VII
ADELINE
i
They would never know what it cost her to come back and look after Colin. That knowledge was beyond Adeline Fielding. She congratulated Anne and expected Anne to congratulate herself on being "well out of it." Her safety was revolting and humiliating to Anne when she thought of Queenie and Cutler and Dicky, and Eliot and Jerrold and all the allied armies in the thick of it. She had left a world where life was lived at its highest pitch of intensity for a world where people were only half-alive. To be safe from the chance of sudden violent death was to be only half-alive.
Her one consolation had been that now she would see Jerrold. But she did not see him. Jerrold had given up his appointment in the Punjaub three weeks before the outbreak of the war. His return coincided with the retreat from Mons. He had not been in England a week before he was in training on Salisbury Plain. Anne had left Wyck when he arrived; and before he got leave she was in Belgium with her Field Ambulance. And now, in October of nineteen fifteen, when she came back to Wyck, Jerrold was fighting in France.
At least they knew what had happened to Colin; but about Eliot and Jerrold they knew nothing. Anything might have happened to them since they had written the letters that let them off from week to week, telling them that they were safe. Anything might happen and they might never know.
Anne's fear was dumb and secret. She couldn't talk about Jerrold. She lived every minute in terror of Adeline's talking, of the cries that came from her at queer unexpected moments: between two cups of tea, two glances at the mirror, two careful gestures of her hands pinning up her hair.
"I cannot bear it if anything happens to Jerrold, Anne."
"Oh Anne, I wonder what's happening to Jerrold."
"If only I knew what was happening to Jerrold."
"If only I knew where Jerrold was. Nothing's so awful as not knowing."
And at breakfast, over toast and marmalade: "Anne, I've got such an awful feeling that something's happened to Jerrold. I'm sure these feelings aren't given you for nothing… You aren't eating anything, darling. You must eat."
Every morning at breakfast Anne had to look through the lists of killed, missing and wounded, to save Adeline the shock of coming upon Jerrold's or Eliot's name. Every morning Adeline gazed at Anne across the table with the same look of strained and agonised enquiry. Every morning Anne's heart tightened and dragged, then loosened and lifted, as they were let off for one more day.
One more day? Not one more hour, one minute. Any second the wire from the War Office might come.
ii
Anne never knew the moment when she was first aware that Colin's mother was afraid of him. Aunt Adeline was very busy, making swabs and bandages. Every day she went off to her War Hospital Supply work at the Town Hall, and Anne was left to take care of Colin. She began to wonder whether the swabs and bandages were not a pretext for getting away from Colin.
"It's no use," Adeline said. "I cannot stand the strain of it. Anne, he's worse with me than he is with you. Everything I say and do is wrong. You don't know what it was like before you came."
Anne did know. The awful thing was that Colin couldn't bear to be left alone, day or night. He would lie awake shivering with terror. If he dropped off to sleep he woke screaming. At first Pinkney slept with him. But Pinkney had joined up, and old Wilkins, the butler, was impossible because he snored.
Anne had her old room across the passage where she had slept when they were children. And now, as then, their doors were left open, so that at a sound from Colin she could get up and go to him.
She was used to the lacerating, unearthly scream that woke her, the scream that terrified Adeline, that made her cover her head tight with the bed-clothes, to shut it out, that made her lock her door to shut out Colin. Once he had come into his mother's room and she had found him standing by her bed and looking at her with the queer frightened face that frightened her. She was always afraid of this happening again.
Anne couldn't bear to think of that locked door. She was used to the sight of Colin standing in her doorway, to the watches beside his bed where he lay shivering, holding her hand tight as he used to hold it when he was a child. To Anne he was "poor Col-Col" again, the little boy who was afraid of ghosts, only more abandoned to terror, more unresisting.
He would start and tremble at any quick, unexpected movement. He would burst into tears at any sudden sound. Small noises, whisperings, murmurings, creakings, soft shufflings, irritated him. Loud noises, the slamming of doors, the barking of dogs, the crowing of cocks, made him writhe in agony. For Colin the deep silence of the Manor was the ambush for some stupendous, crashing, annihilating sound; sound that was always coming and never came. The droop of the mouth that used to appear suddenly in his moments of childish anguish was fixed now, and fixed the little tortured twist of his eyebrows and his look of anxiety and fear. His head drooped, his shoulders were hunched slightly, as if he cowered before some perpetually falling blow.
On fine warm days he lay out on the terrace on Adeline's long chair; on wet days he lay on the couch in the library, or sat crouching over the fire. Anne brought him milk or beef tea or Benger's Food every two hours. He was content to be waited on; he had no will to move, no desire to get up and do things for himself. He lay or sat still, shivering every now and then as he remembered or imagined some horror. And as he was afraid to be left alone Anne sat with him.
"How can you say this is a quiet place?" he said.
"It's quiet enough now."
