Chapter 6

"You do see, Anne, how thrilling it is, don't you? For me there's nothing but bacteriology. I always meant to go in for it, and Sir Martin's magnificent. Absolutely top-hole. You see, all these disgusting diseases can be prevented. It's inconceivable that they should be tolerated in a civilized country. People can't care a rap or they couldn't sleep in their beds. They ought to get up and make a public row about it, to insist on compulsory inoculation for everybody whether they like it or not. It really isn't enough to cure people of diseases when they've got them. We ought to see that they never get them, that there aren't any to get... What we don't know yet is the complete behaviour of all these bacteria among themselves. A bad bacillus may be doing good work by holding down a worse one. It's conceivable that if we succeeded in exterminating all known diseases we might release an unknown one, supremely horrible, that would exterminate the race."

"Oh Eliot, how awful. How can _you_ sleep in your bed?"

"You needn't worry. It's only a nightmare idea of mine."

And so on and so on, for he was still so young that he wanted Anne to be excited by the things that excited him. And Anne told him all about her Ilford farm and what she meant to do on it. Eliot didn't behave like Aunt Adeline, he listened beautifully, like Uncle Robert and Jerrold, as if it was really most important that you should have a farm and work on it.

"What I want is to sell it and get one here. I don't want to be anywhere else. I can't tell you how frightfully home-sick I am when I'm away. I keep on seeing those gables with the little stone balls, and the peacocks, and the fields down to the Manor Farm. And the hills, Eliot. When I'm away I'm always dreaming that I'm trying to get back to them and something stops me. Or I see them and they turn into something else. I shan't be happy till I can come back for good."

"You don't want to go to India?" Eliot's heart began to beat as he asked his question.

"I want to work. To work hard. To work till I'm so dead tired that I roll off to sleep the minute I get into bed. So tired that I can't dream."

"That isn't right. You're too young to feel like that, Anne."

"I do feel like it. You feel like it yourself--My farm is to me what your old bacteria are to you."

"Oh, if I thought it was the farm--"

"Why, what else did you think it was?"

Eliot couldn't bring himself to tell her. He took refuge in apparent irrelevance.

"You know Father left me the Manor Farm house, don't you?"

"No, I didn't. I suppose he thought you'd want to come back, like me."

"Well, I'm glad I've got it. Mother's got the Dower House in Wyck. But she'll stay on here till--"

"Till Jerrold comes back," said Anne bravely.

"I don't suppose Jerry'll turn her out even then. Unless--"

But neither he nor Anne had the courage to say "unless he marries."

Not Anne, because she couldn't trust herself with the theme of Jerrold's marrying. Not Eliot, because he had Jerrold's word for it that if he married anybody, ever, it would not be Anne.

* * * * *

It was this assurance that made it possible for him to say what he had been thinking of saying all the time that he talked to Anne about his bacteriology. Bacteriology was a screen behind which Eliot, uncertain of Anne's feelings, sheltered himself against irrevocable disaster. He meant to ask Anne to marry him, but he kept putting it off because, so long as he didn't know for certain that she wouldn't have him, he was at liberty to think she would. He would not be taking her from Jerrold. Jerrold, inconceivable ass, didn't want her. Eliot had made sure of that months ago, the night before Jerrold sailed. He had simply put it to him: what did he mean to do about Anne Severn? And Jerrold had made it very plain that his chief object in going to India was to get away from Anne Severn and Everything. Eliot knew Jerrold too well to suspect his sincerity, so he considered that the way was now honorably open to him.

His only uncertainty was Anne herself. He had meant to give her a year to forget Jerrold in, if she was ever going to forget him; though in moments of deeper insight he realized that Anne was not likely to forget, nor to marry anybody else as long as she remembered.

Yet, Eliot reasoned, women did marry, even remembering. They married and were happy. You saw it every day. He was content to take Anne on her own terms, at any cost, at any risk. He had never been afraid of risks, and once he had faced the chance of her refusal all other dangers were insignificant.

A year was a long time, and Eliot had to consider the probability of his going out to Central Africa with Sir Martin Crozier to investigate sleeping sickness. He wanted the thing settled one way or another before he went.

