Chapter 10

Anne had gone up with him to Wyck Manor, to see the soldiers. Ever since they had come there she had taken cream and fruit to them twice a week from the Farm. Unaware of what was thought of her, she never knew that the scandal of young Fielding and Miss Severn had penetrated the Convalescent Home with the fruit and cream. And if she had known it she would not have stayed away. People's beastliness was no reason why she shouldn't go where she wanted, where she had always gone. The Convalescent Home belonged to the Fieldings, and the Fieldings were her dearest friends who had been turned into relations by her father's marriage. So this evening, absorbed in the convalescents, she never saw the matron's queer look at her or her pointed way of talking only to Eliot.

Eliot saw it.

He thought: "It doesn't matter. She's so utterly good that nothing can touch her. All the same, if she marries me she'll be safe from this sort of thing."

They had come to the dip of the valley and the Manor Farm water.

"Let's go up the beech walk," he said.

They went up and sat in the beech ring where Anne had sat with Jerrold three months ago. Eliot never realised how repeatedly Jerrold had been before him.

"Anne," he said, "it's more than five years since I asked you to marry me."

"Is it, Eliot?"

"Do you remember I said then I'd never give you up?"

"I remember. Unless Jerrold got me, you said. Well, he hasn't got me."

"I wouldn't want you to tie yourself up with me if there was the remotest chance of Jerrold; but, as there isn't, don't you think--"

"No, Eliot, I don't."

"But you do care for me, Anne, a little. I know you do."

"I care for you a great deal; but not in that sort of way."

"I'm not asking you to care for me in the way you care for Jerrold. You may care for me any way you please if you'll only marry me. You don't know how awfully little I'd be content to take."

"I shouldn't be content to give it, though. You oughtn't to have anything but the best."

"It would be the best for me, you see."

"Oh no, Eliot, it wouldn't. You only think it would because you're an angel. It would be awful of me to give so little when I take such a lot. I know what your loving would be."

"If you know you must have thought of it. And if you've thought of it--"

"I've only thought of it to see how impossible it is. It mightn't be if I could leave off loving Jerrold. But I can't...Eliot, I've got the queerest feeling about him. I know you'll think me mad, when he's gone and married somebody else, but I feel all the time as if he hadn't, as if he belonged to me and always had; and I to him. Whoever Maisie's married it isn't Jerrold. Not the real Jerrold."

"The fact remains that she's married him."

"No. Not him. Only a bit of him. Some bit that doesn't matter."

"Anne darling, I'd try not to think that."

"I don't think it. I feel it. Down there, deep inside me. I've always felt that Jerrold would come back to me and he came back. Then there was Colin. He'll come back again."

"Then there'll be Maisie."

"No, then there won't be Maisie. There won't be anything if he really comes...Now you see how mad I am. Now you see how awful it would be to marry me."

"No, Anne. I see it's the only way to keep you safe."

"Safe from what? Safe from Jerrold? I don't want to be safe from him. Eliot, I'm telling you this because you trust me. I want you to see me as I really am, so that you won't want to marry me any more."

"Ah, that's not the way to make me. Nothing you say makes any difference. Nothing you could do would make any difference."

"Supposing it had been true what your mother said, wouldn't that?"

"No. If you'd given yourself to Colin I should only have thought it was your goodness. It would have been good because you did it."

"How queer. That's what Jerrold said. Then he _did_ love me."

"I told you he loved you."

"Then I don't care. Nothing else matters."

"That's all you have to say to me?"

"Yes. Unless I lie."

"You'd lie for Jerrold."

"For him. Not to him. I should never need to."

"You've no need to lie to me, dear. I know you better than he does. You forget that I didn't think what he thought."

"That only shows that he knew."

"Knew what?"

"What I am. What I might do if I really cared."

"There are things you'd never do. You'd never do anything mean or dishonourable or cruel."

"Oh, you don't know what I'd do...Don't worry, Eliot. I shall be too busy with the land and with Colin to do very much."

"I'm not worrying."

All the same he wondered which of them knew Anne best, he or Anne herself, or Jerrold.

