i

At last, in March, nineteen-sixteen, Jerrold had got leave.

Anne was right; Jerrold had come through because he had had to stand up to the War and face it.  He couldn’t turn away.  It was too stupendous a fact to be ignored or denied or in any way escaped from.  And as he had to “take” it, he took it laughing.  Once in the thick of it, Jerrold was sustained by his cheerful obstinacy, his inability to see the things he didn’t want to see.  He admitted that there was a war, the most appalling war, if you liked, that had ever been; but he refused, all the time, to believe that the Allies would lose it; he refused from moment to moment to believe that they could be beaten in any single action; he denied the possibility of disaster to his own men.  Disaster to himself ­possibly; probably, in theory; but not in practice.  Not when he turned back in the rain of the enemy’s fire to find his captain who had dropped wounded among the dead, when he swung him over his shoulder and staggered to the nearest stretcher.  He knew he would get through.  It was inconceivable to Jerrold that he should not get through.  Even in his fifth engagement, when his men broke and gave back in front of the German parapet, and he advanced alone, shouting to them to come on, it was inconceivable that they should not come on.  And when they saw him, running forward by himself, they gathered again and ran after him and the trench was taken in a mad rush.

Jerrold got his captaincy and two weeks’ leave together.  He had meant to spend three days in London with his mother, three days in Yorkshire with the Durhams, and the rest of his time at Upper Speed with Anne and Colin.  He was not quite sure whether he wanted to go to the Durhams.  More than anything he wanted to see Anne again.

His last unbearable memory of her was wiped out by five years of India and a year of war.  He remembered the child Anne who played with him, the girl Anne who went about with him, and the girl woman he had found in her room at dawn.  He tried to join on to her the image of the Anne that Eliot wrote to him about, who had gone out to the war and come back from it to look after Colin.  He was in love with this image of her and ready to be in love again with the real Anne.  He would go back now and find her and make her care for him.

There had been a time, after his father’s death, when he had tried to make himself think that Anne had never cared for him, because he didn’t want to think she cared.  Now that he did want it he wasn’t sure.

Not so sure as he was about little Maisie Durham.  He knew Maisie cared.  That was why she had gone out to India.  It was also why she had been sent back again.  He was afraid it might be why the Durhams had asked him to stay with them as soon as he had leave.  If that was so, he wasn’t sure whether he ought to stay with them, seeing that he didn’t care for Maisie.  But since they had asked him, well, he could only suppose that the Durhams knew what they were about.  Perhaps Maisie had got over it.  The little thing had lots of sense.

It hadn’t been his fault in the beginning, Maisie’s caring.  Afterwards, perhaps, in India, when he had let himself see more of her than he would have done if he had known she cared; but that, again, was hardly his fault since he didn’t know.  You don’t see these things unless you’re on the lookout for them, and you’re not on the lookout unless you’re a conceited ass.  Then when he did see it, when he couldn’t help seeing, after other people had seen and made him see, it had been too late.

But this was five years ago, and of course Maisie had got over it.  There would be somebody else now.  Perhaps he would go down to Yorkshire.  Perhaps he wouldn’t.

At this point Jerrold realised that it depended on Anne.

But before he saw Anne he would have to see his mother.  And before he saw his mother his mother had seen Anne and Colin.

ii

And while Anne in Gloucestershire was answering Jerrold’s letter, Jerrold sat in the drawing-room of the house in Montpelier Square and talked to his mother.  They talked about Colin and Anne.

“What’s Colin’s wife doing?” he said.

“Queenie?  She’s driving a field ambulance car in Belgium.”

“Why isn’t she looking after Colin?”

“That isn’t in Queenie’s line.  Besides ­”

“Besides what?”

“Well, to tell the truth, I don’t suppose she’ll live with Colin after ­”

“After what?”

“Well, after Colin’s living with Anne.”

Jerrold stiffened.  He felt the blood rushing to his heart, betraying him.  His face was God only knew what awful colour.

“You don’t mean to say they ­”

“I don’t mean to say I blame them, poor darlings.  What were they to do?”

“But” (he almost stammered it) “you don’t know ­you can’t know ­it doesn’t follow.”

“Well, of course, my dear, they haven’t told me.  You don’t shout these things from the house-tops.  But what is one to think?  There they are; there they’ve been for the last five months, living together at the Farm, absolutely alone.  Anne won’t leave him.  She won’t have anybody there.  If you tell her it’s not proper she laughs in your face.  And Colin swears he won’t go back to Queenie.  What is one to think?”

