ii

And through it all their passion itself still lived its inextinguishable
and tortured life. Pity, so far from destroying it, only made it
stronger, pouring in its own emotion, wave after wave, swelling the
flood that carried them towards the warm darkness where will and thought
would cease.

And as Jerrold's soul had once stirred in the warm darkness under the
first stinging of remorse, so now it pushed and struggled to be born;
all his will fought against the darkness to deliver his soul. His soul
knew that Anne saved it. If her will had been weaker his would not have
been so strong. At this moment an unscrupulous Anne might have damned
him to the sensual hell by clinging to his pity. He would have sinned
because he was sorry for her.

But Anne's will refused his pity. When he showed it she was angry. Yet
it was there, waiting for her always, against her will.

One day in October (Maisie's illness lasting on into the autumn) they
had gone out into the garden to breathe the cold, clean air while Maisie
slept.

"Jerrold," she said, suddenly, "do you think she knows?"

"No. I'm certain she doesn't."

"I'm not. I've an awful feeling that she knows and that's why she
doesn't get better."

"I don't think so. If she knew she'd have said something or done
something."

"She mightn't. She mightn't do anything. Perhaps she's just being
angelically good to us."

"She _is_ angelically good. But she doesn't know. You forget her illness
began before there _was_ anything to know. It isn't the sort of thing
she'd think of. If somebody told her she wouldn't believe it. She trusts
us absolutely.... That's bad enough, Anne, without her knowing."

"Yes. It's bad enough. It's worse, really."

"I know it is.... Anne--I'm awfully sorry to have let you in for all
this misery."

"You mustn't be sorry. You haven't let me in for it. Nobody could have
known it would have happened. It wouldn't, if Maisie had been different.
We wouldn't have bothered then. Nothing would have mattered. Think how
gloriously happy we were. All my life all my happiness has come through
you or because of you. We'd be happy still if it wasn't for Maisie."

"I don't see how we're to go on like this. I can't stand it when you're
not happy. And nothing makes any difference, really. I want you so
awfully all the time."

"That's one of the things we mustn't say to each other."

"I know we mustn't. Only I didn't want you to think I didn't."

"I don't think it. I know you'll care for me as long as you live. Only
you mustn't say so. You mustn't be sorry for me. It makes me feel all
weak and soft when I want to be strong and hard."

"You _are_ strong, Anne."

"So are you. I shouldn't love you if you weren't. But we mustn't make it
too hard for each other. You know what'll happen if we do?"

"What? You mean we'd crumple up and give in?"

"No. But we couldn't ever see each other alone again. Never see each
other again at all, perhaps. I'd have to go away."

"You shan't have to. I swear I won't say another word."

"Sometimes I think it would be easier for you if I went."

"It wouldn't. It would be simply damnable. You can't go, Anne. That
_would_ make Maisie think."


iii

After weeks of rest Maisie passed into a period of painless
tranquillity. She had no longer any fear of her illness because she had
no longer any fear of Jerrold's knowing about it. He did know, and yet
her world stood firm round her, firmer than when he had not known. For
she had now in Jerrold's ceaseless devotion what seemed to her the
absolute proof that he cared for her, if she had ever doubted it. And if
he had doubted her, hadn't he the absolute proof that she cared,
desperately? Would she have so hidden the truth from him, would she have
borne her pain and the fear of it, in that awful lonely secrecy, if she
had not cared for him more than for anything on earth? She had been more
afraid to sleep alone than poor Colin who had waked them with his
screaming. Jerrold knew that she was not a brave woman like Anne or
Colin's wife, Queenie; it was out of her love for him that she had drawn
the courage that made her face, night after night, the horror of her
torment alone. If he had wanted proof, what better proof could he have
than that?

