Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 4

"And you mustn't hurt her feelings."

"Have I? I didn't mean to."

"You wouldn't if you loved her."

"_You_ haven't ever hurt her feelings, have you, Daddy?"

"No."

"Well, you see, it's because I keep on thinking about Mummy. I want her back--I want her so awfully."

"I know, Anne, I know."

Anne's mind burrowed under, turning on its tracks, coming out suddenly.

"Do you love Auntie Adeline, Daddy?"

It was terrible, but he owned that he had brought it on himself.

"I can't say. I've known her such a long time; before you were born."

"Before you married Mummy!"

"Yes."

"Well, won't it do if I love Uncle Robert and Eliot and Colin? And Jerrold?"

That night he said to Adeline, "I know who'll take my place when I'm gone."

"Who? Robert?"

"No, Jerrold."

In another week he had sailed for India and Ambala.

viii

Jerrold was brave.

When Colin upset the schoolroom lamp Jerrold wrapped it in the tablecloth and threw it out of the window just in time. He put the chain on Billy, the sheep-dog, when he went mad and snapped at everybody. It seemed odd that Jerrold should be frightened.

A minute ago he had been happy, rolling over and over on the gra.s.s, shouting with laughter while Sandy, the Aberdeen, jumped on him, growling his merry puppy's growl and biting the balled fists that pushed him off.

They were all out on the lawn. Anne waited for Jerry to get up and take her into Wyck, to buy chocolates.

Every time Jerrold laughed his mother laughed too, a throaty, girlish giggle.

"I love Jerry's laugh," she said. "It's the nicest noise he makes."

Then, suddenly, she stopped it. She stopped it with a word.

"If you're going into Wyck, Jerry, you might tell Yearp----"

Yearp.

He got up. His face was very red. He looked mournful and frightened too.

Yes, frightened.

"I--can't, Mother."

"You can perfectly well. Tell Yearp to come and look at p.u.s.s.y's ears, I think she's got canker."

"She hasn't," said Jerry defiantly.

"She jolly well has," said Eliot.

"Rot."

"You only say that because you don't like to think she's got it."

"Eliot can go himself. _He's_ fond of Yearp."

"You'll do as you're told, Jerry. It's downright cowardice."

"It isn't cowardice, is it, Daddy?"

"Well," said his father, "it isn't exactly courage."

"Whatever it is," his mother said, "you'll have to get over it. You go on as if n.o.body cared about poor Binky but yourself."

Binky was Jerry's dog. He had run into a motor-bicycle in the Easter holidays and hurt his back, so that Yearp, the vet, had had to come and give him chloroform. That was why Jerrold was afraid of Yearp. When he saw him he saw Binky with his nose in the cup of chloroform; he heard him snorting out his last breath. And he couldn't bear it.

"I could send one of the men," his father was saying.

"Don't encourage him, Robert. He's got to face it."

"Yes, Jerrold, you'd better go and get it over. You can't go on funking it for ever."

Jerrold went. But he went alone, he wouldn't let Anne go with him. He said he didn't want her to be mixed up with it.

"He means," said Eliot, "that he doesn't want to think of Yearp every time he sees Anne."

ix

It was true that Eliot was fond of Yearp's society. He would spend hours with him, learning how to dissect frogs and rabbits and pigeons. He drove about the country with Yearp seeing the sick animals, the ewes at lambing time and the cows at their calving. And he spent half the midsummer holidays reading _Animal Biology_ and drawing diagrams of frogs' hearts and pigeons' brains. He said he wasn't going to Oxford or Cambridge when he left Cheltenham; he was going to Barts. He wanted to be a doctor. But his mother said he didn't know what he'd want to be in three years' time. She thought him awful, with his frogs' hearts and horrors.