"I'm afraid you've had a very hard time."

"Not so hard as you think."

She smiled a mysterious, quiet smile, as if she contemplated some happy
secret. He thought he knew it, Anne's secret.

"Do you think it's funny of me to be living here with Colin?"

He laughed.

"I suppose it's all right. You always had pluck enough for anything."

"It doesn't take pluck to stick to Colin."

"Moral pluck."

"No. Not even moral."

"You were always fond of him, weren't you?"

That was about as far as he dare go.

She smiled her strange smile again.

"Yes. I was always fond of him.... You see, he wants me more than
anybody else ever did or ever will."

"I'm not so sure about that. But he always did get what he wanted."

"Oh, does he! How about Queenie?"

"Even Queenie. I suppose he wanted her at the time."

"He doesn't want her now. Poor Colin."

"You mustn't ask me to pity him."

"Ask you? He'd hate you to pity him. I'd hate you to pity _me_."

"I shouldn't dream of pitying you, any more than I should dream of
criticising you."

"Oh, you may criticise as much as you like."

"No. Whatever you did it would make no difference. I should know it was
right because you did it."

"It wouldn't be. I do heaps of wrong things, but _this_ is right."

"I'm sure it is." "Here's Colin," she said.

He had come out to look for them. He couldn't bear to be alone.


vi

Jerrold had gone to Sutton's Farm to say good-bye to their old nurse,
Nanny Sutton.

Nanny talked about the war, about the young men who had gone from Wyck
and would not come back, about the marvel of Sutton's living on through
it all, and he so old and feeble. She talked about Colin and Anne.

"Oh, Master Jerrold," she said, "I do think it's a pity she should be
livin' all alone with Mr. Colin like this 'ere."

"They're all right, Nanny. You needn't worry."

"Well--well, Miss Anne was always one to go her own way and make it seem
the right way."

"You may be perfectly sure it is the right way."

"I'm not sayin' as 'tisn't. And I dunnow what Master Colin'd a done
without her. But it do make people talk. There's a deal of strange
things said in the place."

"Don't listen to them."

"Eh dear, I'll not 'ear a word. When anybody says anything to me I tell
'em straight they'd oughter be ashamed of themselves, back-bitin' and
slanderin'."

"That's right, Nanny, you give it them in the neck."

"If it'd only end in talk, but there's been harm done to the innocent.
There's Mr. and Mrs. Kimber. Kimber, 'e's my 'usband's cousing." Nanny
paused.

"What about him?"

"Well, 'tis this way. They're doin' for Miss Anne, livin' in the house
with her. Kimber, 'e sees to the garden and Mrs. Kimber she cooks and
that. And Kimber--that's my 'usband's cousin--'e was gardener at the
vicarage. And now 'e's lost his job along of Master Colin and Miss
Anne."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, sir, 'tis the vicar. 'E says they 'adn't oughter be livin' in the
house with Miss Anne, because of the talk there's been. So 'e says
Kimber must choose between 'em. And Kimber, 'e says 'e'd have minded
what parson said if it had a bin a church matter or such like, but
parson or no parson, 'e says 'e's his own master an' 'e won't have no
interferin' with him and his missus. So he's lost his job."

"Poor old Kimber. What a beastly shame."

"Eh, 'tis a shame to be sure."

"Never mind; I can give him a bigger job at the Manor."

"Oh, Master Jerrold, if you would, it'd be a kindness, I'm sure. And
Kimber 'e deserves it, the way they've stuck to Miss Anne."

"He does indeed. It's pretty decent of them. I'll see about that before
I go."

"Thank you, sir. Sutton and me thought maybe you'd do something for him,
else I shouldn't have spoken. And if there's anything I can do for Miss
Anne I'll do it. I've always looked on her as one of you. But 'tis a
pity, all the same."

"You mustn't say that, Nanny. I tell you it's all perfectly right."

"Well, I shall never say as 'tisn't. No, nor think it. You can trust me
for that, Master Jerrold."

He thought: Poor old Nanny. She lies like a brick.


vii

He said to himself that he would never know the truth about Anne and
Colin. If he went to them and asked them he would be no nearer knowing.
They would have to lie to him to save each other. In any case, his
mother had made it clear to him that as long as Anne had to look after
Colin he couldn't ask them. If they were innocent their innocence must
be left undisturbed. If they were not innocent, well--he had lost the
right to know it. Besides, he was sure, as sure as if they had told him.

He knew how it would be. Colin's wife would come home and she would
divorce Colin and he would marry Anne. So far as Jerrold could see, that
was his brother's only chance of happiness and sanity.

As for himself, there was nothing he could do now but clear out and
leave them.

And, as he had no desire to go back to his mother and hear about Anne
and Colin all over again, he went down to the Durhams' in Yorkshire for
the rest of his leave.

He hadn't been there five days before he and Maisie were engaged; and
before the two weeks were up he had married her.



X


ELIOT

i

Eliot stood in the porch of the Manor Farm house. There was nobody there
to greet him. Behind him on the oak table in the hall the wire he had
sent lay unopened.

It was midday in June.

All round the place the air was sweet with the smell of the mown hay,
and from the Broad Pasture there came the rattle and throb of the
mowing-machines.

Eliot went down the road and through the gate into the hay-field. Colin
and Anne were there. Anne at the top of the field drove the mower,
mounted up on the shell-shaped iron seat, white against the blue sky.
Colin at the bottom, slender and tall above the big revolving wheel,
drove the rake. The tedding machine, driven by a farm hand, went
between. Its iron-toothed rack caught the new-mown hay, tossed it and
scattered it on the field. Beside the long glistening swaths the cut
edge of the hay stood up clean and solid as a wall. Above it the raised
plane of the grass-tops, brushed by the wind, quivered and swayed,
whitish green, greenish white, in a long shimmering undulation.

