Chapter 14

And she would go with him, her naked feet shining white on the queer, bright, cold green of the grass, up the field to the belt of firs that stood up, strange and eternal, under the risen sun.

They parted there, holding each other for a last kiss, a last clinging, as if never in this world they would meet again.

Dawn after dawn. They belonged to the dawn and the dawn light; the dawn was their day; they knew it as they knew no other time.

And Anne would go back to her shelter, and lie there, and live through their passion again in memory, till she fell asleep.

And when she woke she would find the sweet, sad ghost of Maisie haunting her, coming between her and the memory of her dark ecstasy. Maisie, utterly innocent, utterly good, trusting her, sending Jerrold back to her because she trusted her. Only to think of Maisie gave her a fearful sense of insecurity. She thought: If I'd loved her I could never have done it. If I were to love her even now that would end it. We couldn't go on. She prayed God that she might not love her.

By day the hard work of the farm stopped her thinking. And the next night and the next dawn brought back her safety.

iv

The hay harvest was over by the last week of June, and in the first week of July Maisie had come back.

Maisie or no Maisie, the work of the farm had to go on; and Anne felt more than ever that it justified her. When the day of reckoning came, if it ever did come, let her be judged by her work. Because of her love for Jerrold here was this big estate held together, and kept going; because of his love for her here was Jerrold, growing into a perfect farmer and a perfect landlord; because of her he had found the one thing he was best fitted to do; because of him she herself was valuable. Anne brought to her work on the land a thoroughness that aimed continually at perfection. She watched the starting of every tractor-plough and driller as it broke fresh ground, to see that machines and men were working at their highest pitch of efficiency. She demanded efficiency, and, on the whole, she got it; she gave it by a sort of contagion. She wrung out of the land the very utmost it was capable of yielding; she saw that there was no waste of straw or hay, of grain or fertilizers; and she knew how to take risks, spending big sums on implements and stock wherever she saw a good chance of a return.

Jerrold learned from her this perfection. Her work stood clear for the whole countryside to see. Nobody could say she had not done well by the land. When she first took on the Manor Farm it had stood only in the second class; in four years she had raised it to the first. It was now one of the best cultivated estates in the county and famous for its prize stock. Sir John Corbett of Underwoods, Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicote, and Major Markham of Wyck Wold owned to an admiration for Anne Severn's management. Her morals, they said, might be a trifle shady, but her farming was above reproach. More reluctantly they admitted that she had made something of that young rotter, Colin, even while they supposed that he had been sent abroad to keep him out of Anne Severn's way. They also supposed that as soon as he could do it decently Jerrold would get rid of Anne.

Then two things happened. In July Maisie Fielding came back and was seen driving about the country with Anne Severn; and in the same month old Sutton died and the Barrow Farm was let to Anne, thus establishing her permanence.

Anne had refused to take it from Jerrold as his gift. He had pressed her persistently.

"You might, Anne. It's the only thing I can give you. And what is it? A scrubby two hundred acres."

"It's a thundering lot of land, Jerrold. I can't take it."

"You must. It isn't enough, after all you've done for us. I'd like to give you everything I've got; Wyck Manor and the whole blessed estate to the last turnip, and every cow and pig. But I can't do that. And you used to say you wanted the Barrow Farm."

"I wanted to rent it, Jerry darling. I can't let you give it me."

"Why not? I think it's simply beastly of you not to."

At that point Maisie had passed through the room with her flowers and he had called to her to help him.

"What are you two quarrelling about?" she said.

"Why, I want to give her the Barrow Farm and she won't let me."

"Of course I won't let him. A whole farm. How could I?"

"I think you might, Anne. It would please him no end."

"She thinks," Jerrold said, "she can go on doing things for us, but we mustn't do anything for her. And I say it's beastly of her."

"It is really, Anne darling. It's selfish. He wants to give it you so awfully. He won't be happy if you won't take it."

"But a farm, a whole thumping farm. It's a big house and two hundred acres. How can I take a thing like that? You couldn't yourself if you were me."

Maisie's little white fingers flickered over the blue delphiniums stacked in the blue-and-white Chinese jar. Her mauve-blue eyes were smiling at Anne over the tops of the tall blue spires.

