Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 12

"Well, I think it's horrid of you. I shall miss you frightfully."

"Yes, you were good enough to say I amused you."

"You're not amusing me now, my dear ... Are you going to take Anne away from me too?"

"Not if you'd like to keep her."

"Of course I'd like to keep her."

He paused, brooding, wrenching one of his lean hands with the other.

"There's one thing I must ask you--"

"Ask, ask, then."

"I told you Anne would care for you if you gave her time. She does care for you."

"Yes. Odd as it may seem, I really believe she does."

"Well--don't let her be hurt by it."

"Hurt? Who's going to hurt her?"

"You, if you let her throw herself away on you when you don't want her."

"Have I behaved as if I didn't want her?"

"You've behaved like an angel. All the same, you frighten me a little.

You've a terrible fascination for the child. Don't use it too much. Let her feelings alone. Don't work on them for the fun of seeing what she'll do next. If she tries to break away don't bring her back. Don't jerk her on the chain. Don't--amuse yourself with Anne."

"So that's how you think of me?"

"Oh, you know how I think."

"Do I? Have I ever known? You say the cruellest things. Is there anything else I'm not to do to her?"

"Yes. For G.o.d's sake don't tease her about Jerrold."

"My dear John, you talk as if it was serious. I a.s.sure you Jerrold isn't thinking about Anne."

"And Anne isn't 'thinking' about Jerrold. They don't think, poor dears.

They don't know what's happening to them. None of us know what's happening to us till it happens. Then it's too late."

"Well, I'll promise not to do any of these awful things if you'll tell me, honestly, why you're going."

He stared at her.

"Tell you? You know why. I am going for _the same reason_ that I came.

How can you possibly ask me to stay?"

"Of course, if you feel like that about it--"

"You'll say I'd no business to come if I feel like that. But I knew I wasn't hurting anybody but myself. I knew _you_ were safe. There's never been anybody but Robert."

"Never. Never for a minute."

"I tell you I know that. I always have known it. And I understand it.

What I can't understand is why, when that's that, you make it so hard for me."

"Do I make it hard for you?"

"d.a.m.nably."

"You poor thing. But you'll get over it."

"I'm not young enough to get over it. Does it look like getting over it?

It's been going on for twenty-two years."

"Oh come, not all the time, John."

"Pretty nearly. On and off."

"More off than on, I think."

"What does that matter when it's 'on' now? Anyhow I've got to go."

"Go, if you must. Do the best for yourself, my dear. Only don't say I made you."

"I'm not saying anything."

"Well--I'm sorry."

All the same her smile declared her profound and triumphant satisfaction with herself. It remained with her after he had gone. She would rather he had stayed, following her about, waiting for her, ready to her call, amusing her; but his going was the finer tribute to her power: the finest, perhaps, that he could have well paid. She hadn't been prepared for such a complete surrender.

vi

Something had happened to Eliot. He sulked. Indoors and out, working and playing, at meal-times and bed-time he sulked. Jerrold said of him that he sulked in his sleep.

Two things made his behaviour inexplicable. To begin with, it was uncalled for. Robert Fielding, urged by John Severn in a last interview, had given in all along the line. Not only had Eliot leave to stick to his medicine (which he would have done in any case), but he was to go to Bart's to work for his doctor's degree when his three years at Cambridge were ended. His father had made a new will, leaving the estate to Jerrold and securing to the eldest son an income almost large enough to make up for the loss. Eliot, whose ultimate aim was research work, now saw all the ways before him cleared. He had no longer anything to sulk for.

Still more mysteriously, his sulking appeared to be related to Anne. He had left off going for walks alone with her in the fields and woods; he didn't show her things under his microscope any more. If she leaned over his shoulder he writhed himself away; if his hand blundered against hers he drew it back as if her touch burnt him. More often than not he would go out of the room if she came into it. Yet as long as she was there he couldn't keep his eyes off her. She would be sitting still, reading, when she would be aware, again and again, of Eliot's eyes, lifted from his book to fasten on her. She could feel them following her when she walked away.

One wet day in August they were alone together in the schoolroom, reading. Suddenly Anne felt his eyes on her. Their look was intent, penetrating, disturbing; it burned at her under his jutting, sombre eyebrows.

"Is there anything funny about me?" she said.

"Funny? No. Why?"