Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 16

And as Adeline wouldn't listen to her Anne talked to the cat.

"Clever little thing, he sees everything, all the b.u.t.terflies and the d.i.c.ky-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 p.u.s.s.ies, 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 p.u.s.s.y 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sage 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-gla.s.s. Nicky's saucer of milk gleamed white on the dark floor at Anne's feet. The pale ceiling lightened; and with a sliding s.h.i.+mmer of polished curves the furniture rose up from the walls. Presently it stood clear, wine-coloured, s.h.i.+ning 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.