Anne Severn and the Fieldings

by May Sinclair

XIX

ANNE AND ELIOT

i

She knew what she would do now.

She would go away and never see Jerrold again, never while their youth lasted, while they could still feel. She would go out of England, so far away that they couldn't meet. She would go to Canada and farm.

All night she lay awake with her mind fixed on the one thought of going away. There was nothing else to be done, no room for worry or hesitation. They couldn't hold out any longer, she and Jerrold, strained to the breaking-point, tortured with the sight of each other.

As she lay awake there came to her the peace that comes with all immense and clear decisions. Her mind would never be torn and divided any more. And towards morning she fell asleep.

She woke dulled and bewildered. Her mind struggled with a sense of appalling yet undefined disaster. Something had happened overnight, she couldn't remember what. Something had happened. No. Something was going to happen. She tried to fall back into sleep, fighting against the return of consciousness; it came on, wave after wave, beating her down.

Now she remembered. She was going away. She would never see Jerrold again. She was going to Canada.

The sharp, clear name made the whole thing real and irrevocable. It was something that would actually happen soon. To her. She was going. And when she had gone she would not come back.

She got up and looked out of the window. She saw the green field sloping down to the river and the road, and beyond the road, to the right, the rise of the Manor fields and the belt of firs. And in her mind, more real than they, the Manor house, the garden, and the many-coloured hills beyond, rolling, curve after curve, to the straight, dark-blue horizon. The scene that held her childhood, all her youth, all her happiness; that had drawn her back, again and again, in memory and in dreams, making her heart ache. How could she leave it? How could she live with that pain?

If she was going to be a coward, if she was going to be afraid of pain—How was she to escape it, how was Jerrold to escape? If she stayed on they would break down together and give in; they would be lovers again, and again Maisie's sweet, wounding face would come between them; they could never get away from it; and in the end their remorse would be as unbearable as their separation. She couldn't drag Jerrold through that agony again.

No. Life wasn't worth living if you were a coward and afraid. And under all her misery Anne had still the sense that life was somehow worth living even if it made you miserable. Life was either your friend or your enemy. If it was your friend you served it; if it was your enemy you stood up to it and refused to let it beat you, and your enemy became your servant. Whatever happened, your work remained. Still there would be ploughing and sowing, and reaping and ploughing again. Still the earth waited. She thought of the unknown Canadian earth that waited for her tilling.

Jerrold was not a coward. He was not afraid—well, only afraid of the people he loved getting ill and dying; and she was not going to get ill and die.

She would have to tell him. She would go to him in the fields and tell him.

But before she did that she must make the thing irrevocable. So Anne wrote to the steamship company, booking her passage in two weeks' time; she wrote to Eliot, asking him to call at the company's office and see if he could get her a decent cabin. She went to Wyck and posted her letters, and then to the Far Acres field where Jerrold was watching the ploughing.

They met at the "headland." They would be safe there on the ploughed land, in the open air.

"What is it, Anne?" he said.

"Nothing. I want to talk to you."

"All right."

Her set face, her hard voice gave him a premonition of disaster.

"It's simply this," she said. "What happened yesterday mustn't happen again."

"It shan't. I swear it shan't. I was a beast. I lost my head."

"Yes, but it may happen again. We can't go on like this, Jerry. The strain's too awful."

"You mean you can't trust me."

"I can't trust myself. And it isn't fair to you."

"Oh, me. That doesn't matter."

"Well, then, say I matter. It's the same for me. I'm never going to let that happen again. I'm going away."

"Going away—"

"Yes. And I'm not coming back this time."

His voice struggled in his throat. Something choked him. He couldn't speak.

"I'm going to Canada in a fortnight."

"Good God! You can't go to Canada."

"I can. I've booked my passage."

His face was suddenly sallow white, ghastly. His heart heaved and he felt sick.

"Nothing on earth will stop me."

"Won't Maisie stop you? If you do this she'll know. Can't you see how it gives us away?"

"No. It'll only give me away. If Maisie asks me why I'm going I shall tell her I'm in love with you, and that I can't stand it; that I'm too unhappy. I'd rather she thought I cared for you than that she should think you cared for me."

