better stay in bed for a week or two."
So Maisie stayed in bed, and Jerrold and Anne sat with her, together or
in turn. He had a bed made up in her room and slept there when he slept
at all. But half the night he lay awake, listening for the sound of her
panting and the little gasping cry that would come when the pain got
her. He kept on getting up to look at her and make sure that she was
sleeping.
He was changed from his old happy, careless self, the self that used to
turn from any trouble, that refused to believe that the people it loved
could be ill and die. He was convinced that Maisie's state was
dangerous. He sent for Dr. Harper of Cheltenham and for a nerve
specialist and a heart specialist from London and they all told him the
same thing. And he wouldn't believe them. Because Maisie's death was the
most unbearable thing that his remorse could imagine, he felt that
nothing short of Maisie's death would appease the powers that punished
him. He was the more certain that Maisie would die because he had denied
that she was ill. For Jerrold's mind remembered everything and
anticipated nothing. Like most men who refuse to see or foresee trouble,
he was crushed by it when it came.
The remorse he felt might have been less intolerable if he had been
alone in it; but, day after day, his pain was intensified by the sight
of Anne's pain. She was exquisitely vulnerable, and for every pang that
stabbed her he felt himself responsible. What they had done they had
done together, and they suffered for it together, but in the beginning
she had done it for him, and he had made her do it. Nobody, not even
Maisie, could have been more innocent than Anne. He had no doubt that,
left to herself, she would have hidden her passion from him to the end
of time. He, therefore, was the cause of her suffering.
It was as if Anne's consciousness were transferred to him, day after
day, when they sat together in Maisie's room, one on each side of her
bed, while Maisie lay between them, sleeping her helpless and
reproachful sleep, and he saw Anne's piteous face, white with pain. His
pity for Maisie and his pity for Anne, their pity for each other were
mixed together and held them, close as passion, in an unbearable
communion.
They looked at each other, and their wounded eyes said, day after day,
the same thing: "Yes, it hurts. But I could bear it if it were not for
you." Their pity took the place of passion. It was as if a part of each
other passed into them with their suffering as it had passed into them
with their joy.
ii
And through it all their passion itself still lived its inextinguishable
and tortured life. Pity, so far from destroying it, only made it
stronger, pouring in its own emotion, wave after wave, swelling the
flood that carried them towards the warm darkness where will and thought
would cease.
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. He would have sinned
because he was sorry for her.
But Anne's will refused his pity. When he showed it she was angry. Yet
it was there, waiting for her always, against her will.
One day in October (Maisie's illness lasting on into the autumn) they
had gone out into the garden to breathe the cold, clean air while Maisie
slept.
"Jerrold," she said, suddenly, "do you think she knows?"
"No. I'm certain she doesn't."
"I'm not. I've an awful feeling that she knows and that's why she
doesn't get better."
"I don't think so. If she knew she'd have said something or done
something."
"She mightn't. She mightn't do anything. Perhaps she's just being
angelically good to us."
"She _is_ angelically good. But she doesn't know. You forget her illness
began before there _was_ anything to know. It isn't the sort of thing
she'd think of. If somebody told her she wouldn't believe it. She trusts
us absolutely.... That's bad enough, Anne, without her knowing."
"Yes. It's bad enough. It's worse, really."
"I know it is.... Anne--I'm awfully sorry to have let you in for all
this misery."
"You mustn't be sorry. You haven't let me in for it. Nobody could have
known it would have happened. It wouldn't, if Maisie had been different.
We wouldn't have bothered then. Nothing would have mattered. Think how
gloriously happy we were. All my life all my happiness has come through
you or because of you. We'd be happy still if it wasn't for Maisie."
"I don't see how we're to go on like this. I can't stand it when you're
not happy. And nothing makes any difference, really. I want you so
awfully all the time."
"That's one of the things we mustn't say to each other."
"I know we mustn't. Only I didn't want you to think I didn't."
"I don't think it. I know you'll care for me as long as you live. Only
you mustn't say so. You mustn't be sorry for me. It makes me feel all
weak and soft when I want to be strong and hard."