Eliot went on to meet Anne and Colin as they turned and came up the
field again.

When they saw him they jumped down and came running.

"Eliot, you never told us."

"I wired at nine this morning."

"There's nobody in the house and we've not been in since breakfast at
seven," Colin said.

"It's twelve now. Time you knocked off for lunch, isn't it?"

"Are you all right, Eliot?" said Anne.

"Rather."

He gave a long look at them, at their sun-burnt faces, at their clean,
slender grace, Colin in his cricketing flannels, and Anne in her
land-girl's white-linen coat, knickerbockers, and grey wideawake.

"Colin doesn't look as if there was much the matter with him. He might
have been farming all his life."

"So I have," said Colin; "considering that I haven't lived till now."

And they went back together towards the house.


ii

Colin's and Anne's work was done for the day. The hay in the Broad
Pasture was mown and dried. Tomorrow it would be heaped into cocks and
carried to the stackyard.

It was the evening of Eliot's first day. He and Anne sat out under the
apple trees in the orchard.

"What on earth have you done to Colin?" he said. "I expected to find him
a perfect wreck."

"He was pretty bad three months ago. But it's good for him being down
here in the place he used to be happy in. He knows he's safe here. It's
good for him doing jobs about the farm, too."

"I imagine it's good for him being with you."

"Oh, well, he knows he's safe with me."

"Very safe. He owes it to you that he's sane now. You must have been
astonishingly wise with him."

"It didn't take much wisdom. Not more than it used to take when he was a
little frightened kid. That's all he was when he came back from the war,
Eliot."

"The point is that you haven't treated him like a kid. You've made a man
of him again. You've given him a man's life and a man's work."

"That's what I want to do. When he's trained he can look after Jerrold's
land. You know poor Barker died last month of septic pneumonia. The camp
was full of it."

"I know."

"What do you think of my training Colin?"

"It's all right for him, Anne. But how about you?"

"Me? Oh, _I'm_ all right. You needn't worry about me."

"I do worry about you. And your father's worrying."

"Dear old Daddy. It _is_ silly of him. As if anything mattered but
Colin."

"_You_ matter. You see, your father doesn't like your being here alone
with him. He's afraid of what people may think."

"I'm not. I don't care what people think. They've no business to."

"No; but they will, and they do...You know what I mean, Anne, don't
you?"

"I suppose you mean they think I'm Colin's mistress. Is that it?"

"I'm afraid it is. They can't think anything else. It's beastly of them,
I know, but this is a beastly world, dear, and it doesn't do to go on
behaving as if it wasn't."

"I don't care. If people are beastly it's their look-out, not mine. The
beastlier they are the less I care."

"I don't suppose you care if the vicar's wife won't call or if Lady
Corbett and the Hawtreys cut you. But that's why."

"Is it? I never thought about it. I'm too busy to go and see them and I
supposed they were too busy to come and see me. I certainly don't care."

"If it was people you cared about?"

"Nobody I care about would think things like that of me."

"Anne dear, I'm not so sure."

"Then it shows how much they care about _me_."

"But it's because they care."

"I can't help it. They may care, but they don't know. They can't know
anything about me if they think that."

"And you honestly don't mind?"

"I mind what _you_ think. But you don't think it, Eliot, do you?"

"I? Good Lord no! Do you mind what mother thinks?"

"Yes, I mind. But it doesn't matter very much."

"It would matter if Jerrold thought it."

"Oh Eliot--_does_ he?"

"I don't suppose he thinks precisely that. But I'm pretty sure he
thought you and Colin cared for each other."

"What makes you think so?"

"His marrying Maisie like that."

"Why shouldn't he marry her?"

"Because it's you he cares about."

Eliot's voice was quiet and heavy. She knew that what he said was true.
That quiet, heavy voice was the voice of her own innermost conviction.
Yet under the shock of it she sat silent, not looking at him, looking
with wide, fixed eyes at the pattern the apple boughs made on the sky.

"How do you know?" she said, presently.

"Because of the way he talked to mother before he came to see you here.
She says he was frightfully upset when she told him about you and
Colin."

"She told him _that?_"

"Apparently."

"What did she do it for, Eliot?"

"What does mother do anything for? I imagine she wanted to put Jerrold
off so that you could stick on with Colin. You've taken him off her
hands and she wants him kept off."

"So she told him I was Colin's mistress."

"Mind you, she doesn't think a bit the worse of you for that. She
admires you for it no end."

"Do you suppose I care what she thinks? It's her making Jerrold think
it...Eliot, how could she?"

"She could, because she only sees things as they affect herself."

"Do you believe she really thinks it?"

"She's made herself think it because she wanted to."

"But why--why should she want to?"

"I've told you why. She's afraid of having to look after Colin. I've no
illusions about mother. She's always been like that. She wouldn't see
what she was doing to you. Before she did it she'd persuaded herself
that it was Colin and not Jerrold that you cared for. And she wouldn't
do it deliberately at all. I know it has all the effect of low cunning,
but it isn't. It's just one of her sudden movements. She'd rush into it
on a blind impulse."

Anne saw it all, she saw that Adeline had slandered her to Jerrold and
to Eliot, that she had made use of her love for Colin, which was her
love for Jerrold, to betray her; that she had betrayed her to safeguard
her own happy life, without pity and without remorse; she had done all
of these things and none of them. They were the instinctive movements of
her funk. Where Adeline's ease and happiness were concerned she was one
incarnate funk. You couldn't think of her as a reasonable and
responsible being, to be forgiven or unforgiven.

