May Sinclair

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Very soon Maisie murmured some gentle, unintelligible excuse, and left them.
There was a moment of silence in which everything they had ever said to each other was present to them, making all other speech unnecessary, as if they held a long intimate conversation. Eliot sat very still, not looking at her, yet attentive as if he listened to the passing of those unuttered words. Then Anne spoke and her voice broke up his mood.
"What are you doing now? Bacteriology?"
"Yes. We've found the thing we were looking for, the germ of trench fever." ”

“ In the weeks before Maisie's coming and after, Anne's happiness was perfect, intense and secret like the bliss of a saint in ecstasy, of genius contemplating its finished work. In giving herself to Jerrold she had found reality. She gave herself without shame and without remorse, or any fear of the dangerous risks they ran. Their passion was too clean for fear or remorse or shame. She thought love was a finer thing going free and in danger than sheltered and safe and bound. The game of love should be played with a high, defiant courage ”

“ I should hate myself if I didn't. I can't think of anything more disgusting and dishonourable than to keep a man tied to you when he cares for somebody else. I should feel as if I were living in sin."
"Maisie—will you be awfully unhappy?"
"Yes, Jerrold. But not so unhappy as if I'd kept you."
"We'll go away somewhere where you won't have to see us."
"No. It's I who'll go away."
"But I want you to have the Manor and—and everything. Colin'll look after the estate for me."
"Do you think I could stay here after you'd gone?... No, Jerry, I can't do that for you. You can't make it up that way." ”

“ Maisie loved the peacocks and the clipped yew walls and the goldfish pond and the flower garden.
He walked quickly, afraid to linger, afraid of having to talk to her. He felt as if the least thing she said would be charged with some unendurable emotion and that at any minute he might be called on to respond. To be sure this was not like what he knew of Maisie; but, everything having changed for him, he felt that at any minute Maisie might begin to be unlike herself.
She was out of breath. She put her hand on his arm. "Don't go so fast,
Jerry. I want to look and look." ”

“ They loved the warmth of each other's bodies in the hot windless nights; they loved their smooth, clean coolness washed by the night wind. Nothing, not even the sweet, haunting ghost of Maisie, came between. They would fall asleep in each other's arms and lie there till dawn, till Anne woke in a sudden fright. Always she had this fear that some day they would sleep on into the morning, when the farm people would be up and about. Jerrold lay still, tired out with satisfaction, sunk under all the floors of sleep. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To Anne he was "poor Col-Col" again, the little boy who was afraid of ghosts, only more abandoned to terror, more unresisting.
He would start and tremble at any quick, unexpected movement. He would burst into tears at any sudden sound. Small noises, whisperings, murmurings, creakings, soft shufflings, irritated him. Loud noises, the slamming of doors, the barking of dogs, the crowing of cocks, made him writhe in agony. For Colin the deep silence of the Manor was the ambush for some stupendous, crashing, annihilating sound; sound that was always coming and never came. ”

“ What could discovery and exposure do but set her free in her reality? Anne would have rejoiced to see her lie go up in one purifying flame of revelation. But to go safe in her lie, hiding her reality, and yet defenceless under the sting of Maisie's loving, was more than she could bear. She had brought all her truth and all her fineness to this passion which Maisie's innocence made a sin, and she was punished where she had sinned, wounded by the subtle God in her fineness and her truth. If only Jerrold could have escaped, but he was vulnerable, too ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet it struck them that he looked sadder than a booby-trap should have made him.
It was just before bed-time that Eliot told them the awful thing.
"I suppose you know," he said, "that Pinkney's mother's dying?"
"I didn't," said Jerrold. "But I might have known. I notice that when you're excited, really excited, something awful's bound to happen.... Don't cry, Anne. It was beastly of us, but we didn't know."
"No. It's no use crying," said Eliot. "You can't do anything."
"That's it," Anne sobbed. "If we only could. If we could go to him and tell him we wouldn't have done it if we'd known." ”

“ I don't care what you think of me so long as you don't think it was Jerry's fault. I should go on caring for him whatever he did or didn't do."
"I know you would. But it's possible—"
"To care for two people and marry one of them, no matter which? It isn't possible for me. If I can't have the person I want I won't have anybody."
"It isn't wise, Anne. I tell you I could make you care for me. I know all about you. I know how you think and how you feel. I understand you better than Jerrold does. You'd be happy with me and you'd be safe." ”

“ She loathed the flat Essex country and the streets of little white rough cast and red-tiled houses on the Ilford side where the clear fields had once lain beyond the tall elm rows. She was haunted by the steep, many-coloured pattern of the hills round Wyck, and the grey gables of the Manor. Love-sickness and home-sickness tore at her together till her heart felt as if it were stretched out to breaking point.
She had only to go back and she would end this pain. Then on the sixth day Jerrold's wire came: "Colin ill again. Please come back. Jerrold." ”