"Don't you want to make him happy?" she said.

"Not that way."

"If it's the only way--?"

She passed out of the room, still smiling, to gather more flowers. They looked at each other.

"Jerrold, I can't stand it when she says things like that."

"No more can I. But you know, she really does want you to take that farm."

"Don't you see why I can't take it--from _you_? It's because we're lovers."

"I should have thought that made it easier."

"It makes it impossible. I've _given_ myself to you. I can't take anything. Besides, it would look as if I'd taken it for that."

"That's an appalling idea, Anne."

"It is. But it's what everybody'll think. They'll wonder what on earth you did it for. We don't want people wondering about us. If they once begin wondering they'll end by finding out."

"I see. Perhaps you're right. I'm sorry."

"It sticks out of us enough as it is. I can't think how Maisie doesn't see it. But she never will. She'll never believe that we--"

"Do you want her to see it?"

"No, but it hurts so, her not seeing.... Jerrold, I believe that's the punishment--Maisie's trusting us. It's the worst thing she could have done to us."

"Then, if we're punished we're quits. Don't think of it, Anne darling. Don't let Maisie come in between us like that."

He took her in his arms and kissed her, close and quick, so that no thought could come between.

But Maisie's sweetness had not done its worst. She had yet to prove what she was and what she could do.

v

July passed and August; the harvest was over. And in September Jerrold went up to London to stay with Eliot for the week-end, and Anne stayed with Maisie, because Maisie didn't like being left in the big house by herself. Through all those weeks that was the way Maisie had her, through her need of her.

And on the Thursday before Anne came Maisie had called on Mrs. Hawtrey of Medlicote, and Mrs. Hawtrey had asked her to lunch with her on the following Monday. Maisie said she was afraid she couldn't lunch on Monday because Anne Severn would be with her, and Mrs. Hawtrey said she was very sorry, but she was afraid she couldn't ask Anne Severn.

And Maisie enquired in her tender voice, "Why not?"

And Mrs. Hawtrey replied, "Because, my dear, nobody here does ask Anne Severn."

Maisie said again, "Why not?"

Then Mrs. Hawtrey said she didn't want to go into it, the whole thing was so unpleasant, but nobody _did_ call on Anne Severn. She was too well known.

And at that Maisie rose in her fragile dignity and said that nobody knew Anne Severn so well as she and her husband did, and that there was nobody in the world so absolutely _good_ as Anne, and that she couldn't possibly know anybody who refused to know her, and so left Mrs. Hawtrey.

The evening Jerrold came home, Maisie, flushed with pleasure, entertained him with a report of the encounter.

"So you've given an ultimatum to the county."

"Yes. I told you I'd cut them all if they went on cutting Anne. And now they know it."

"That means that you won't know anybody, Maisie. Except for Anne and me you'll be absolutely alone here."

"I don't care. I don't want anybody but you and Anne. And if I do we can ask somebody down. There are lots of amusing people who'd come. And Eliot can bring his scientific crowd. It simply means that Corbetts and Hawtreys won't be asked to meet them, that's all."

She went upstairs to lie down before dinner, and presently Anne came to him in the drawing-room. She was dressed in her riding coat and breeches as she had come off the land.

"What do you think Maisie's done now?" he said.

"I don't know. Something that'll make me feel awful, I suppose."

"If you're going to take it like that I won't tell you."

"Yes. Tell me. Tell me. I'd rather know."

He told her as Maisie had told him.

"Can't you see her, standing up to the whole county? Pounding them with her little hands."

His vision of the gentle thing, rising up in that sudden sacred fury of protection, moved him to admiring, tender laughter. It made Anne burst into tears.

"Oh, Jerrold, that's the worst that's happened yet. Everybody'll cut her, because of me."

"Bless you, she won't care. She says she doesn't care about anybody but you and me."

"But that's the awful thing, her caring. That's the punishment. The punishment."

Again he took her in his arms and comforted her.

"What am I to do, Jerry? What am I to _do?_"

"Go to her," he said, "and say something nice."

"Go to her and take my punishment?"