Jerrold covered his face with his hands.  He didn’t know.

His mother went on in a voice of perfect sweetness.  “Don’t imagine I think a bit the worse of Anne.  She’s been simply splendid.  I never saw anything like her devotion.  She’s brought Colin round out of the most appalling state.  We’ve no business to complain of a situation we’re all benefitting by.  Some people can do these things and you forgive them.  Whatever Anne does or doesn’t do she’ll always be a perfect darling.  As for Queenie, I don’t consider her for a minute.  She’s been simply asking for it.”

He wondered whether it were really true.  It didn’t follow that Anne and Colin were lovers because his mother said so; even supposing that she really thought it.

“You don’t go telling everybody, I hope?” he said.

“My dear Jerrold, what do you think I’m made of?  I haven’t even told Anne’s father.  I’ve only told you because I thought you ought to know.”

“I see; you want to put me off Anne?”

“I don’t want to.  But it would, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh Lord, yes, if it was true.  Perhaps it isn’t.”

“Jerry dear, it may be awfully immoral of me, but for Colin’s sake I can’t help hoping that it is.  I did so want Anne to marry Colin ­really he’s only right when he’s with her ­and if Queenie divorces him I suppose she will.”

“But, mother, you are going ahead.  You may be quite wrong.”

“I may.  You can only suppose ­”

“How on earth am I to know?  I can’t ask them.”

“No, you can’t ask them.”

Of course he couldn’t.  He couldn’t go to Colin and say, “Are you Anne’s lover?” He couldn’t go to Anne and say, “Are you Colin’s mistress?”

“If they wanted us to know,” said Adeline, “they’d have told us.  There you are.”

“Supposing it isn’t true, do you imagine he cares for her?”

“Yes, Jerrold.  I’m quite, quite sure of that.  I was down there last week and saw them.  He can’t bear her out of his sight one minute.  He couldn’t not care.”

“And Anne?”

“Oh, well, Anne isn’t going to give herself away.  But I’m certain...  Would she stick down there, with everybody watching them and thinking things and talking, if she didn’t care so much that nothing matters?”

“But would she ­would she ­”

The best of his mother was that in these matters her mind jumped to meet yours halfway.  You hadn’t got to put things into words.

“My dear, if you think she wouldn’t, supposing she cared enough, you don’t know Anne.”

“I shall go down,” he said, “and see her.”

“If you do, for goodness’ sake be careful.  Even supposing there’s nothing in it, you mustn’t let Colin see you think there is.  He’d feel then that he ought to leave her for fear of compromising her.  And if he leaves her he’ll be as bad as ever again.  And I can’t manage him.  Nobody can manage him but Anne.  That’s how they’ve tied our hands.  We can’t say anything.”

“I see.”

“After all, Jerrold, it’s very simple.  If they’re innocent we must leave them in their innocence.  And if they’re not ­”

“If they’re not?”

“Well, we must leave them in that.”

Jerrold laughed.  But he was not in the least amused.

iii

He went down to Wyck the next day; he couldn’t wait till the day after.

Not that he had the smallest hope of Anne now.  Even if his mother’s suspicion were unfounded, she had made it sufficiently clear to him that Anne was necessary to Colin; and, that being so, the chances were that Colin cared for her.  In these matters his mother was not such a fool as to be utterly mistaken.  On every account, therefore, he must be prepared to give Anne up.  He couldn’t take her away from Colin, and he wouldn’t if he could.  It was his own fault.  What was done was done six years ago.  He should have loved Anne then.

Going down in the train he thought of her, a little girl with short black hair, holding a black-and-white rabbit against her breast, a little girl with a sweet mouth ready for kisses, who hung herself round his neck with sudden, loving arms.  A big girl with long black hair tied in an immense black bow, a girl too big for kisses.  A girl sitting in her room between her white bed and the window with a little black cat in her arms.  Her platted hair lay in a thick black rope down her back.  He remembered how he had kissed her; he remembered the sliding of her sweet face against his, the pressure of her darling head against his shoulder, the salt taste of her tears.  It was inconceivable that he had not loved Anne then.  Why hadn’t he?  Why had he let his infernal cowardice stop him?  Eliot had loved her.

Then he remembered Colin.  Little Col-Col running after them down the field, calling to them to take him with them; Colin’s hands playing; Colin’s voice singing Lord Rendal.  He tried to think of Queenie, the woman Colin had married.  He had no image of her.  He could see nothing but Colin and Anne.

