Anne Severn and the Fieldings

by May Sinclair

IV

ROBERT

i

But when to-morrow came he did not kiss her. He was annoyed with Anne because she insisted on taking a gloomy view of his father's illness.

The doctors couldn't agree about it. Dr. Ransome of Wyck said it was gastritis. Dr. Harper of Cheltenham said it was colitis. He had had that before and had got better. Now he was getting worse, fast. For the last three days he couldn't keep down his chicken and fish. Yesterday not even his milk. To-day, not even his ice-water. Then they both said it was acute gastritis.

"He's never been like this before, Jerrold."

"No. But that doesn't mean he isn't going to get better. People with acute gastritis do get better. It's enough to make him die, everybody insisting that he's going to. And it's rot sending for Eliot."

That was what Anne had done.

Eliot had written to her from London: 10 Welbeck St., Sept. 35th, 1910.

My dear Anne:

I wish you'd tell me how Father really is. Nobody but you has any intelligence that matters. Between Mother's wails and Jerrold's optimism I don't seem to be getting the truth. If it's serious I'll come down at once.

Always yours,

Eliot.

And Anne had answered:

My dear Eliot,

It is serious. Dr. Ransome and Dr. Harper say so. They think now it's acute gastritis. I wish you'd come down. Jerrold is heart-breaking. He won't see it; because he couldn't bear it if he did. I know Auntie wants you.

Always very affectionately yours,

Anne.

She addressed the letter to Dr. Eliot Fielding, for Eliot had taken his degree.

And on that to-morrow of Jerrold's Eliot had come. Jerrold told him he was a perfect idiot, rushing down like that, as if Daddy hadn't an hour to live.

"You'll simply terrify him," he said. "He hasn't got a chance with all you people grousing and croaking round him."

And he went off to play in the lawn tennis tournament at Medlicote as a protest against the general pessimism. His idea seemed to be that if he, Jerrold, could play in a lawn tennis tournament, his father couldn't be seriously ill.

"It's perfectly awful of Jerrold," his mother said. "I can't make him out. He adores his father, yet he behaves as if he hadn't any feeling."

She and Anne were sitting in the lounge after luncheon, waiting for
Eliot to come from his father's room.

"Didn't you tell him, Anne?"

"I did everything I know…. But darling, he isn't unfeeling. He does it because he can't bear to think Uncle Robert won't get better. He's trying to make himself believe he will. I think he does believe it. But if he stayed away from the tournament that would mean he didn't."

"If only I could. But I must. I must believe it if I'm not to go mad. I don't know what I shall do if he doesn't get better. I can't live without him. It's been so perfect, Anne. It can't come to an end like this. It can't happen. It would be too cruel."

"It would," Anne said. But she thought: "It just will happen. It's happening now."

"Here's Eliot," she said.

Eliot came down the stairs. Adeline went to him.

"Oh Eliot, what do you think of him?"

Eliot put her off. "I can't tell you yet."

"You think he's very bad?"

"Very."

"But you don't think there isn't any hope?"

"I can't tell yet. There may be. He wants you to go to him. Don't talk much to him. Don't let him talk. And don't, whatever you do, let him move an inch."

Adeline went upstairs. Anne and Eliot were alone. "You can tell," she said. "You don't think there's any hope."

"I don't. There's something quite horribly wrong. His temperature's a hundred and three."

"Is that bad?"

"Very."

"I do wish Jerry hadn't gone."

"So do I."

"It'll be worse for him, Eliot, than for any of us when he knows."

"I know. But he's always been like that, as long as I can remember. He simply can't stand trouble. It's the only thing he funks. And his funking it wouldn't matter if he'd stand and face it. But he runs away. He's running away now. Say what you like, it's a sort of cowardice."

"It's his only fault."

"I know it is. But it's a pretty serious one, Anne. And he'll have to pay for it. The world's chock full of suffering and all sorts of horrors, and you can't go turning your back to them as Jerrold does without paying for it. Why, he won't face anything that's even a little unpleasant. He won't listen if you try to tell him. He won't read a book that hasn't a happy ending. He won't go to a play that isn't a comedy… It's an attitude I can't understand. I don't like horrors any more than he does; but when I hear about them I want to go straight where they are and do something to stop them. That's what I chose my profession for."

"I know. Because you're so sorry. So sorry. But Jerry's sorry too. So sorry that he can't bear it."

"But he's got to bear it. There it is and he's got to take it. He's only making things worse for himself by holding out and refusing. Jerrold will never be any good till he has taken it. Till he's suffered damnably."