He put it off again till the next week-end. And in the meanwhile Sir Martin Crozier had seen him. He was starting in the spring and Eliot was to go with him.

It was on Sunday evening that he spoke to Anne, sitting with her under the beeches at the top of the field where she and Jerrold had sat together. Eliot had chosen his place badly.

"I wouldn't bother you so soon if I wasn't going away, but I simply must--must know--"

"Must know what?"

"Whether you care for me at all. Not much, of course, but just enough not to hate marrying me."

Anne turned her face full on him and looked at him with her innocent, candid eyes. And all she said was, "You _do_ know about Jerrold, don't you?"

"Oh God, yes. I know all about him."

"He's why I can't."

"I tell you, I know all about Jerrold. He isn't a good enough reason."

"Good enough for me."

"Not unless--" But he couldn't say it.

"Not unless he cares for me. That's why you're asking me, then, because you know he doesn't."

"Well, it wouldn't be much good if I knew he did."

"Eliot, it's awful of me to talk about it, as if he'd said he did. He never said a word. He never will."

"I'm afraid he won't, Anne."

"Don't imagine I ever thought he would. He never did anything to make me think it for a minute, really."

"Are you quite sure he didn't?"

"Quite sure. I made it all up out of my head. My silly head. I don't care what you think of me so long as you don't think it was Jerry's fault. I should go on caring for him whatever he did or didn't do."

"I know you would. But it's possible--"

"To care for two people and marry one of them, no matter which? It isn't possible for me. If I can't have the person I want I won't have anybody."

"It isn't wise, Anne. I tell you I could make you care for me. I know all about you. I know how you think and how you feel. I understand you better than Jerrold does. You'd be happy with me and you'd be safe."

"It's no use. I'd rather be unhappy and in danger if it was with Jerrold."

"You'll be unhappy and in danger without him."

"I don't care. Besides, I shan't be. I shall work. You'll work, too. It'll be so exciting that you'll soon forget all about me."

"You know I shan't. And I'll never give you up, unless Jerrold gets you."

"Eliot--I only told you about Jerrold, because I thought you ought to know. So that you mightn't think it was anything in you."

"It isn't something in me, then? Tell me--if it hadn't been for Jerry, do you think you might have cared for me?"

"Yes. I do. I quite easily might. And I think it would be a jolly good thing if I could, now. Only I can't. I can't."

"Poor little Anne."

"Does it comfort you to think I'd have cared if it hadn't been for Jerry?"

"It does, very much."

"Eliot--you're the only person I can talk to about him. Do you mind telling me whether he said that to you, or whether you just guessed it."

"What?"

"Why, that he wouldn't--ever--"

"I asked him, Anne, because I had to know. And he told me."

"I thought he told you."

"Yes, he told me. But I'm a cad for letting you think he didn't care for you. I believe he did, or that he would have cared--awfully--if my father hadn't died just then. Your being in the room that day upset him. If it hadn't been for that--"

"Yes, but there _was_ that. It was like he was when Binky died and he couldn't stand Yearp. Don't you remember how he wouldn't let me go with him to see Yearp because he said he didn't want me mixed up with it. Well--I've been mixed up, that's all."

"Still, Anne, I'm certain he'd have cared--if that's any comfort to you. You didn't make it up out of your dear little head. We all thought it. Father thought it. I believe he wanted it. If he'd only known!"

She thought: If he'd only known how he had hurt her, he who had never hurt anybody in all his beautiful life.

"Dear Uncle Robert. There's no good talking about it. I knew, the minute Jerry said he didn't want me to go to India with him."

"Is that why you didn't go?"

"Yes."

"That was a mistake, Anne. You should have gone."

"How could I, after that? And if I had, he'd only have kept away."

"You should have let him go first and then gone after him. You should have turned up suddenly, in wonderful clothes, looking cheerful and beautiful. So that you wiped out the memory he funked. As it is you've left him nothing else to think of."

"I daresay that's what I should have done. But it's too late. I can't do it now."

"I'm not so sure."

"What, go _after_ Jerrold? Hunt him down? Dress up and scheme to make him marry me?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes."

"Eliot, you know I couldn't."

"You said once you'd commit a crime for anybody you cared about."

"A crime, yes. But not that. I'd rather die."