XI

INTERIM

i

Colin thought with terror of the time when Queenie would come back from the war. At any moment she might get leave and come; if she had not had it yet that only made it more likely that she would have it soon.

The vague horror that waited for him every morning had turned into this definite fear of Queenie. He was afraid of her temper, of her voice and eyes, of her crude, malignant thoughts, of her hatred of Anne. More than anything he was afraid of her power over him, of her vehement, exhausting love. He was afraid of her beauty.

One morning, early in September, the wire came. Colin shook with agitation as he read it.

"What is it?" Anne said.

"Queenie. She's got leave. She'll be here today. At four o'clock."

"Don't you want to see her?"

"No, I don't."

"Then you'd better drive over to Kingden and look at those bullocks of Ledbury's."

"I don't know anything about bullocks. They ought to be straight lines from their heads to their tails. That's about all I know."

"Never mind, you'll have gone to look at bullocks. And you can tell Ledbury I'm coming over to-morrow. Do you mind driving yourself?"

Colin did mind. He was afraid to drive by himself; but he was much more afraid of Queenie.

"You can take Harry. And leave me to settle Queenie."

Colin went off with Harry to Chipping Kingden. And at four o'clock Queenie came. Her hard, fierce eyes stared past Anne, looking for Colin.

"Where's Colin?" she said.

"He had to go out, but he'll be back before dinner."

Presently Queenie asked if she might go upstairs. As they went you could see her quick, inquisitive eyes sweeping and flashing.

The door of Colin's room stood open.

"Is that Colin's room?"

"Yes."

She went in, opened the inner door and looked into the gable room.

"Who sleeps here?" she said.

"I do," said Anne.

"You?"

"Have you any objection?"

"You might as well sleep in my husband's room."

"Oh no, this is near enough. I can tell whether he's asleep or awake."

"_Can_ you? And, please, how long has this been going on?"

"I've been sleeping in this room since November. Before that we had our old rooms at the Manor. There was a passage between, you remember. But I left the doors wide open."

"Oh no, this is near enough. I can tell whether he's asleep or awake."

"Can you? And, please, how long has this been going on?"

"I've been sleeping in this room since November. Before that we had our old rooms at the Manor. There was a passage between, you remember. But I left the doors wide open."

"I suppose," said Queenie, with furious calm, "you want me to divorce him?"

"Divorce him? Why on earth should you? Just because I looked after him at night? I _had_ to. There wasn't anybody else. And he was afraid to sleep alone. He is still. But he's all right as long as he knows I'm there."

"You expect me to believe that's all there is in it?"

"No, I don't, considering what your mind's like."

"Oh yes, when people do dirty things it's always other people's dirty minds. Do you imagine I'm a fool, Anne?"

"You're an awful fool if you think Colin's my lover."

"I think it, and I say it."

"If you think it you're a fool. If you say it you're a liar. A damned liar."

"And is Colin's mother a liar, too?"

"Yes, but not a damned one. It would serve you jolly well right, Queenie, if he _was_ my lover, after the way you left him to me."

"I didn't leave him to you. I left him to his mother."

"Anyhow, you left him."

"I couldn't help it. _You_ were not wanted at the front and I was. I couldn't leave hundreds of wounded soldiers just for Colin."

"_I_ had to. He was in an awful state. I've looked after him day and night; I've got him almost well now, and I think the least you can do is to keep quiet and let him alone."

"I shall do nothing of the sort. I shall divorce him as soon as the war's over."

"It isn't over yet. And I don't advise you to try. No decent barrister would touch your case, it's so rotten."

"Not half so rotten as you'll look when it's in all the papers."

"You can't frighten me that way."

"Can't I? I suppose you'll say you were looking, poor darling, if you do bring your silly old action. Only please don't do it till he's quite well, or he'll be ill again...I think that's tea going in. Will you go down?"

They went down. Tea was laid in the big bare hall. The small round oak table brought them close together. Anne waited on Queenie with every appearance of polite attention. Queenie ate and drank in long, fierce silences; for her hunger was even more imperious than her pride.

"I don't _want_ to eat your food," she said at last. "I'm only doing it because I'm starving. I dined with Colin's mother last night. It was the first dinner I've eaten since I went to the war."