"It doesn't matter how she did it. It's done now," she said.

"Really, Anne, it was too bad of Colin. He oughtn't to have let you."

"He couldn't help it, poor darling. He wasn't in a state. Don't put that
into his head. It just had to happen... I don't care, Eliot. If it was
to be done again to-morrow I'd do it. Only, if I'd known, I could have
told Jerrold the truth. The others can think what they like. It'll only
make me stick to Colin all the more. I promised Jerrold I'd look after
him and I shall as long as he wants me. It serves them all right. They
all left him to me--Daddy and Aunt Adeline and Queenie, I mean--and they
can't stop me now."

"Mother doesn't want to stop you. It's your father."

"I'll write and tell Daddy. Besides, it's too late. If I left Colin
to-morrow it wouldn't stop the scandal. My reputation's gone and I can't
get it back, can I?"

"Dear Anne, you don't know how adorable you are without it."

"Look here, Eliot, what did your mother tell _you_ for?"

"Same reason. To put me off, too."

They looked at each other and smiled. Across their memories, across the
years of war, across Anne's agony they smiled. Besides its courage and
its young, candid cynicism, Anne's smile expressed her utter trust in
him.

"As if," Eliot said, "it would have made the smallest difference."

"Wouldn't it have?"

"No, Anne. Nothing would."

"That's what Jerrold said. And _he_ thought it. I wondered what he
meant."

"He meant what I mean."

The moments passed, ticked off by the beating of his heart, time and his
heart beating violently together. Not one of them was his moment, not
one would serve him for what he had to say, falling so close on their
intolerable conversation. He meant to ask Anne to marry him; but if he
did it now she would suspect him of chivalry; it would look as if he
wanted to make up to her for all she had lost through Colin; as if he
wanted more than anything to save her.

So Eliot, who had waited so long, waited a little longer, till the
evening of his last day.


iii

Anne had gone up with him to Wyck Manor, to see the soldiers. Ever since
they had come there she had taken cream and fruit to them twice a week
from the Farm. Unaware of what was thought of her, she never knew that
the scandal of young Fielding and Miss Severn had penetrated the
Convalescent Home with the fruit and cream. And if she had known it she
would not have stayed away. People's beastliness was no reason why she
shouldn't go where she wanted, where she had always gone. The
Convalescent Home belonged to the Fieldings, and the Fieldings were her
dearest friends who had been turned into relations by her father's
marriage. So this evening, absorbed in the convalescents, she never saw
the matron's queer look at her or her pointed way of talking only to
Eliot.

Eliot saw it.

He thought: "It doesn't matter. She's so utterly good that nothing can
touch her. All the same, if she marries me she'll be safe from this sort
of thing."

They had come to the dip of the valley and the Manor Farm water.

"Let's go up the beech walk," he said.

They went up and sat in the beech ring where Anne had sat with Jerrold
three months ago. Eliot never realised how repeatedly Jerrold had been
before him.

"Anne," he said, "it's more than five years since I asked you to marry
me."

"Is it, Eliot?"

"Do you remember I said then I'd never give you up?"

"I remember. Unless Jerrold got me, you said. Well, he hasn't got me."

"I wouldn't want you to tie yourself up with me if there was the
remotest chance of Jerrold; but, as there isn't, don't you think--"

"No, Eliot, I don't."

"But you do care for me, Anne, a little. I know you do."

"I care for you a great deal; but not in that sort of way."

"I'm not asking you to care for me in the way you care for Jerrold. You
may care for me any way you please if you'll only marry me. You don't
know how awfully little I'd be content to take."

"I shouldn't be content to give it, though. You oughtn't to have
anything but the best."

"It would be the best for me, you see."

"Oh no, Eliot, it wouldn't. You only think it would because you're an
angel. It would be awful of me to give so little when I take such a lot.
I know what your loving would be."

"If you know you must have thought of it. And if you've thought of it--"

"I've only thought of it to see how impossible it is. It mightn't be if
I could leave off loving Jerrold. But I can't...Eliot, I've got the
queerest feeling about him. I know you'll think me mad, when he's gone
and married somebody else, but I feel all the time as if he hadn't, as
if he belonged to me and always had; and I to him. Whoever Maisie's
married it isn't Jerrold. Not the real Jerrold."

"The fact remains that she's married him."

"No. Not him. Only a bit of him. Some bit that doesn't matter."

"Anne darling, I'd try not to think that."

"I don't think it. I feel it. Down there, deep inside me. I've always
felt that Jerrold would come back to me and he came back. Then there was
Colin. He'll come back again."

"Then there'll be Maisie."

"No, then there won't be Maisie. There won't be anything if he really
comes...Now you see how mad I am. Now you see how awful it would be to
marry me."

"No, Anne. I see it's the only way to keep you safe."

"Safe from what? Safe from Jerrold? I don't want to be safe from him.
Eliot, I'm telling you this because you trust me. I want you to see me
as I really am, so that you won't want to marry me any more."

"Ah, that's not the way to make me. Nothing you say makes any
difference. Nothing you could do would make any difference."

"Supposing it had been true what your mother said, wouldn't that?"

"No. If you'd given yourself to Colin I should only have thought it was
your goodness. It would have been good because you did it."

"How queer. That's what Jerrold said. Then he _did_ love me."

"I told you he loved you."

"Then I don't care. Nothing else matters."

"That's all you have to say to me?"

"Yes. Unless I lie."