So Maisie remained tranquil, secure in her love for Jerrold, and in his
love for her, while Anne and Jerrold were tortured by their love for
each other. They were no longer sustained in their renunciation by the
sight of Maisie's illness and the fear of it which more than anything
had held back their passion. Without that warning fear they were exposed
at every turn. It might be there, waiting for them in the background,
but, with Maisie going about as if nothing had happened, even remorse
had lost its protective poignancy. They suffered the strain of perpetual
frustration. They were never alone together now. They had passed from
each other, beyond all contact of spirit with spirit and flesh with
flesh, beyond all words and looks of longing; they had nothing of each
other but sight, sight that had all the violence of touch without its
satisfaction, that served only to excite them, to torture them with
desire. They might be held at arm's length, at a room's length, at a
field's length apart, but their eyes drew them together, set their
hearts beating; in one moment of seeing they were joined and put
asunder.

And, day after day, their minds desired each other with a subtle,
incessant, intensely conscious longing, and were utterly cut off from
all communion. They met now at longer and longer intervals, for their
work separated them. Colin had come home in October, perfectly
recovered, and he and Jerrold managed the Manor estate together while
Anne looked after her own farm. Jerrold never saw her, he never tried to
see her unless Colin or Maisie or some of the farm people were present;
he was afraid and Anne knew that he was afraid. Her sense of his danger
made her feel herself fragile and unstable. She, too, avoided every
occasion of seeing him alone.

And this separation, so far from saving them, defeated its own end.
Every day it brought them nearer to the breaking point. It was against
all nature and all nature was against it. They had always before them
that vision of the point at which they would give in. Always there was
one thought that drew them to the edge of surrender: "I can bear it for
myself, but I can't bear it for him," "I can bear it for myself, but I
can't bear it for her."

And to both of them had come another fear, greater than their dread of
Maisie's pain, the fear of each other's illness. Their splendid physical
health was beginning to break down. They worked harder than ever on the
land; but hard work exhausted them at the end of the day. They went on
from a sense of duty, dull and implacable, but they had no more pleasure
in it. Anne became every night more restless, every day more tired and
anaemic. Jerrold ate less and slept less. They grew thin, and their
faces took on the same look of fatigue and anxiety and wonder, as if,
more than anything, they were amazed at a world whose being connived at
and tolerated their pain.

Maisie saw it and felt the first vague disturbance of her peace. Her
illness had worried everybody while it lasted, but she couldn't think
why, when she was well again, Anne and Jerrold should go on looking like
that. Maisie thought it was physical; the poor dears worked too hard.

The change had been so gradual that she saw it without consternation,
but when Eliot came down in November he couldn't hide his distress. To
Eliot the significant thing was not Anne's illness or Jerrold's illness
but the likeness in their illnesses, the likeness in their faces. It was
clear that they suffered together, with the same suffering, from the
same cause. And when on his last evening Jerrold took him into the
library to consult him about Maisie's case, Eliot had a hard, straight
talk with him about his own.

"My dear Jerrold," he said, "there's nothing seriously wrong with
Maisie. I've examined her heart. It isn't a particularly strong heart,
but there's no disease in it. If you took her to all the specialists in
Europe they'd tell you the same thing."

"I know, but I keep on worrying."

"That, my dear chap, is because you're ill yourself. I don't like it.
I'm not bothered about Maisie, but I am bothered about you and Anne."

"Anne? Do you think _Anne's_ ill?"

"I think she will be, and so will you if... What have you been doing?"

"We've been doing nothing."

"That's it. You've got to do something and do it pretty quick if it's to
be any good."

Jerrold started and looked up. He wondered whether Eliot knew. He had a
way of getting at things, you couldn't tell how.

"What d'you mean? What are you talking about?" His words came with a
sudden sharp rapidity.

"You know what I mean."

"I don't know how _you_ know anything. And, as a matter of fact, you
don't."

"I don't know much. But I know enough to see that you two can't go on
like this."

"Maisie and me?"

"No. You and Anne. It's Anne I'm talking about. I suppose you can make a
mess of your own life if you like. You've no business to make a mess of
hers."

"My God! as if I didn't know it. What the devil am I to do?"

"Leave her alone, Jerrold, if you can't have her."

"Leave her alone? I _am_ leaving her alone. I've got to leave her alone,
if we both die of it."

"She ought to go away," Eliot said.

"She shan't go away unless I go with her. And I can't."'

"Well, then, it's an impossible situation."

