Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 5

Next to Jerrold and little Colin Anne loved Eliot. He seemed to know when she was thinking about her mother and to understand. He took her into the woods to look for squirrels; he showed her the wildflowers and told her all their names: bugloss, and lady's smock and speedwell, king-cup, willow herb and meadow sweet, crane's bill and celandine.

One day they found in the garden a tiny egg-shaped sh.e.l.l made of gold-coloured lattice work. When they put it under the microscope they saw inside it a thing like a green egg. Every day they watched it; it put out two green horns, and a ridge grew down the middle of it, and one morning they found the golden sh.e.l.l broken. A long, elegant fly with slender wings crawled beside it.

When Benjy died of eating too much lettuce Eliot was sorry. Aunt Adeline said it was all put on and that he really wanted to cut him up and see what he was made of. But Eliot didn't. He said Benjy was sacred. That was because he knew they loved him. And he dug the grave and lined it with moss and told Aunt Adeline to shut up when she said it ought to have been lettuce leaves.

Aunt Adeline complained that it was hard that Eliot couldn't be nice to her when he was her favorite.

"Little Anne, little Anne, what have you done to my Eliot?" She was always saying things like that. Anne couldn't think what she meant till Jerrold told her she was the only kid that Eliot had ever looked at. The big Hawtrey girl from Medlicote would have given her head to be in Anne's shoes.

But Anne didn't care. Her love for Jerrold was sharp and exciting. She brought tears to it and temper. It was mixed up with G.o.d and music and the deaths of animals, and sunsets and all sorrowful and beautiful and mysterious things. Thinking about her mother made her think about Jerrold; but she never thought about Eliot at all when he wasn't there.

She would run away from Eliot any minute if she heard Jerrold calling.

It was Jerrold, Jerrold, all the time, said Aunt Adeline.

And when Eliot was busy with his microscope and Jerrold had turned from her to Colin, there was Uncle Robert. He seemed to know the moments when she wanted him. Then he would take her out riding with him over the estate that stretched from Wyck across the valley of the Speed and beyond it for miles over the hills. And he would show her the reaping machines at work, and the great carthorses, and the prize bullocks in their stalls at the Manor Farm. And Anne told him her secret, the secret she had told to n.o.body but Jerrold.

"Some day," she said, "I shall have a farm, with horses and cows and pigs and little calves."

"Shall you like that?"

"Yes," said Anne. "I would. Only it can't happen till Grandpapa's dead.

And I don't want him to die."

x

They were saying now that Colin was wonderful. He was only seven, yet he could play the piano like a grown-up person, very fast and with loud noises in the ba.s.s. And he could sing like an angel. When you heard him you could hardly believe that he was a little boy who cried sometimes and was afraid of ghosts. Two masters came out from Cheltenham twice a week to teach him. Eliot said Colin would be a professional when he grew up, but his mother said he should be nothing of the sort and Eliot wasn't to go putting nonsense like that into his head. Still, she was proud of Colin when his hands went pounding and flas.h.i.+ng over the keys.

Anne had to give up practising because she did it so badly that it hurt Colin to hear her.

He wasn't in the least conceited about his playing, not even when Jerrold stood beside him and looked on and said, "Clever Col-Col. Isn't he a wonderful kid? Look at him. Look at his little hands, all over the place."

He didn't think playing was wonderful. He thought the things that Jerrold did were wonderful. With his child's legs and arms he tried to do the things that Jerrold did. They told him he would have to wait nine years before he could do them. He was always talking about what he would do in nine years' time.

And there was the day of the walk to High Slaughter, through the valley of the Speed to the valley of the Windlode, five miles there and back.

Eliot and Jerrold and Anne had tried to sneak out when Colin wasn't looking; but he had seen them and came running after them down the field, calling to them to let him come. Eliot shouted "We can't, Col-Col, it's too far," but Colin looked so pathetic, standing there in the big field, that Jerrold couldn't bear it.

"I think," he said, "we might let him come."

"Yes. Let him," Anne said.

"Rot. He can't walk it."

"I can," said Colin. "I can."

"I tell you he can't. If he's tired he'll be sick in the night and then he'll say it's ghosts."

Colin's mouth trembled.

"It's all right, Col-Col, you're coming." Jerrold held out his hand.

"Well," said Eliot, "if he crumples up _you_ can carry him."

"I can," said Jerrold.

"So can I," said Anne.

"n.o.body," said Colin "shall carry me. I can walk."

Eliot went on grumbling while Colin trotted happily beside them. "You're a fearful a.s.s, Jerrold. You're simple ruining that kid. He thinks he can come b.u.t.ting into everything. Here's the whole afternoon spoiled for all three of us. He can't walk. You'll see he'll drop out in the first mile."

"I shan't, Jerrold."

And he didn't. He struggled on down the fields to Upper Speed and along the river-meadows to Lower Speed and Hayes Mill, and from Hayes Mill to High Slaughter. It was when they started to walk back that his legs betrayed him, slackening first, then running, because running was easier than walking, for a change. Then dragging. Then being dragged between Anne and Jerrold (for he refused to be carried). Then staggering, stumbling, stopping dead; his child's mouth drooping.

Then Jerrold carried him on his back with his hands clasped under Colin's soft hips. Colin's body slipped every minute and had to be jerked up again; and when it slipped his arms tightened round Jerrold's neck, strangling him.

At last Jerrold, too, staggered and stumbled and stopped dead.

"I'll take him," said Eliot. He forbore, n.o.bly, to say "I told you so."

And by turns they carried him, from the valley of the Windlode to the valley of the Speed, past Hayes Mill, through Lower Speed, Upper Speed, and up the fields to Wyck Manor. Then up the stairs to the schoolroom, pursued by their mother's cries.

"Oh Col-Col, my little Col-Col! What have you done to him, Eliot?"

Eliot bore it like a lamb.

Only after they had left Colin in the schoolroom, he turned on Jerrold.

"Some day," he said, "Col-Col will be a perfect nuisance. Then you and Anne'll have to pay for it."

"Why me and Anne?"

"Because you'll both be fools enough to keep on giving in to him."

"I suppose," said Jerrold bitterly, "you think you're clever."

Adeline came out and overheard him and made a scene in the gallery before Pinkney, the footman, who was bringing in the schoolroom tea. She said Eliot was clever enough and old enough to know better. They were all old enough. And Jerrold said it was his fault, not Eliot's, and Anne said it was hers, too. And Adeline declared that it was all their faults and she would have to speak to their father. She kept it up long after Eliot and Jerrold had retreated to the bathroom. If it had been anybody but her little Col-Col. She wouldn't _have_ him dragged about the country till he dropped.

She added that Col-Col was her favourite.

xi

It was the last week of the holidays. Rain had come with the west wind.

The hills were drawn back behind thick sheets of gla.s.sy rain. s.h.i.+ning spears of rain dashed themselves against the west windows. Jets of rain rose up, whirling and spraying, from the terrace. Rain ran before the wind in a silver scud along the flagged path under the south front.

The wind made hard, thudding noises as if it pounded invisible bodies in the air. It screamed high above the drumming and hissing of the rain.