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.