"You'd lie for Jerrold."

"For him. Not to him. I should never need to."

"You've no need to lie to me, dear. I know you better than he does. You
forget that I didn't think what he thought."

"That only shows that he knew."

"Knew what?"

"What I am. What I might do if I really cared."

"There are things you'd never do. You'd never do anything mean or
dishonourable or cruel."

"Oh, you don't know what I'd do...Don't worry, Eliot. I shall be too
busy with the land and with Colin to do very much."

"I'm not worrying."

All the same he wondered which of them knew Anne best, he or Anne
herself, or Jerrold.



XI


INTERIM

i

Colin thought with terror of the time when Queenie would come back from
the war. At any moment she might get leave and come; if she had not had
it yet that only made it more likely that she would have it soon.

The vague horror that waited for him every morning had turned into this
definite fear of Queenie. He was afraid of her temper, of her voice and
eyes, of her crude, malignant thoughts, of her hatred of Anne. More than
anything he was afraid of her power over him, of her vehement,
exhausting love. He was afraid of her beauty.

One morning, early in September, the wire came. Colin shook with
agitation as he read it.

"What is it?" Anne said.

"Queenie. She's got leave. She'll be here today. At four o'clock."

"Don't you want to see her?"

"No, I don't."

"Then you'd better drive over to Kingden and look at those bullocks of
Ledbury's."

"I don't know anything about bullocks. They ought to be straight lines
from their heads to their tails. That's about all I know."

"Never mind, you'll have gone to look at bullocks. And you can tell
Ledbury I'm coming over to-morrow. Do you mind driving yourself?"

Colin did mind. He was afraid to drive by himself; but he was much more
afraid of Queenie.

"You can take Harry. And leave me to settle Queenie."

Colin went off with Harry to Chipping Kingden. And at four o'clock
Queenie came. Her hard, fierce eyes stared past Anne, looking for Colin.

"Where's Colin?" she said.

"He had to go out, but he'll be back before dinner."

Presently Queenie asked if she might go upstairs. As they went you could
see her quick, inquisitive eyes sweeping and flashing.

The door of Colin's room stood open.

"Is that Colin's room?"

"Yes."

She went in, opened the inner door and looked into the gable room.

"Who sleeps here?" she said.

"I do," said Anne.

"You?"

"Have you any objection?"

"You might as well sleep in my husband's room."

"Oh no, this is near enough. I can tell whether he's asleep or awake."

"_Can_ you? And, please, how long has this been going on?"

"I've been sleeping in this room since November. Before that we had our
old rooms at the Manor. There was a passage between, you remember. But
I left the doors wide open."

"Oh no, this is near enough. I can tell whether he's asleep or awake."

"Can you? And, please, how long has this been going on?"

"I've been sleeping in this room since November. Before that we had our
old rooms at the Manor. There was a passage between, you remember. But I
left the doors wide open."

"I suppose," said Queenie, with furious calm, "you want me to divorce
him?"

"Divorce him? Why on earth should you? Just because I looked after him
at night? I _had_ to. There wasn't anybody else. And he was afraid to
sleep alone. He is still. But he's all right as long as he knows I'm
there."

"You expect me to believe that's all there is in it?"

"No, I don't, considering what your mind's like."

"Oh yes, when people do dirty things it's always other people's dirty
minds. Do you imagine I'm a fool, Anne?"

"You're an awful fool if you think Colin's my lover."

"I think it, and I say it."

"If you think it you're a fool. If you say it you're a liar. A damned
liar."

"And is Colin's mother a liar, too?"

"Yes, but not a damned one. It would serve you jolly well right,
Queenie, if he _was_ my lover, after the way you left him to me."

"I didn't leave him to you. I left him to his mother."

"Anyhow, you left him."

"I couldn't help it. _You_ were not wanted at the front and I was. I
couldn't leave hundreds of wounded soldiers just for Colin."

"_I_ had to. He was in an awful state. I've looked after him day and
night; I've got him almost well now, and I think the least you can do is
to keep quiet and let him alone."

"I shall do nothing of the sort. I shall divorce him as soon as the
war's over."

"It isn't over yet. And I don't advise you to try. No decent barrister
would touch your case, it's so rotten."

"Not half so rotten as you'll look when it's in all the papers."

"You can't frighten me that way."

"Can't I? I suppose you'll say you were looking, poor darling, if you do
bring your silly old action. Only please don't do it till he's quite
well, or he'll be ill again...I think that's tea going in. Will you go
down?"

They went down. Tea was laid in the big bare hall. The small round oak
table brought them close together. Anne waited on Queenie with every
appearance of polite attention. Queenie ate and drank in long, fierce
silences; for her hunger was even more imperious than her pride.

"I don't _want_ to eat your food," she said at last. "I'm only doing it
because I'm starving. I dined with Colin's mother last night. It was the
first dinner I've eaten since I went to the war."

"You needn't feel unhappy about it," said Anne. "It's Eliot's house and
Jerrold's food. How's Cutler?"

"Much the same as when you saw him." Queenie answered quietly, but her
face was red.

"And that Johnnie--what was his name?--who took my place?"

Queenie's flush darkened. She was holding her mouth so tight that the
thin red line of the lips faded.

"Noel Fenwick," said Anne, suddenly remembering.

"What about him?" Queenie's throat moved as if she swallowed something
big and hard.

"Is he there still?"

"He was when I left."

Her angry, defiant eyes were fixed on the open doorway. You could see
she was waiting for Colin, ready to fall on him and tear him as soon as
he came in.

"Am I to see Colin or not?" she said as she rose.

"Have you anything to say to him?"

