Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 25

"What do you think of Queenie?" Adeline said.

"She's very handsome."

"Yes, Anne. But it isn't a nice face. Now, is it?"

Anne couldn't say it was a nice face.

"It's awful to think of Colin being married to it. He's only twenty-one now, and she's seven years older. If it had been anybody but Colin. If it had been Eliot or Jerrold I shouldn't have minded so much. They can look after themselves. He'll never stand up against that horrible girl."

"She does look terribly strong."

"And cruel, Anne, as if she might hurt him. I don't want him to be hurt.

I can't bear her taking him away from me. My little Col-Col....I did hope, Anne, that if you wouldn't have Eliot--"

"I'd have Colin? But Auntie, I'm years older than he is. He's a baby."

"If he's a baby he'll want somebody older to look after him."

"Queenie's even better fitted than I am, then."

"Do you think, Anne, she proposed to Colin?"

"No. I shouldn't think it was necessary."

"I should say she was capable of anything. My only hope is they'll tire each other out before they're married and break it off."

All afternoon on the tennis court below Queenie played against Colin.

She played vigorously, excitedly, savagely, to win. She couldn't hide her annoyance when he beat her.

"What was I to do?" he said. "You don't like it when I beat you. But if I was beaten you wouldn't like _me_."

ii

Adeline's only hope was not realized. They hadn't had time to tire of each other before the War broke out. And Colin insisted on marrying before he joined up. Their engagement had left him nervous and unfit, and his idea was that, once married, he would present a better appearance before the medical examiners.

But after a month of Queenie, Colin was more nervous and unfit than ever.

"I can't think," said Adeline, "what that woman does to him. She'll wear him out."

So Colin waited, trying to get fitter, and afraid to volunteer lest he should be rejected.

Everybody around him was moving rapidly. Queenie had taken up motoring, so that she could drive an ambulance car at the front. Anne had gone up to London for her Red Cross training. Eliot had left his practice to his partner at Penang and had come home and joined the Army Medical Corps.

Eliot, home on leave for three days before he went out, tried hard to keep Colin back from the War. In Eliot's opinion Colin was not fit and never would be fit to fight. He was just behaving as he always had behaved, rus.h.i.+ng forward, trying insanely to do the thing he never could do.

"Do you mean to say they won't pa.s.s me?" he asked.

"Oh, they'll pa.s.s you all right," Eliot said. "They'll give you an expensive training, and send you into the trenches, and in any time from a day to a month you'll be in hospital with sh.e.l.l-shock. Then you'll be discharged as unfit, having wasted everybody's time and made a d.a.m.ned nuisance of yourself....I suppose I ought to say it's splendid of you to want to go out. But it isn't splendid. It's idiotic. You'll be simply b.u.t.ting in where you're not wanted, taking a better man's place, taking a better man's commission, taking a better man's bed in a hospital. I tell you we don't want men who are going to crumple up in their first action."

"Do you think I'm going to funk then?" said poor Colin.

"Funk? Oh, Lord no. You'll stick it till you drop, till you're paralyzed, till you've lost your voice and memory, till you're an utter wreck. There'll be enough of 'em, poor devils, without you, Col-Col."

"But why should I go like that more than anybody else?"

"Because you're made that way, because you haven't got a nervous system that can stand the racket. The noises alone will do for you. You'll be as right as rain if you keep out of it."

"But Jerrold's coming back. _He_'ll go out at once. How can I stick at home when he's gone?"

"Heaps of good work to be done at home."

"Not by men of my age."

"By men of your nervous organization. Your going out would be sheer waste."

"Why not?" Does it matter what becomes of me?"

"No. It doesn't. It matters, though, that you'll be taking a better man's place."

Now Colin really did want to go out and fight, as he had always wanted to follow Jerrold's lead; he wanted it so badly that it seemed to him a form of self-indulgence; and this idea of taking a better man's place so worked on him that he had almost decided to give it up, since that was the sacrifice required of him, when he told Queenie what Eliot had said.

"All I can say is," said Queenie, "that if you don't go out I shall give _you_ up. I've no use for men with cold feet."

"Can't you see," said Colin (he almost hated Queenie in that moment), "what I'm afraid of? Being a d.a.m.ned nuisance. That's what Eliot says I'll be. I don't know how he knows."

"He doesn't know everything. If _my_ brother tried to stop my going to the front I'd jolly soon tell him to go to h.e.l.l. I swear, Colin, if you back out of it I won't speak to you again. I'm not asking you to do anything I funk myself."

"Oh, shut up. I'm going all right. Not because you've asked me, but because I want to."

"If you didn't I should think you'd feel pretty rotten when I'm out with my Field Ambulance," said Queenie.

"d.a.m.n your Field Ambulance!... No, I didn't mean that, old thing; it's splendid of you to go. But you'd no business to suppose I funked. I _may_ funk. n.o.body knows till they've tried. But I was going all right till Eliot put me off."

"Oh, if you're put off as easily as all that----"

She was intolerable. She seemed to think he was only going because she'd shamed him into it.

That evening he sang:

"'What are you doing all the day, Rendal, my son?

What are you doing all the day, my pretty one?'"

He understood that song now.

"'What will you leave to your lover, Rendal, my son?

What will you leave to your lover, my pretty one?

A rope to hang her, mother, A rope to hang her, mother....'"