And as she thought of his coming to her, and heard her own voice lying
to Maisie, the blood mounted to her face, flooding it to the roots of
her hair.

"I'm thinking of Colin."

Her voice kept on sounding loud and dreadful in her brain, while
Maisie's voice floated across it, faint, as if it came from somewhere a
long way off.

"You never think of yourself. You're too good for anything, Anne."

She would never be safe from Maisie and Maisie's innocence that accused,
reproached and threatened her. Maisie's sweetness went through her like
a thrusting sword, like a sharp poison; it had words that cut deeper
than threats, reproaches, accusations. Before she had seen Maisie she
had been fearless, pitiless, remorseless; now, because of Maisie, she
would never be safe from remorse and pity and fear.

She recovered. She told herself that she hadn't lied; that she _had_
been thinking of Colin; that she had thought of him first; that she had
refused to go to Taormina before she knew that Jerrold was coming back
for the hay harvest. She couldn't help it if she knew that now. It was
not as if she had schemed for it or counted on it. She had never for one
moment counted on anything or schemed. And still, as she thought of
Jerrold, her heart tightened on the sharp sword-thrust of remorse.

Because of Maisie, nothing would ever be the same again.


ii

In the last week of April they had gone, Jerrold and Maisie, Eliot and
Colin, to Taormina. In the last week in May Jerrold and Eliot took
Maisie up to Como on their way home. They found Sir Charles and Lady
Durham there waiting for her. They had left Colin by himself at
Taormina.

From the first moment of landing Colin had fallen in love with Sicily
and refused to be taken away from it. He was aware that his recovery was
now in his own hands, and that he would not be free from his malady so
long as he was afraid to be alone. He had got to break himself of his
habit of dependence on other people. And here in Taormina he had come
upon the place that he could bear to be alone in. There was freedom in
his surrender to its enchantment and in the contemplation of its beauty
there was peace. And with peace and freedom he had found his
indestructible self; he had come to the end of its long injury.

One day, sitting out on the balcony of his hotel, he wrote to Anne.

"Don't imagine because I've got well here away from you that it wasn't
you who made me well. In the first place, I should never have gone away
if you hadn't made me go. You knew what you were about when you sent me
here. I know now what Jerrold meant when he wanted to get away by
himself after Father died. He said he wanted to grow a new memory. Well,
that's what I've done here.

"It seemed to happen all at once. One day I'd left them all and gone out
for a walk by myself. It came over me that between me and being well,
perfectly well, there was nothing but myself, that I was really hanging
on to my illness for some sort of protection that it gave me, just as
I'd hung on to you. I'd been thinking about it all the time, filling my
mind with my illness, hanging on to the very fear of it; to save myself,
I suppose, from a worse fear, the fear of life itself. And suddenly, out
there, I let go. And the beauty of the place got me. I can't describe
the beauty, except that there was a lot of strong blue and yellow in it,
a clear gold atmosphere, positively quivering, and streaming over
everything like gold water. I seemed to remember it as if I'd been here
before, a long, steady memory, not just a flash. It was like finding
something you'd lost, or when a musical phrase you've been looking for
suddenly comes back to you. It was the most utter, indescribable peace
and satisfaction. And somehow this time joined on to the times at Wyck
when we were all there and happy together; and the beastly time in
between slipped through. It just dropped out, as if it had never
happened, and I got a sense of having done with it forever. I can't tell
you what it was like. But I think it means I'm well.

"And then, on the top of it all, I remembered you, Anne, and all your
goodness and sweetness. I got right away from my beastly self and saw
you as you are. And I knew what you'd done for me. I don't believe I
ever knew, really _knew_, before. I had to be alone with myself before I
could see it, just as I always had to be alone with my music before I
could get it right. I've never thanked you properly. I can't thank you.
There aren't any words to do it in. And I only know now what it's cost
you...."

Did he know? Did he know that it had once cost her Jerrold?

"... For instance, I know you gave up coming here with us because you
thought it would be better for me without you."

Colin, too, turning it in her heart, the sharp blade of remorse. Would
they never have done punishing her?

And then: "Maisie knows what you are. She told Eliot you were the most
beautiful thing, morally, she had ever known. The one person, she said,
whose motives would always be clean."

If he had tried he couldn't have hit on anything that would have hurt
her so. It was more than she could bear to be punished like this through
the innocence of innocent people, through their kindness and affection,
their belief, their incorruptible trust in her. There was nothing in the
world she dreaded more than Maisie's trust. It was as if she foresaw
what it would do to her, how at any minute it would beat her, it would
break her down.

But she was not beaten yet, not broken down. After every fit of remorse
her passion asserted itself again in a superb recovery. Her motives
might not be so spotless as they looked to Maisie, but her passion
itself was clean as fire. Nothing, not even Maisie's innocence, Maisie's
trust in her, could make her go back on it. Hard, wounding tears cut
through her eyelids as she thought of Maisie, but she brushed them away
and began counting the days till Jerrold should come back.


iii

He came back the first week in June, in time for the hay harvest. And it
happened as she had foreseen.

It would have been dangerous for Jerrold to have left the house at night
to go to the Manor Farm. At any moment he might have been betrayed by
his own footsteps treading the passages and stairs, by the slipping of
locks and bolts, the sound of the opening and shutting of doors. The
servants might be awake and hear him; they might go to his room and find
that he was not there.