"Only what I've said to you."

"Then you won't see him. In fact I think you'd better not see him at
all."

"You mean he funks it?"

"I funk it for him. He isn't well enough to be raged at and threatened
with proceedings. It'll upset him horribly and I don't see what good
it'll do you."

"No more do I. I'm not going to live with him after this. You can tell
him that. Tell him I don't want to see him or speak to him again."

"I see. You just came down to make a row."

"You don't suppose I came down to stay with you two?"

Queenie was so far from coming down to stay that she had taken rooms for
the night at the White Hart in Wyck. Anne drove her there.


ii

Two and a half years passed. Anne's work on the farm filled up her days
and marked them. Her times were ploughing time and the time for sowing:
wheat first, and turnips after the wheat, barley after the turnips,
sainfoin, grass and clover after the barley. Oats in the five-acre field
this year; in the seven-acre field the next. Lambing time, calving time,
cross-ploughing and harrowing, washing and shearing time, time for
hoeing; hay time and harvest. Then threshing time and ploughing again.

All summer the hard fight against the charlock, year after year the
same. You harrowed it out and ploughed it down and sprayed it with
sulphate of copper; you sowed vetches and winter corn to crowd it out;
and always it sprang up again, flaring in bright yellow stripes and fans
about the hills. The air was sweet with its smooth, delicious smell.

Always the same clear-cut pattern of the fields; but the colors shifted.
The slender, sharp-pointed triangle that was jade-green last June, this
June was yellow-brown. The square under the dark comb of the plantation
that had been yellow-brown was emerald; the wide-open fan beside it that
had been emerald was pink. By August the emerald had turned to red-gold
and the jade-green to white.

These changes marked the months and the years, a bright patterned,
imperceptibly moving measure, rolling time off across the hills.

Nineteen-sixteen, seventeen. Nineteen-eighteen and the armistice.
Nineteen-nineteen and the peace.


iii

In the spring of that year Anne and Colin were still together at the
Manor Farm. He was stronger. But, though he did more and more work every
year, he was still unfit to take over the management himself.
Responsibility fretted him and he tired soon. He could do nothing
without Anne.

He was now definitely separated from his wife. Queenie had come back
from the war a year ago. As soon as it was over she had begun to rage
and consult lawyers and write letters two or three times a week,
threatening to drag Anne and Colin through the Divorce Court. But Miss
Mullins (once the secretary of Dr. Cutler's Field Ambulance Corps),
recovering at the Farm from an excess of war work, reassured them.
Queenie, she said, was only bluffing. Queenie was not in a position to
bring an action against any husband, she had been too notorious herself.
Miss Mullins had seen things, and she intimated that no defence could
stand against the evidence she could give.

And in the end Queenie left off talking about divorce and contented
herself with a judicial separation.

Colin still woke every morning to his dread of some blank, undefined
disaster; but, as if Queenie and the war had made one obsession, he was
no longer haunted by the imminent crash of phantom shells. It was
settled that he was to live with Jerrold and Maisie when they came back
to the Manor, while Anne stayed on by herself at the Farm.

Every now and then Eliot came down to see them. He had been sent home
early in nineteen-seventeen with a shrapnel wound in his left leg, the
bone shattered. He obtained his discharge at the price of a permanent
limp, and went back to his research work.

For the last two years he had been investigating trench fever, with
results that were to make him famous. But that was not for another year.

In February, nineteen-nineteen, Jerrold had come back. He and Maisie had
been living in London ever since he had left the Army, filling in time
till Wyck Manor would be no longer a Home for Convalescent Soldiers. He
had tried to crowd into this interval all the amusement he hadn't had
for four years. His way was to crush down the past with the present; to
pile up engagements against the future, party on party, dances on
suppers and suppers on plays; to dine every evening at some place where
they hadn't dined before; to meet lots of nice amusing people with
demobilised minds who wouldn't talk to him about the war; to let himself
go in bursts of exquisitely imbecile laughter; never to be quiet for an
hour, never to be alone with himself, never to be long alone with
Maisie.

After the first week of it this sort of thing ceased to amuse him, but
he went on with it because he thought it amused Maisie.

There was something he missed; something he wanted and hadn't got. At
night, when he lay awake, alone with himself at last, he knew that it
was Anne.

And he went on laughing and amusing Maisie; and Maisie, with a
heart-breaking sweetness, laughed back at him and declared herself
amused. She had never had such a jolly time in all her life, she said.

Then, very early in the spring, Maisie went down to her people in
Yorkshire to recover from the jolly time she had had. The convalescent
soldiers had all gone, and Wyck Manor, rather worn and shabby, was Wyck
Manor again.

Jerrold came back to it alone.



XII


COLIN, JERROLD, AND ANNE

i

He went through the wide empty house, looking through all the rooms,
trying to find some memory of the happiness he had had there long ago.
The house was full of Anne. Anne's figure crossed the floors before him,
her head turned over her shoulder to see if he were coming; her voice
called to him from the doorways, her running feet sounded on the stairs.
That was her place at the table; that was the armchair she used to curl
up in; just there, on the landing, he had kissed her when he went to
school.

They had given his mother's room to Maisie, and they had put his things
into the room beyond, his father's room. Everything was in its place as
it had been in his father's time, the great wardrobe, the white
marble-topped washstand, the bed he had died on. He saw him lying there
and Anne going to and fro between the washstand and the bed. The parrot
curtains hung from the windows, straight and still.

Jerrold shuddered as he looked at these things.

They had thought that he would want to sleep in that room because he was
married, because Maisie would have the room it led out of.