"Well, yes, darling, I'm afraid you've got to take it. We can't have it both ways. It wouldn't _be_ a punishment if you weren't so sweet, if you didn't mind so. I wish to God I'd never told you."

She held her head high.

"I made you. I'm glad you told me."

She went up to Maisie in her room. Maisie had dressed for dinner and lay on her couch, looking exquisite and fragile in a gown of thick white lace. She gave a little soft cry as Anne came to her.

"Anne, you've been crying. What is it, darling?"

"Nothing. Only Jerrold told me what you'd done."

"Done?"

"Yes, for me. Why did you do it, Maisie?"

"Why? I suppose it was because I love you. It was the least I could do."

She held out her hands to her. Anne knelt down, crouching on the floor beside her, with her face hidden against Maisie's body. Maisie put her arm round her.

"But why are you crying about it, Anne? You never cry. I can't bear it. It's like seeing Jerrold cry."

"It's because you're so good, so good, and I'm such a brute. You don't know what a brute I am."

"Oh yes, I know."

"Do you?" she said, sharply. For one moment she thought that Maisie did indeed know, know and understand so perfectly that she forgave. This was forgiveness.

"Of course I do. And so does Jerrold. _He_ knows what a brute you are."

It was not forgiveness. It was Maisie's innocence again, her trust--the punishment. Anne knelt there and took the pain of it.

vi

She lay awake, alone in her shelter. She had given the excuse of a racking headache to keep Jerrold from coming to her. For that she had had to lie. But what was her whole existence but a lie? A lie told by her silence under Maisie's trust in her, by her acceptance of Maisie's friendship, by her acquiescence in Maisie's preposterous belief. Every minute that she let Maisie go on loving and trusting and believing in her she lied. And the appalling thing was that she couldn't be alone in her lying. So long as Maisie trusted him Jerrold lied, too--Jerrold, who was truth itself. One moment she thought: That's what I've brought him to. That's how I've dragged him down. The next she saw that reproach as the very madness of her conscience. She had not dragged Jerrold down; she had raised him to his highest intensity of loving, she had brought him, out of the illusion of his life with Maisie, to reality and kept him there in an immaculate faithfulness. Not even for one insane moment did Anne admit that there was anything wrong or shameful in their passion itself. It was Maisie's innocence that made them liars, Maisie's goodness that put them in the wrong and brought shame on them, her truth that falsified them.

No woman less exquisite in goodness could have moved her to this incredible remorse. It took the whole of Maisie, in her unique perfection, to beat her and break her down. Her first instinct in refusing to know Maisie had been profoundly right. It was as if she had foreseen, even then, that knowing Maisie would mean loving her, and that, loving her, she would be beaten and broken down. The awful thing was that she did love Maisie; and she couldn't tell which was the worse to bear, her love for Maisie or Maisie's love for her. And who could have foreseen the pain of it? When she prayed that she might take the whole punishment, she had not reckoned on this refinement and precision of torture. God knew what he was about. With all his resources he couldn't have hit on anything more delicately calculated to hurt. Nothing less subtle would have touched her. Not discovery; not the grossness of exposure; but this intolerable security. What could discovery and exposure do but set her free in her reality? Anne would have rejoiced to see her lie go up in one purifying flame of revelation. But to go safe in her lie, hiding her reality, and yet defenceless under the sting of Maisie's loving, was more than she could bear. She had brought all her truth and all her fineness to this passion which Maisie's innocence made a sin, and she was punished where she had sinned, wounded by the subtle God in her fineness and her truth. If only Jerrold could have escaped, but he was vulnerable, too; there was fineness and truth in him. To suffer really he had to be wounded in his soul.

If Jerrold was hurt then they must end it.

As yet he had given no sign of feeling; but that was like him. Up to the last minute he would fight against feeling, and when it came he would refuse to own that he suffered, that there was any cause for suffering. It would be like the time when his father was dying, when he refused to see that he was dying. So he would refuse to see Maisie and then, all at once, he would see her and he would be beaten and broken down.

vii

And suddenly he did see her.

It was on the first Sunday after Jerrold's return. Maisie had had another of her heart attacks, by herself, in her bed, the night before; and she had been lying down all day. The sun had come round on to the terrace, and she now rested there, wrapped in a fur coat and leaning back on her cushions in the garden chair.