"You _are_ strong, Anne."
"So are you. I shouldn't love you if you weren't. But we mustn't make it
too hard for each other. You know what'll happen if we do?"
"What? You mean we'd crumple up and give in?"
"No. But we couldn't ever see each other alone again. Never see each
other again at all, perhaps. I'd have to go away."
"You shan't have to. I swear I won't say another word."
"Sometimes I think it would be easier for you if I went."
"It wouldn't. It would be simply damnable. You can't go, Anne. That
_would_ make Maisie think."
iii
After weeks of rest Maisie passed into a period of painless
tranquillity. She had no longer any fear of her illness because she had
no longer any fear of Jerrold's knowing about it. He did know, and yet
her world stood firm round her, firmer than when he had not known. For
she had now in Jerrold's ceaseless devotion what seemed to her the
absolute proof that he cared for her, if she had ever doubted it. And if
he had doubted her, hadn't he the absolute proof that she cared,
desperately? Would she have so hidden the truth from him, would she have
borne her pain and the fear of it, in that awful lonely secrecy, if she
had not cared for him more than for anything on earth? She had been more
afraid to sleep alone than poor Colin who had waked them with his
screaming. Jerrold knew that she was not a brave woman like Anne or
Colin's wife, Queenie; it was out of her love for him that she had drawn
the courage that made her face, night after night, the horror of her
torment alone. If he had wanted proof, what better proof could he have
than that?
So Maisie remained tranquil, secure in her love for Jerrold, and in his
love for her, while Anne and Jerrold were tortured by their love for
each other. They were no longer sustained in their renunciation by the
sight of Maisie's illness and the fear of it which more than anything
had held back their passion. Without that warning fear they were exposed
at every turn. It might be there, waiting for them in the background,
but, with Maisie going about as if nothing had happened, even remorse
had lost its protective poignancy. They suffered the strain of perpetual
frustration. They were never alone together now. They had passed from
each other, beyond all contact of spirit with spirit and flesh with
flesh, beyond all words and looks of longing; they had nothing of each
other but sight, sight that had all the violence of touch without its
satisfaction, that served only to excite them, to torture them with
desire. They might be held at arm's length, at a room's length, at a
field's length apart, but their eyes drew them together, set their
hearts beating; in one moment of seeing they were joined and put
asunder.
And, day after day, their minds desired each other with a subtle,
incessant, intensely conscious longing, and were utterly cut off from
all communion. They met now at longer and longer intervals, for their
work separated them. Colin had come home in October, perfectly
recovered, and he and Jerrold managed the Manor estate together while
Anne looked after her own farm. Jerrold never saw her, he never tried to
see her unless Colin or Maisie or some of the farm people were present;
he was afraid and Anne knew that he was afraid. Her sense of his danger
made her feel herself fragile and unstable. She, too, avoided every
occasion of seeing him alone.
And this separation, so far from saving them, defeated its own end.
Every day it brought them nearer to the breaking point. It was against
all nature and all nature was against it. They had always before them
that vision of the point at which they would give in. Always there was
one thought that drew them to the edge of surrender: "I can bear it for
myself, but I can't bear it for him," "I can bear it for myself, but I
can't bear it for her."
And to both of them had come another fear, greater than their dread of
Maisie's pain, the fear of each other's illness. Their splendid physical
health was beginning to break down. They worked harder than ever on the
land; but hard work exhausted them at the end of the day. They went on
from a sense of duty, dull and implacable, but they had no more pleasure
in it. Anne became every night more restless, every day more tired and
anaemic. Jerrold ate less and slept less. They grew thin, and their
faces took on the same look of fatigue and anxiety and wonder, as if,
more than anything, they were amazed at a world whose being connived at
and tolerated their pain.
Maisie saw it and felt the first vague disturbance of her peace. Her
illness had worried everybody while it lasted, but she couldn't think
why, when she was well again, Anne and Jerrold should go on looking like
that. Maisie thought it was physical; the poor dears worked too hard.