"It's a damnable situation, but it's the only decent one. You forget
there's Maisie."

"No, I don't. Maisie doesn't know?"

"Oh Lord, no. And she never will."

"You ought to tell her."

Jerrold was silent.

"My dear Jerrold, it's the only sensible thing. Tell her straight and
get her to divorce you."

"I was going to. Then she got ill and I couldn't."

"She isn't ill now."

"She will be if I tell her. It'll simply kill her."

"It won't. It may--even--cure her."

"It'll make her frightfully unhappy. And it'll bring back that infernal
pain. If you'd seen her, Eliot, you'd know how impossible it is. We
simply can't be swine. And if I could, Anne couldn't.... No. We've got
to stick it somehow, Anne and I."

"It's all wrong, Jerrold."

"I know it's all wrong. But it's the best we can do. You don't suppose
Anne would be happy if we did Maisie down."

"No. No. She wouldn't. You're right there. But it's a damnable
business."

"Oh, damnable, yes."

Jerrold laughed in his agony. Yet he saw, as if he had never seen it
before, Eliot's goodness and the sadness and beauty of his love for
Anne. He had borne for years what Jerrold was bearing now, and Anne had
not loved him. He had never known for one moment the bliss of love or
any joy. He had had nothing. And Jerrold remembered with a pang of
contrition that he had never cared enough for Eliot. It had always been
Colin, the young, breakable Colin, who had clung to him and followed
him. Eliot had always gone his own queer way, keeping himself apart.

And now Eliot was nearer to him than anything in the world, except Anne.

"I'm sorry, Jerrold."

"You're pretty decent, Eliot, to be sorry--I believe you honestly want
me to have Anne."

"I wouldn't go so far as that, old man. But I believe I honestly want
Anne to have you.... I say, she hasn't gone yet, has she?"

"No. Maisie's keeping her for dinner in your honour. You'll probably
find her in the drawing-room now."

"Where's Maisie?"

"She won't worry you. She's gone to lie down."

Eliot went into the drawing-room and found Anne there.

She looked at him. "You've been talking to Jerrold," she said.

"Yes, Anne. I'm worried about him."

"So am I."

"And I'm worried about you."

"And he's worried about Maisie."

"Yes. I suppose he began by not seeing she was ill, and now he does see
it he thinks she's going to die. I've been trying to explain to him that
she isn't."

"Can you explain why she's got into this state? It's not as if she
wasn't happy. She _is_ happy."

"She wasn't always happy. Jerrold must have made her suffer damnably."

"When?"

"Oh, long before he married her."

"But _how_ did he make her suffer?"

"Oh, by just not marrying her. She found out he didn't care for her. Her
people took her out to India, I believe, with the idea that he would
marry her. And when they saw that Jerry wasn't on in that act they sent
her back again. Poor Maisie got it well rammed into her then that he
didn't care for her, and the idea's stuck. It's left a sort of wound in
her memory."

"But she must have thought he cared for her when he did marry her. She
thinks he cares now."

"Of course she thinks it. I don't suppose he's ever let her see."

"I know he hasn't."

"But the wound's there, all the same. She's never got over it, though
she isn't conscious of it now. The fact remains that Maisie's marriage
is incomplete because Jerry doesn't care for her. Part of Maisie, the
adorable part we know, isn't aware of any incompleteness; it lives in a
perpetual illusion. But the part we don't know, the hidden, secret part
of her, is aware of nothing else.... Well, her illness is simply
camouflage for that. Maisie's mind couldn't bear the reality, so it
escaped into a neurosis. Maisie's behaving as though she wasn't married,
so that her mind can say to itself that her marriage is incomplete
because she's ill, not because Jerry doesn't care for her. It's
substituted a bearable situation for an unbearable one."

"Then, you don't think she _knows_?"

"That Jerrold doesn't care for her? No. Only in that unconscious way.
Her mind remembers and _she_ doesn't."

"I mean, she doesn't know about Jerrold and me?"

"I'm sure she doesn't. If she did she'd do something."

"That's what Jerrold said. What would she do?"

"Oh something beautiful, or it wouldn't be Maisie. She'd let Jerrold
go."