"She'll think it all the same."

"Then I shall have to lie. I must risk it…. Oh Jerry, don't look so awful! I've got to go. We've settled it that we can't go on deceiving her, and we aren't going to make her unhappy. There's nothing else to be done."

"Except to bear it."

"And how long do you suppose that'll last? We can't bear it. Look at it straight. It's all so horribly simple. If we were beasts and only thought of ourselves and didn't think of Maisie it wouldn't matter to us what we did. But we can't be beasts. We can't lie to Maisie, and we can't tell her the truth. We can't go on seeing each other without wanting each other—unbearably—and we can't go on wanting each other without—some day—giving in. It comes back the first minute we're alone. And we don't mean to give in. So we mustn't see each other, that's all. Can you tell me one other thing I can do?"

"But why should it be you? Why should you get the worst of it?"

"Because one of us has got to clear out. It can't be you, so it's got to be me. And going away isn't the worst of it. It'll be worse for you sticking on here where everything reminds you—At least I shall have new things to keep my mind off it."

"Nothing will keep your mind off it. You'll fret yourself to death."

"No, I shan't. I shall have too much to do. You're not to be sorry for me, Jerrold."

"But you're giving up everything. The Barrow Farm. The place you wanted.
You won't have a thing."

"I don't want 'things.' It's easier to chuck them than to hang on to them when they'll remind me…. Really, if I could see any other way I'd take it."

"But you can't go. You're not fit to go. You're ill."

"I shall be all right when I get there."

"But what do you think you're going to do in Canada? It's not as if you'd got anything to go for."

"I shall find something. I shall work on somebody's ranch first and learn Canadian farming. Then I shall look out for land and buy it. I've got stacks of money. All Grandpapa Everitt's, and the money for the farm. Stacks. I shall get on all right."

"When did you think of all this?"

"Last night."

"I see. I made you."

"No. I made myself. After all, it's the easiest way."

"For you, or me?"

"For both of us. Honestly, it's the only straight thing. I ought to have done it long ago."

"It means never seeing each other again. You'll never come back."

"Never while we're young. When we're both old, too old to feel any more, then I'll come back some day, and we'll be friends."

And still his will beat against hers in vain, till at last he stopped; sick and exhausted.

They went together down the ploughed land into the pastures, and through the pastures to the mill water. In the opposite field they could see the brown roof and walls of the shelter.

"What are you going to plant in the Seven Acres field?"

"Barley," he said.

"You can't. It was barley last year."

"Was it?"

They were silent then. Jerrold struggled with his feeling of deadly sickness. Anne couldn't trust herself to speak. At the Barrow Farm gate they parted.

ii

Maisie's eyes looked at him across the table, wondering. Her little drooping mouth was half open with anxiety, as if any minute she was going to say something. The looking-glass had shown him his haggard and discoloured face, a face to frighten her. He tried to eat, but the sight and smell of hot roast mutton sickened him.

"Oh, Jerrold, can't you eat it?"

"No, I can't. I'm sorry."

"There's some cold chicken. Will you have that?"

"No, thanks."

"Try and eat something."

"I can't. I feel sick."

"Don't sit up, then. Go and lie down."

"I will if you don't mind."

He went to his room and was sick. He lay down on his bed and tried to sleep. His head ached violently and every movement made him heave; he couldn't sleep; he couldn't lie still; and presently he got up and went out again, up to the Far Acres field to the ploughing. He couldn't overcome the physical sickness of his misery, but he could force himself to move, to tramp up and down the stiff furrows, watching the tractor; he kept himself going by the sheer strength of his will. The rattle and clank of the tractor ground into his head, making it ache again. He was stunned with great blows of noise and pain, so that he couldn't think. He didn't want to think; he was glad of the abominable sensations that stopped him. He went from field to field, avoiding the boundaries of the Barrow Farm lest he should see Anne.

When the sun set and the land darkened he went home.

At dinner he tried to eat, sickened again, and leaned back in his chair; he forced himself to sit through the meal, talking to Maisie. When it was over he went to bed and lay awake till the morning.

