Anne didn't answer.
"You _are_ unhappy. You've been unhappy ever so long. Can't we do
anything?"
"No. Nobody can do anything."
"It isn't," said Maisie at last, "anything to do with Jerrold?"
"You wouldn't ask me that, Maisie, if you didn't know it was."
"Perhaps I do know. Do you care for him very much, Anne?"
"Yes, I care for him, very much. And I can't stand it."
"It's so bad that you've got to go away?"
"It's so bad that I've got to go away."
"That's very brave of you."
"Or very cowardly."
"No. You couldn't be a coward.... Oh, Anne darling, I'm so sorry."
"Don't be sorry. It's my own fault. I'd no business to get into this
state. Don't let's talk about it, Maisie."
"All right, I won't. But I'm sorry.... Only one thing. It--it hasn't
made you hate me, has it?"
"You know it hasn't."
"Oh, Anne, you _are_ beautiful."
"I'm anything but, if you only knew."
She had got beyond the pain of Maisie's goodness, Maisie's trust. No
possible blow from Maisie's mind could hurt her now. Nothing mattered.
Maisie's trust and goodness didn't matter, since she had done all she
knew; since she was going away; since she would never see Jerrold again,
never till their youth was gone and they had ceased to feel.
iv
That afternoon Eliot arrived at Wyck Manor. His coming was his answer to
Anne's letter.
He went over to the Barrow Farm about five o'clock when Anne's work
would be done. Anne was still out, and he waited till she should come
back.
As he waited he looked round her room. This, he thought, was the place
that Anne had set her heart on having for her own; it was the home they
had made for her. Something terrible must have happened before she could
bring herself to leave it. She must have been driven to the
breaking-point. She was broken. Jerrold must have driven and broken her.
He heard her feet on the flagged path, on the threshold of the house;
she stood in the doorway of the room, looking at him, startled.
"Eliot, what are you doing there?"
"Waiting for you. You must have known I'd come."
"To say good-bye? That was nice of you."
"No, not to say good-bye. I should come to see you off if you were
going."
"But I am going. You've seen about my berth, haven't you?"
"No, I haven't. We've got to talk about it first."
He looked dead tired. She remembered that she was his hostess.
"Have you had tea?"
"No. You're going to give me some. Then we'll talk about it."
"Talking won't be a bit of good."
"I think it may be," he said.
She rang the bell and they waited. She gave him his tea, and while they
ate and drank he talked to her about the weather and the land, and about
his work and the book he had just finished on Amoebic Dysentery, and
about Colin and how well he was now. Neither of them spoke of Jerrold or
of Maisie.
When the tea things were cleared away he leaned back and looked at her
with his kind, deep-set, attentive eyes. She loved Eliot's eyes, and his
queer, clever face that was so like and so unlike his father's, so
utterly unlike Jerrold's.
"You needn't tell me why you're going," he said at last. "I've seen
Jerrold."
"Did he tell you?"
"No. You've only got to look at him to see."
"Do you think Maisie sees?"
"I can't tell you. She isn't stupid. She must wonder why you're going
like this."
"I told her. I told her I was in love with Jerrold."
"What did she say?"
"Nothing. Only that she was sorry. I told her so that she mightn't think
he cared for me. She needn't know that."
"She isn't stupid," he said again.
"No. But she's good. She trusts him so. She trusted me.... Eliot, that
was the worst of it, the way she trusted us. That broke us down."
"Of course she trusted you."
"Did you?"
"You know I did."
"And yet," she said, "I believe you knew. You knew all the time."
"If I didn't, I know now."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
"How? Because of my going away? Is that it?"
"Not altogether. I've seen you happy and I've seen you unhappy. I've
seen you with Jerrold. I've seen you with Maisie. Nobody else would have
seen it, but I did, because I knew you so well. And because I was afraid
of it. Besides, you almost told me."
"Yes, and you said it wouldn't make any difference. Does it?"
"No. None. I know, whatever you did, you wouldn't do it only for
yourself. You did this for Jerrold. And you were unhappy because of it."
"No. No. I was happy. We were only unhappy afterwards because of Maisie.
It was so awful going on deceiving her, hiding it and lying. I feel as
if everything I said and did then was a lie. That was how I was
punished. Not being able to tell the truth. And I could have borne even
that if it wasn't for Jerrold. But he hated it, too. It made him
wretched."
