incredible remorse. It took the whole of Maisie, in her unique
perfection, to beat her and break her down. Her first instinct in
refusing to know Maisie had been profoundly right. It was as if she had
foreseen, even then, that knowing Maisie would mean loving her, and
that, loving her, she would be beaten and broken down. The awful thing
was that she did love Maisie; and she couldn't tell which was the worse
to bear, her love for Maisie or Maisie's love for her. And who could
have foreseen the pain of it? When she prayed that she might take the
whole punishment, she had not reckoned on this refinement and precision
of torture. God knew what he was about. With all his resources he
couldn't have hit on anything more delicately calculated to hurt.
Nothing less subtle would have touched her. Not discovery; not the
grossness of exposure; but this intolerable security. 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; there was
fineness and truth in him. To suffer really he had to be wounded in his
soul.
If Jerrold was hurt then they must end it.
As yet he had given no sign of feeling; but that was like him. Up to the
last minute he would fight against feeling, and when it came he would
refuse to own that he suffered, that there was any cause for suffering.
It would be like the time when his father was dying, when he refused to
see that he was dying. So he would refuse to see Maisie and then, all at
once, he would see her and he would be beaten and broken down.
vii
And suddenly he did see her.
It was on the first Sunday after Jerrold's return. Maisie had had
another of her heart attacks, by herself, in her bed, the night before;
and she had been lying down all day. The sun had come round on to the
terrace, and she now rested there, wrapped in a fur coat and leaning
back on her cushions in the garden chair.
They were sitting out there, all three, Jerrold and Anne talking
together, and Maisie listening with her sweet, attentive eyes. Suddenly
she shut her eyes and ceased to listen. Jerrold and Anne went on talking
with hushed voices, and in a little while Maisie was asleep.
Her head, rising out of the brown fur, was tilted back on the cushions,
showing her innocent white throat; her white violet eyelids were shut
down on her eyes, the dark lashes lying still; her mouth, utterly
innocent, was half open; her breath came through it unevenly, in light
jerks.
"She's asleep, Jerrold."
They sat still, making no sound.
And as she looked at Maisie sleeping, tears came again into Anne's eyes,
the hard tears that cut her eyelids and spilled themselves, drop by slow
drop, heavily. She tried to wipe them away secretly with her hand before
Jerrold saw them; but they came again and again and he had seen. He had
risen to his feet as if he would go, then checked himself and stood
beside her; and together they looked on at Maisie's sleeping; they felt
together the infinite anguish, the infinite pathos of her goodness and
her trust. The beauty of her spirit lay bare to them in the white,
tilted face, slackened and smoothed with sleep. Sleep showed them her
innocence again, naked and helpless. They saw her in her poignant being,
her intense reality. She was so real that in that moment nothing else
mattered to them.
Anne set her teeth hard to keep her mouth still. She saw Jerrold glance
at her, she heard him give a soft groan of pity or of pain; then he
moved away from them and stood by the terrace wall with his back to her.
She saw his clenched hands, and through his terrible, tense quietness
she knew by the quivering of his shoulders that his breast heaved. Then
she saw him grasp the terrace wall and grind the edge of it into the
palms of his hands. That was how he had stood by his father's deathbed,
gripping the foot-rail; and when presently he turned and came to her she
saw the look on his face she had seen then, of young, blind agony,
sharpened now with some more piercing spiritual pain.
"Come," he said, "come into the house."
They went together, side by side, as they had gone when they were
children, along the terrace and down the steps into the drive. In the
shelter of the hall she gave way and cried, openly and helplessly, like
a child, and he put his arm round her and led her into the library, away
from the place where Maisie was. They sat together on the couch, holding
each other's hands, clinging together in their suffering, their memory
of what Maisie had made their sin. Even so they had sat in Anne's room,
on the edge of Anne's bed, when they were children, holding each other's
hands, miserable and yet glad because they were brought together,
because what they had done and what they had borne they had done and
borne together. And now as then he comforted her.
"Don't cry, Anne darling; it isn't your fault. I made you."
"You didn't. You didn't. I wanted you and I made you come to me. And I
knew what it would be like and you didn't."
"Nobody could have known. Don't go back on it."
"I'm not going back on it. If only I'd never seen Maisie--then I
wouldn't have cared. We could have gone on."
"Do you mean we can't now?"
"Yes. How can we when she's such an angel to us and trusts us so?"
"It does make it pretty beastly," he said.
"It makes me feel absolutely rotten."
"So it does me, when I think about it."
"It's knowing her, Jerry. It's having to love her, and knowing that she
loves me; it's knowing what she is.... Why did you make me see her?"
"You know why."
"Yes. Because it made it safer. That's the beastliness of it. I knew how
it would be. I knew she'd beat us in the end--with her goodness."
"Darling, it _isn't_ your fault."
"It _is_. It's all my fault. I'm not going back on it. I'd do it again
to-morrow if it weren't for Maisie. Even now I don't know whether it's
right or wrong. I only know it's the most real and valuable part of me
that loves you, and it's the most real and valuable part of you that
loves me; and I feel somehow that that makes it right. I'd go on with it
if it made you happy. But you aren't happy now."