She was there alone at the station to meet him.  She came towards him along the platform.  Their eyes looked for each other.  Something choked his voice back.  She spoke first.

“Anne.”  A strange, thick voice deep down in his throat.

Their hands clasped one into the other, close and strong.

“Colin wanted to come, but I wouldn’t let him.  It would have been too much for him.  He might have cried or something ...  You mustn’t mind if he cries when he sees you.  He isn’t quite right yet.”

“No, but he’s better.”

“Ever so much better.  He can do things on the farm now.  He looks after the lambs and the chickens and the pigs.  It’s good for him to have something to do.”

Jerrold agreed that it was good.

They had reached the Manor Farm now.

“Don’t take any notice if he cries,” she said.

Colin waited for him in the hall of the house.  He was trying hard to control himself, but when he saw Jerrold coming up the path he broke down in a brief convulsive crying that stopped suddenly at the touch of Jerrold’s hand.

Anne left them together.

iv

“Don’t go, Anne.”

Colin called her back when she would have left them, again after dinner.

“Don’t you want Jerrold to yourself?” she said.

“We don’t want you to go, do we, Jerrold?”

“Rather not.”

Jerrold found himself looking at them all the time.  He had tried to persuade himself that what his mother had told him was not true.  But he wasn’t sure.  Look as he would, he was not sure.

If only his mother hadn’t told him, he might have gone on believing in what she had called their innocence.  But she had shown him what to look for, and for the life of him he couldn’t help seeing it at every turn:  in Anne’s face, in the way she looked at Colin, the way she spoke to him; in her kindness to him, her tender, quiet absorption.  In the way Colin’s face turned after her as she came and went; in his restlessness when she was not there; in the peace, the sudden smoothing of his vexed brows, when having gone she came back again.

Supposing it were true that they ­

He couldn’t bear it to be true; his mind struggled against the truth of it, but if it were true he didn’t blame them.  So far from being untrue or even improbable, it seemed to Jerrold the most likely thing in the world to have happened.  It had happened to so many people since the war that he couldn’t deny its likelihood.  There was only one thing that could have made it impossible ­if Anne had cared for him.  And what reason had he to suppose she cared?  After six years?  After he had told her he was trying to get away from her?  He had got away; and he saw a sort of dreadful justice in the event that made it useless for him to come back.  If anybody was to blame it was himself.  Himself and Queenie, that horrible girl Colin had married.

When he asked himself whether it was the sort of thing that Anne would be likely to do he thought:  Why not, if she loved him, if she wanted to make him happy?  How could he tell what Anne would or would not do?  She had said long ago that he couldn’t, that she might do anything.

They spent the evening talking, by fits and starts, with long silences in between.  They talked about the things that happened before the war, before Colin’s marriage, the things they had done together.  They talked about the farm and Anne’s work, about Barker and Curtis and Ballinger, about Mrs. Sutton who watched them from her house across the road.

Mrs. Sutton had once been Colin’s nurse up at the Manor:  she had married old Sutton after his first wife’s death; old Sutton who wouldn’t die and let Anne have his farm.  And now she watched them as if she were afraid of what they might do next.

“Poor old Nanna,” Jerrold said.

“Goodness knows what she thinks of us,” said Anne.

“It doesn’t matter what she thinks,” said Colin.

And they laughed; they laughed; and Jerrold was not quite sure, yet.

But before the night was over he thought he was.

They had given him the little room in the gable.  It led out of Colin’s room.  And there on the chimneypiece he saw an old photograph of himself at the age of thirteen, holding a puppy in his arms.  He had given it to Anne on the last day of the midsummer holidays, nineteen hundred.  Also he found a pair of Anne’s slippers under the bed, and, caught in a crack of the dressing-table, one long black hair.  This room leading out of Colin’s was Anne’s room.

And Colin called out to him, “Do you mind leaving the door open, Jerry? 
I can’t sleep if it’s shut.”

v

It was Jerrold’s second day.  He and Anne climbed the steep beech walk to the top of the hillock and sat there under the trees.  Up the fields on the opposite rise they could see the grey walls and gables of the Manor, and beside it their other beech ring at the top of the last field.

They were silent for a while.  He was intensely aware of her as she turned her head round, slowly, to look at him, straight and full.