"I know it did. If you hadn't been so fine it wouldn't have punished
you."
"_The_ horrible thing was knowing what I'd done to Jerrold, making him
hide and lie."
"Oh, what you've done to Jerrold--You've done him nothing but good.
You've made him finer than he could possibly have been without you."
"I've made him frightfully unhappy."
"Not unhappier than he's made you. And it's what he had to be. I told
you long ago Jerrold wouldn't be any good till he'd suffered damnably.
Well--he has suffered damnably. And he's got a soul because of it. He
hadn't much of one before he loved you."
"How do you mean?"
"I mean he used to think of nothing but his own happiness. Now he's
thinking of nothing but Maisie's and yours. He loves you better than
himself. He even loves Maisie better--I mean he thinks more of her--than
he did before he loved you. There are two people that he cares for more
than himself. He cares more for his own honour than he did. And for
yours. And that's your doing. Just think how you'd have wrecked him if
you'd been a different sort of woman."
"No. Because then he wouldn't have cared for me."
"No, I believe he wouldn't. He chose well."
"You were always much too good to me."
"No, Anne. I want you to see this thing straight, and to see yourself as
you really are. Not to go back on yourself."
"I don't go back on myself. That would be going back on Jerrold. I'm
sorry because of Maisie, that's all. If I'd had an ounce of sense I'd
never have known her. I'd have gone off to some place not too far away
where Jerrold could have come to me and where I should never have seen
Maisie. That's what I should have done. We should both have been happy
then."
"Yes, Jerrold would have been happy. And he wouldn't have saved his
soul. And he'd have been deceiving Maisie all the time. You don't really
wish you'd done that, Anne."
"No. Not now. And I'm not unhappy about Maisie now. I'm going away. I'm
giving Jerrold up. I can't do more than that."
"You wouldn't have to go away, Anne, if you'd do what I want and marry
me. You said perhaps you might if you had to save Jerrold."
"Did I? I don't think I did."
"You've forgotten and I haven't. You don't know what an appalling thing
you're doing. You're leaving everything and everybody you ever cared
for. You'll die of sheer unhappiness."
"Nonsense, Eliot. You know perfectly well that people don't die of
unhappiness. They die of accidents and diseases and old age. I shall die
of old age. And I'll be back in twenty years' time if I've seen it
through."
"Twenty years. The best years of your life. You'll be desperately
lonely. You don't know what it'll be like."
"Oh yes, I do. I've been lonely before now. And I've saved myself by
working."
"Yes, in England, where you could see some of us sometimes. But out
there, with people you never saw before--people who may be brutes--"
"They needn't be."
He went on relentlessly. "People you don't care for and never will care
for. You've never really cared for anybody but us."
"I haven't. I'm going because I care. I can't let Jerry go on like that.
I've got to end it."
"You're going simply to save Jerrold. So that you can never go back to
him. Don't you see that if you married me you'd both be safe? You
couldn't go back. If you were married to me Jerrold wouldn't take you
from me. If you were married to me you wouldn't break faith with me. If
you had children you wouldn't break faith with them. Nothing could keep
you safer."
"I can't, Eliot. Nothing's changed. I belong to Jerrold. I always have
belonged to him. It isn't anything physical. Even if I'm separated from
him, thousands of miles, I shall belong to him still. My mind, or soul,
or whatever the thing is, can't get away from him.... You say if I
belonged to you I couldn't give myself to Jerrold. If I belong to
Jerrold, how can I give myself to you?"
"I see. It's like that, is it?"
"It's like that."
Eliot said no more. He knew when he was beaten.
v
Maisie sat alone in her own room, thinking it over. She didn't know yet
that Eliot had come. He had arrived while she was with Anne and she had
missed him on the way to Barrow Farm, driving up by the hill road while
he walked down through the fields.
She didn't think of Jerrold all at once. Her mind was taken up with Anne
and Anne's unhappiness. She could see nothing else. She remembered how
Adeline had told her that Anne was in love with Jerrold. She had said,
"It was funny when she was a little thing." Anne had loved him all her
life, then. All her life she had had to do without him.
Maisie thought: Perhaps he would have loved her and married her if it
hadn't been for me. And yet Anne had loved her.