"You're too fastidious. It's only the unscrupulous people who get what they want in this world. They know what they want and go for it. They stamp on everything and everybody that gets in their way."

"Oh, Eliot dear, I know what I want, and I'd go for it. If only Jerrold knew, too."

"He would know if you showed him."

"And that's just what I can't do."

"Well, don't say I didn't give you the best possible advice, against my own interests, too."

"It was sweet of you. But you see how impossible it is."

"I see how adorable you are. You always were."

iv

For the first time in her life Adeline was furious.

She had asked Eliot whether he was or was not going to marry Anne Severn, and was told that he had asked her to marry him that afternoon and that she wouldn't have him.

"Wouldn't have you? What's she thinking of?"

"You'd better ask her," said Eliot, never dreaming that she would.

But that was what Adeline did. She came that night to Anne's room just as Anne was getting into bed. Unappeased by her defenseless attitude, she attacked with violence.

"What's all this about Eliot asking you to marry him?"

Anne uncurled herself and sat up on the edge of her bed.

"Did he tell you?"

"Yes. Of course he told me. He says you refused him. Did you?"

"I'm afraid I did."

"Then Anne, you're a perfect little fool."

"But Auntie, I don't love him."

"Nonsense; you love him as much as most people love the men they marry. He's quite sensible. He doesn't want you to go mad about him."

"He wants more than I can give him."

"Well, all I can say is if you can't give him what he wants you'd no business to go about with him as you've been doing."

"I've been going about with him all my life and I never dreamed he'd want to marry me."

"What did you suppose he'd want?"

"Why, nothing but just to go about. As we always did."

"You idiot."

"I don't see why you should be so cross about it."

Adeline sat down in the armchair at the head of the bed, prepared to "have it out" with Anne.

"I suppose you think my son's happiness is nothing to me? Didn't it occur to you that if you refuse him he'll stick for years in that awful place he's going to? Whereas if he had a wife in England there'd be a chance of his coming home now and then. Perhaps he'd never go out again."

"I'm sorry, Auntie. I can't marry Eliot even to keep him in England. Even to please you."

"Even to save his life, you mean. You don't care if he dies of some hideous tropical disease."

"I care awfully. But I can't marry him. He knows why."

"It's more than I do. If you're thinking of Jerrold, you needn't. I thought you'd done with that schoolgirlish nonsense."

"I'm not 'thinking' of him. I'm not 'thinking' of anybody and I wish you'd leave me alone."

"My dear child, how can I leave you alone when I see you making the mistake of your life? Eliot is absolutely the right person for you, if you'd only the sense to see it. He's got more character than anybody I know. Much more than dear Jerry. He'll be ten times more interesting to live with."

"I thought Jerrold was your favourite."

"No, Eliot, my dear. Always Eliot. He was my first baby."

"Well, I'm awfully sorry you mind so much. And I'd marry Eliot if I could. I simply hate him to be unhappy. But he won't be. He'll live to be frightfully glad I didn't...What, aren't you going to kiss me good-night?"

Adeline had risen and turned away with the great dignity of her righteous anger.

"I don't feel like it," she said. "I think you've been thoroughly selfish and unkind. I hate girls who go on like that--making a man mad about you by pretending to be his comrade, and then throwing him over. I've had more men in love with me, Anne, than you've seen in your life, but I never did _that_."

"Oh Auntie, what about Father? And you were engaged to him."

"Well, anyhow," said Adeline, softened by the recollection, "I _was_ engaged."

She smiled her enchanting smile; and Anne, observing the breakdown of dignity, got up off the bed and kissed her.

"I don't suppose," she said, "that Father was the only one."

"He wasn't. But then, with _me_, my dear, it was their own risk. They knew where they were."

v

In March, nineteen eleven, Eliot went out to Central Africa. He stayed there two years, investigating malaria and sleeping sickness. Then he went on to the Straits Settlements and finally took a partnership in a practice at Penang.

Anne left Wyck at Easter and returned in August because of Colin. Then she went back to her Ilford farm.

The two years passed, and in the spring of the third year, nineteen fourteen, she came again.

VI

QUEENIE

i

Something awful had happened. Adeline had told Anne about it.