"I'm not happy because you're not. I don't mind for myself so much. Only
I hate the beastly way we've got to do it. Covering it all up and
pretending that we're not lovers. Deceiving her. That's what makes it
all wrong. Hiding it."
"I know. And I made you do that."
"You didn't. We did it for Maisie. Anyhow, we must stop it. We can't go
on like this any more. We must simply tell her."
"_Tell_ her?"
"Yes; tell her, and get her to divorce me, so that I can marry you. It's
the only straight thing."
"How can we? It would hurt her so awfully."
"Not so much as you think. Remember, she doesn't care for me. She's not
like you, Anne. She's frightfully cold."
As he said it there came to her a sudden awful intimation of reality, a
sense that behind all their words, all the piled-up protection of their
outward thinking, there hid an unknown certainty, a certainty that would
wreck them if they knew it. It was safer not to know, to go on hiding
behind those piled-up barriers of thought. But an inward, ultimate
honesty drove her to her questioning.
"Are you sure she's cold?"
"Absolutely sure. You go on thinking all the time that she's like you,
that she takes things as hard as you do; but she doesn't. She doesn't
feel as you do. It won't hurt her as it would hurt you if I left you for
somebody else."
"But--it'll hurt her."
"It's better to hurt her a little now than to go on humbugging and
shamming till she finds out. That would hurt her damnably. She'd hate
our not being straight with her. But if we tell her the truth she'll
understand. I'm certain she'll understand and she'll forgive _you_. She
can't be hard on you for caring for me."
"Even if she doesn't care?"
"She cares for _you_," he said.
She couldn't push it from her, that importunate sense of a certainty
that was not his certainty. If Maisie did care for him Jerrold wouldn't
see it. He never saw what he didn't want to see.
"Supposing she _does_ care all the time? How do you know she doesn't?"
"I don't think I can tell you."
"But I _must_ know, Jerrold. It makes all the difference."
"It makes none to me, Anne. I'd want you whether Maisie cared for me or
not. But she doesn't."
"If I thought she didn't--then--then I shouldn't mind her knowing. Why
are you so certain? You might tell me."
Then he told her.
After all, that sense of hidden certainty was an illusion.
"When was that, Jerrold?"
"Oh, a night or two after she came down here in April. She didn't know,
poor darling, how she let me off."
"April--September. And she's stuck to it?"
"Oh--stuck to it. Rather."
"And before that?"
"Before that we were all right."
"And she'd been away, too."
"Yes. Ages. That made it all the funnier."
"I wish you'd told me before."
"I wish I had, if it makes you happier."
"It does. Still, we can't go on, Jerrold, till she knows."
"Of course we can't. It's too awful. I'll tell her. And we'll go away
somewhere while she's divorcing me, and stay away till I can marry
you.... It'll be all different when we've got away."
"When you've told her. We ought to have told her long ago, before it
happened."
"Yes. But now--what the devil _am_ I to tell her?"
He saw, as if for the first time, what telling her would mean.
"Tell her the truth. The whole truth."
"How can I--when it's _you_?"
"It's because it _is_ me that you've got to tell her. If you don't,
Jerrold, I'll tell her myself."
"All right. I'll tell her at once and get it over. I'll tell her
tonight."
"No. Not tonight, while she's so tired. Wait till she's rested."
And Jerrold waited.
XVI
ANNE, MAISIE, AND JERROLD
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.
XVII
JERROLD, MAISIE, ANNE, ELIOT
i
Maisie lay in bed, helpless and abandoned to her illness. It was no good
trying to cover it up and hide it any more. Jerrold knew.
The night when he left Anne he had gone up to Maisie in her room. He
couldn't rest unless he knew that she was all right. He had stooped over
her to kiss her and she had sat up, holding her face to him, her hands
clasped round his neck, drawing him close to her, when suddenly the pain
gripped her and she lay back in his arms, choking, struggling for
breath.
Jerrold thought she was dying. He waited till the pain passed and she
was quieted, then he ran downstairs and telephoned for Ransome. He
looked on in agony while Ransome's stethoscope wandered over Maisie's
thin breast and back. It seemed to him that Ransome was taking an
unusually long time about it, that he must be on the track of some
terrible discovery. And when Ransome took the tubes from his ears and
said, curtly, "Heart quite sound; nothing wrong there," he was convinced
that Ransome was an old fool who didn't know his business. Or else he
was lying for Maisie's sake.
Downstairs in the library he turned on him.
"Look here; there's no good lying to me. I want truth."
"My dear Fielding, I shouldn't dream of lying to you. There's nothing
wrong with your wife's heart. Nothing organically wrong."
"With that pain? She was in agony, Ransome, agony. Why can't you tell me
at once that it's angina?"
"Because it isn't. Not the real thing. False angina's a neurosis, not a
heart disease. Get the nervous condition cured and she'll be all right.
Has she had any worry? Any shock?"
"Not that I know."
"Any cause for worry?"
He hesitated. Poor Maisie had had cause enough if she had known. But she
didn't know. It seemed to him that Ransome was looking at him queerly.
"No," he said. "None."
"You're quite certain? Has she ever had any?"
"Well, I suppose she was pretty jumpy all the time I was at the front."
"Before that? Years ago?"
"That I don't know. I should say not."
"You won't swear?"
"No. I won't swear. It would be years before we were married."