"Yes. She'd let him go. And she'd die of it."

"Oh no, she wouldn't. I told Jerrold just now it might cure her."

"How _could_ it cure her?"

"By making her face reality. By making her see that her illness simply
means that she hasn't faced it. All our neuroses come because we daren't
live with the truth."

"It's no good making Maisie well if we make her unhappy. Besides, I
don't believe it. If Maisie's unhappy she'll be worse, not better."

"There _is_ just that risk," he said. "But it's you I'm thinking about,
not Maisie. You see, I don't know what's happened."

"Jerrold didn't tell you?"

"He only told me what I know already."

"After all, what _do_ you know?"

"I know you were all right, you and he, when I saw you together here in
the spring. So I suppose you were happy then. Jerrold looked wretchedly
ill all the time he was at Taormina. So I suppose he was unhappy then
because he was away from you. He looks wretchedly ill now. So do you. So
I suppose you're both unhappy."

"Yes, we're both unhappy."

"Do you want to tell me about it, Anne?"

"No. I don't want to tell you about it. Only, if I thought you still
wanted to marry me----"

"I do want to marry you. I shall always want to marry you. I told you
long ago nothing would ever make any difference.

"Even if----?"

"Even if--Whatever you did or didn't do I'd still want you. But I told
you--don't you remember?--that you could never do anything dishonourable
or cruel."

"And I told you I wasn't sure."

"And I am sure. That's enough for me. I don't want to know anything
more. I don't want to know anything you'd rather I didn't know."

"Oh, Eliot, you _are_ so good. You're good like Maisie. Don't worry
about Jerry and me. We'll see it through somehow."

"And if you can't stand the strain of it?"

"But I can."

"And if _he_ can't? If you want to be safe----"

"I told you I should never want to be safe."

"If you want _him_ to be safe, then, would you marry me?"

"That's different. I don't know, Eliot, but I don't think so."

He went away with a faint hope. She had said it would be different; what
she would never do for him she might do for Jerrold.

She might, after all, marry him to keep Jerrold safe.

Nothing made any difference. Whatever Anne did she would still be Anne.
And it was Anne he loved. And, after all, what did he know about her and
Jerrold? Only that if they had been lovers that would account for their
strange happiness seven months ago; if they had given each other up this
would account for their unhappiness now. He thought: How they must have
struggled.

Perhaps, some day, when the whole story was told and Anne was tired of
struggling, she would come to him and he would marry her.

Even if----



XVIII


JERROLD AND ANNE

i

The Barrow Farm house, long, low and grey, stood back behind the tall
elms and turned its blank north gable end to the road and the Manor
Farm. Its nine mullioned windows looked down the field to the river. And
the great barns were piled behind it, long roof-trees, steep,
mouse-coloured slopes and peaks above grey walls.

Anne didn't move into the Barrow Farm house all at once. She had to wait
while Jerrold had the place made beautiful for her.

This was the only thing that roused him to any interest. Through all his
misery he could still find pleasure in the work of throwing small rooms
into one to make more space for Anne, and putting windows into the south
gable to give her the sun.

Anne's garden absorbed him more than his own seven hundred acres. Maisie
and he planned it together, walking round the rank flower-beds, and bald
wastes scratched up by the hens.

There was to be a flagged court on one side and a grass plot on the
other, with a flower garden between. Here, Maisie said, there should be
great clumps of larkspurs and there a lavender hedge. They said how nice
it would be for Anne to watch the garden grow.

"He's going to make it so beautiful that you'll want to stay in it
forever," she said.

And Anne went with them and listened to them, and told them they were
angels, and pretended to be excited about her house and garden, while
all the time her heart ached and she was too tired to care.

The house was finished by the end of November and Jerrold and Maisie
helped her to furnish it. Maisie sent to London for patterns and brought
them to Anne to choose. Maisie thought perhaps the chintz with the cream
and pink roses, or the one with the green leaves and red tulips and blue
and purple clematis was the prettiest. Anne tried to behave as if all
her happiness depended on a pattern, and ended by choosing the one that
Maisie liked best. And the furniture went where Maisie thought it should
go, because Anne was too tired to care. Besides, she was busy on her
farm. Old Sutton in his decadence had let most of his arable land run to
waste, and Anne's job was to make good soil again out of bad.