It seemed that Colin in his second year at Cambridge, when he should have given his whole mind to reading for the Diplomatic Service, had had the imprudence to get engaged. And to a girl that Adeline had never heard of, about whom nothing was known but that she was remarkably handsome and that her family (Courthopes of Leicestershire) were, in Adeline's brief phrase, "all right."

From the terrace they could see, coming up the lawn from the goldfish pond, Colin and his girl.

Queenie Courthope. She came slowly, her short Russian skirt swinging out from her ankles. The brilliance of her face showed clear at a distance, vermilion on white, flaming; hard, crystal eyes, sweeping and flashing; bobbed hair, brown-red, shining in the sun. Then a dominant, squarish jaw, and a mouth exquisitely formed, but thin, a vermilion thread drawn between her staring, insolent nostrils and the rise of her round chin.

This face in its approach expressed a profound, arrogant indifference to Adeline and Anne. Only as it turned towards Colin its grey-black eyes lowered and were soft dark under the black feathers of their brows.

Colin looked back at it with a shy, adoring tenderness.

Queenie could be even more superbly uninterested than Adeline. In Adeline's self-absorption there was a passive innocence, a candor that disarmed you, but Queenie's was insolent and hostile; it took possession of the scene and challenged every comer.

"Hallo, Anne!" Colin shouted. "How did you get here?"

"Motored down."

"I say, have you got a car?"

"Only just."

"Drove yourself?"

"Rather."

Queenie scowled as if there were something disagreeable to her in the idea that Anne should have a car of her own and drive it. She endured the introduction in silence and addressed herself with an air of exclusiveness to Colin.

"What are we going to do?"

"Anything you like," he said.

"I'll play you singles, then."

"Anne might like to play," said Colin. But he still looked at Queenie, as she flamed in her beauty.

"Oh, three's a rotten game. You can't play the two of us unless Miss Severn handicaps me."

"She won't do that. Anne could take us both on and play a decent game."

Queenie picked up her racquet and stood between them, beating her skirts with little strokes of irritated impatience. Her eyes were fixed on Colin, trying, you could see, to dominate him.

"We'd better take it in turns," he said.

"Thanks, Col-Col. I'd rather not play. I've driven ninety-seven miles."

"Really rather?"

Queenie backed towards the court.

"Oh, come on, Colin, if you're coming."

He went.

"What do you think of Queenie?" Adeline said.

"She's very handsome."

"Yes, Anne. But it isn't a nice face. Now, is it?"

Anne couldn't say it was a nice face.

"It's awful to think of Colin being married to it. He's only twenty-one now, and she's seven years older. If it had been anybody but Colin. If it had been Eliot or Jerrold I shouldn't have minded so much. They can look after themselves. He'll never stand up against that horrible girl."

"She does look terribly strong."

"And cruel, Anne, as if she might hurt him. I don't want him to be hurt. I can't bear her taking him away from me. My little Col-Col....I did hope, Anne, that if you wouldn't have Eliot--"

"I'd have Colin? But Auntie, I'm years older than he is. He's a baby."

"If he's a baby he'll want somebody older to look after him."

"Queenie's even better fitted than I am, then."

"Do you think, Anne, she proposed to Colin?"

"No. I shouldn't think it was necessary."

"I should say she was capable of anything. My only hope is they'll tire each other out before they're married and break it off."

All afternoon on the tennis court below Queenie played against Colin. She played vigorously, excitedly, savagely, to win. She couldn't hide her annoyance when he beat her.

"What was I to do?" he said. "You don't like it when I beat you. But if I was beaten you wouldn't like _me_."

ii

Adeline's only hope was not realized. They hadn't had time to tire of each other before the War broke out. And Colin insisted on marrying before he joined up. Their engagement had left him nervous and unfit, and his idea was that, once married, he would present a better appearance before the medical examiners.

But after a month of Queenie, Colin was more nervous and unfit than ever.

"I can't think," said Adeline, "what that woman does to him. She'll wear him out."

So Colin waited, trying to get fitter, and afraid to volunteer lest he should be rejected.

Everybody around him was moving rapidly. Queenie had taken up motoring, so that she could drive an ambulance car at the front. Anne had gone up to London for her Red Cross training. Eliot had left his practice to his partner at Penang and had come home and joined the Army Medical Corps.