The change had been so gradual that she saw it without consternation,
but when Eliot came down in November he couldn't hide his distress. To
Eliot the significant thing was not Anne's illness or Jerrold's illness
but the likeness in their illnesses, the likeness in their faces. It was
clear that they suffered together, with the same suffering, from the
same cause. And when on his last evening Jerrold took him into the
library to consult him about Maisie's case, Eliot had a hard, straight
talk with him about his own.
"My dear Jerrold," he said, "there's nothing seriously wrong with
Maisie. I've examined her heart. It isn't a particularly strong heart,
but there's no disease in it. If you took her to all the specialists in
Europe they'd tell you the same thing."
"I know, but I keep on worrying."
"That, my dear chap, is because you're ill yourself. I don't like it.
I'm not bothered about Maisie, but I am bothered about you and Anne."
"Anne? Do you think _Anne's_ ill?"
"I think she will be, and so will you if... What have you been doing?"
"We've been doing nothing."
"That's it. You've got to do something and do it pretty quick if it's to
be any good."
Jerrold started and looked up. He wondered whether Eliot knew. He had a
way of getting at things, you couldn't tell how.
"What d'you mean? What are you talking about?" His words came with a
sudden sharp rapidity.
"You know what I mean."
"I don't know how _you_ know anything. And, as a matter of fact, you
don't."
"I don't know much. But I know enough to see that you two can't go on
like this."
"Maisie and me?"
"No. You and Anne. It's Anne I'm talking about. I suppose you can make a
mess of your own life if you like. You've no business to make a mess of
hers."
"My God! as if I didn't know it. What the devil am I to do?"
"Leave her alone, Jerrold, if you can't have her."
"Leave her alone? I _am_ leaving her alone. I've got to leave her alone,
if we both die of it."
"She ought to go away," Eliot said.
"She shan't go away unless I go with her. And I can't."'
"Well, then, it's an impossible situation."
"It's a damnable situation, but it's the only decent one. You forget
there's Maisie."
"No, I don't. Maisie doesn't know?"
"Oh Lord, no. And she never will."
"You ought to tell her."
Jerrold was silent.
"My dear Jerrold, it's the only sensible thing. Tell her straight and
get her to divorce you."
"I was going to. Then she got ill and I couldn't."
"She isn't ill now."
"She will be if I tell her. It'll simply kill her."
"It won't. It may--even--cure her."
"It'll make her frightfully unhappy. And it'll bring back that infernal
pain. If you'd seen her, Eliot, you'd know how impossible it is. We
simply can't be swine. And if I could, Anne couldn't.... No. We've got
to stick it somehow, Anne and I."
"It's all wrong, Jerrold."
"I know it's all wrong. But it's the best we can do. You don't suppose
Anne would be happy if we did Maisie down."
"No. No. She wouldn't. You're right there. But it's a damnable
business."
"Oh, damnable, yes."
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.
And now Eliot was nearer to him than anything in the world, except Anne.
"I'm sorry, Jerrold."
"You're pretty decent, Eliot, to be sorry--I believe you honestly want
me to have Anne."
"I wouldn't go so far as that, old man. But I believe I honestly want
Anne to have you.... I say, she hasn't gone yet, has she?"
"No. Maisie's keeping her for dinner in your honour. You'll probably
find her in the drawing-room now."
"Where's Maisie?"
"She won't worry you. She's gone to lie down."
Eliot went into the drawing-room and found Anne there.
She looked at him. "You've been talking to Jerrold," she said.
"Yes, Anne. I'm worried about him."
"So am I."
"And I'm worried about you."
"And he's worried about Maisie."
"Yes. I suppose he began by not seeing she was ill, and now he does see
it he thinks she's going to die. I've been trying to explain to him that
she isn't."
"Can you explain why she's got into this state? It's not as if she
wasn't happy. She _is_ happy."
"She wasn't always happy. Jerrold must have made her suffer damnably."
"When?"
"Oh, long before he married her."