"It isn't. It's full of noises. Loud, thundering noises going on and on. Awful noises…. You know what it is? It's the guns in France. I can hear them all the time."
"No, Colin. That isn't what you hear. We're much too far off. Nobody could hear them."
"I can."
"I don't think so."
"Do you mean it's noises in my head?"
"Yes. They'll go away when you're stronger."
"I shall never be strong again."
"Oh yes, you will be. You're better already."
"If I get better they'll send me out again."
"Never. Never again."
"I ought to be out. I oughtn't to be sticking here doing nothing….
Anne, you don't think Queenie'll come over, do you?"
"No, I don't. She's got much too much to do out there."
"You know, that's what I'm afraid of, more than anything, Queenie's coming. She'll tell me I funked. She thinks I funked. She thinks that's what's the matter with me."
"She doesn't. She knows it's your body, not you. Your nerves are shaken to bits, that's all."
"I didn't funk, Anne." (He said it for the hundredth time.) "I mean I stuck it all right. I went back after I had shell-shock the first time—straight back into the trenches. It was at the very end of the fighting that I got it again. Then I couldn't go back. I couldn't move."
"I know, Colin, I know."
"Does Queenie know?"
"Of course she does. She understands perfectly. Why, she sees men with shell-shock every day. She knows you were splendid."
"I wasn't. But I wasn't as bad as she thinks me. … Don't let her see me if she comes back."
"She won't come."
"She will. She will. She'll get leave some day. Tell her not to come. Tell her she can't see me. Say I'm off my head. Any old lie that'll stop her."
"Don't think about her."
"I can't help thinking. She said such beastly things. You can't think what disgusting things she said."
"She says them to everybody. She doesn't mean them."
"Oh, doesn't she!… Is that mother? You might tell her I'm sleeping."
For Colin was afraid of his mother, too. He was afraid that she would talk, that she would talk about the War and about Jerrold. Colin had been home six weeks and he had not once spoken Jerrold's name. He read his letters and handed them to Anne and Adeline without a word. It was as if between him and the thought of Jerrold there was darkness and a supreme, nameless terror.
One morning at dawn Anne was wakened by Colin's voice in her room.
"Anne, are you awake?"
The room was full of the white dawn. She saw him standing in it by her bedside.
"My head's awfully queer," he said. "I can feel my brain shaking and wobbling inside it, as if the convolutions had come undone. Could they?"
"Of course they couldn't."
"The noise might have loosened them."
"It isn't your brain you feel, Colin. It's your nerves. It's just the shock still going on in them."
"Is it never going to stop?"
"Yes, when you're stronger. Go back to bed and I'll come to you."
He went back. She slipped on her dressing-gown and came to him. She sat by his bed and put her hand on his forehead.
"There—it stops when you put your hand on."
"Yes. And you'll sleep."
Presently, to her joy, he slept.
She stood up and looked at him as he lay there in the white dawn. He was utterly innocent, utterly pathetic in his sleep, and beautiful. Sleep smoothed out his vexed face and brought back the likeness of the boy Colin, Jerrold's brother.
That morning a letter came to her from Jerrold. He wrote: "Don't worry too much about Col-Col. He'll be all right as long as you'll look after him."
She thought: "I wonder whether he remembers that he asked me to."
But she was glad he was not there to hear Colin scream.
iii
"Anne, can you sleep?" said Adeline. Colin had gone to bed and they were sitting together in the drawing-room for the last hour of the evening.
"Not very well, when Colin has such bad nights."
"Do you think he's ever going to get right again?"
"Yes. But it'll take time."
"A long time?"
"Very long, probably."
"My dear, if it does, I don't know how I'm going to stand it. And if I only knew what was happening to Jerrold and Eliot. Sometimes I wonder how I've lived through these five years. First, Robert's death; then the War. And before that there was nothing but perfect happiness. I think trouble's worse to bear when you've known nothing but happiness before…. If I could only die instead of all these boys, Anne. Why can't I? What is there to live for?"
"There's Jerrold and Eliot and Colin."
"Oh, my dear, Jerrold and Eliot may never come back. And look at poor Colin. That isn't the Colin I know. He'll never be the same again. I'd almost rather he'd been killed than that he should be like this. If he'd lost a leg or an arm…. It's all very well for you, Anne. He isn't your son."
"You don't know what he is," said Anne. She thought: "He's Jerrold's brother. He's what Jerrold loves more than anything."
"No," said Adeline. "Everything ended for me when Robert died. I shall never marry again. I couldn't bear to put anybody in Robert's place."
"Of course you couldn't. I know it's been awful for you, Auntie."
"I couldn't bear it, Anne, if I didn't believe that there is Something
Somewhere. I can't think how you get on without any religion."
"How do you know I haven't any?"
"Well, you've no faith in Anything. Have you, ducky?"
"I don't know what I've faith in. It's too difficult. If you love people, that's enough, I think. It keeps you going through everything."