That was Anne's beauty.
She wondered next: If Anne had been in love with Jerrold all that time,
and if they had all seen it, all the Fieldings and John Severn, how was
it that she had never seen it? She had seen nothing but a perfect
friendship, and she had tried to keep it for them in all its perfection,
so that neither of them should miss anything because Jerrold had married
her. She remembered how happy Anne had been when she first knew her, and
she thought: If she was happy then, why is she unhappy now? If she loved
Jerrold all her life, if she had done without him all her life, why go
away now?
Unless something had happened.
It was then that Maisie thought of Jerrold, and his sad, drawn face and
his sudden sickness the other day. That was the day he had been with
Anne, when she had told him that she was going away. He had never been
the same since. He had neither slept nor eaten.
Maisie had all the pieces of the puzzle loose before her, and at first
sight not one of them looked as if it would fit. But this piece under
her hand fitted. Jerrold's illness joined on to Anne's going. With a
terrible dread in her heart Maisie put the two things together and saw
the third thing. Jerrold was ill because Anne was going away. He
wouldn't be ill unless he cared for her. And another thing. Anne was
going away, not because she cared, but because Jerrold cared. Therefore
she knew that he cared for her. Therefore he had told her. That was what
had happened.
When she had put all the pieces into their places she would have the
whole story.
But Maisie didn't want to know any more. She had enough to make her
heart break. She still clung to her belief in their goodness. They were
unhappy because they had given each other up. And under all her
thinking, like a quick-running pain, there went her premonition of its
end. She remembered that they had been happy once when she first knew
them. If they were unhappy now because they had given each other up, had
they been happy then because they hadn't? For a moment she asked
herself, "Were they--?" and was afraid to finish and answer her own
question. It was enough that they were all unhappy now and that none of
them would ever be happy again. Not Anne. Not Jerrold. _Their_
unhappiness didn't bear thinking of, and in thinking of it Maisie forgot
her own.
Her heart shook her breast with its beating, and for a moment she
wondered whether her pain were beginning again. Then the thought of Anne
and Jerrold and herself and of their threefold undivided misery came
upon her, annihilating every other thought. As if all that was physical
in Maisie were subdued by the intensity of her suffering, with the
coming of the supreme emotion her body had no pain.
XX
MAISIE, JERROLD, AND ANNE
i
She got up and dressed for dinner as if nothing had happened, or,
rather, as if everything were about to happen and she were going through
with it magnificently, with no sign that she was beaten. She didn't know
yet what she would do; she didn't see clearly what there was to be done.
She might not have to do anything; and yet again, vaguely,
half-fascinated, half-frightened, she foresaw that she might be called
on to do something, something that was hard and terrible and at the same
time beautiful and supreme.
And downstairs in the hall, she found Eliot.
He told her that he had come down to see Anne and that he had done his
best to keep her from going away and that it was all no good.
"We can't stop her. She's got an unbreakable will."
"Unbreakable," she said. "And yet she's broken."
"I know," he said.
In her nervous exaltation she felt that Eliot had been sent, that Eliot
knew. Eliot was wise. He would help her.
"Eliot----" she said. "Will you see me in the library after dinner? I
want to ask you something."
"If it's about Anne, I don't know that there's anything I can say."
"It's about Jerrold," she said.
After dinner he came to her in the library.
"Where's Jerrold?"
"In the drawing-room with Colin. He won't come in."
"Eliot, there's something awfully wrong with him. He can't sleep. He
can't eat. He's sick if he tries."
"He looks pretty ghastly."
"Do you know what's the matter with him?"
"How can I know? He doesn't tell me anything."
"It's ever since he heard that Anne's going." "He's worried about her.
So am I. So are you."
"He isn't worrying. He's fretting.... Eliot--do you think he cares for
her?"
Eliot didn't answer her. He looked at her gravely, searchingly, as if he
were measuring her strength before he answered.
"Don't be afraid to tell me. I'm not a coward."
"I haven't anything to tell you. It isn't altogether this affair of
Anne's. Jerrold hasn't been fit for a long time."
"It's been going on for a long time."
"What makes you think so?"
"Oh," said Maisie, "everything."
"Then why don't you ask him?"
"But--if it is so--would he tell me?"