"You needn't feel unhappy about it," said Anne. "It's Eliot's house and Jerrold's food. How's Cutler?"

"Much the same as when you saw him." Queenie answered quietly, but her face was red.

"And that Johnnie--what was his name?--who took my place?"

Queenie's flush darkened. She was holding her mouth so tight that the thin red line of the lips faded.

"Noel Fenwick," said Anne, suddenly remembering.

"What about him?" Queenie's throat moved as if she swallowed something big and hard.

"Is he there still?"

"He was when I left."

Her angry, defiant eyes were fixed on the open doorway. You could see she was waiting for Colin, ready to fall on him and tear him as soon as he came in.

"Am I to see Colin or not?" she said as she rose.

"Have you anything to say to him?"

"Only what I've said to you."

"Then you won't see him. In fact I think you'd better not see him at all."

"You mean he funks it?"

"I funk it for him. He isn't well enough to be raged at and threatened with proceedings. It'll upset him horribly and I don't see what good it'll do you."

"No more do I. I'm not going to live with him after this. You can tell him that. Tell him I don't want to see him or speak to him again."

"I see. You just came down to make a row."

"You don't suppose I came down to stay with you two?"

Queenie was so far from coming down to stay that she had taken rooms for the night at the White Hart in Wyck. Anne drove her there.

ii

Two and a half years passed. Anne's work on the farm filled up her days and marked them. Her times were ploughing time and the time for sowing: wheat first, and turnips after the wheat, barley after the turnips, sainfoin, grass and clover after the barley. Oats in the five-acre field this year; in the seven-acre field the next. Lambing time, calving time, cross-ploughing and harrowing, washing and shearing time, time for hoeing; hay time and harvest. Then threshing time and ploughing again.

All summer the hard fight against the charlock, year after year the same. You harrowed it out and ploughed it down and sprayed it with sulphate of copper; you sowed vetches and winter corn to crowd it out; and always it sprang up again, flaring in bright yellow stripes and fans about the hills. The air was sweet with its smooth, delicious smell.

Always the same clear-cut pattern of the fields; but the colors shifted. The slender, sharp-pointed triangle that was jade-green last June, this June was yellow-brown. The square under the dark comb of the plantation that had been yellow-brown was emerald; the wide-open fan beside it that had been emerald was pink. By August the emerald had turned to red-gold and the jade-green to white.

These changes marked the months and the years, a bright patterned, imperceptibly moving measure, rolling time off across the hills.

Nineteen-sixteen, seventeen. Nineteen-eighteen and the armistice. Nineteen-nineteen and the peace.

iii

In the spring of that year Anne and Colin were still together at the Manor Farm. He was stronger. But, though he did more and more work every year, he was still unfit to take over the management himself. Responsibility fretted him and he tired soon. He could do nothing without Anne.

He was now definitely separated from his wife. Queenie had come back from the war a year ago. As soon as it was over she had begun to rage and consult lawyers and write letters two or three times a week, threatening to drag Anne and Colin through the Divorce Court. But Miss Mullins (once the secretary of Dr. Cutler's Field Ambulance Corps), recovering at the Farm from an excess of war work, reassured them. Queenie, she said, was only bluffing. Queenie was not in a position to bring an action against any husband, she had been too notorious herself. Miss Mullins had seen things, and she intimated that no defence could stand against the evidence she could give.

And in the end Queenie left off talking about divorce and contented herself with a judicial separation.

Colin still woke every morning to his dread of some blank, undefined disaster; but, as if Queenie and the war had made one obsession, he was no longer haunted by the imminent crash of phantom shells. It was settled that he was to live with Jerrold and Maisie when they came back to the Manor, while Anne stayed on by herself at the Farm.

Every now and then Eliot came down to see them. He had been sent home early in nineteen-seventeen with a shrapnel wound in his left leg, the bone shattered. He obtained his discharge at the price of a permanent limp, and went back to his research work.

For the last two years he had been investigating trench fever, with results that were to make him famous. But that was not for another year.