But Colin's shelter stood in a recess on the lawn, open to the fields
and hidden from the house by tall hedges of yew. Nobody could see him
slip out into the moonlight or the darkness; nobody could hear the soft
padding of his feet on the grass. He had only to run down the three
fields and cross the belt of firs to come to Anne's shelter at the
bottom. The blank, projecting wall of the mill hid it from the cottages
and the Manor Farm house; the firs hid it from the field path; a high
bank, topped by a stone wall, hid it from the road and Sutton's Farm.
Its three wooden walls held them safe.

Night after night, between eleven and midnight, he came to her. Night
after night, she lay awake waiting till the light rustling of the meadow
grass told her he was there: on moonlit nights a quick brushing sound;
in the thick blackness a sound like a slow shearing as he felt his way.
The moon would show him clear, as he stood in the open frame of the
shelter, looking in at her; or she would see him grey, twilit and
mysterious; or looming, darker than dark, on black nights without moon
or stars.

They loved the clear nights when their bodies showed to each other white
under the white moon; they loved the dark nights that brought them
close, shutting them in, annihilating every sensation but that of his
tense, hard muscles pressing down, of her body crushed and yielding,
tightening and slackening in surrender; of their brains swimming in
their dark ecstasy.

They loved the warmth of each other's bodies in the hot windless nights;
they loved their smooth, clean coolness washed by the night wind.
Nothing, not even the sweet, haunting ghost of Maisie, came between.
They would fall asleep in each other's arms and lie there till dawn,
till Anne woke in a sudden fright. Always she had this fear that some
day they would sleep on into the morning, when the farm people would be
up and about. Jerrold lay still, tired out with satisfaction, sunk under
all the floors of sleep. She had to drag him up, with kisses first and
light stroking, then with a strong undoing of their embrace, pushing
back his heavy arms that fell again to her breast as she parted them.
Then she would wrench herself loose and shake him by the shoulders till
she woke him. He woke clean, with no ugly turning and yawning, but with
a great stretching of his strong body and a short, sudden laugh, the
laugh he had for danger. Then he would look at his wrist watch and show
it her, laughing again as she saw that this time, again, they were safe.
And they would lie a little while longer, looking into each other's
faces for the sheer joy of looking, reckless with impunity. And he would
start up suddenly with, "I say, Anne, I must clear out or we shall be
caught." And they would get up.

Outside, the world looked young and unknown in the June dawn, in the
still, clear, gold-crystal air, where green leaves and green grass shone
with a strange, hard lustre like fresh paint, and yet unearthly,
uncreated, fixed in their own space and time.

And she would go with him, her naked feet shining white on the queer,
bright, cold green of the grass, up the field to the belt of firs that
stood up, strange and eternal, under the risen sun.

They parted there, holding each other for a last kiss, a last clinging,
as if never in this world they would meet again.

Dawn after dawn. They belonged to the dawn and the dawn light; the dawn
was their day; they knew it as they knew no other time.

And Anne would go back to her shelter, and lie there, and live through
their passion again in memory, till she fell asleep.

And when she woke she would find the sweet, sad ghost of Maisie haunting
her, coming between her and the memory of her dark ecstasy. Maisie,
utterly innocent, utterly good, trusting her, sending Jerrold back to
her because she trusted her. Only to think of Maisie gave her a fearful
sense of insecurity. She thought: If I'd loved her I could never have
done it. If I were to love her even now that would end it. We couldn't
go on. She prayed God that she might not love her.

By day the hard work of the farm stopped her thinking. And the next
night and the next dawn brought back her safety.


iv

The hay harvest was over by the last week of June, and in the first week
of July Maisie had come back.

Maisie or no Maisie, the work of the farm had to go on; and Anne felt
more than ever that it justified her. When the day of reckoning came, if
it ever did come, let her be judged by her work. Because of her love for
Jerrold here was this big estate held together, and kept going; because
of his love for her here was Jerrold, growing into a perfect farmer and
a perfect landlord; because of her he had found the one thing he was
best fitted to do; because of him she herself was valuable. Anne brought
to her work on the land a thoroughness that aimed continually at
perfection. She watched the starting of every tractor-plough and driller
as it broke fresh ground, to see that machines and men were working at
their highest pitch of efficiency. She demanded efficiency, and, on the
whole, she got it; she gave it by a sort of contagion. She wrung out of
the land the very utmost it was capable of yielding; she saw that there
was no waste of straw or hay, of grain or fertilizers; and she knew how
to take risks, spending big sums on implements and stock wherever she
saw a good chance of a return.

Jerrold learned from her this perfection. Her work stood clear for the
whole countryside to see. Nobody could say she had not done well by the
land. When she first took on the Manor Farm it had stood only in the
second class; in four years she had raised it to the first. It was now
one of the best cultivated estates in the county and famous for its
prize stock. Sir John Corbett of Underwoods, Mr. Hawtrey of Medlicote,
and Major Markham of Wyck Wold owned to an admiration for Anne Severn's
management. Her morals, they said, might be a trifle shady, but her
farming was above reproach. More reluctantly they admitted that she had
made something of that young rotter, Colin, even while they supposed
that he had been sent abroad to keep him out of Anne Severn's way. They
also supposed that as soon as he could do it decently Jerrold would get
rid of Anne.

Then two things happened. In July Maisie Fielding came back and was seen
driving about the country with Anne Severn; and in the same month old
Sutton died and the Barrow Farm was let to Anne, thus establishing her
permanence.

Anne had refused to take it from Jerrold as his gift. He had pressed her
persistently.

"You might, Anne. It's the only thing I can give you. And what is it? A
scrubby two hundred acres."