"But _how_ did he make her suffer?"
"Oh, by just not marrying her. She found out he didn't care for her. Her
people took her out to India, I believe, with the idea that he would
marry her. And when they saw that Jerry wasn't on in that act they sent
her back again. Poor Maisie got it well rammed into her then that he
didn't care for her, and the idea's stuck. It's left a sort of wound in
her memory."
"But she must have thought he cared for her when he did marry her. She
thinks he cares now."
"Of course she thinks it. I don't suppose he's ever let her see."
"I know he hasn't."
"But the wound's there, all the same. She's never got over it, though
she isn't conscious of it now. 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. It's
substituted a bearable situation for an unbearable one."
"Then, you don't think she _knows_?"
"That Jerrold doesn't care for her? No. Only in that unconscious way.
Her mind remembers and _she_ doesn't."
"I mean, she doesn't know about Jerrold and me?"
"I'm sure she doesn't. If she did she'd do something."
"That's what Jerrold said. What would she do?"
"Oh something beautiful, or it wouldn't be Maisie. She'd let Jerrold
go."
"Yes. She'd let him go. And she'd die of it."
"Oh no, she wouldn't. I told Jerrold just now it might cure her."
"How _could_ it cure her?"
"By making her face reality. By making her see that her illness simply
means that she hasn't faced it. All our neuroses come because we daren't
live with the truth."
"It's no good making Maisie well if we make her unhappy. Besides, I
don't believe it. If Maisie's unhappy she'll be worse, not better."
"There _is_ just that risk," he said. "But it's you I'm thinking about,
not Maisie. You see, I don't know what's happened."
"Jerrold didn't tell you?"
"He only told me what I know already."
"After all, what _do_ you know?"
"I know you were all right, you and he, when I saw you together here in
the spring. So I suppose you were happy then. Jerrold looked wretchedly
ill all the time he was at Taormina. So I suppose he was unhappy then
because he was away from you. He looks wretchedly ill now. So do you. So
I suppose you're both unhappy."
"Yes, we're both unhappy."
"Do you want to tell me about it, Anne?"
"No. I don't want to tell you about it. Only, if I thought you still
wanted to marry me----"
"I do want to marry you. I shall always want to marry you. I told you
long ago nothing would ever make any difference.
"Even if----?"
"Even if--Whatever you did or didn't do I'd still want you. But I told
you--don't you remember?--that you could never do anything dishonourable
or cruel."
"And I told you I wasn't sure."
"And I am sure. That's enough for me. I don't want to know anything
more. I don't want to know anything you'd rather I didn't know."
"Oh, Eliot, you _are_ so good. You're good like Maisie. Don't worry
about Jerry and me. We'll see it through somehow."
"And if you can't stand the strain of it?"
"But I can."
"And if _he_ can't? If you want to be safe----"
"I told you I should never want to be safe."
"If you want _him_ to be safe, then, would you marry me?"
"That's different. I don't know, Eliot, but I don't think so."
He went away with a faint hope. She had said it would be different; what
she would never do for him she might do for Jerrold.
She might, after all, marry him to keep Jerrold safe.
Nothing made any difference. Whatever Anne did she would still be Anne.
And it was Anne he loved. And, after all, what did he know about her and
Jerrold? Only that if they had been lovers that would account for their
strange happiness seven months ago; if they had given each other up this
would account for their unhappiness now. He thought: How they must have
struggled.
Perhaps, some day, when the whole story was told and Anne was tired of
struggling, she would come to him and he would marry her.
Even if----
XVIII
JERROLD AND ANNE
i
The Barrow Farm house, long, low and grey, stood back behind the tall
elms and turned its blank north gable end to the road and the Manor
Farm. Its nine mullioned windows looked down the field to the river. And
the great barns were piled behind it, long roof-trees, steep,
mouse-coloured slopes and peaks above grey walls.
Anne didn't move into the Barrow Farm house all at once. She had to wait
while Jerrold had the place made beautiful for her.