Maisie was pleased like a child and excited with her planning. Her idea
was that Anne should come in from her work on the land and find the
house all ready for her, everything in its place, chairs and sofas
dressed in their gay suits of chintz, the books on their shelves, the
blue-and-white china in rows on the oak dresser.

Tea was set out on the gate-legged table before the wide hearth-place.
The lamps were lit. A big fire burned. Colin and Jerrold and Maisie were
there waiting for her. And Anne came in out of the fields, tired and
white and thin, her black hair drooping. Her rough land dress hung slack
on her slender body.

Jerrold looked at her. Anne's tired face, trying to smile, wrung his
heart. So did the happiness in Maisie's eyes. And Anne's voice trying to
sound as if she were happy.

"You darlings! How nice you've made it."

"Do you like it?"

Maisie was breathless with joy.

"I love it. I adore it! But--aren't there lots of things that weren't
here before? Where did that table come from?"

"From the Manor Farm. Don't you remember it? That's Eliot."

"And the bureau, and the dresser, and those heavenly rugs?"

"That's Jerrold."

And the china was Colin, and the chintz was Maisie. The long couch for
Anne to lie down on was Maisie. Everything that was not Anne's they had
given her.

"You shouldn't have done it," she said.

"We did it for ourselves. To keep you with us," said Maisie.

"Did you think it would take all that?"

She wondered whether they saw how hard she was trying to look happy, not
to be too tired to care.

Then Maisie took her upstairs to show her her bedroom and the white
bathroom. Colin carried the lamp. He left them together in Anne's room.
Maisie turned to her there.

"Darling, how tired you look. Are you too tired to be happy?"

"I'd be a brute if I weren't happy," Anne said.

But she wasn't happy. The minute they were gone her sadness came upon
her, crushing her down. She could hear Colin and Maisie, the two
innocent ones, laughing out into the darkness. She saw again Jerrold's
hard, unhappy face trying to smile; his mouth jerking in the tight,
difficult smile that was like an agony. And it used to be Jerrold who
was always happy, who went laughing.

She turned up and down the beautiful lighted room; she looked again and
again at the things they had given her, Colin and Jerrold and Maisie.

Maisie. She would have to live with the cruelty of Maisie's gifts, with
Maisie's wounding kindness and her innocence. Maisie's curtains,
Maisie's couch, covered with flowers that smiled at her, gay on the
white ground. She thought of the other house, of the curtains that had
shut out the light from her and Jerrold, of the couch where she had lain
in his arms. Each object had a dumb but poignant life that reminded and
reproached her.

This was the scene where her life was to be cast. Henceforth these
things would know her in her desolation. Jerrold would never come to her
here as he had come to the Manor Farm house; they would never sit
together talking by this fireside; those curtains would never be drawn
on their passion; he would never go up to that lamp and put it out; she
would never lie here waiting, thrilling, as he came to her through the
darkness.

She had wanted the Barrow Farm and she had got what she had wanted, and
she had got it too late. She loved it. Yet how was it possible to love
the place that she was to be so unhappy in? She ought to hate it with
its enclosing walls, its bright-eyed, watching furniture, its air of
quiet complicity in her pain.

She drew back the curtains. The lamp and its yellow flame hung out there
on the darkness of the fields. The fields dropped away through the
darkness to the river, and there were the black masses of the trees.

There the earth waited for her. Out there was the only life left for her
to live. The life of struggling with the earth, forcing the earth to
yield to her more than it had yielded to the men who had tilled it
before her, making the bad land good. Ploughing time would come and seed
time, and hay harvest and corn harvest. Feeding time and milking time
would come. She would go on seeing the same things done at the same
hour, at the same season, day after day and year after year. There would
have been joy in that if it had been Jerrold's land, if she could have
gone on working for Jerrold and with Jerrold. And if she had not been so
tired.