"It's a thundering lot of land, Jerrold. I can't take it."

"You must. It isn't enough, after all you've done for us. I'd like to
give you everything I've got; Wyck Manor and the whole blessed estate to
the last turnip, and every cow and pig. But I can't do that. And you
used to say you wanted the Barrow Farm."

"I wanted to rent it, Jerry darling. I can't let you give it me."

"Why not? I think it's simply beastly of you not to."

At that point Maisie had passed through the room with her flowers and he
had called to her to help him.

"What are you two quarrelling about?" she said.

"Why, I want to give her the Barrow Farm and she won't let me."

"Of course I won't let him. A whole farm. How could I?"

"I think you might, Anne. It would please him no end."

"She thinks," Jerrold said, "she can go on doing things for us, but we
mustn't do anything for her. And I say it's beastly of her."

"It is really, Anne darling. It's selfish. He wants to give it you so
awfully. He won't be happy if you won't take it."

"But a farm, a whole thumping farm. It's a big house and two hundred
acres. How can I take a thing like that? You couldn't yourself if you
were me."

Maisie's little white fingers flickered over the blue delphiniums
stacked in the blue-and-white Chinese jar. Her mauve-blue eyes were
smiling at Anne over the tops of the tall blue spires.

"Don't you want to make him happy?" she said.

"Not that way."

"If it's the only way--?"

She passed out of the room, still smiling, to gather more flowers. They
looked at each other.

"Jerrold, I can't stand it when she says things like that."

"No more can I. But you know, she really does want you to take that
farm."

"Don't you see why I can't take it--from _you_? It's because we're
lovers."

"I should have thought that made it easier."

"It makes it impossible. I've _given_ myself to you. I can't take
anything. Besides, it would look as if I'd taken it for that."

"That's an appalling idea, Anne."

"It is. But it's what everybody'll think. They'll wonder what on earth
you did it for. We don't want people wondering about us. If they once
begin wondering they'll end by finding out."

"I see. Perhaps you're right. I'm sorry."

"It sticks out of us enough as it is. I can't think how Maisie doesn't
see it. But she never will. She'll never believe that we--"

"Do you want her to see it?"

"No, but it hurts so, her not seeing.... Jerrold, I believe that's the
punishment--Maisie's trusting us. It's the worst thing she could have
done to us."

"Then, if we're punished we're quits. Don't think of it, Anne darling.
Don't let Maisie come in between us like that."

He took her in his arms and kissed her, close and quick, so that no
thought could come between.

But Maisie's sweetness had not done its worst. She had yet to prove what
she was and what she could do.


v

July passed and August; the harvest was over. And in September Jerrold
went up to London to stay with Eliot for the week-end, and Anne stayed
with Maisie, because Maisie didn't like being left in the big house by
herself. Through all those weeks that was the way Maisie had her,
through her need of her.

And on the Thursday before Anne came Maisie had called on Mrs. Hawtrey
of Medlicote, and Mrs. Hawtrey had asked her to lunch with her on the
following Monday. Maisie said she was afraid she couldn't lunch on
Monday because Anne Severn would be with her, and Mrs. Hawtrey said she
was very sorry, but she was afraid she couldn't ask Anne Severn.

And Maisie enquired in her tender voice, "Why not?"

And Mrs. Hawtrey replied, "Because, my dear, nobody here does ask Anne
Severn."

Maisie said again, "Why not?"

Then Mrs. Hawtrey said she didn't want to go into it, the whole thing
was so unpleasant, but nobody _did_ call on Anne Severn. She was too
well known.

And at that Maisie rose in her fragile dignity and said that nobody knew
Anne Severn so well as she and her husband did, and that there was
nobody in the world so absolutely _good_ as Anne, and that she couldn't
possibly know anybody who refused to know her, and so left Mrs. Hawtrey.

The evening Jerrold came home, Maisie, flushed with pleasure,
entertained him with a report of the encounter.

"So you've given an ultimatum to the county."

"Yes. I told you I'd cut them all if they went on cutting Anne. And now
they know it."

"That means that you won't know anybody, Maisie. Except for Anne and me
you'll be absolutely alone here."

"I don't care. I don't want anybody but you and Anne. And if I do we can
ask somebody down. There are lots of amusing people who'd come. And
Eliot can bring his scientific crowd. It simply means that Corbetts and
Hawtreys won't be asked to meet them, that's all."

She went upstairs to lie down before dinner, and presently Anne came to
him in the drawing-room. She was dressed in her riding coat and breeches
as she had come off the land.

"What do you think Maisie's done now?" he said.

"I don't know. Something that'll make me feel awful, I suppose."

"If you're going to take it like that I won't tell you."

"Yes. Tell me. Tell me. I'd rather know."

He told her as Maisie had told him.

"Can't you see her, standing up to the whole county? Pounding them with
her little hands."

His vision of the gentle thing, rising up in that sudden sacred fury of
protection, moved him to admiring, tender laughter. It made Anne burst
into tears.

"Oh, Jerrold, that's the worst that's happened yet. Everybody'll cut
her, because of me."

"Bless you, she won't care. She says she doesn't care about anybody but
you and me."

"But that's the awful thing, her caring. That's the punishment. The
punishment."

Again he took her in his arms and comforted her.

"What am I to do, Jerry? What am I to _do?_"

"Go to her," he said, "and say something nice."

"Go to her and take my punishment?"

"Well, yes, darling, I'm afraid you've got to take it. We can't have it
both ways. It wouldn't _be_ a punishment if you weren't so sweet, if you
didn't mind so. I wish to God I'd never told you."