But he couldn't sleep in it. He couldn't stay in it a minute; he would
never pass its door without that sickening pang of memory. He moved his
things across the gallery into Anne's room.

He would sleep there; he would sleep in the white bed that Anne had
slept in.

He told himself that he had to be near Colin; there was only the passage
between and their doors could stand open; that was why he wanted to
sleep there. But he knew that was not why. He wanted to sleep there
because there was no other room where he could feel Anne so near him,
where he could see her so clearly. When the dawn came she would be with
him, sitting in her chair by the window. The window looked to the west,
to Upper Speed and the Manor Farm house. The house was down there behind
the trees, and somewhere there, jutting out above the porch, was the
window of Anne's room.

He looked at his watch. One o'clock. At two he would go and see Anne.


ii

When Jerrold called at the Manor Farm house Anne was out. Old Ballinger
came slouching up from the farmyard to tell him that Miss Anne had gone
up to the Far Acres field to try the new tractor.

The Far Acres field lay at the western end of the estate. Jerrold
followed her there. Five furrows, five bright brown bands on the sallow
stubble, marked out the Far Acres into five plots. In the turning space
at the top corner he saw Anne on her black horse and Colin standing
beside her.

With a great clanking and clanging the new American, tractor struggled
towards them up the hill, dragging its plough. It stopped and turned at
the "headland" as Jerrold came up.

A clear, light wind blew over the hill and he felt a sudden happiness
and excitement. He was beginning to take an interest in his land. He
shouted:

"I say, Anne, you look like Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo."

"Oh, not Waterloo, I hope. I'm going to win _my_ battle."

"Well, Marengo--Austerlitz--whatever battles he did win. Does Curtis
understand that infernal thing?"

Young Curtis, sulky and stolid on his driver's seat, stared at his new
master.

"Yes. He's been taught motor mechanics. He's quite good at it ... If
only he'd do what you tell him. Curtis, I said you were not to use those
disc coulters for this field. I've had three smashed in two weeks.
They're no earthly good for stony soil."

"Tis n' so bad 'ere as it is at the east end, miss."

"Well, we'll see. You can let her go now."

With a fearful grinding and clanking the tractor started. The revolving
disc coulter cut the earth; the three great shares gripped it and turned
it on one side. But the earth, instead of slanting off clear from the
furrows, fell back again. Anne dismounted and ran after the tractor and
stopped it.

"He hasn't got his plough set right," she said. "It's too deep in."

She stooped, and did something mysterious and efficient with a lever;
the wheels dipped, raising the shares to their right level, and the
tractor set off again. This time the earth parted clean from the furrows
with the noise of surge, and three slanting, glistening waves ran the
length of the field in the wake of the triple plough.

"Oh, Jerrold, look at those three lovely furrows. Look at the pace it
goes. This field will be ploughed up in a day or two. Colin, aren't you
pleased?"

The tractor was coming towards them, making a most horrible noise.

"No," he said, "I don't like the row it makes. Can't I go, now I've seen
what the beastly thing can do?"

"Yes. You'd better go if you can't stand it."

Colin went with quick, desperate strides down the field away from the
terrifying sound of the tractor.

They looked after him sorrowfully.

"He's not right yet. I don't think he'll ever be able to stand noises."

"You must give him time, Anne."

"Time? He's had three years. It's heart-breaking. I must just keep him
out of the way of the tractors, that's all."

She mounted her horse and went riding up and down the field, abreast of
the plough.

Jerrold waited for her at the gate of the field.


iii

It was Sunday evening between five and six.

Anne was in the house, in the great Jacobean room on the first floor.
Barker had judged it too large and too dilapidated to live in, and it
had been left empty in his time. Eliot had had it restored and Jerrold
had furnished it. Black oak bookcases from the Manor stretched along
the walls, for Jerrold had given Eliot half of their father's books.
This room would be too dilapidated to live in, and it had been left
empty in his time. Eliot had had it restored and Jerrold had furnished
it. Black oak bookcases from the Manor stretched along the walls, for
Jerrold had given Eliot half of their father's books. This room would be
Eliot's library when he came down. It was now Anne's sitting-room.

The leaded windows were thrown open to the grey evening and a drizzling
rain; but a fire blazed on the great hearth under the arch of the carved
stone chimney-piece. Anne's couch was drawn up before it. She lay
stretched out on it, tired with her week's work.

She was all alone in the house. The gardener and his wife went out
together every Sunday to spend the evening with their families at
Medlicote or Wyck. She was not sorry when they were gone; the stillness
of the house rested her. But she missed Colin. Last Sunday he had been
there, sitting beside her in his chair by the hearth, reading. Today he
was with Jerrold at the Manor. The soft drizzle turned to a quick patter
of rain; a curtain of rain fell, covering the grey fields between the
farm and the Manor, cutting her off.

She was listening to the rain when she heard the click of the gate and
feet on the garden path. They stopped on the flagstones under her
window. Jerrold's voice called up to her.

"Anne--Anne, are you there? Can I come up?"

"Rather."

He came rushing up the stairs. He was in the room now.

"How nice of you to come on this beastly evening."

"That's why I came. I thought it would be so rotten for you all alone
down here."

"What have you done with Colin?"

"Left him up there. He was making no end of a row on the piano."

"Oh Jerrold, if he's playing again he'll be all right."

"He didn't sound as if there was much the matter with him."

"You never can tell. He can't stand those tractors."

"We must keep him away from the beastly things. I suppose we've got to
have 'em?"

"I'm afraid so. They save no end of labour, and labour's short and
dear."

"Is that why you've been working yourself to death?"