In February, nineteen-nineteen, Jerrold had come back. He and Maisie had been living in London ever since he had left the Army, filling in time till Wyck Manor would be no longer a Home for Convalescent Soldiers. He had tried to crowd into this interval all the amusement he hadn't had for four years. His way was to crush down the past with the present; to pile up engagements against the future, party on party, dances on suppers and suppers on plays; to dine every evening at some place where they hadn't dined before; to meet lots of nice amusing people with demobilised minds who wouldn't talk to him about the war; to let himself go in bursts of exquisitely imbecile laughter; never to be quiet for an hour, never to be alone with himself, never to be long alone with Maisie.

After the first week of it this sort of thing ceased to amuse him, but he went on with it because he thought it amused Maisie.

There was something he missed; something he wanted and hadn't got. At night, when he lay awake, alone with himself at last, he knew that it was Anne.

And he went on laughing and amusing Maisie; and Maisie, with a heart-breaking sweetness, laughed back at him and declared herself amused. She had never had such a jolly time in all her life, she said.

Then, very early in the spring, Maisie went down to her people in Yorkshire to recover from the jolly time she had had. The convalescent soldiers had all gone, and Wyck Manor, rather worn and shabby, was Wyck Manor again.

Jerrold came back to it alone.

XII

COLIN, JERROLD, AND ANNE

i

He went through the wide empty house, looking through all the rooms, trying to find some memory of the happiness he had had there long ago. The house was full of Anne. Anne's figure crossed the floors before him, her head turned over her shoulder to see if he were coming; her voice called to him from the doorways, her running feet sounded on the stairs. That was her place at the table; that was the armchair she used to curl up in; just there, on the landing, he had kissed her when he went to school.

They had given his mother's room to Maisie, and they had put his things into the room beyond, his father's room. Everything was in its place as it had been in his father's time, the great wardrobe, the white marble-topped washstand, the bed he had died on. He saw him lying there and Anne going to and fro between the washstand and the bed. The parrot curtains hung from the windows, straight and still.

Jerrold shuddered as he looked at these things.

They had thought that he would want to sleep in that room because he was married, because Maisie would have the room it led out of.

But he couldn't sleep in it. He couldn't stay in it a minute; he would never pass its door without that sickening pang of memory. He moved his things across the gallery into Anne's room.

He would sleep there; he would sleep in the white bed that Anne had slept in.

He told himself that he had to be near Colin; there was only the passage between and their doors could stand open; that was why he wanted to sleep there. But he knew that was not why. He wanted to sleep there because there was no other room where he could feel Anne so near him, where he could see her so clearly. When the dawn came she would be with him, sitting in her chair by the window. The window looked to the west, to Upper Speed and the Manor Farm house. The house was down there behind the trees, and somewhere there, jutting out above the porch, was the window of Anne's room.

He looked at his watch. One o'clock. At two he would go and see Anne.

ii

When Jerrold called at the Manor Farm house Anne was out. Old Ballinger came slouching up from the farmyard to tell him that Miss Anne had gone up to the Far Acres field to try the new tractor.

The Far Acres field lay at the western end of the estate. Jerrold followed her there. Five furrows, five bright brown bands on the sallow stubble, marked out the Far Acres into five plots. In the turning space at the top corner he saw Anne on her black horse and Colin standing beside her.

With a great clanking and clanging the new American, tractor struggled towards them up the hill, dragging its plough. It stopped and turned at the "headland" as Jerrold came up.

A clear, light wind blew over the hill and he felt a sudden happiness and excitement. He was beginning to take an interest in his land. He shouted:

"I say, Anne, you look like Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo."

"Oh, not Waterloo, I hope. I'm going to win _my_ battle."

"Well, Marengo--Austerlitz--whatever battles he did win. Does Curtis understand that infernal thing?"

Young Curtis, sulky and stolid on his driver's seat, stared at his new master.

"Yes. He's been taught motor mechanics. He's quite good at it ... If only he'd do what you tell him. Curtis, I said you were not to use those disc coulters for this field. I've had three smashed in two weeks. They're no earthly good for stony soil."

"Tis n' so bad 'ere as it is at the east end, miss."

"Well, we'll see. You can let her go now."