She held her head high.

"I made you. I'm glad you told me."

She went up to Maisie in her room. Maisie had dressed for dinner and lay
on her couch, looking exquisite and fragile in a gown of thick white
lace. She gave a little soft cry as Anne came to her.

"Anne, you've been crying. What is it, darling?"

"Nothing. Only Jerrold told me what you'd done."

"Done?"

"Yes, for me. Why did you do it, Maisie?"

"Why? I suppose it was because I love you. It was the least I could do."

She held out her hands to her. Anne knelt down, crouching on the floor
beside her, with her face hidden against Maisie's body. Maisie put her
arm round her.

"But why are you crying about it, Anne? You never cry. I can't bear it.
It's like seeing Jerrold cry."

"It's because you're so good, so good, and I'm such a brute. You don't
know what a brute I am."

"Oh yes, I know."

"Do you?" she said, sharply. For one moment she thought that Maisie did
indeed know, know and understand so perfectly that she forgave. This was
forgiveness.

"Of course I do. And so does Jerrold. _He_ knows what a brute you are."

It was not forgiveness. It was Maisie's innocence again, her trust--the
punishment. Anne knelt there and took the pain of it.


vi

She lay awake, alone in her shelter. She had given the excuse of a
racking headache to keep Jerrold from coming to her. For that she had
had to lie. But what was her whole existence but a lie? A lie told by
her silence under Maisie's trust in her, by her acceptance of Maisie's
friendship, by her acquiescence in Maisie's preposterous belief. Every
minute that she let Maisie go on loving and trusting and believing in
her she lied. And the appalling thing was that she couldn't be alone in
her lying. So long as Maisie trusted him Jerrold lied, too--Jerrold, who
was truth itself. One moment she thought: That's what I've brought him
to. That's how I've dragged him down. The next she saw that reproach as
the very madness of her conscience. She had not dragged Jerrold down;
she had raised him to his highest intensity of loving, she had brought
him, out of the illusion of his life with Maisie, to reality and kept
him there in an immaculate faithfulness. Not even for one insane moment
did Anne admit that there was anything wrong or shameful in their
passion itself. It was Maisie's innocence that made them liars, Maisie's
goodness that put them in the wrong and brought shame on them, her truth
that falsified them.

No woman less exquisite in goodness could have moved her to this
incredible remorse. It took the whole of Maisie, in her unique
perfection, to beat her and break her down. Her first instinct in
refusing to know Maisie had been profoundly right. It was as if she had
foreseen, even then, that knowing Maisie would mean loving her, and
that, loving her, she would be beaten and broken down. The awful thing
was that she did love Maisie; and she couldn't tell which was the worse
to bear, her love for Maisie or Maisie's love for her. And who could
have foreseen the pain of it? When she prayed that she might take the
whole punishment, she had not reckoned on this refinement and precision
of torture. God knew what he was about. With all his resources he
couldn't have hit on anything more delicately calculated to hurt.
Nothing less subtle would have touched her. Not discovery; not the
grossness of exposure; but this intolerable security. What could
discovery and exposure do but set her free in her reality? Anne would
have rejoiced to see her lie go up in one purifying flame of revelation.
But to go safe in her lie, hiding her reality, and yet defenceless under
the sting of Maisie's loving, was more than she could bear. She had
brought all her truth and all her fineness to this passion which
Maisie's innocence made a sin, and she was punished where she had
sinned, wounded by the subtle God in her fineness and her truth. If only
Jerrold could have escaped, but he was vulnerable, too; there was
fineness and truth in him. To suffer really he had to be wounded in his
soul.

If Jerrold was hurt then they must end it.

As yet he had given no sign of feeling; but that was like him. Up to the
last minute he would fight against feeling, and when it came he would
refuse to own that he suffered, that there was any cause for suffering.
It would be like the time when his father was dying, when he refused to
see that he was dying. So he would refuse to see Maisie and then, all at
once, he would see her and he would be beaten and broken down.


vii

And suddenly he did see her.

It was on the first Sunday after Jerrold's return. Maisie had had
another of her heart attacks, by herself, in her bed, the night before;
and she had been lying down all day. The sun had come round on to the
terrace, and she now rested there, wrapped in a fur coat and leaning
back on her cushions in the garden chair.

They were sitting out there, all three, Jerrold and Anne talking
together, and Maisie listening with her sweet, attentive eyes. Suddenly
she shut her eyes and ceased to listen. Jerrold and Anne went on talking
with hushed voices, and in a little while Maisie was asleep.

Her head, rising out of the brown fur, was tilted back on the cushions,
showing her innocent white throat; her white violet eyelids were shut
down on her eyes, the dark lashes lying still; her mouth, utterly
innocent, was half open; her breath came through it unevenly, in light
jerks.

"She's asleep, Jerrold."

They sat still, making no sound.

And as she looked at Maisie sleeping, tears came again into Anne's eyes,
the hard tears that cut her eyelids and spilled themselves, drop by slow
drop, heavily. She tried to wipe them away secretly with her hand before
Jerrold saw them; but they came again and again and he had seen. He had
risen to his feet as if he would go, then checked himself and stood
beside her; and together they looked on at Maisie's sleeping; they felt
together the infinite anguish, the infinite pathos of her goodness and
her trust. The beauty of her spirit lay bare to them in the white,
tilted face, slackened and smoothed with sleep. Sleep showed them her
innocence again, naked and helpless. They saw her in her poignant being,
her intense reality. She was so real that in that moment nothing else
mattered to them.