The next day passed in the same way, and the next night; and always he was aware of Maisie's sweet face watching him with frightened eyes and an unuttered question. He was afraid to tell her that Anne was going lest she should put down his illness to its true cause.

And on the third day, when he heard her say she was going to see Anne, he told her.

"Oh, Jerrold, she can't really mean it."

"She does mean it. I said everything I could to stop her, but it wasn't any good. She's taken her passage."

"But why—why should she want to go?"

"I can't tell you why. You'd better ask her."

"Has anything happened to upset her?"

"What on earth should happen?"

"Oh, I don't know. When did she tell you this?"

He hesitated. It was dangerous to lie when Maisie might get the truth from Anne.

"The day before yesterday."

Maisie's eyes were fixed on him, considering it. He knew she was saying to herself, "That was the day you came home so sick and queer."

"Jerry—did you say anything to upset her?"

"No."

"I can't think how she could want to go."

"Nor I. But she's going."

"I shall go down and see if I can't make her stay."

"Do. But you won't if I can't," he said.

iii

Maisie went down early in the afternoon to see Anne.

She couldn't think how Anne could want to leave the Barrow Farm house when she had just got into it, when they had all made it so nice for her; she couldn't think how she could leave them when she cared for them, when she knew how they cared for her.

"You do care for us, Anne?"

"Oh yes, I care."

"And you wanted the farm. I can't understand your going just when you've got it, when you've settled, in and when Jerrold took all that trouble to make it nice for you. It isn't like you, Anne."

"I know. It must seem awful of me; but I can't help it, Maisie darling.
I've got to go. You mustn't try and stop me. It only makes it harder."

"Then it is hard? You don't really want to go?"

"Of course I don't. But I must."

Maisie meditated, trying to make it out.

"Is it—is it because you're unhappy?"

Anne didn't answer.

"You are unhappy. You've been unhappy ever so long. Can't we do anything?"

"No. Nobody can do anything."

"It isn't," said Maisie at last, "anything to do with Jerrold?"

"You wouldn't ask me that, Maisie, if you didn't know it was."

"Perhaps I do know. Do you care for him very much, Anne?"

"Yes, I care for him, very much. And I can't stand it."

"It's so bad that you've got to go away?"

"It's so bad that I've got to go away."

"That's very brave of you."

"Or very cowardly."

"No. You couldn't be a coward…. Oh, Anne darling, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry. It's my own fault. I'd no business to get into this state. Don't let's talk about it, Maisie."

"All right, I won't. But I'm sorry…. Only one thing. It—it hasn't made you hate me, has it?"

"You know it hasn't."

"Oh, Anne, you are beautiful."

"I'm anything but, if you only knew."

She had got beyond the pain of Maisie's goodness, Maisie's trust. No possible blow from Maisie's mind could hurt her now. Nothing mattered. Maisie's trust and goodness didn't matter, since she had done all she knew; since she was going away; since she would never see Jerrold again, never till their youth was gone and they had ceased to feel.

iv

That afternoon Eliot arrived at Wyck Manor. His coming was his answer to
Anne's letter.

He went over to the Barrow Farm about five o'clock when Anne's work would be done. Anne was still out, and he waited till she should come back.

As he waited he looked round her room. This, he thought, was the place that Anne had set her heart on having for her own; it was the home they had made for her. Something terrible must have happened before she could bring herself to leave it. She must have been driven to the breaking-point. She was broken. Jerrold must have driven and broken her.

He heard her feet on the flagged path, on the threshold of the house; she stood in the doorway of the room, looking at him, startled.

"Eliot, what are you doing there?"

"Waiting for you. You must have known I'd come."

"To say good-bye? That was nice of you."

"No, not to say good-bye. I should come to see you off if you were going."

"But I am going. You've seen about my berth, haven't you?"

"No, I haven't. We've got to talk about it first."

He looked dead tired. She remembered that she was his hostess.

"Have you had tea?"

"No. You're going to give me some. Then we'll talk about it."

"Talking won't be a bit of good."

"I think it may be," he said.