“ You held on to reality."
"Eliot said that?"
"Yes. He said it was the test of everybody, how they took reality, and that Jerrold had had to learn how, but that you had always known. You were so true that your worst punishment was not being able to tell me the truth. I was to think of you like that."
"How can you bear to think of me at all?"
"How can I bear to live? But I shall live."
Maisie's voice dropped, note by note, like clear, rounded tears, pressed out and shaped by pain.
Anne's voice came thick and quivering out of her dark secret anguish, like a voice from behind shut doors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She thought: He knows. He's known all the time, only he won't give them away.
"Yes," she said, "I'll ask him."
"Maisie—if it is so what will you do?"
"Do? There's only one thing I can do."
She turned to him, and her milk-white face was grey-white, ashen; the skin had a slack, pitted look, suddenly old. The soft flesh trembled. But her mouth and eyes were still. In this moment of her agony no base emotion defaced their sweetness, so that she seemed to him utterly composed. She had seen what she could do. Something hard and terrible. ”

“ Because of her love for Jerrold here was this big estate held together, and kept going; because of his love for her here was Jerrold, growing into a perfect farmer and a perfect landlord; because of her he had found the one thing he was best fitted to do; because of him she herself was valuable. Anne brought to her work on the land a thoroughness that aimed continually at perfection. She watched the starting of every tractor-plough and driller as it broke fresh ground, to see that machines and men were working at their highest pitch of efficiency. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They would never know what it cost her to come back and look after Colin. That knowledge was beyond Adeline Fielding. She congratulated Anne and expected Anne to congratulate herself on being "well out of it." Her safety was revolting and humiliating to Anne when she thought of Queenie and Cutler and Dicky, and Eliot and Jerrold and all the allied armies in the thick of it. She had left a world where life was lived at its highest pitch of intensity for a world where people were only half-alive. To be safe from the chance of sudden violent death was to be only half-alive. ”

“ From three o'clock till tea-time the sponge fight stormed up and down the passages. The house was filled with the sound of thudding feet and shrill laughter.
Adeline lay on the sofa in the library. Eliot was with her there.
She was amused, but a little plaintive when they rushed in to her.
"It's perfectly awful the noise you children are making. I'm tired out with it."
Jerrold flung himself on her. "Tired? What must we be?"
But he wasn't tired. His madness still worked in him. It sought some supreme expression.
"What can we play at next?" said Anne.
"What can we play at next?" said Colin. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 could listen for half an hour at a time when Anne read to him—poems, short stories, things that were ended before Colin tired of them. He ate and drank hungrily and his body began to get back its strength.
At noon, when the winter sun shone, he walked, first up and down the terrace, then round and round the garden, then to the beech trees at the top of the field, and then down the hill to the Manor Farm. On mild days she drove him about the country in the dog-cart. She had tried motoring but had had to give it up because Colin was frightened at the hooting, grinding and jarring of the car. ”

“ They were very quiet, Jerrold and Anne and Colin, as they set the booby-trap for Pinkney. Very quiet as they watched Pinkney's innocent approach. The sponge caught him—with a delightful, squelching flump—full and fair on the top of his sleek head.
Anne shrieked with delight. "Oh Jerry, did you hear him say 'Damn'?"
They rushed back to the library to tell Eliot. But Eliot couldn't see that it was funny. He said it was a rotten thing to do.
"When he's a servant and can't do anything to us." ”

“ 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." ”

“ Jerry singing a dismal song like that."
"Darling, you used to say Colin was your favourite."
"No, my dear. Never. Never. It was always Jerrold. Ever since he was born. He never cried when he was a baby. Colin was always crying."
"Poor Col-Col."
"There you are. Nobody'll ever say, 'Poor Jerrold'. I like happy people,
Anne. In this tiresome world it's people's duty to be happy."
"If it was, would they be? Don't look at me as if I wasn't."
"I wasn't thinking of you, ducky... You might tell Pinkney to take all those tea-things off the terrace and put them back into the lounge." ”

“ 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 damned nuisance. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ Queenie backed towards the court.
"Oh, come on, Colin, if you're coming."
He went.
"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." ”

“ That was Jerrold. Jerrold. She felt him standing beside his mother, looking at her, and her eyelids fluttered; but she lay still.
"She isn't asleep at all," said Aunt Adeline. "She's shamming, the little monkey."
Jerrold thought he knew why. He turned into the old nursery that was the schoolroom now, and found Eliot there, examining a fly's leg under his microscope. It was Eliot that he wanted..
"I say, you know, Mum's making a jolly mistake about that kid. Trying to go on as if she was Anne's mother. You can see it makes her sick. It would me, if my mother was dead." ”

“ But I left the doors wide open."
"I suppose," said Queenie, with furious calm, "you want me to divorce him?"
"Divorce him? Why on earth should you? Just because I looked after him at night? I had to. There wasn't anybody else. And he was afraid to sleep alone. He is still. But he's all right as long as he knows I'm there."
"You expect me to believe that's all there is in it?"
"No, I don't, considering what your mind's like."
"Oh yes, when people do dirty things it's always other people's dirty minds. Do you imagine I'm a fool, Anne?"
"You're an awful fool if you think Colin's my lover." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Anne was walking with her now, gathering roses for the house. The garden was like a room shut in by the clipped yew walls, and open to the sky. The sunshine poured into it; the flagged walks were pale with heat. ”