With a fearful grinding and clanking the tractor started. The revolving disc coulter cut the earth; the three great shares gripped it and turned it on one side. But the earth, instead of slanting off clear from the furrows, fell back again. Anne dismounted and ran after the tractor and stopped it.

"He hasn't got his plough set right," she said. "It's too deep in."

She stooped, and did something mysterious and efficient with a lever; the wheels dipped, raising the shares to their right level, and the tractor set off again. This time the earth parted clean from the furrows with the noise of surge, and three slanting, glistening waves ran the length of the field in the wake of the triple plough.

"Oh, Jerrold, look at those three lovely furrows. Look at the pace it goes. This field will be ploughed up in a day or two. Colin, aren't you pleased?"

The tractor was coming towards them, making a most horrible noise.

"No," he said, "I don't like the row it makes. Can't I go, now I've seen what the beastly thing can do?"

"Yes. You'd better go if you can't stand it."

Colin went with quick, desperate strides down the field away from the terrifying sound of the tractor.

They looked after him sorrowfully.

"He's not right yet. I don't think he'll ever be able to stand noises."

"You must give him time, Anne."

"Time? He's had three years. It's heart-breaking. I must just keep him out of the way of the tractors, that's all."

She mounted her horse and went riding up and down the field, abreast of the plough.

Jerrold waited for her at the gate of the field.

iii

It was Sunday evening between five and six.

Anne was in the house, in the great Jacobean room on the first floor. Barker had judged it too large and too dilapidated to live in, and it had been left empty in his time. Eliot had had it restored and Jerrold had furnished it. Black oak bookcases from the Manor stretched along the walls, for Jerrold had given Eliot half of their father's books. This room would be too dilapidated to live in, and it had been left empty in his time. Eliot had had it restored and Jerrold had furnished it. Black oak bookcases from the Manor stretched along the walls, for Jerrold had given Eliot half of their father's books. This room would be Eliot's library when he came down. It was now Anne's sitting-room.

The leaded windows were thrown open to the grey evening and a drizzling rain; but a fire blazed on the great hearth under the arch of the carved stone chimney-piece. Anne's couch was drawn up before it. She lay stretched out on it, tired with her week's work.

She was all alone in the house. The gardener and his wife went out together every Sunday to spend the evening with their families at Medlicote or Wyck. She was not sorry when they were gone; the stillness of the house rested her. But she missed Colin. Last Sunday he had been there, sitting beside her in his chair by the hearth, reading. Today he was with Jerrold at the Manor. The soft drizzle turned to a quick patter of rain; a curtain of rain fell, covering the grey fields between the farm and the Manor, cutting her off.

She was listening to the rain when she heard the click of the gate and feet on the garden path. They stopped on the flagstones under her window. Jerrold's voice called up to her.

"Anne--Anne, are you there? Can I come up?"

"Rather."

He came rushing up the stairs. He was in the room now.

"How nice of you to come on this beastly evening."

"That's why I came. I thought it would be so rotten for you all alone down here."

"What have you done with Colin?"

"Left him up there. He was making no end of a row on the piano."

"Oh Jerrold, if he's playing again he'll be all right."

"He didn't sound as if there was much the matter with him."

"You never can tell. He can't stand those tractors."

"We must keep him away from the beastly things. I suppose we've got to have 'em?"

"I'm afraid so. They save no end of labour, and labour's short and dear."

"Is that why you've been working yourself to death?"

"I haven't. Why, do I look dead?"

"No. Eliot told me. He saw you at it."

"I only take a hand at hay time and harvest. All the rest of the year it's just riding about and seeing that other people work. And Colin does half of that now."

"All the same, I think it's about time you stopped."

"But if I stop the whole thing'll stop. The men must have somebody over them."

"There's me."

"You don't know anything about farming, Jerry dear. You don't know a teg from a wether."

"I suppose I can learn if Colin's learnt. Or I can get another Barker."

"Not so easy. Don't you like my looking after your land, then? Aren't you pleased with me? I haven't done so badly, you know. Seven hundred acres."

"You've been simply splendid. I shall never forget what you've done. And I shall never forgive myself for letting you do it. I'd no idea what it meant."