She rang the bell and they waited. She gave him his tea, and while they ate and drank he talked to her about the weather and the land, and about his work and the book he had just finished on Amoebic Dysentery, and about Colin and how well he was now. Neither of them spoke of Jerrold or of Maisie.

When the tea things were cleared away he leaned back and looked at her with his kind, deep-set, attentive eyes. She loved Eliot's eyes, and his queer, clever face that was so like and so unlike his father's, so utterly unlike Jerrold's.

"You needn't tell me why you're going," he said at last. "I've seen
Jerrold."

"Did he tell you?"

"No. You've only got to look at him to see."

"Do you think Maisie sees?"

"I can't tell you. She isn't stupid. She must wonder why you're going like this."

"I told her. I told her I was in love with Jerrold."

"What did she say?"

"Nothing. Only that she was sorry. I told her so that she mightn't think he cared for me. She needn't know that."

"She isn't stupid," he said again.

"No. But she's good. She trusts him so. She trusted me…. Eliot, that was the worst of it, the way she trusted us. That broke us down."

"Of course she trusted you."

"Did you?"

"You know I did."

"And yet," she said, "I believe you knew. You knew all the time."

"If I didn't, I know now."

"Everything?"

"Everything."

"How? Because of my going away? Is that it?"

"Not altogether. I've seen you happy and I've seen you unhappy. I've seen you with Jerrold. I've seen you with Maisie. Nobody else would have seen it, but I did, because I knew you so well. And because I was afraid of it. Besides, you almost told me."

"Yes, and you said it wouldn't make any difference. Does it?"

"No. None. I know, whatever you did, you wouldn't do it only for yourself. You did this for Jerrold. And you were unhappy because of it."

"No. No. I was happy. We were only unhappy afterwards because of Maisie. It was so awful going on deceiving her, hiding it and lying. I feel as if everything I said and did then was a lie. That was how I was punished. Not being able to tell the truth. And I could have borne even that if it wasn't for Jerrold. But he hated it, too. It made him wretched."

"I know it did. If you hadn't been so fine it wouldn't have punished you."

"The horrible thing was knowing what I'd done to Jerrold, making him hide and lie."

"Oh, what you've done to Jerrold—You've done him nothing but good.
You've made him finer than he could possibly have been without you."

"I've made him frightfully unhappy."

"Not unhappier than he's made you. And it's what he had to be. I told you long ago Jerrold wouldn't be any good till he'd suffered damnably. Well—he has suffered damnably. And he's got a soul because of it. He hadn't much of one before he loved you."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean he used to think of nothing but his own happiness. Now he's thinking of nothing but Maisie's and yours. He loves you better than himself. He even loves Maisie better—I mean he thinks more of her—than he did before he loved you. There are two people that he cares for more than himself. He cares more for his own honour than he did. And for yours. And that's your doing. Just think how you'd have wrecked him if you'd been a different sort of woman."

"No. Because then he wouldn't have cared for me."

"No, I believe he wouldn't. He chose well."

"You were always much too good to me."

"No, Anne. I want you to see this thing straight, and to see yourself as you really are. Not to go back on yourself."

"I don't go back on myself. That would be going back on Jerrold. I'm sorry because of Maisie, that's all. If I'd had an ounce of sense I'd never have known her. I'd have gone off to some place not too far away where Jerrold could have come to me and where I should never have seen Maisie. That's what I should have done. We should both have been happy then."

"Yes, Jerrold would have been happy. And he wouldn't have saved his soul. And he'd have been deceiving Maisie all the time. You don't really wish you'd done that, Anne."

"No. Not now. And I'm not unhappy about Maisie now. I'm going away. I'm giving Jerrold up. I can't do more than that."

"You wouldn't have to go away, Anne, if you'd do what I want and marry me. You said perhaps you might if you had to save Jerrold."

"Did I? I don't think I did."

"You've forgotten and I haven't. You don't know what an appalling thing you're doing. You're leaving everything and everybody you ever cared for. You'll die of sheer unhappiness."