"I haven't. Why, do I look dead?"

"No. Eliot told me. He saw you at it."

"I only take a hand at hay time and harvest. All the rest of the year
it's just riding about and seeing that other people work. And Colin does
half of that now."

"All the same, I think it's about time you stopped."

"But if I stop the whole thing'll stop. The men must have somebody over
them."

"There's me."

"You don't know anything about farming, Jerry dear. You don't know a teg
from a wether."

"I suppose I can learn if Colin's learnt. Or I can get another Barker."

"Not so easy. Don't you like my looking after your land, then? Aren't
you pleased with me? I haven't done so badly, you know. Seven hundred
acres."

"You've been simply splendid. I shall never forget what you've done. And
I shall never forgive myself for letting you do it. I'd no idea what it
meant."

"It's only meant that Colin's better and I've been happier than I ever
thought I could have been."

"Happier? Weren't you happy then?"

She didn't answer. They were on dangerous ground. If they began talking
about happiness--

"If I gave it up to-morrow," she said, "I should only go and work on
another farm."

"Would you?"

"Jerrold--do you want me to go?"

"Want you?"

"Yes. You did once. At least, you wanted to get away from _me_."

"I didn't know what I was doing. If I had known I shouldn't have done
it. I can't talk about that, Anne. It doesn't bear thinking about."

"No. But, Jerrold--tell me the truth. Do you want me to go because of
Colin?"

"Colin?"

"Yes. Because of what your mother told you?"

"How do you know what she told me?"

"She told Eliot."

"And he told _you_? Good God! what was he thinking of?"

"He thought it better for me to know it. It _was_ better."

"How could it be?"

"I can't tell you...Jerrold, it isn't true."

"I know it isn't."

"But you thought it was."

"When did I think?"

"Then; when you came to see me."

"Did I?"

"Yes. And you're not going to lie about it now."

"Well, if I did I've paid for it."

(What did he mean? Paid for it? It was she who had paid.)

"When did you know it wasn't true?" she said.

"Three months after, when Eliot wrote and told me. It was too late
then.... If only you'd told me at the time. Why didn't you?"

"But I didn't know you thought it. How could I know?"

"No. How could you? Who would have believed that things could have
happened so damnably as that?"

"But it's all right now. Why did you say it was too late?"

"Because it _was_ too late. I was married."

"What _do_ you mean?"

"I mean that I lied when I told you it made no difference. It made that
difference. If I hadn't thought that you and Colin were...if I hadn't
thought that, I wouldn't have married Maisie. I'd have married you."

"Don't say that, Jerrold."

"Well--you asked for the truth, and there it is."

She got up and walked away from him to the window. He followed her
there. She spread out her hands to the cold rain.

"It's raining still," she said.

He caught back her hands.

"Would you have married me?"

"Don't, Jerrold, don't. It's cruel of you."

He was holding her by her hands.

"_Would_ you? Tell me. Tell me."

"Let go my hands, then."

He let them go. They turned back to the fireplace. Anne shivered. She
held herself to the warmth.

"You haven't told me," he said.

"No, I haven't told you," she repeated, stupidly.

"That's because you _would_. That's because you love me. You do love
me."

"I've always loved you."

She spoke as if from some far-off place; as if the eternity of her love
removed her from him, put her beyond his reach.

"But--what's the good of talking about it?" she said.

"All the good in the world. We owed each other the truth. We know it
now; we know where we are. We needn't humbug ourselves and each other
any more. You see what comes of keeping back the truth. Look how we've
had to pay for it. You and me. Would you rather go on thinking I didn't
care for you?"

"No, Jerrold, no. I'm only wondering what we're to do next."

"Next?"

"Yes. _That's_ why you want me to go away."

"It isn't. It's why I want you to stay. I want you to leave off working
and do all the jolly things we used to do."

"You mustn't make me leave off working. It's my only chance."

They turned restlessly from the fireplace to the couch. They sat one at
each end of it, still for a long time, without speaking. The fire died
down. The evening darkened in the rain. The twilight came between them,
poignant and disquieting, dimming their faces, making them strange and
wonderful to each other. Their bodies loomed up through it, wonderful
and strange. The high white stone chimney-piece glimmered like an arch
into some inner place.

Outside, from the church below the farm house, the bell tinkled for
service.

It ceased.

Suddenly they rose and he came towards her to take her in his arms. She
beat down his hands and hung on them, keeping him off.

"Don't, Jerry, please, please don't hold me."

"Oh Anne, let me. You let me once. Don't you remember?"

"We can't now. We mustn't."

And yet she knew that it would happen in some time, in some way. But not
now. Not like this.

"We mustn't."

"Don't you want me to take you in my arms?"

"No. Not that."

"What, then?" He pressed tighter.

"I want you not to hurt Maisie."

"It's too late to think of Maisie now."

"I'm not thinking of her. I'm thinking of you. You'll hurt yourself
frightfully if you hurt her." She wrenched his hands apart and went from
him to the door.

"What are you going to do?" he said.

"I'm going to fetch the lamp."

She left him standing there.

A few minutes later she came back carrying the lighted lamp. He took it
from her and set it on the table.

"And now?"

"Now you're going back to Colin. And we're both going to be good...You
do want to be good--don't you?"

"Yes. But I don't see how we're going to manage it."

"We could manage it if we didn't see each other. If I went away."

"Anne, you wouldn't. You can't mean that. I couldn't stand not seeing
you. You couldn't stand it, either."

"I have stood it. I can stand it again."

"You can't. Not now. It's all different. I swear I'll be decent. I won't
say another word if only you won't go."