They were sitting out there, all three, Jerrold and Anne talking together, and Maisie listening with her sweet, attentive eyes. Suddenly she shut her eyes and ceased to listen. Jerrold and Anne went on talking with hushed voices, and in a little while Maisie was asleep.

Her head, rising out of the brown fur, was tilted back on the cushions, showing her innocent white throat; her white violet eyelids were shut down on her eyes, the dark lashes lying still; her mouth, utterly innocent, was half open; her breath came through it unevenly, in light jerks.

"She's asleep, Jerrold."

They sat still, making no sound.

And as she looked at Maisie sleeping, tears came again into Anne's eyes, the hard tears that cut her eyelids and spilled themselves, drop by slow drop, heavily. She tried to wipe them away secretly with her hand before Jerrold saw them; but they came again and again and he had seen. He had risen to his feet as if he would go, then checked himself and stood beside her; and together they looked on at Maisie's sleeping; they felt together the infinite anguish, the infinite pathos of her goodness and her trust. The beauty of her spirit lay bare to them in the white, tilted face, slackened and smoothed with sleep. Sleep showed them her innocence again, naked and helpless. They saw her in her poignant being, her intense reality. She was so real that in that moment nothing else mattered to them.

Anne set her teeth hard to keep her mouth still. She saw Jerrold glance at her, she heard him give a soft groan of pity or of pain; then he moved away from them and stood by the terrace wall with his back to her. She saw his clenched hands, and through his terrible, tense quietness she knew by the quivering of his shoulders that his breast heaved. Then she saw him grasp the terrace wall and grind the edge of it into the palms of his hands. That was how he had stood by his father's deathbed, gripping the foot-rail; and when presently he turned and came to her she saw the look on his face she had seen then, of young, blind agony, sharpened now with some more piercing spiritual pain.

"Come," he said, "come into the house."

They went together, side by side, as they had gone when they were children, along the terrace and down the steps into the drive. In the shelter of the hall she gave way and cried, openly and helplessly, like a child, and he put his arm round her and led her into the library, away from the place where Maisie was. They sat together on the couch, holding each other's hands, clinging together in their suffering, their memory of what Maisie had made their sin. Even so they had sat in Anne's room, on the edge of Anne's bed, when they were children, holding each other's hands, miserable and yet glad because they were brought together, because what they had done and what they had borne they had done and borne together. And now as then he comforted her.

"Don't cry, Anne darling; it isn't your fault. I made you."

"You didn't. You didn't. I wanted you and I made you come to me. And I knew what it would be like and you didn't."

"Nobody could have known. Don't go back on it."

"I'm not going back on it. If only I'd never seen Maisie--then I wouldn't have cared. We could have gone on."

"Do you mean we can't now?"

"Yes. How can we when she's such an angel to us and trusts us so?"

"It does make it pretty beastly," he said.

"It makes me feel absolutely rotten."

"So it does me, when I think about it."

"It's knowing her, Jerry. It's having to love her, and knowing that she loves me; it's knowing what she is.... Why did you make me see her?"

"You know why."

"Yes. Because it made it safer. That's the beastliness of it. I knew how it would be. I knew she'd beat us in the end--with her goodness."

"Darling, it _isn't_ your fault."

"It _is_. It's all my fault. I'm not going back on it. I'd do it again to-morrow if it weren't for Maisie. Even now I don't know whether it's right or wrong. I only know it's the most real and valuable part of me that loves you, and it's the most real and valuable part of you that loves me; and I feel somehow that that makes it right. I'd go on with it if it made you happy. But you aren't happy now."

"I'm not happy because you're not. I don't mind for myself so much. Only I hate the beastly way we've got to do it. Covering it all up and pretending that we're not lovers. Deceiving her. That's what makes it all wrong. Hiding it."

"I know. And I made you do that."

"You didn't. We did it for Maisie. Anyhow, we must stop it. We can't go on like this any more. We must simply tell her."

"_Tell_ her?"

"Yes; tell her, and get her to divorce me, so that I can marry you. It's the only straight thing."

"How can we? It would hurt her so awfully."