"Nonsense, Eliot. You know perfectly well that people don't die of unhappiness. They die of accidents and diseases and old age. I shall die of old age. And I'll be back in twenty years' time if I've seen it through."

"Twenty years. The best years of your life. You'll be desperately lonely. You don't know what it'll be like."

"Oh yes, I do. I've been lonely before now. And I've saved myself by working."

"Yes, in England, where you could see some of us sometimes. But out there, with people you never saw before—people who may be brutes—"

"They needn't be."

He went on relentlessly. "People you don't care for and never will care for. You've never really cared for anybody but us."

"I haven't. I'm going because I care. I can't let Jerry go on like that.
I've got to end it."

"You're going simply to save Jerrold. So that you can never go back to him. Don't you see that if you married me you'd both be safe? You couldn't go back. If you were married to me Jerrold wouldn't take you from me. If you were married to me you wouldn't break faith with me. If you had children you wouldn't break faith with them. Nothing could keep you safer."

"I can't, Eliot. Nothing's changed. I belong to Jerrold. I always have belonged to him. It isn't anything physical. Even if I'm separated from him, thousands of miles, I shall belong to him still. My mind, or soul, or whatever the thing is, can't get away from him…. You say if I belonged to you I couldn't give myself to Jerrold. If I belong to Jerrold, how can I give myself to you?"

"I see. It's like that, is it?"

"It's like that."

Eliot said no more. He knew when he was beaten.

v

Maisie sat alone in her own room, thinking it over. She didn't know yet that Eliot had come. He had arrived while she was with Anne and she had missed him on the way to Barrow Farm, driving up by the hill road while he walked down through the fields.

She didn't think of Jerrold all at once. Her mind was taken up with Anne and Anne's unhappiness. She could see nothing else. She remembered how Adeline had told her that Anne was in love with Jerrold. She had said, "It was funny when she was a little thing." Anne had loved him all her life, then. All her life she had had to do without him.

Maisie thought: Perhaps he would have loved her and married her if it hadn't been for me. And yet Anne had loved her.

That was Anne's beauty.

She wondered next: If Anne had been in love with Jerrold all that time, and if they had all seen it, all the Fieldings and John Severn, how was it that she had never seen it? She had seen nothing but a perfect friendship, and she had tried to keep it for them in all its perfection, so that neither of them should miss anything because Jerrold had married her. She remembered how happy Anne had been when she first knew her, and she thought: If she was happy then, why is she unhappy now? If she loved Jerrold all her life, if she had done without him all her life, why go away now?

Unless something had happened.

It was then that Maisie thought of Jerrold, and his sad, drawn face and his sudden sickness the other day. That was the day he had been with Anne, when she had told him that she was going away. He had never been the same since. He had neither slept nor eaten.

Maisie had all the pieces of the puzzle loose before her, and at first sight not one of them looked as if it would fit. But this piece under her hand fitted. Jerrold's illness joined on to Anne's going. With a terrible dread in her heart Maisie put the two things together and saw the third thing. Jerrold was ill because Anne was going away. He wouldn't be ill unless he cared for her. And another thing. Anne was going away, not because she cared, but because Jerrold cared. Therefore she knew that he cared for her. Therefore he had told her. That was what had happened.

When she had put all the pieces into their places she would have the whole story.

But Maisie didn't want to know any more. She had enough to make her heart break. She still clung to her belief in their goodness. They were unhappy because they had given each other up. And under all her thinking, like a quick-running pain, there went her premonition of its end. She remembered that they had been happy once when she first knew them. If they were unhappy now because they had given each other up, had they been happy then because they hadn't? For a moment she asked herself, "Were they—?" and was afraid to finish and answer her own question. It was enough that they were all unhappy now and that none of them would ever be happy again. Not Anne. Not Jerrold. Their unhappiness didn't bear thinking of, and in thinking of it Maisie forgot her own.

Her heart shook her breast with its beating, and for a moment she wondered whether her pain were beginning again. Then the thought of Anne and Jerrold and herself and of their threefold undivided misery came upon her, annihilating every other thought. As if all that was physical in Maisie were subdued by the intensity of her suffering, with the coming of the supreme emotion her body had no pain.