Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 34

"Well, I can't conceive how I could have had."

"You mean it seems so long ago."

"No, I don't mean that."

"You've forgotten."

"I don't mean that, either."

Silence.

"Look here, Anne, I want to know about Colin. Has he been very bad?"

"Yes, he has."

"How bad?"

"So bad that sometimes I was glad you weren't there to see him. You remember when he was a kid, how frightened he used to be at night. Well, he's been like that all the time. He's like that now, only he's a bit better. He doesn't scream now.... All the time he kept on worrying about you. He only told me that the other day. He seemed to think the war must have done something more frightful to you than it had done to him; he said, because you'd mind it more. I told him it wasn't the sort of thing you'd mind most."

"It isn't the sort of thing it's any good minding. I don't suppose I minded more than the other chaps. If anything had happened to you, or him, or Eliot, I'd have minded that."

"I know. That's what I told him. I knew you'd come through."

"Eliot was dead right about Colin. He knew he wouldn't. He ought never to have gone out."

"He wanted so awfully to go. But Eliot could have stopped him if it hadn't been for Queenie. She hunted and hounded him out. She told him he was funking. Fancy Colin funking!"

"What's Queenie like?"

"She's like that. She never funks herself, but she wants to make out that everybody else does."

"Do you like Queenie?"

"No. I hate her. I don't mind her hounding him out so much since she went herself; I _do_ mind her leaving him. Do you know, she's never even tried to come and see him."

"Good G.o.d! what a beast the woman must be. What on earth made him marry her?"

"He was frightfully in love. An awful sort of love that wore him out and made him wretched. And now he's afraid for his life of her. I believe he's afraid of the war ending because then she'll come back."

"And if she does come back?"

"She may try and take Colin away from me. But she shan't. She can't take him if he doesn't want to go. She left him to me to look after and I mean to stick to him. I won't have him frightened and made all ill again just when I've got him well."

"I'm afraid you've had a very hard time."

"Not so hard as you think."

She smiled a mysterious, quiet smile, as if she contemplated some happy secret. He thought he knew it, Anne's secret.

"Do you think it's funny of me to be living here with Colin?"

He laughed.

"I suppose it's all right. You always had pluck enough for anything."

"It doesn't take pluck to stick to Colin."

"Moral pluck."

"No. Not even moral."

"You were always fond of him, weren't you?"

That was about as far as he dare go.

She smiled her strange smile again.

"Yes. I was always fond of him.... You see, he wants me more than anybody else ever did or ever will."

"I'm not so sure about that. But he always did get what he wanted."

"Oh, does he! How about Queenie?"

"Even Queenie. I suppose he wanted her at the time."

"He doesn't want her now. Poor Colin."

"You mustn't ask me to pity him."

"Ask you? He'd hate you to pity him. I'd hate you to pity _me_."

"I shouldn't dream of pitying you, any more than I should dream of criticising you."

"Oh, you may criticise as much as you like."

"No. Whatever you did it would make no difference. I should know it was right because you did it."

"It wouldn't be. I do heaps of wrong things, but _this_ is right."

"I'm sure it is." "Here's Colin," she said.

He had come out to look for them. He couldn't bear to be alone.

vi

Jerrold had gone to Sutton's Farm to say good-bye to their old nurse, Nanny Sutton.