"Not so much as you think. Remember, she doesn't care for me. She's not like you, Anne. She's frightfully cold."

As he said it there came to her a sudden awful intimation of reality, a sense that behind all their words, all the piled-up protection of their outward thinking, there hid an unknown certainty, a certainty that would wreck them if they knew it. It was safer not to know, to go on hiding behind those piled-up barriers of thought. But an inward, ultimate honesty drove her to her questioning.

"Are you sure she's cold?"

"Absolutely sure. You go on thinking all the time that she's like you, that she takes things as hard as you do; but she doesn't. She doesn't feel as you do. It won't hurt her as it would hurt you if I left you for somebody else."

"But--it'll hurt her."

"It's better to hurt her a little now than to go on humbugging and shamming till she finds out. That would hurt her damnably. She'd hate our not being straight with her. But if we tell her the truth she'll understand. I'm certain she'll understand and she'll forgive _you_. She can't be hard on you for caring for me."

"Even if she doesn't care?"

"She cares for _you_," he said.

She couldn't push it from her, that importunate sense of a certainty that was not his certainty. If Maisie did care for him Jerrold wouldn't see it. He never saw what he didn't want to see.

"Supposing she _does_ care all the time? How do you know she doesn't?"

"I don't think I can tell you."

"But I _must_ know, Jerrold. It makes all the difference."

"It makes none to me, Anne. I'd want you whether Maisie cared for me or not. But she doesn't."

"If I thought she didn't--then--then I shouldn't mind her knowing. Why are you so certain? You might tell me."

Then he told her.

After all, that sense of hidden certainty was an illusion.

"When was that, Jerrold?"

"Oh, a night or two after she came down here in April. She didn't know, poor darling, how she let me off."

"April--September. And she's stuck to it?"

"Oh--stuck to it. Rather."

"And before that?"

"Before that we were all right."

"And she'd been away, too."

"Yes. Ages. That made it all the funnier."

"I wish you'd told me before."

"I wish I had, if it makes you happier."

"It does. Still, we can't go on, Jerrold, till she knows."

"Of course we can't. It's too awful. I'll tell her. And we'll go away somewhere while she's divorcing me, and stay away till I can marry you.... It'll be all different when we've got away."

"When you've told her. We ought to have told her long ago, before it happened."

"Yes. But now--what the devil _am_ I to tell her?"

He saw, as if for the first time, what telling her would mean.

"Tell her the truth. The whole truth."

"How can I--when it's _you_?"

"It's because it _is_ me that you've got to tell her. If you don't, Jerrold, I'll tell her myself."

"All right. I'll tell her at once and get it over. I'll tell her tonight."

"No. Not tonight, while she's so tired. Wait till she's rested."

And Jerrold waited.

XVI

ANNE, MAISIE, AND JERROLD

i

Jerrold waited, and Maisie got her truth in first.

It was on the Wednesday, a fine bright day in September, and Jerrold was to have driven Maisie and Anne over to Oxford in the car. And, ten minutes before starting, Maisie had declared herself too tired to go. Anne wouldn't go without her, and Jerrold, rather sulky, had set off by himself. He couldn't understand Maisie's sudden fits of fatigue when there was nothing the matter with her. He thought her capricious and hysterical. She was acquiring his mother's perverse habit of upsetting your engagements at the last moment; and lately she had been particularly tiresome about motoring. Either they were going too fast or too far, or the wind was too strong; and he would have to turn back, or hold himself in and go slowly. And the next time she would refuse to go at all for fear of spoiling their pleasure. She liked it better when Anne drove her.

And today Jerrold was annoyed with Maisie because of Anne. If it hadn't been for Maisie, Anne would have been with him, enjoying a day's holiday for once. Really, Maisie might have thought of Anne and Anne's pleasure. It wasn't like her not to think of other people. Yet he owned that she hadn't wanted Anne to stay with her. He could hear her pathetic voice imploring Anne to go "because Jerry won't like it if you don't." Also he knew that if Anne was determined not to do a thing nothing you could say would make her do it.

He had had time to think about it as he sat in the lounge of the hotel at Oxford waiting for the friends who were to lunch with him. And suddenly his annoyance had turned to pity.