"I don't want him to suffer. I don't want it. I can't bear him to bear it."

"He must. He's got to."

"I'd do anything to save him. But I can't."

"You can't. And you mustn't try to. It would be the best thing that could happen to him."

"Oh no, not to Jerry."

"Yes. To Jerry. If he's ever to be any good. You don't want him to be a moral invalid, do you?"

"No… Oh Eliot, that's Uncle Robert's door."

Upstairs the door opened and shut and Adeline came to the head of the stairs.

"Oh Eliot, come quick——"

Eliot rushed upstairs. And Anne heard Adeline sobbing hysterically and crying out to him.

"I can't—I can't. I can not bear it!"

She saw her trail off along the gallery to her room; she heard her lock herself in. She had every appearance of running away from something. From something she could not bear. Half an hour passed before Eliot came back to Anne.

"What was it?" she said.

"What I thought. Gastric ulcer. He's had a haemorrhage."

That was what Aunt Adeline had run away from.

"Look here, Anne, I've got to send Scarrott in the car for Ransome. Then he'll have to go on to Cheltenham to fetch Colin."

"Colin?" This was the end then.

"Yes. He'd better come. And I want you to do something. I want you to drive over to Medlicote and bring Jerrold back. It's beastly for you. But you'll do it, won't you?"

"I'll do anything."

It was the beastliest thing she had ever had to do, but she did it.

From where she drew up in the drive at Medlicote she could see the tennis courts. She could see Jerrold playing in the men's singles. He stood up to the net, smashing down the ball at the volley; his back was turned to her as he stood.

She heard him shout. She heard him laugh. She saw him turn to come up the court, facing her.

And when he saw her, he knew.

ii

He had waited ten minutes in the gallery outside his father's room. Eliot had asked Anne to go in and help him while Jerrold stood by the door to keep his mother out. She was no good, Eliot said. She lost her head just when he wanted her to do things. You could have heard her all over the house crying out that she couldn't bear it.

She opened her door and looked out. When she saw Jerrold she came to him, slowly, supporting herself by the gallery rail. Her eyes were sore with crying and there was a flushed thickening about the edges of her mouth.

"So you've come back," she said. "You might go in and tell me how he is."

"Haven't you seen him?"

"Of course I've seen him. But I'm afraid, Jerrold. It was awful, awful, the haemorrhage. You can't think how awful. I daren't go in and see it again. I shouldn't be a bit of good if I did. I should only faint, or be ill or something. I simply can not bear it."

"You mustn't go in," he said.

"Who's with him?"

"Eliot and Anne."

"Anne?"

"Yes."

"Jerrold, to think that Anne should be with him and me not."

"Well, she'll be all right. She can stand things."

"It's all very well for Anne. He isn't her husband."

"You'd better go away, Mother."

"Not before you tell me how he is. Go in, Jerrold."

He knocked and went in.

His father was sitting up in his white, slender bed, raised on Eliot's arm. He saw his face, strained and smoothed with exhaustion, sallow white against the pillows, the back-drawn-mouth, the sharp, peaked nose, the iron grey hair, pointed with sweat, sticking to the forehead. A face of piteous, tired patience, waiting. He saw Eliot's face, close, close beside it by the edge of the pillow, grave and sombre and intent.

Anne was crossing the room from the bed to the washstand. Her face was very white but she had an air of great competence and composure. She carried a white basin brimming with a reddish froth. He saw little red specks splashed on the sleeve of her white linen gown. He shuddered.

Eliot made a sign to him and he went back to the door where his mother waited.

"Is he better?" she whispered. "Can I come in?"

Jerrold shook his head. "Better not—yet."

"You'll send for me if—if—"

"Yes."

He heard her trailing away along the gallery. He went into the room. He stood at the foot of the bed and stared, stared at his father lying there in Eliot's arms. He would have liked to have been in Eliot's place, close to him, close, holding him. As it was he could do nothing but stand and look at him with that helpless, agonized stare. He had to look at him, to look and look, punishing himself with sight for not having seen.

His eyes felt hot and brittle; they kept on filling with tears, burned themselves dry and filled again. His hand clutched the edge of the footrail as if only so he could keep his stand there.

A stream of warm air came through the open windows. Everything in the room stood still in it, unnaturally still, waiting. He was aware of the pattern of the window curtains. Blue parrots perched on brown branches among red flowers on a white ground; it all hung very straight and still, waiting.

Anne looked at him and spoke. She was standing beside the bed now, holding the clean basin and a towel, ready.