"I don't know. Perhaps he wants to tell you, only he's afraid. Anyhow,
if it isn't so he'll tell you and you'll be happy."
"Somehow I don't think I'm going to be happy."
"Then," he said, "you're going to be brave."
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.
"I can set him free."
ii
That was the end she had seen before her, vaguely, as something not only
hard and terrible, but beautiful and supreme. To leave off clinging to
the illusion of her happiness. To let go. And with that letting go she
was aware that an obscure horror had been hanging over her for three
days and three nights and was now gone. She stood free of herself, in a
great light and peace, so that presently when Jerrold came to her she
met him with an incomparable tranquillity.
"Jerrold--"
The slight throbbing of her voice startled him coming out of her
stillness.
They stood up, facing each other, in attitudes that had no permanence,
as if what must pass between them now would be sudden and soon over.
"Do you care for Anne?"
The words dropped clear through her stillness, vibrating. His eyes went
from her, evading the issue. Her voice came with a sharper stress.
"I _must_ know. _Do_ you care for her?"
"Yes."
"And that's why she's going?"
"Yes. That's why she's going. Did Eliot say anything?"
"No. He only told me to ask you. He said you'd tell me the truth."
"I have told you the truth. I'm sorry, Maisie."
"I know you're sorry. So am I."
"But, you see, it isn't as if I'd begun after I married you. I've cared
for her all my life."
"Then why didn't you marry her?"
"Because, first of all, I didn't know I cared. And afterwards I thought
she cared for Colin."
"You never asked her?"
"No. I thought--I thought they were lovers."
"You thought that of her?"
"Well, yes. I thought it would be just like her to give everything. I
knew if she cared enough she'd stick at nothing. She wouldn't do it for
herself."
"That was--when?"
"The time I came home on leave three years ago."
"The time you married me. Why did you marry me, if you didn't care for
me?"
"I would have cared for you if I hadn't cared for her."
"But, when you cared for her----?"
"I thought we should find something in it. I wanted you to be happy.
More than anything I wanted you to be happy. I thought I'd be killed in
my next action and that nothing would matter."
"That you wouldn't have to keep it up?"
"Oh, I'd have kept it up all right if Anne hadn't been there. I cared
enough for you to want you to be happy. I wanted you to have a child.
You'd have liked that. That would have made you happy."
"Poor Jerrold----"
"I'd have been all right if I hadn't seen Anne again."
"When did you see her again?"
"Last spring."
"Only last spring?"
"Yes, only."
"When I was away."
She remembered. She remembered how she had first come to Wyck and found
Jerrold happy and superbly well.
"But," she said, "you were happy then."
He sighed, a long, tearing sigh that hurt her.
"Yes. We were happy then."
And in a flash of terrific clarity she remembered her home-coming and
the night that followed it and Jerrold's acquiescence in their
separation.
"Then," she said, "if you were happy----"
"Do you want to know how far it went?"
"I want to know everything. I want the truth. I think you owe me the
truth."
"It went just as far as it could go."
"Do you mean----"
He stood silent and she found his words for him.
"You were Anne's lover?"
"Yes."
Her face changed before him, as it had changed an hour ago before Eliot,
ashen-white and slack, quivering, suddenly old.
Tears came into his eyes, tears of remorse and pity. She saw them and
her heart ached for him.
"It didn't last long," he said.
"How long?"
"From March till--till September."
"I remember."
"Maisie--I can't ask you to forgive me. But you must forgive Anne. It
wasn't her fault. I made her do it. And she's been awfully unhappy about
it, because of you."
"Ah--that was why----"
"Won't you forgive her?"
"I forgive you both. I don't know how I should have felt if you'd been
happy. I can't see anything but your unhappiness."
"We gave it up because of you. That was Anne. She couldn't bear going on
after she knew you, when you were such an angel. It was your goodness
and sweetness broke us down."
"But if I'd been the most disagreeable person it would have been just as
_wrong_."
"It wouldn't, for in that case we shouldn't have deceived you. I should
have told you straight and left you."
"Why didn't you tell me, Jerrold? Why didn't you tell me in the
beginning?"
"We were afraid. We didn't want to hurt you."
"As if that mattered."
"It did matter. We were going to tell you. Then you were ill and we
couldn't. We thought you'd die of it, with your poor little heart in
that state."
