Adeline Fielding.

Anne's eyes filled with tears. At last she saw Adeline Fielding completely, as she was, without any fascination. She thought: "She's marrying to get away from Colin. She's left him to me to look after. How could she leave him? How could she?"

Anne didn't go up for the wedding. She told Adeline it wasn't much use asking her when she knew that Colin couldn't be left.

"Or, if you like, that _I_ can't leave him."

Her father wrote back:

Your Aunt Adeline thinks you reproach her for leaving Colin. I told her you were too intelligent to do anything of the sort. You'll agree it's the best thing she could do for him. She's no more capable of looking after Colin than a kitten. She wants to be looked after herself, and you ought to be grateful to me for relieving you of the job.

But I don't like your being alone down there with Colin. If he isn't better we must send him to a nursing home.

Are you wondering whether we're going to be happy?

We shall be so long as I let her have her own way; which is what I mean to do.

Your very affectionate father,

JOHN SEVERN.

And Anne answered:

DEAREST DADDY,--I shouldn't dream of reproaching Aunt Adeline any more than I should reproach a p.u.s.s.ycat for catching birds.

Look after her as much as you please--_I_ shall look after Colin.

Whether you like it or not, darling, you can't stop me. And I won't let Colin go to a nursing home. It would be the worst possible place for him. Ask Eliot. Besides, he _is_ better.

I'm ever so glad you're going to be happy.

Your loving

ANNE.

VIII

ANNE AND COLIN

i

Autumn had pa.s.sed. Colin's couch was drawn up before the fire in the drawing-room. Anne sat with him there.

He was better. 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.

As winter went on Anne found that Colin was no worse in cold or wet weather. He couldn't stand the noise and rush of the wind, but his strange malady took no count of rain or snow. He shivered in the clear, still frost, but it braced him all the same. Driving or strolling, she kept him half the day in the open air.

She saw that he liked best the places they had gone to when they were children--the Manor Farm fields, High Slaughter, and Hayes Mill. They were always going to the places where they had done things together.

When Colin talked sanely he was back in those times. He was safe there.

There, if anywhere, he could find his real self and be well.

She had the feeling that Colin's future lay somewhere through his past.

If only she could get him back there, so that he could be what he had been. There must be some way of joining up that time to this, if only she could find a bridge, a link. She didn't know that she was the way, she was the link binding his past to his present, bound up with his youth, his happiness, his innocence, with the years before Queenie and the War.

She didn't know what Queenie had done to him. She didn't know that the war had only finished what Queenie had begun. That was Colin's secret, the hidden source of his fear.

But he was safe with Anne because they were not in love with each other.

She left his senses at rest, and her affection never called for any emotional response. She took him away from his fear; she kept him back in his childhood, in his boyhood, in the years before Queenie, with a continual, "Do you remember?"

"Do you remember the walk to High Slaughter?"

"Do you remember the b.o.o.by-trap we set for poor Pinkney?"

That was dangerous, for poor Pinkney was at the War.

"Do you remember Benjy?"

"Yes, rather."

But Benjy was dangerous, too; for Jerrold had given him to her. She could feel Colin shying.

"He had a b.u.t.terfly s.m.u.t," he said. "Hadn't he? ...Do you remember how I used to come and see you at Cheltenham?"

"And Grannie and Aunt Emily, and how you used to play on their piano.

And how Grannie jumped when you came down crash on those chords in the Waldstein."

"Do you mean the _presto?_"

"Yes. The last movement."

"No wonder she jumped. I should jump now." He turned his mournful face to her. "Anne--I shall never be able to play again."

There was danger everywhere. In the end all ways led back to Colin's malady.

"Oh yes, you wall when you're quite strong."

"I shall never be stronger."

"You will. You're stronger already."

She knew he was stronger. He could sleep three hours on end now and he had left off screaming.

And still the doors were left open between their rooms at night. He was still afraid to sleep alone; he liked to know that she was there, close to him.