Anne set her teeth hard to keep her mouth still. She saw Jerrold glance
at her, she heard him give a soft groan of pity or of pain; then he
moved away from them and stood by the terrace wall with his back to her.
She saw his clenched hands, and through his terrible, tense quietness
she knew by the quivering of his shoulders that his breast heaved. Then
she saw him grasp the terrace wall and grind the edge of it into the
palms of his hands. That was how he had stood by his father's deathbed,
gripping the foot-rail; and when presently he turned and came to her she
saw the look on his face she had seen then, of young, blind agony,
sharpened now with some more piercing spiritual pain.

"Come," he said, "come into the house."

They went together, side by side, as they had gone when they were
children, along the terrace and down the steps into the drive. In the
shelter of the hall she gave way and cried, openly and helplessly, like
a child, and he put his arm round her and led her into the library, away
from the place where Maisie was. They sat together on the couch, holding
each other's hands, clinging together in their suffering, their memory
of what Maisie had made their sin. Even so they had sat in Anne's room,
on the edge of Anne's bed, when they were children, holding each other's
hands, miserable and yet glad because they were brought together,
because what they had done and what they had borne they had done and
borne together. And now as then he comforted her.

"Don't cry, Anne darling; it isn't your fault. I made you."

"You didn't. You didn't. I wanted you and I made you come to me. And I
knew what it would be like and you didn't."

"Nobody could have known. Don't go back on it."

"I'm not going back on it. If only I'd never seen Maisie--then I
wouldn't have cared. We could have gone on."

"Do you mean we can't now?"

"Yes. How can we when she's such an angel to us and trusts us so?"

"It does make it pretty beastly," he said.

"It makes me feel absolutely rotten."

"So it does me, when I think about it."

"It's knowing her, Jerry. It's having to love her, and knowing that she
loves me; it's knowing what she is.... Why did you make me see her?"

"You know why."

"Yes. Because it made it safer. That's the beastliness of it. I knew how
it would be. I knew she'd beat us in the end--with her goodness."

"Darling, it _isn't_ your fault."

"It _is_. It's all my fault. I'm not going back on it. I'd do it again
to-morrow if it weren't for Maisie. Even now I don't know whether it's
right or wrong. I only know it's the most real and valuable part of me
that loves you, and it's the most real and valuable part of you that
loves me; and I feel somehow that that makes it right. I'd go on with it
if it made you happy. But you aren't happy now."

"I'm not happy because you're not. I don't mind for myself so much. Only
I hate the beastly way we've got to do it. Covering it all up and
pretending that we're not lovers. Deceiving her. That's what makes it
all wrong. Hiding it."

"I know. And I made you do that."

"You didn't. We did it for Maisie. Anyhow, we must stop it. We can't go
on like this any more. We must simply tell her."

"_Tell_ her?"

"Yes; tell her, and get her to divorce me, so that I can marry you. It's
the only straight thing."

"How can we? It would hurt her so awfully."

"Not so much as you think. Remember, she doesn't care for me. She's not
like you, Anne. She's frightfully cold."

As he said it there came to her a sudden awful intimation of reality, a
sense that behind all their words, all the piled-up protection of their
outward thinking, there hid an unknown certainty, a certainty that would
wreck them if they knew it. It was safer not to know, to go on hiding
behind those piled-up barriers of thought. But an inward, ultimate
honesty drove her to her questioning.

"Are you sure she's cold?"

"Absolutely sure. You go on thinking all the time that she's like you,
that she takes things as hard as you do; but she doesn't. She doesn't
feel as you do. It won't hurt her as it would hurt you if I left you for
somebody else."

"But--it'll hurt her."

"It's better to hurt her a little now than to go on humbugging and
shamming till she finds out. That would hurt her damnably. She'd hate
our not being straight with her. But if we tell her the truth she'll
understand. I'm certain she'll understand and she'll forgive _you_. She
can't be hard on you for caring for me."

"Even if she doesn't care?"

"She cares for _you_," he said.

She couldn't push it from her, that importunate sense of a certainty
that was not his certainty. If Maisie did care for him Jerrold wouldn't
see it. He never saw what he didn't want to see.

"Supposing she _does_ care all the time? How do you know she doesn't?"

"I don't think I can tell you."

"But I _must_ know, Jerrold. It makes all the difference."

"It makes none to me, Anne. I'd want you whether Maisie cared for me or
not. But she doesn't."

"If I thought she didn't--then--then I shouldn't mind her knowing. Why
are you so certain? You might tell me."

Then he told her.

After all, that sense of hidden certainty was an illusion.

"When was that, Jerrold?"

"Oh, a night or two after she came down here in April. She didn't know,
poor darling, how she let me off."

"April--September. And she's stuck to it?"

"Oh--stuck to it. Rather."

"And before that?"

"Before that we were all right."

"And she'd been away, too."

"Yes. Ages. That made it all the funnier."

"I wish you'd told me before."

"I wish I had, if it makes you happier."

"It does. Still, we can't go on, Jerrold, till she knows."

"Of course we can't. It's too awful. I'll tell her. And we'll go away
somewhere while she's divorcing me, and stay away till I can marry
you.... It'll be all different when we've got away."

"When you've told her. We ought to have told her long ago, before it
happened."

"Yes. But now--what the devil _am_ I to tell her?"

He saw, as if for the first time, what telling her would mean.

"Tell her the truth. The whole truth."

"How can I--when it's _you_?"

"It's because it _is_ me that you've got to tell her. If you don't,
Jerrold, I'll tell her myself."