And the sense of his nearness came over her, soaking in deeper, swamping her brain.  Her wide open eyes darkened; her breathing came in tight, short jerks; her nerves quivered.  She wondered whether he could feel their quivering, whether he could hear her jerking breath, whether he could see something queer about her eyes.  But she had to look at him, not shyly, furtively, but straight and full, taking him in.

He was changed.  The war had changed him.  His face looked harder, the mouth closer set under the mark of the little clipped fawn-brown moustache.  His eyes that used to flash their blue so gayly, to rest so lightly, were fixed now, dark and heavy with memory.  They had seen too much.  They would never lose that dark memory of the things they had seen.  She wondered, was Colin right?  Had the war done worse things to Jerrold than it had done to him?  He would never tell her.

“Jerrold,” she said, suddenly, “did you have a good time in India?”

“I suppose so.  I dare say I thought I had.”

“And you hadn’t?”

“Well, I can’t conceive how I could have had.”

“You mean it seems so long ago.”

“No, I don’t mean that.”

“You’ve forgotten.”

“I don’t mean that, either.”

Silence.

“Look here, Anne, I want to know about Colin.  Has he been very bad?”

“Yes, he has.”

“How bad?”

“So bad that sometimes I was glad you weren’t there to see him.  You remember when he was a kid, how frightened he used to be at night.  Well, he’s been like that all the time.  He’s like that now, only he’s a bit better.  He doesn’t scream now....  All the time he kept on worrying about you.  He only told me that the other day.  He seemed to think the war must have done something more frightful to you than it had done to him; he said, because you’d mind it more.  I told him it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d mind most.”

“It isn’t the sort of thing it’s any good minding.  I don’t suppose I minded more than the other chaps.  If anything had happened to you, or him, or Eliot, I’d have minded that.”

“I know.  That’s what I told him.  I knew you’d come through.”

“Eliot was dead right about Colin.  He knew he wouldn’t.  He ought never to have gone out.”

“He wanted so awfully to go.  But Eliot could have stopped him if it hadn’t been for Queenie.  She hunted and hounded him out.  She told him he was funking.  Fancy Colin funking!”

“What’s Queenie like?”

“She’s like that.  She never funks herself, but she wants to make out that everybody else does.”

“Do you like Queenie?”

“No.  I hate her.  I don’t mind her hounding him out so much since she went herself; I do mind her leaving him.  Do you know, she’s never even tried to come and see him.”

“Good God! what a beast the woman must be.  What on earth made him marry her?”

“He was frightfully in love.  An awful sort of love that wore him out and made him wretched.  And now he’s afraid for his life of her.  I believe he’s afraid of the war ending because then she’ll come back.”

“And if she does come back?”

“She may try and take Colin away from me.  But she shan’t.  She can’t take him if he doesn’t want to go.  She left him to me to look after and I mean to stick to him.  I won’t have him frightened and made all ill again just when I’ve got him well.”

“I’m afraid you’ve had a very hard time.”

“Not so hard as you think.”

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

“Do you think it’s funny of me to be living here with Colin?”

He laughed.

“I suppose it’s all right.  You always had pluck enough for anything.”

“It doesn’t take pluck to stick to Colin.”

“Moral pluck.”

“No.  Not even moral.”

“You were always fond of him, weren’t you?”

That was about as far as he dare go.

She smiled her strange smile again.

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

“I’m not so sure about that.  But he always did get what he wanted.”

“Oh, does he!  How about Queenie?”

“Even Queenie.  I suppose he wanted her at the time.”

“He doesn’t want her now.  Poor Colin.”

“You mustn’t ask me to pity him.”

“Ask you?  He’d hate you to pity him.  I’d hate you to pity me.”

“I shouldn’t dream of pitying you, any more than I should dream of criticising you.”

“Oh, you may criticise as much as you like.”

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

“It wouldn’t be.  I do heaps of wrong things, but this is right.”

“I’m sure it is.”  “Here’s Colin,” she said.

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

vi

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

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

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

“They’re all right, Nanny.  You needn’t worry.”

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

“You may be perfectly sure it is the right way.”

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

“Don’t listen to them.”

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

“That’s right, Nanny, you give it them in the neck.”

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

“What about him?”

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

“What do you mean?”

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

“Poor old Kimber.  What a beastly shame.”

“Eh, ’tis a shame to be sure.”

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

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

“He does indeed.  It’s pretty decent of them.  I’ll see about that before I go.”

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

“You mustn’t say that, Nanny.  I tell you it’s all perfectly right.”

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

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

vii

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

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

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

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

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