He's Sir Charles Durham. Something important in the Punjaub. Some high government official. He'll be useful to Jerrold if he gets a job out there. They're going back in October. I suppose I shall have to ask.

Maisie Durham before they sail."

Maisie Durham. Maisie Durham. But to-morrow he would have got away.

"'What will you leave your lover, Rendal, my son?

What will you leave your lover, my pretty one?

A rope to hang her, mother, A rope to hang her, mother, make my bed soon, For I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down.'"

"Sing something cheerful, Colin, for Goodness sake," said his mother.

But Colin sang it again.

"'A rope to hang her'"

"Bless him, you'd think he'd known all the wicked women that ever were.

My little Col-Col."

"You like him the best, don't you?"

"No. Indeed I do not. I like my laughing boy best. You wouldn't catch Jerry singing a dismal song like that."

"Darling, you used to say Colin was your favourite."

"No, my dear. Never. Never. It was always Jerrold. Ever since he was born. He never cried when he was a baby. Colin was always crying."

"Poor Col-Col."

"There you are. n.o.body'll ever say, 'Poor Jerrold'. I like happy people, Anne. In this tiresome world it's people's duty to be happy."

"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 s.p.a.ces 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; s.h.i.+mmering in a wash of thin air.