"All right. I'll tell her at once and get it over. I'll tell her
tonight."

"No. Not tonight, while she's so tired. Wait till she's rested."

And Jerrold waited.



XVI


ANNE, MAISIE, AND JERROLD

i

Jerrold waited, and Maisie got her truth in first.

It was on the Wednesday, a fine bright day in September, and Jerrold was
to have driven Maisie and Anne over to Oxford in the car. And, ten
minutes before starting, Maisie had declared herself too tired to go.
Anne wouldn't go without her, and Jerrold, rather sulky, had set off by
himself. He couldn't understand Maisie's sudden fits of fatigue when
there was nothing the matter with her. He thought her capricious and
hysterical. She was acquiring his mother's perverse habit of upsetting
your engagements at the last moment; and lately she had been
particularly tiresome about motoring. Either they were going too fast or
too far, or the wind was too strong; and he would have to turn back, or
hold himself in and go slowly. And the next time she would refuse to go
at all for fear of spoiling their pleasure. She liked it better when
Anne drove her.

And today Jerrold was annoyed with Maisie because of Anne. If it hadn't
been for Maisie, Anne would have been with him, enjoying a day's holiday
for once. Really, Maisie might have thought of Anne and Anne's pleasure.
It wasn't like her not to think of other people. Yet he owned that she
hadn't wanted Anne to stay with her. He could hear her pathetic voice
imploring Anne to go "because Jerry won't like it if you don't." Also he
knew that if Anne was determined not to do a thing nothing you could say
would make her do it.

He had had time to think about it as he sat in the lounge of the hotel
at Oxford waiting for the friends who were to lunch with him. And
suddenly his annoyance had turned to pity.

It was no wonder if Maisie was hysterical. His life with her was all
wrong, all horribly unnatural. She ought to have had children. Or he
ought never to have married her. It had been all wrong from the
beginning. Perhaps she had been aware that there was something missing.
Perhaps not. Maisie had seemed always singularly unaware. That was
because she didn't care for him. Perhaps, if he had loved her
passionately she would have cared more. Perhaps not. Maisie was
incurably cold. She shrank from the slightest gesture of approach; she
was afraid of any emotion. She was one of those unhappy women who are
born with an aversion from warm contacts, who cannot give themselves.
What puzzled him was the union of such a temperament with Maisie's
sweetness and her charm He had noticed that other men adored her. He
knew that if it had not been for Anne he might have adored her, too. And
again he wondered whether it would have made any difference to Maisie if
he had.

He thought not. She was happy, as it was, in her gentle, unexcited way.
Happy and at peace. Giving happiness and peace, if peace were what you
wanted. It was that happiness and peace of Maisie's that had drawn him
to her when he gave Anne up three years ago.

And again he couldn't understand this combination of hysteria and
perfect peace. He couldn't understand Maisie.

Perhaps, after all, she had got what she had wanted. She wouldn't have
been happy and at peace if she had been married to some brute who would
have had no pity, who would have insisted on his rights. Some faithful
brute; or some brute no more faithful to her than he, who had been
faithful only to Anne.

As he thought of Anne darkness came down over his brain. His mind
struggled through it, looking for the light.

The entrance of his friends cut short his struggling.


ii

Maisie lay on the couch in the library, and Anne sat with her. Maisie's
eyes had been closed, but now they had opened, and Anne saw them looking
at her and smiling.

"You are a darling, Anne; but I wish you'd gone with Jerrold."

"I don't. I wouldn't have liked it a bit."

"_He_ would, though."

"Not when he thought of you left here all by yourself."

Maisie smiled again.

"Jerry doesn't think, thank Goodness."

"Why 'thank Goodness'?"

"Because I don't want him to. I don't want him to see."

"To see what?"

"Why, that I can't do things like other people."

"Maisie--_why_ can't you? You used to. Jerrold's told me how you used to
rush about, dancing and golfing and playing tennis."

"Why? Did he say anything?"

"Only that you took a lot of exercise, and he thinks it's awfully bad
for you knocking it all off now."

"Dear old Jerry. Of course he must think it frightfully stupid. But I
can't help it, Anne. I can't do things now like I used to. I've got to
be careful."

"But--why?"

"Because there's something wrong with my heart. Jerry doesn't know it. I
don't want him to know."

"You don't mean seriously wrong?"

"Not very serious. But it hurts."

"Hurts?"

"Yes. And the pain frightens me. Every time it comes I think I'm going
to die. But I don't die."

"Oh--_Maisie_--what sort of pain?"

"A disgusting pain, Anne. As if it was full of splintered glass, mixed
up with bubbling blood, cutting and tearing. It grabs at you and you
choke; you feel as if your face would burst. You're afraid to breathe
for fear it should come again."

"But, Maisie, that's angina."

"It isn't real angina; but it's awful, all the same. Oh, Anne, what must
the real thing be like?"

"Have you seen a doctor?"

"Yes, two. A man in London and a man in Torquay."

"Do they say it isn't the real thing?"

"Yes. It's all nerves. But it's every bit as bad as if it was real,
except that I can't die of it."

"Poor little Maisie--I didn't know."

"I didn't mean you to know. But I _had_ to tell somebody. It's so awful
being by yourself with it and being frightened. And then I'm afraid all
the time of Jerrold finding out. I'm afraid of his _seeing_ me when it
comes on."

"But, Maisie darling, he ought to know. You ought to tell him."