"Jerrold, you might go and get some more ice. It's in the bucket in the bath-room. Break it up into little pieces, like that. You split it with a needle."

He went to the bath-room, moving like a sleepwalker, wrapped in his dream-like horror. He found the ice, he broke it into little pieces, like that. He was very careful and conscientious about the size, and grateful to Anne for giving him something to do. Then he went back again and took up his station at the foot of the bed and waited. His father still lay back on his pillow, propped by Eliot's arm. His hands were folded on his chest above the bedclothes.

Anne still stood by the bed holding her basin and her towel ready. From time to time they gave him little pieces of ice to suck.

Once he opened his eyes, looked round the room and spoke. "Is your mother there?"

"Do you want her?" Eliot said.

"No. It'll only upset her. Don't let her come in."

He closed his eyes and opened them again.

"Is that Anne?"

"Yes. Who did you think it was?"

"I don't know…I'm sorry, Anne."

"Darling—" the word broke from a tender inarticulate sound she made.

Then: "Jerrold—," he said.

Jerrold came closer. His father's right arm unfolded itself and stretched out towards him along the bed.

Anne whispered, "Take his hand." Jerrold took it. He could feel it tremble as he touched it.

"It's all right, Jerry," he said. "It's all right." He gave a little choking cough. His eyes darkened with a sudden anxiety, a fear. His hand slackened. His head sank forward. Anne came between them. Jerrold felt the slight thrust of her body pushing him aside. He saw her arms stretched out, and the white gleam of the basin, then, the haemorrhage, jet after jet. Then his father's face tilted up on Eliot's arm, very white, and Anne stooping over him tenderly, and her hand with the towel, wiping the red foam from his lips.

Then eyes glazed between half-shut lids, mouth open, and the noise of death.

Eliot's arm laid down its burden. He got up and put his hand on Jerrold's shoulder and led him out of the room. "Go out into the air," he said. "I'll tell Mother."

Jerrold staggered downstairs, and through the hall and out into the blinding sunshine.

Far down the avenue he could hear the whirring of the car coming back from Cheltenham; the lines of the beech trees opened fan-wise to let it through. He saw Colin sitting up beside Scarrott.

Above his head a lattice ground and clattered. Somebody was going through the front rooms, shutting the windows and pulling down the blinds.

Jerrold turned back into the house to meet Colin there.

Upstairs his father's door opened and shut softly and Anne came out. She moved along the gallery to her room. Between the dark rails he could see her white skirt, and her arm, hanging, and the little specks of red splashed on the white sleeve.

iii

Jerrold was afraid of Anne, and he saw no end to his fear. He had been dashed against the suffering he was trying to put away from him and the shock of it had killed in one hour his young adolescent passion. She would be for ever associated with that suffering. He would never see Anne without thinking of his father's death. He would never think of his father's death without seeing Anne. He would see her for ever through an atmosphere of pain and horror, moving as she had moved in his father's room. He couldn't see her any other way. This intolerable memory of her effaced all other memories, memories of the child Anne with the rabbit, of the young, happy Anne who walked and rode and played with him, of the strange, mysterious Anne he had found yesterday in her room at dawn. That Anne belonged to a time he had done with. There was nothing left for him but the Anne who had come to tell him his father was dying, who had brought him to his father's death-bed, who had bound herself up inseparably with his death, who only moved from the scene of it to appear dressed in black and carrying the flowers for his funeral.

She was wrapped round and round with death and death, nothing but death, and with Jerrold's suffering. When he saw her he suffered again. And as his way had always been to avoid suffering, he avoided Anne. His eyes turned from her if he saw her coming. He spoke to her without looking at her. He tried not to think of her. When he had gone he would try not to remember.

His one idea was to go, to get away from the place his father had died in and from the people who had seen him die. He wanted new unknown faces, new unknown voices that would not remind him———

Ten days after his father's death the letter came from John Severn. He wrote:

"… I'm delighted about Sir Charles Durham. You are a lucky devil. Any chap Sir Charles takes a fancy to is bound to get on. He can't help himself. You're not afraid of hard work, and I can tell you we give our Assistant Commissioners all they want and a lot more.

"It'll be nice if you bring Anne out with you. If you're stationed anywhere near us we ought to give her the jolliest time in her life between us."

"But Jerrold," said Adeline when she had read this letter. "You're not going out now. You must wire and tell him so."

"Why not now?"

"Because, my dear boy, you've got the estate and you must stay and look after it."