"No, it doesn't. It's all the other way about. It's loving people that makes it all so hard. If you didn't love them you wouldn't care what happened to them. If I didn't love Colin I could bear his shell-shock better."
"If I didn't love him, I couldn't bear it at all."
"I expect," said Adeline, "we both mean the same thing."
Anne thought of Adeline's locked door; and, in spite of her love for her, she had a doubt. She wondered whether in this matter of loving they had ever meant the same thing. With Adeline love was a passive state that began and ended in emotion. With Anne love was power in action. More than anything it meant doing things for the people that you loved. Adeline loved her husband and her sons, but she had run away from the sight of Robert's haemorrhage, she had tried to keep back Eliot and Jerrold from the life they wanted, she locked her door at night and shut Colin out. To Anne that was the worst thing Adeline had done yet. She tried not to think of that locked door.
"I suppose," said Adeline, "you'll leave me now your father's coming home?"
John Severn's letter lay between them on the table. He was retiring after twenty-five years of India. He would be home as soon as his letter.
"I shall do nothing of the sort," said Anne. "I shall stay as long as you want me. If father wants me he must come down here."
In another three days he had come.
iv
He had grey hair now and his face was a little lined, a little faded, but he was slender and handsome still—handsomer, more distinguished, Adeline thought, than ever.
Again he sat out with her on the terrace when the October days were warm; he walked with her up and down the lawn and on the flagged paths of the flower garden. Again he followed her from the drawing-room to the library where Colin was, and back again. He waited, ready for her.
Again Adeline smiled her self-satisfied, self-conscious smile. She had the look of a young girl, moving in perfect happiness. She was perpetually aware of him.
One night Colin called out to Anne that he couldn't sleep. People were walking about outside under his window. Anne looked out. In the full moonlight she saw Adeline and her father walking together on the terrace. Adeline was wrapped in a long cloak; she held his arm and they leaned toward each other as they walked. His man's voice sounded tender and low.
Anne called to them. "I say, darlings, would you mind awfully going somewhere else? Colin can't sleep with you prowling about there."
Adeline's voice came up to them with a little laughing quiver.
"All right, ducky; we're going in."
v
It was the end of October; John Severn had gone back to London. He had taken a house in Montpelier Square and was furnishing it.
One morning Adeline came down smiling, more self-conscious than ever.
"Anne," she said, "do you think you could look after Colin if I went up to Evelyn's for a week or two?"
Evelyn was Adeline's sister. She lived in London.
"Of course I can."
"You aren't afraid of being alone with him?"
"Afraid? Of Col-Col? What do you take me for?"
"Well—" Adeline meditated. "It isn't as if Mrs. Benning wasn't here."
Mrs. Benning was the housekeeper.
"That'll make it all right and proper. The fact is, I must have a rest and change before the winter. I hardly ever get away, as you know. And Evelyn would like to have me. I think I must go."
"Of course you must go," Anne said.
And Adeline went.
At the end of the first week she wrote:
12 Eaton Square. November 3d, 1915.
Darling Anne,—Will you be very much surprised to hear that your father and I are going to be married? You mayn't know it, but he has loved me all his life. We were to have married once (you knew that), and I jilted him. But he has never changed. He has been so faithful and forgiving, and has waited for me so patiently—twenty-seven years, Anne—that I hadn't the heart to refuse him. I feel that I must make up to him for all the pain I've given him.
We want you to come up for the wedding on the 10th. It will be very quiet. No bridesmaids. No party. We think it best not to have it at Wyck, on Colin's account. So I shall just be married from Evelyn's house.
Give us your blessing, there's a dear.
Your loving
Adeline Fielding.
Anne's eyes filled with tears. At last she saw Adeline Fielding completely, as she was, without any fascination. She thought: "She's marrying to get away from Colin. She's left him to me to look after. How could she leave him? How could she?"
Anne didn't go up for the wedding. She told Adeline it wasn't much use asking her when she knew that Colin couldn't be left.
"Or, if you like, that I can't leave him."
Her father wrote back:
Your Aunt Adeline thinks you reproach her for leaving Colin. I told her you were too intelligent to do anything of the sort. You'll agree it's the best thing she could do for him. She's no more capable of looking after Colin than a kitten. She wants to be looked after herself, and you ought to be grateful to me for relieving you of the job.
But I don't like your being alone down there with Colin. If he isn't better we must send him to a nursing home.
Are you wondering whether we're going to be happy?
We shall be so long as I let her have her own way; which is what I mean to do.
Your very affectionate father,
JOHN SEVERN.
And Anne answered:
DEAREST DADDY,—I shouldn't dream of reproaching Aunt Adeline any more
than I should reproach a pussycat for catching birds.
Look after her as much as you please—I shall look after Colin.
Whether you like it or not, darling, you can't stop me. And I won't let
Colin go to a nursing home. It would be the worst possible place for
him. Ask Eliot. Besides, he is better.
I'm ever so glad you're going to be happy.
Your loving