"No. I haven't told my father and mother because they'd tell him.
Luckily it's only come on in the night, so that he hasn't seen. But it
might come on anywhere, any minute. If I'm excited or anything ...
That's the awful thing, Anne; I'm afraid of getting excited. I'm afraid
to feel. I'm afraid of everything that makes me feel. I'm afraid of
Jerrold's touching me, even of his saying something nice to me. The
least thing makes my silly heart tumble about, and if it tumbles too
much the pain comes. I daren't let Jerrold sleep with me."

"Yet you haven't told him."

"No; I daren't."

"You _must_ tell him, Maisie."

"I won't. He'd mind horribly. He'd be frightened and miserable, and I
can't bear him to be frightened and miserable. He's had enough. He's
been through the war. I don't mean that that frightened him; but this
would."

"Do you mean to say he doesn't see it?"

"Bless you, no. He just thinks I'm tiresome and hysterical. I'd rather
he thought that than see him unhappy. Nothing in the world matters but
Jerrold. You see I care for him so frightfully.... You don't know how
awful it is, caring like that, and yet having to beat him back all the
time, never to give him anything. I daren't let him come near me because
of that ghastly fright. I know you oughtn't to be afraid of pain, but
it's a pain that makes you afraid. Being afraid's all part of it. So I
can't help it."

"Of course you can't help it."

"I wouldn't mind if it wasn't for Jerry. I ought never to have married
him."

"But, Maisie, I can't understand it. You're always so happy and calm.
How can you be calm and happy with _that_ hanging over you?"

"I've got to be calm for fear of it. And I'm happy because Jerrold's
there. Simply knowing that he's there.... I can't think what I'd do,
Anne, if he wasn't such an angel. Some men wouldn't be. They wouldn't
stand it. And that makes me care all the more. He'll never know how I
care."

"You must tell him."

"There it is. I daren't even try to tell him. I just live in perpetual
funk."

"And you're the bravest thing that ever lived."

"Oh, I've got to cover it up. It wouldn't do to show it. But I'm glad
I've told you."

She leaned back, panting.

"I mustn't talk--any more now."

"No. Rest."

"You won't mind?... But--get a book--and read. You'll be--so bored."

She shut her eyes.

Anne got a book and tried to read it; but the words ran together, grey
lines tangled on a white page. Nothing was clear to her but the fact
that Maisie had told the truth about herself.

It was the worst thing that had happened yet. It was the supreme
reproach, the ultimate disaster and defeat. Yet Maisie had not told her
anything that surprised her. This was the certainty that hid behind the
defences of their thought, the certainty she had foreseen when Jerrold
told her about Maisie's coldness. It meant that Jerrold couldn't escape,
and that his punishment would be even worse than hers. Nothing that
Maisie could have done would have been more terrible to Jerrold than her
illness and the way she had hidden it from him; the poor darling going
in terror of it, lying in bed alone, night after night, shut in with her
terror. Jerrold was utterly vulnerable; his belief in Maisie's
indifference had been his only protection against remorse. How was he
going to bear Maisie's wounding love? How would he take the knowledge of
it?

Anne saw what must come of his knowing. It would be the end of their
happiness. After this they would have to give each other up; he would
never take her in his arms again; he would never come to her again in
the fields between midnight and dawn. They couldn't go on unless they
told Maisie the truth; and they couldn't tell Maisie the truth now,
because the truth would bring the pain back to her poor little heart.
They could never be straight with her; they would have to hide what they
had done for ever. Maisie had silenced them for ever when she got her
truth in first. To Anne it was not thinkable, either that they should go
on being lovers, knowing about Maisie, or that she should keep her
knowledge to herself. She would tell Jerrold and end it.


iii

She stayed on with Maisie till the evening.

Jerrold had come back and was walking home with her through the Manor
fields when she made up her mind that she would tell him now; at the
next gate--the next--when they came to the belt of firs she would tell
him.

She stopped him there by the fence of the plantation. The darkness hid
them from each other, only their faces and Anne's white coat glimmered
through.

"Wait a minute, Jerrold. I want to tell you something. About Maisie."

He drew himself up abruptly, and she felt the sudden start and check of
his hurt mind.

"You haven't told her?" he said.

"No. It's something she told me. She doesn't want you to know. But
you've got to know it. You think she doesn't care for you, and she does;
she cares awfully. But--she's ill."

"Ill? She isn't, Anne. She only thinks she is. I know Maisie."

"You don't know that she gets heart attacks. Frightful pain, Jerrold,
pain that terrifies her."

"My God--you don't mean she's got _angina_?"

"Not the real kind. If it was that she'd be dead. But pain so bad that
she thinks she's dying every time. It's what they call false angina.
That's why she doesn't want you to sleep with her, for fear it'll come
on and you'll see her."

Through the darkness she could feel the vibration of his shock; it came
to her in his stillness.

"You said she didn't feel. She's afraid to feel because feeling brings
it on."

He spoke at last. "Why on earth couldn't she tell me that?"

"Because she loves you so awfully. The poor darling didn't want you to
be unhappy about her."

"As if that mattered."

"It matters more than anything to her."

"Do you really mean that she's got that hellish thing? Who told her what
it was?"

"Some London doctor and a man at Torquay."

"I shall take her up to-morrow and make her see a specialist."

"If you do you mustn't let her know I told you, or she'll never tell me
anything again."

"What am I to say?"

"Say you've been worried about her."

"God knows I ought to have been."

"You're worried about her, and you think there's something wrong. If she
says there isn't, you'll say that's what you want to be sure of."

"Look here; how do those fellows know it isn't the real thing?"