She was only twenty-nine and Jerrold was only thirty-two. She wondered
how many more ploughing times they would have to go through, how many
seed times and harvests. And how would they go through them? Would they
go on getting more and more tired, or would something happen?

No. Nothing would happen. Nothing that they could bear to think of. They
would just go on.

In the stillness of the house she could feel her heart beating,
measuring out time, measuring out her pain.


ii

That winter Adeline and John Severn came down to Wyck Manor for
Christmas and the New Year.

Adeline was sitting in the drawing-room with Maisie in the heavy hour
before tea time. All afternoon she had been trying to talk to Maisie,
and she was now bored. Jerrold's wife had always bored her. She couldn't
imagine why Jerrold had married her when it was so clear that he was not
in love with her.

"It's funny," she said at last, "staying in your own house when it isn't
your own any more."

Maisie hoped that Adeline would treat the house as if it were her own.

"I probably shall. Don't be surprised if you hear me giving orders to
the servants. I really cannot consider that Wilkins belongs to anybody
but me."

Maisie hoped that Adeline wouldn't consider that he didn't.

And there was a pause. Adeline looked at the clock and saw that there
was still another half-hour till tea time. How could they possibly fill
it in? Then, suddenly, from a thought of Jerrold so incredibly married
to Maisie, Adeline's mind wandered to Anne.

"Is Anne dining here tonight?" she said.

And Maisie said yes, she thought Adeline and Mr. Severn would like to
see as much as possible of Anne. And Adeline said that was very kind of
Maisie, and was bored again.

She saw nothing before her but more and more boredom; and the subject of
Anne alone held out the prospect of relief. She flew to it as she would
have fled from any danger.

"By the way, Maisie, if I were you I wouldn't let Anne see too much of
Jerrold."

"Why not?"

"Because, my dear, it isn't good for her."

"I should have thought," Maisie said, "it was very good for both of
them, as they like each other. I should never dream of interfering with
their friendship. That's the way people get themselves thoroughly
disliked. I don't want Jerry to dislike me, or Anne, either. I like them
to feel that if he _is_ married they can go on being friends just the
same."

"Oh, of course, if you like it----"

"I do like it," said Maisie, firmly.

Firm opposition was a thing that Adeline's wilfulness could never stand.
It always made her either change the subject or revert to her original
statement. This time she reverted.

"My point was that it isn't fair to Anne."

"Why isn't it?"

"Because she's in love with him."

"That," said Maisie, with increasing decision, "I do _not_ believe. I've
never seen any signs of it."

"You're the only person who hasn't then. It sticks out of her. If it was
a secret I shouldn't have told you."

"It is a secret to me," said Maisie, "so I think you might let it
alone."

"You ought to know it if nobody else does. We've all of us known about
Anne for ages. She was always quite mad about Jerrold. It was funny when
she was a little thing; but it's rather more serious now she's thirty."

"She isn't thirty," said Maisie, contradictiously.

"Almost thirty. It's a dangerous age, Maisie. And Anne's a dangerous
person. She's absolutely reckless. She always was."

"I thought you thought she was in love with Colin."

"I never thought it."

Maisie hated people who lied to her.

"Why did you tell Jerrold they were lovers, then?" she said.

"Did I tell Jerrold they were lovers?"

"He thinks you did."

"He must have misunderstood what I said. Colin gave me his word of
honour that there was nothing between them."

But Maisie had no mercy.

"Why should he do that if you didn't think there was? If you were
mistaken then you may be mistaken now."

"I'm not mistaken now. Ask Colin, ask Eliot, ask Anne's father."

"I shouldn't dream of asking them. You forget, if Jerrold's my husband,
Anne's my friend."

"Then for goodness sake keep her out of mischief. Keep her out of
Jerrold's way. Anne's a darling and I'm devoted to her, but she always
did love playing with fire. If she's bent on burning her pretty wings it
isn't kind to bring her where the lamp is."

"I'd trust Anne's wings to keep her out of danger."

"How about Jerrold's danger? You might think of him."

"I do think of him. And I trust him. Absolutely."

"I don't. I don't trust anybody absolutely."

