Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 44

Eliot had been down to see him and had gone. And again, as before, n.o.body could do anything with him but Anne.

"I couldn't," Jerrold said, "and Eliot couldn't. Eliot made me send for you."

They had left Colin upstairs and were together in the drawing-room. He stood in the full wash of the sunlight that flooded in through the west window. It showed his face drawn and haggard, and discoloured, as though he had come through a long illness. His mouth was hard with pain. He stared away from her with heavy, wounded eyes. She looked at him and was frightened.

"Jerrold, have you been ill?"

"No. What makes you think so?"

"You look ill. You look as if you hadn't slept for ages."

"I haven't. I've been frightfully worried about Colin."

"Have you any idea what set him off again?"

"I believe it was those infernal tractors. He would go out with them after you'd left. He said he'd have to, as long as you weren't there.

And he couldn't stand the row. Eliot said it would be that. And the responsibility, the feeling that everything depended on him."

"I see. I oughtn't to have left him."

"It looks like it."

"What else did Eliot say?"

"Oh, he thinks perhaps he might be better at the Farm than up here. He thinks it's bad for him sleeping in that room where he was frightened when he was a kid. He says it all hooks on to that. What's more, he says he may go on having these relapses for years. Any noise or strain or excitement'll bring them on. Do you mind his being at the Farm again?"

"Mind? Of course I don't. If I'm to look after him _and_ the land it'll be very much easier there than here."

For every night at Colin's bedtime Anne came up to the Manor. She slept in the room that was to be Maisie's. When Colin screamed she went to him and sat with him till he slept again. In the morning she went back to the Farm.

She had been doing this for a week now, and Colin was better.

But he didn't want to go back. If, he said, Jerrold didn't mind having him.

Jerrold wanted to know why he didn't want to go back and Colin told him.

"Hasn't it occurred to you that I've hurt Anne enough without beginning all over again? All these d.a.m.ned people here think I'm her lover."

"You can't help that. You're not the only one that's hurt her. We must try and make it up to her, that's all."

"How are we going to do it?"

"My G.o.d! I don't know. I shall begin by cutting the swine who've cut her."

"That's no good. She doesn't care if they do cut her. She only cares about us. She's done everything for us, and among us all we've done nothing for her. Absolutely nothing. We can't give her anything. We haven't got anything to give her that she wants."

Jerrold was silent.

Presently he said, "She wants Sutton's farm. Sutton's dying. I shall give it to her when he's dead."

"You think that'll make up?"

"No, Colin, I don't. Supposing we don't talk about it any more."

"All right. I say, when's Maisie coming home?"

"G.o.d only knows. I don't."

He wondered how much Colin knew.

iii

February had gone. They were in the middle of March, and still Maisie had not come back.

She wrote sweet little letters to him saying she was sorry to be so long away, but her mother wanted her to stay on another week. When Jerrold wrote asking her to come back (he did this so that he might feel that he had really played the game) she answered that they wouldn't let her go till she was rested, and she wasn't quite rested yet. Jerrold mustn't imagine she was the least bit ill, only rather tired after the winter's racketing. It would be heavenly to see him again.

Then when she was rested her mother got ill and she had to go with her to Torquay. And at Torquay Maisie stayed on and on.

And Jerrold didn't imagine she had been the least bit ill, or even very tired, or that Lady Durham was ill. He preferred to think that Maisie stayed away because she wanted to, because she cared about her people more than she cared about him. The longer she stayed the more obstinately he thought it. Here was he, trying to play the game, trying to be decent and keep straight, and there was Maisie leaving him alone with Anne and making it impossible for him.

Anne had been back at the Farm a week and he had not been to see her.

But Maisie's last letter made him wonder whether, really, he need try any more. He was ill and miserable. Why should he make himself ill and miserable for a woman who didn't care whether he was ill and miserable or not? Why shouldn't he go and see Anne? Maisie had left him to her.

And on Sunday morning, suddenly, he went.

There had been a sharp frost overnight. Every branch and twig, every blade of gra.s.s, every crinkle in the road was edged with a white fur of rime. It crackled under his feet. He drank down the cold, clean air like water. His whole body felt cold and clean. He was aware of its strength in the hard tension of his muscles as he walked. His own movement exhilarated and excited him. He was going to see Anne.

Anne was not in the house. He went through the yards looking for her. In the stockyard he met her coming up from the sheepfold, carrying a young lamb in her arms. She smiled at him as she came.

She wore her farm dress, knee breeches and a thing like an old trench coat, and looked superb. She went bareheaded. Her black hair was brushed up from her forehead and down over her ears, the length of it rolled in on itself in a curving ma.s.s at the back. Over it the frost had raised a crisp web of hair that covered its solid smoothness like a net. Anne's head was the head of a hunting Diana; it might have fitted into the sickle moon.

The lamb's queer knotted body was like a grey ligament between its hind and fore quarters. It rested on Anne's arms, the long black legs dangling. The black-faced, hammer-shaped head hung in the hollow of her elbow.

"This is Colin's job," she said.

"What are you doing with it?"

"Taking it indoors to nurse it. It's been frozen stiff, poor darling. Do you mind looking in the barn and seeing if you can find some old sacks there?"

He looked, found the sacks and carried them, following her into the kitchen. Anne fetched a piece of old blanket and wrapped the lamb up.

They made a bed of the sacks before the fire and laid it on it. She warmed some milk, dipped her fingers in it and put them into the lamb's mouth to see if it would suck.

"I didn't know they'd do that," he said.

"Oh, they'll suck anything. When you've had them a little time they'll climb into your lap like puppies and suck the b.u.t.tons on your coat. Its mother's dead and we shall have to bring it up by hand."

"I doubt if you will."