"Oh, they can tell that by the state of her heart. I don't suppose for a
moment it's the real thing. She wouldn't be alive if it was. And you
don't die of false angina. It's all nerves, though it hurts like sin."

He was silent for a second.

"Anne--she's beaten us. We can't tell her now."

"No. And we can't go on. If we can't be straight about it we've got to
give each other up."

"I know. We can't go on. There's nothing more to be said."

His voice dropped on her aching heart with the toneless weight of
finality.

"We've got to end it now, this minute," she said. "Don't come any
farther."

"Let me go to the bottom of the field."

"No. I'm not going that way."

He had come close to her now, close, as though he would have taken her
in his arms for the last night, the last time. He wanted to touch her,
to hold her back from the swallowing darkness. But she moved out of his
reach and he did not follow her. His passion was ready to flame up if he
touched her, and he was afraid. They must end it clean, without a word
or a touch.

The grass drive between the firs led to a gate on the hill road that
skirted the Manor fields. He knew that she would go from him that way,
because she didn't want to pass by their shelter at the bottom. She
couldn't sleep in it tonight.

He stood still and watched her go, her white coat glimmering in the
darkness between the black rows of firs. The white gate glimmered at the
end of the drive. She stood there a moment. He saw her slip like a white
ghost between the gate and the gate post; he heard the light thud of the
wooden latch falling back behind her, and she was gone.



XVII


JERROLD, MAISIE, ANNE, ELIOT

i

Maisie lay in bed, helpless and abandoned to her illness. It was no good
trying to cover it up and hide it any more. Jerrold knew.

The night when he left Anne he had gone up to Maisie in her room. He
couldn't rest unless he knew that she was all right. He had stooped over
her to kiss her and she had sat up, holding her face to him, her hands
clasped round his neck, drawing him close to her, when suddenly the pain
gripped her and she lay back in his arms, choking, struggling for
breath.

Jerrold thought she was dying. He waited till the pain passed and she
was quieted, then he ran downstairs and telephoned for Ransome. He
looked on in agony while Ransome's stethoscope wandered over Maisie's
thin breast and back. It seemed to him that Ransome was taking an
unusually long time about it, that he must be on the track of some
terrible discovery. And when Ransome took the tubes from his ears and
said, curtly, "Heart quite sound; nothing wrong there," he was convinced
that Ransome was an old fool who didn't know his business. Or else he
was lying for Maisie's sake.

Downstairs in the library he turned on him.

"Look here; there's no good lying to me. I want truth."

"My dear Fielding, I shouldn't dream of lying to you. There's nothing
wrong with your wife's heart. Nothing organically wrong."

"With that pain? She was in agony, Ransome, agony. Why can't you tell me
at once that it's angina?"

"Because it isn't. Not the real thing. False angina's a neurosis, not a
heart disease. Get the nervous condition cured and she'll be all right.
Has she had any worry? Any shock?"

"Not that I know."

"Any cause for worry?"

He hesitated. Poor Maisie had had cause enough if she had known. But she
didn't know. It seemed to him that Ransome was looking at him queerly.

"No," he said. "None."

"You're quite certain? Has she ever had any?"

"Well, I suppose she was pretty jumpy all the time I was at the front."

"Before that? Years ago?"

"That I don't know. I should say not."

"You won't swear?"

"No. I won't swear. It would be years before we were married."

"Try and find out," said Ransome. "And keep her quiet and happy. She'd
better stay in bed for a week or two."

So Maisie stayed in bed, and Jerrold and Anne sat with her, together or
in turn. He had a bed made up in her room and slept there when he slept
at all. But half the night he lay awake, listening for the sound of her
panting and the little gasping cry that would come when the pain got
her. He kept on getting up to look at her and make sure that she was
sleeping.

He was changed from his old happy, careless self, the self that used to
turn from any trouble, that refused to believe that the people it loved
could be ill and die. He was convinced that Maisie's state was
dangerous. He sent for Dr. Harper of Cheltenham and for a nerve
specialist and a heart specialist from London and they all told him the
same thing. And he wouldn't believe them. Because Maisie's death was the
most unbearable thing that his remorse could imagine, he felt that
nothing short of Maisie's death would appease the powers that punished
him. He was the more certain that Maisie would die because he had denied
that she was ill. For Jerrold's mind remembered everything and
anticipated nothing. Like most men who refuse to see or foresee trouble,
he was crushed by it when it came.

The remorse he felt might have been less intolerable if he had been
alone in it; but, day after day, his pain was intensified by the sight
of Anne's pain. She was exquisitely vulnerable, and for every pang that
stabbed her he felt himself responsible. What they had done they had
done together, and they suffered for it together, but in the beginning
she had done it for him, and he had made her do it. Nobody, not even
Maisie, could have been more innocent than Anne. He had no doubt that,
left to herself, she would have hidden her passion from him to the end
of time. He, therefore, was the cause of her suffering.

It was as if Anne's consciousness were transferred to him, day after
day, when they sat together in Maisie's room, one on each side of her
bed, while Maisie lay between them, sleeping her helpless and
reproachful sleep, and he saw Anne's piteous face, white with pain. His
pity for Maisie and his pity for Anne, their pity for each other were
mixed together and held them, close as passion, in an unbearable
communion.

They looked at each other, and their wounded eyes said, day after day,
the same thing: "Yes, it hurts. But I could bear it if it were not for
you." Their pity took the place of passion. It was as if a part of each
other passed into them with their suffering as it had passed into them
with their joy.