"Oh, my dear, did you suppose I'd hurt you that way?"
"That was what we couldn't bear. Not being straight about it. That was
why we gave each other up. It never happened again. Anne's going away so
that it mayn't happen.... Maisie--you _do_ believe me?"
"Yes, I believe you. I believe you did all you knew."
"We did. But it's my fault that Anne's going. I lost my head, and she
was afraid."
"If only you'd told me. I shouldn't have been hard on you, Jerry. You
knew that, didn't you?"
"Yes. I knew."
"And you went through all that agony rather than hurt me."
"Yes."
"The least I can do, then, is to let you go."
"Would you, Maisie?"
"Of course. I married you to make you happy. I must make you happy this
way, that's all. But if I do you mustn't think I don't care for you. I
care for you so much that nothing matters but your happiness."
"Maisie, I'm not fit to live in the same world with you."
"You mustn't say that. You're fit to live in the same world with Anne. I
suppose I could have made this all ugly and shameful for you. But I want
to keep it beautiful. I want to give you all beautiful to Anne, so that
you'll never go back on it, and never feel ashamed."
"You made me ashamed every time we thought of you."
"Don't think of me. Think of each other."
"Oh--you're adorable."
"No, I'm doing this because I love you both. But if I didn't love you I
should do it for myself. 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."
"I wasn't dreaming of making it up. I simply owe you everything,
everlastingly, and there's nothing I can do. I only remembered that you
liked the garden."
"I couldn't bear it. I should hate the garden. I should hate the whole
place."
"I've done that to you?"
"Yes, you've done that to me. It can't be helped."
"But, what will you _do_, Maisie?"
"I shall go back to my own people. They happen to care for me."
That was her one reproach.
"Do you think _I_ don't?"
"Oh no. I've done the only thing that would make you care. Perhaps
that's what I did it for."
He took the hand she gave him and bowed his head over it and kissed it.
iii
Maisie had a long talk with Eliot after Jerrold had left her.
She was still tranquil and composed, but Jerrold was worried. He was
afraid lest the emotion roused by his confession should bring on her
pain. That night Eliot slept in his father's room, so that he could go
to her if the attack came.
But it did not come.
Late in the afternoon Jerrold went down to the Barrow Farm and saw Anne.
He came back with a message from her. Anne wanted to see Maisie, if
Maisie would let her.
"But she thinks you won't," he said.
"Why should I?"
"She's desperately unhappy."
She turned from him as if she would have left him, and then stayed.
"You want me to see her?"
"If you wouldn't hate it too much."
"I shall hate it. But I'll see her. Go and bring her."
She dreaded more than anything the sight of Anne. Her new knowledge of
her made Anne strange and terrible. She felt that she would be somehow
different. She would see something in her that she had never seen
before, that she couldn't bear to see. Anne's face would show her that
Jerrold was her lover.
Yet, if she had never seen that look, if she had never seen anything in
Anne's face that was not beautiful, what did that mean but that Anne's
love for him was beautiful? Before it had touched her body it had lived
a long time in her soul. Either Anne's soul was beautiful because of it,
or it was beautiful because of Anne's soul; and Maisie knew that if she
too was to be beautiful she must keep safe the beauty of their passion
as she had kept safe the beauty of their friendship. It was clear and
hard, unbreakable as crystal. _She_ had been the one flaw in it, the
thing that had damaged its perfection. Now that she had let Jerrold go
it would be perfect.
Anne stood in the doorway of the library, looking at her and not
speaking. She was the same that she had been yesterday, and before that,
and before that; dressed in the farm clothes that were the queer rough
setting of her charm. The same, except that she was still more broken,
still more beaten, and still more beautiful in her defeat.
"Anne--"
Maisie got up and waited, as Anne shut the door and stood there with her
back to it.
"Maisie--I don't know why I've come. There were things I wanted to say
to you, but I can't say them."
"You want to say you're sorry you took Jerrold from me."
"I'm bitterly sorry."
She came forward with a slender, awkward grace. Her eyes were fixed on
Maisie, thrown open, expecting pain; but she didn't shrink or cower.
Maisie's voice came with its old sweetness.
"You didn't take him from me. You couldn't take what I haven't got."
"I gave him up, Maisie. I couldn't bear it."