"One thing's clear," said Maisie, "that it's time we had tea."

She got up, with an annihilating dignity, and rang the bell. Adeline's
smile intimated that she was unbeaten and unconvinced.

That evening John Severn came into his wife's room as she was dressing
for dinner.

"I wish to goodness Anne hadn't this craze for farming," he said. "She's
simply working herself to death. I never saw her look so seedy. I'm
sorry Jerrold let her have that farm."

"So am I," said Adeline. "I never saw Jerry look so seedy, either.
Maisie's been behaving like a perfect idiot. If she wanted them to go
off together she couldn't have done better."

"You don't imagine," John said, "that's what they're after?"

"How do I know what they're after? You never can tell with people like
Jerrold and Anne. They're both utterly reckless. They don't care who
suffers so long as they get what they want. If Anne had the morals of
a--of a mouse, she'd clear out."

"I think," John said, "you're mistaken. Anne isn't like that.... I hope
you haven't said anything to Maisie?"

Adeline made a face at him, as much as to say, "What do you take me
for?" She lifted up her charming, wilful face and powdered it carefully.


iii

The earth smelt of the coming rain. All night the trees had whispered of
rain coming to-morrow. Now they waited.

At noon the wind dropped. Thick clouds, the colour of dirty sheep's
wool, packed tight by their own movement, roofed the sky and walled it
round, hanging close to the horizon. A slight heaving and swelling in
the grey mass packed it tighter. It was pregnant with rain. Here and
there a steaming vapour broke from it as if puffed out by some immense
interior commotion. Thin tissues detached themselves and hung like a
frayed hem, lengthening, streaming to the hilltops in the west.

Anne was going up the fields towards the Manor and Jerrold was coming
down towards the Manor Farm. They met at the plantation as the first big
drops fell.

He called out to her, "I say, you oughtn't to be out a day like this."

Anne had been ill all January with a slight touch of pleurisy after a
cold that she had taken no care of.

"I'm going to see Maisie."

"You're _not_," he said. "It's going to rain like fury."

"Maisie knows I don't mind rain," Anne said, and laughed.

"Maisie'd have a fit if she knew you were out in it. Look, how it's
coming down over there."

Westwards and northwards the round roof and walls of cloud were shaken
and the black rain hung sheeted between sky and earth. Overhead the dark
tissues thinned out and lengthened. The fir trees quivered; they gave
out slight creaking, crackling noises as the rain came down. It poured
off each of the sloping fir branches like a jet from a tap.

"We must make a dash for it," Jerrold said. And they ran together,
laughing, down the field to Anne's shelter at the bottom. He pushed back
the sliding door.

The rain drummed on the roof and went hissing along the soaked ground;
it sprayed out as the grass bent and parted under it; every hollow tuft
was a water spout. The fields were dim behind the shining, glassy bead
curtain of the rain.

The wind rose again and shook the rain curtain and blew it into the
shelter. Rain scudded across the floor, wetting them where they stood.
Jerrold slid the door to. They were safe now from the downpour.

Anne's bed stood in the corner tucked up in its grey blankets. They sat
down on it side by side.

For a moment they were silent, held by their memory. They were shut in
there with their past. It came up to them, close and living, out of the
bright, alien mystery of the rain.

He put his hand on the shoulder of Anne's coat to feel if it was wet. At
his touch she trembled.

"It hasn't gone through, has it?"

"No," she said and coughed again.

"Anne, I hate that cough of yours. You never had a cough before."

"I've never had pleurisy before."

"You wouldn't have had it if you hadn't been frightfully run down."

"It's all over now," she said.

"It isn't. You may get it again. I don't feel as if you were safe for
one minute. Are you warm?"

"Quite."

"Are your feet wet?"

"No. No. No. Don't worry, Jerry dear; I'm all right."

"I wouldn't worry if I was with you all the time. It's not seeing you.
Not knowing."

"Don't," she said. "I can't bear it."

And they were silent again.

Their silence was more real to them than the sounding storm. There was
danger in it. It drew them back and back. It was poignant and
reminiscent. It came to them like the long stillness before their
passion. They had waited here before, like this, through moments tense
and increasing, for the supreme, toppling instant of their joy.