"I don't see how I can very well. There's the land... No. Colin must
look after that. I'll go when the ploughing's done. And some day you'll
be glad I went."

"Go. Go. You'll find out then."

Their tenderness was over. Something hard and defiant had come in to
them with the light. He was at the door now.

"And you'll come back," he said. "You'll see you'll come back."



XIII


ANNE AND JERROLD

i

When he was gone she turned on herself in fury. What had she done it
for? Why had she let him go? She didn't want to be good. She wanted
nothing in the world but Jerrold.

She hadn't done it for Maisie. Maisie was nothing to her. A woman she
had never seen and didn't want to see. She knew nothing of her but her
name, and that was sweet and vague like a perfume coming from some place
unknown. She had no sweet image of Maisie in her mind. Maisie might
never have existed for all that Anne thought about her.

What did she do it for, then? Why didn't she take him when he gave
himself? When she knew that in the end it must come to that?

As far as she could see through her darkness it was because she knew
that Jerrold had not meant to give himself when he came to her. She had
driven him to it. She had made him betray his secret when she asked for
the truth. At that moment she was the stronger; she had him at a
disadvantage. She couldn't take him like that, through the sudden
movement of his weakness. Before she surrendered she must know first
whether Jerrold's passion for her was his weakness or his strength.
Jerrold didn't know yet. She must give him time to find out.

But before all she had been afraid that if Jerrold hurt Maisie he would
hurt himself. She must know which was going to hurt him more, her
refusal or her surrender. If he wanted "to be good" she must go away and
give him his chance.

And before the ploughing was all over she had gone.

She went down into Essex, to see how her own farm was getting on. The
tenant who had the house wanted to buy it when his three years' lease
was up. Anne had decided that she would let him. The lease would be up
in June. Her agent advised her to sell what was left of the farm land
for building, which was what Anne had meant to do. She wanted to get rid
of the whole place and be free. All this had to be looked into.

She had not been gone from Jerrold a week before the torture of
separation became unbearable. She had said that she could bear it
because she had borne it before, but, as Jerrold had pointed out to her,
it wasn't the same thing now. There was all the difference in the world
between Jerrold's going away from her because he didn't want her, and
her going away from Jerrold because he did. It was the difference
between putting up with a dull continuous pain you had to bear, and
enduring a sharp agony you could end at any minute. Before, she had only
given up what she couldn't get; now, she was giving up what she could
have to-morrow by simply going back to Wyck.

She loathed the flat Essex country and the streets of little white rough
cast and red-tiled houses on the Ilford side where the clear fields had
once lain beyond the tall elm rows. She was haunted by the steep,
many-coloured pattern of the hills round Wyck, and the grey gables of
the Manor. Love-sickness and home-sickness tore at her together till her
heart felt as if it were stretched out to breaking point.

She had only to go back and she would end this pain. Then on the sixth
day Jerrold's wire came: "Colin ill again. Please come back. Jerrold."


ii

It was not her fault and it was not Jerrold's. The thing had been taken
out of their hands. She had not meant to go and Jerrold had not meant to
send for her. Colin must have made him. They had lost each other through
Colin and now it was Colin who had brought them together.

Colin's terror had come again. Again he had the haunting fear of the
tremendous rushing noise, the crash always about to come that never
came. He slept in brief fits and woke screaming.

Eliot had been down to see him and had gone. And again, as before,
nobody could do anything with him but Anne.

"I couldn't," Jerrold said, "and Eliot couldn't. Eliot made me send for
you."

They had left Colin upstairs and were together in the drawing-room. He
stood in the full wash of the sunlight that flooded in through the west
window. It showed his face drawn and haggard, and discoloured, as though
he had come through a long illness. His mouth was hard with pain. He
stared away from her with heavy, wounded eyes. She looked at him and was
frightened.

"Jerrold, have you been ill?"

"No. What makes you think so?"

"You look ill. You look as if you hadn't slept for ages."

"I haven't. I've been frightfully worried about Colin."

"Have you any idea what set him off again?"

"I believe it was those infernal tractors. He would go out with them
after you'd left. He said he'd have to, as long as you weren't there.
And he couldn't stand the row. Eliot said it would be that. And the
responsibility, the feeling that everything depended on him."

"I see. I oughtn't to have left him."

"It looks like it."

"What else did Eliot say?"

"Oh, he thinks perhaps he might be better at the Farm than up here. He
thinks it's bad for him sleeping in that room where he was frightened
when he was a kid. He says it all hooks on to that. What's more, he says
he may go on having these relapses for years. Any noise or strain or
excitement'll bring them on. Do you mind his being at the Farm again?"

"Mind? Of course I don't. If I'm to look after him _and_ the land it'll
be very much easier there than here."

For every night at Colin's bedtime Anne came up to the Manor. She slept
in the room that was to be Maisie's. When Colin screamed she went to him
and sat with him till he slept again. In the morning she went back to
the Farm.

She had been doing this for a week now, and Colin was better.

But he didn't want to go back. If, he said, Jerrold didn't mind having
him.

Jerrold wanted to know why he didn't want to go back and Colin told him.

"Hasn't it occurred to you that I've hurt Anne enough without beginning
all over again? All these damned people here think I'm her lover."

"You can't help that. You're not the only one that's hurt her. We must
try and make it up to her, that's all."

"How are we going to do it?"

"My God! I don't know. I shall begin by cutting the swine who've cut
her."

"That's no good. She doesn't care if they do cut her. She only cares
about us. She's done everything for us, and among us all we've done
nothing for her. Absolutely nothing. We can't give her anything. We
haven't got anything to give her that she wants."