"Barker'll look after it. That's what he's there for."

"Nonsense, Jerrold. There's no need for you to go out to India."

"There is need. I've got to go."

"You haven't. There's every need for you to stop where you are. Eliot will be going abroad if Sir Martin Crozier takes him on. And if Colin goes into the diplomatic service Goodness knows where he'll be sent to."

"Colin won't be sent anywhere for another four years."

"No. But he'll be at Cheltenham or Cambridge half the time. I must have one son at home."

"Sorry, Mother. But I can't stand it here. I've got to go, and I'm going."

To all her arguments and entreaties he had one answer: He had got to go and he was going.

Adeline left him and went to look for Eliot whom she found in his room packing to go back to London. She came sobbing to Eliot.

"It's too dreadfully hard. As if it weren't bad enough to lose my darling husband I must lose all my sons. Not one of you will stay with me. And there's Anne going off with Jerrold. She may have him with her and I mayn't. She's taken everything from me. You'd have said if a wife's place was anywhere it was with her dying husband. But no. She was allowed to be with him and I was turned out of his room."

"My dear Mother, you know you weren't."

"I was. You turned me out yourself, Eliot, and had Anne in."

"Only because you couldn't stand it and she could."

"I daresay. She hadn't the same feelings."

"She had her own feelings, anyhow, only she controlled them. She stood it because she never thought of her feelings. She only thought of what she could do to help. She was magnificent."

"Of course you think so, because you're in love with her. She must take you, too. As if Jerrold wasn't enough."

"She hasn't taken me. She probably won't if I ask her. You shouldn't say those things, Mother. You don't know what you're talking about."

"I know I'm the most unhappy woman in the world. How am I going to live?
I can't stand it if Jerry goes."

"He's got to go, Mother."

"He hasn't. Jerrold's place is here. He's got a duty and a responsibility. Your dear father didn't leave him the estate for him to let it go to wrack and ruin. It's most cruel and wrong of him."

"He can't do anything else. Don't you see why he wants to go? He can't stand the place without Father."

"I've got to stand it. So he may."

"Well, he won't, that's all. He simply funks it."

"He always was an arrant coward where trouble was concerned. He doesn't think of other people and how bad it is for them. He leaves me when I want him most."

"It's hard on you, Mother; but you can't stop him. And I don't think you ought to try."

"Oh, everybody tells me what I ought to do. My children can do as they like. So can Anne. She and Jerrold can go off to India and amuse themselves as if nothing had happened and it's all right."

But Anne didn't go off to India.

When she spoke to Jerrold about going with him his hard, unhappy face showed her that he didn't want her.

"You'd rather I didn't go," she said gently.

"It isn't that, Anne. It isn't that I don't want you. It's—it's simply that I want to get away from here, to get away from everything that reminds me—I shall go off my head if I've got to remember every minute, every time I see somebody who—I want to make a clean break and grow a new memory."

"I understand. You needn't tell me."

"Mother doesn't. I wish you'd make her see it."

"I'll try. But it's all right, Jerrold. I won't go."

"Of course you'll go. Only you won't think me a brute if I don't take you out with me?"

"I'm not going out with you. In fact, I don't think I'm going at all. I only wanted to because of going out together and because of the chance of seeing you when you got leave. I only thought of the heavenly times we might have had."

"Don't—don't, Anne."

"No, I won't. After all, I shouldn't care a rap about Ambala if you weren't there. And you may be stationed miles away. I'd rather go back to Ilford and do farming. Ever so much rather. India would really have wasted a lot of time."

"Oh, Anne, I've spoilt all your pleasure."

"No, you haven't. There isn't any pleasure to spoil—now."

"What a brute—what a cad you must think me."

"I don't, Jerry. It's not your fault. Things have just happened. And you see, I understand. I felt the same about Auntie Adeline after Mother died. I didn't want to see her because she reminded me—and yet, really, I loved her all the time."

"You won't go back on me for it?"

"I wouldn't go back on you whatever you did. And you mustn't keep on thinking I want to go to India. I don't care a rap about India itself. I hate Anglo-Indians and I simply loathe hot places. And Daddy doesn't want me out there, really. I shall be much happier on my farm. And it'll save a lot of expense, too. Just think what my outfit and passage would have cost."

"You wouldn't have cared what it cost if—"

"There isn't any if. I'm not lying, really." Not lying. Not lying. She would have given up more than India to save Jerrold that pang of memory. Only, when it was all over and he had sailed without her, she realized in one wounding flash that what she had given up was Jerrold himself.