Their minds went round and round, looking for words to break the silence
and finding none. They were held there by their danger.

At last Anne spoke.

"Do you think it's over?"

"No. It's only just begun."

The rain hurled itself against the window, as if it would pluck them out
into the storm. It brimmed over from the roof like water poured out from
a bucket.

"We'll have to sit tight till it stops," he said.

Silence again, long, inveterate, dangerous. Every now and then Anne
coughed, the short, hard cough that hurt and frightened him. He knew he
ought to leave her; every minute increased their danger. But he couldn't
go. He felt that, after all they might have done and hadn't done, heaven
had some scheme of compensation in which it owed them this moment.

She turned from him coughing, and that sign of her weakness, the sight
of her thin shoulders shaking filled him with pity that was passion
itself. He thought of the injustice life had heaped on Anne's innocence;
of the cruelty that had tracked her and hunted her down; of his own
complicity with her suffering. He thought of his pity for Maisie as
treachery to Anne, of his honour as cowardice. Instead of piling up wall
after wall, he ought never to have let anything come between him and
Anne. Not even Maisie. Not even his honour. His honour belonged to Anne
far more than to Maisie. The rest had been his own blundering folly, and
he had no right to let Anne be punished for it.

An hour ago the walls had stood solid between them. Now a furious
impulse seized him to tear them down and get through to her. This time
he would hold her and never let her go.

His thoughts went the way his passion went. Then suddenly she turned and
they looked at each other and he thought no more. All his thoughts went
down in the hot rushing darkness of his blood.

"Anne," he said, "Anne"--His voice sounded like a cry.

They stood up suddenly and were swept together; he held her tight, shut
in his arms, his body straining to her. They clung to each other as if
only by clinging they could stand against the hot darkness that drowned
them; and the more they clung the more it came over them, wave after
wave.

Then in the darkness he heard her crying to him to let her go.

"Don't make me, Jerrold, don't make me."

"Yes. Yes."

"No. Oh, why did we ever come here?"

He pressed her closer and she tried to push him off with weak hands that
had once been strong. He felt her breakable in his arms, and utterly
defenceless.

"I can't," she cried. "I should feel as if Maisie were there and looking
at us.... Don't make me."

Suddenly he let her go.

He was beaten by the sheer weakness of her struggle. He couldn't fight
for his flesh, like a brute, against that helplessness.

"If I go, you'll stay here till the rain stops?"

"Yes. I'm sorry, Jerry. You'll get so wet."

That made him laugh. And, laughing, he left her. Then tears came,
cutting through his eyelids like blood from a dry wound. They mixed with
the rain and blinded him.

And Anne sat on the little grey bed in her shelter and stared out at the
rain and cried.



XIX


ANNE AND ELIOT

i

She knew what she would do now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is it, Anne?" he said.

"Nothing. I want to talk to you."

"All right."

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

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

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

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

"You mean you can't trust me."

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

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

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

"Going away--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Nothing on earth will stop me."

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

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

"She'll think it all the same."

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

"Except to bear it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"When did you think of all this?"

"Last night."

"I see. I made you."

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

"For you, or me?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Barley," he said.

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

"Was it?"

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

ii

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

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

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

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

"No, thanks."

"Try and eat something."

"I can't. I feel sick."

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

"I will if you don't mind."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Has anything happened to upset her?"

"What on earth should happen?"

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

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

"The day before yesterday."

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

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

"No."

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

"Nor I. But she's going."

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

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


iii

Maisie went down early in the afternoon to see Anne.

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

"You _do_ care for us, Anne?"

"Oh yes, I care."

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

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

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

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

Maisie meditated, trying to make it out.

"Is it--is it because you're unhappy?"

Anne didn't answer.

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

"No. Nobody can do anything."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's very brave of you."

"Or very cowardly."

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

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

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

"You know it hasn't."

"Oh, Anne, you _are_ beautiful."

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

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


iv

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

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

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

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

"Eliot, what are you doing there?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Have you had tea?"

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

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

"I think it may be," he said.

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

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