This was the only thing that roused him to any interest. Through all his
misery he could still find pleasure in the work of throwing small rooms
into one to make more space for Anne, and putting windows into the south
gable to give her the sun.
Anne's garden absorbed him more than his own seven hundred acres. Maisie
and he planned it together, walking round the rank flower-beds, and bald
wastes scratched up by the hens.
There was to be a flagged court on one side and a grass plot on the
other, with a flower garden between. Here, Maisie said, there should be
great clumps of larkspurs and there a lavender hedge. They said how nice
it would be for Anne to watch the garden grow.
"He's going to make it so beautiful that you'll want to stay in it
forever," she said.
And Anne went with them and listened to them, and told them they were
angels, and pretended to be excited about her house and garden, while
all the time her heart ached and she was too tired to care.
The house was finished by the end of November and Jerrold and Maisie
helped her to furnish it. Maisie sent to London for patterns and brought
them to Anne to choose. Maisie thought perhaps the chintz with the cream
and pink roses, or the one with the green leaves and red tulips and blue
and purple clematis was the prettiest. Anne tried to behave as if all
her happiness depended on a pattern, and ended by choosing the one that
Maisie liked best. And the furniture went where Maisie thought it should
go, because Anne was too tired to care. Besides, she was busy on her
farm. Old Sutton in his decadence had let most of his arable land run to
waste, and Anne's job was to make good soil again out of bad.
Maisie was pleased like a child and excited with her planning. Her idea
was that Anne should come in from her work on the land and find the
house all ready for her, everything in its place, chairs and sofas
dressed in their gay suits of chintz, the books on their shelves, the
blue-and-white china in rows on the oak dresser.
Tea was set out on the gate-legged table before the wide hearth-place.
The lamps were lit. A big fire burned. Colin and Jerrold and Maisie were
there waiting for her. And Anne came in out of the fields, tired and
white and thin, her black hair drooping. Her rough land dress hung slack
on her slender body.
Jerrold looked at her. Anne's tired face, trying to smile, wrung his
heart. So did the happiness in Maisie's eyes. And Anne's voice trying to
sound as if she were happy.
"You darlings! How nice you've made it."
"Do you like it?"
Maisie was breathless with joy.
"I love it. I adore it! But--aren't there lots of things that weren't
here before? Where did that table come from?"
"From the Manor Farm. Don't you remember it? That's Eliot."
"And the bureau, and the dresser, and those heavenly rugs?"
"That's Jerrold."
And the china was Colin, and the chintz was Maisie. The long couch for
Anne to lie down on was Maisie. Everything that was not Anne's they had
given her.
"You shouldn't have done it," she said.
"We did it for ourselves. To keep you with us," said Maisie.
"Did you think it would take all that?"
She wondered whether they saw how hard she was trying to look happy, not
to be too tired to care.
Then Maisie took her upstairs to show her her bedroom and the white
bathroom. Colin carried the lamp. He left them together in Anne's room.
Maisie turned to her there.
"Darling, how tired you look. Are you too tired to be happy?"
"I'd be a brute if I weren't happy," Anne said.
But she wasn't happy. The minute they were gone her sadness came upon
her, crushing her down. She could hear Colin and Maisie, the two
innocent ones, laughing out into the darkness. She saw again Jerrold's
hard, unhappy face trying to smile; his mouth jerking in the tight,
difficult smile that was like an agony. And it used to be Jerrold who
was always happy, who went laughing.
She turned up and down the beautiful lighted room; she looked again and
again at the things they had given her, Colin and Jerrold and Maisie.
Maisie. She would have to live with the cruelty of Maisie's gifts, with
Maisie's wounding kindness and her innocence. Maisie's curtains,
Maisie's couch, covered with flowers that smiled at her, gay on the
white ground. She thought of the other house, of the curtains that had
shut out the light from her and Jerrold, of the couch where she had lain
in his arms. Each object had a dumb but poignant life that reminded and
reproached her.
This was the scene where her life was to be cast. Henceforth these
things would know her in her desolation. 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.