Eliot, home on leave for three days before he went out, tried hard to keep Colin back from the War. In Eliot's opinion Colin was not fit and never would be fit to fight. He was just behaving as he always had behaved, rushing forward, trying insanely to do the thing he never could do.

"Do you mean to say they won't pass me?" he asked.

"Oh, they'll pass you all right," Eliot said. "They'll give you an expensive training, and send you into the trenches, and in any time from a day to a month you'll be in hospital with shell-shock. Then you'll be discharged as unfit, having wasted everybody's time and made a damned nuisance of yourself....I suppose I ought to say it's splendid of you to want to go out. But it isn't splendid. It's idiotic. You'll be simply butting in where you're not wanted, taking a better man's place, taking a better man's commission, taking a better man's bed in a hospital. I tell you we don't want men who are going to crumple up in their first action."

"Do you think I'm going to funk then?" said poor Colin.

"Funk? Oh, Lord no. You'll stick it till you drop, till you're paralyzed, till you've lost your voice and memory, till you're an utter wreck. There'll be enough of 'em, poor devils, without you, Col-Col."

"But why should I go like that more than anybody else?"

"Because you're made that way, because you haven't got a nervous system that can stand the racket. The noises alone will do for you. You'll be as right as rain if you keep out of it."

"But Jerrold's coming back. _He_'ll go out at once. How can I stick at home when he's gone?"

"Heaps of good work to be done at home."

"Not by men of my age."

"By men of your nervous organization. Your going out would be sheer waste."

"Why not?" Does it matter what becomes of me?"

"No. It doesn't. It matters, though, that you'll be taking a better man's place."

Now Colin really did want to go out and fight, as he had always wanted to follow Jerrold's lead; he wanted it so badly that it seemed to him a form of self-indulgence; and this idea of taking a better man's place so worked on him that he had almost decided to give it up, since that was the sacrifice required of him, when he told Queenie what Eliot had said.

"All I can say is," said Queenie, "that if you don't go out I shall give _you_ up. I've no use for men with cold feet."

"Can't you see," said Colin (he almost hated Queenie in that moment), "what I'm afraid of? Being a damned nuisance. That's what Eliot says I'll be. I don't know how he knows."

"He doesn't know everything. If _my_ brother tried to stop my going to the front I'd jolly soon tell him to go to hell. I swear, Colin, if you back out of it I won't speak to you again. I'm not asking you to do anything I funk myself."

"Oh, shut up. I'm going all right. Not because you've asked me, but because I want to."

"If you didn't I should think you'd feel pretty rotten when I'm out with my Field Ambulance," said Queenie.

"Damn your Field Ambulance!... No, I didn't mean that, old thing; it's splendid of you to go. But you'd no business to suppose I funked. I _may_ funk. Nobody knows till they've tried. But I was going all right till Eliot put me off."

"Oh, if you're put off as easily as all that----"

She was intolerable. She seemed to think he was only going because she'd shamed him into it.

That evening he sang:

"'What are you doing all the day, Rendal, my son? What are you doing all the day, my pretty one?'"

He understood that song now.

"'What will you leave to your lover, Rendal, my son? What will you leave to your lover, my pretty one? A rope to hang her, mother, A rope to hang her, mother....'"

"Go it, Col-Col!" Out on the terrace Queenie laughed her harsh, cruel laugh.

"'For I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down.'"

"'I'm sick to my heart and I fain would lie down,'" Queenie echoed, with clipped words, mocking him.

He hated Queenie.

And he loved her. At night, at night, she would unbend, she would be tender and passionate, she would touch him with quick, hurrying caresses, she would put her arms round him and draw him to her, kissing and kissing. And with her young, beautiful body pressed tight to him, with her mouth on his and her eyes shining close and big in the darkness, Colin would forget.

iii

Dr. Cutler's Field Ambulance, British Hospital, Antwerp.

_September 20th, 1914._

Dearest Auntie Adeline,--I haven't been able to write before. There's been a lot of fighting all round here and we're frightfully busy getting in wounded. And when you've done you're too tired to sit up and write letters. You simply roll into bed and drop off to sleep. Sometimes we're out with the ambulances half the night.