Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 36

And they went back together towards the house.

ii

Colin's and Anne's work was done for the day. The hay in the Broad Pasture was mown and dried. Tomorrow it would be heaped into c.o.c.ks and carried to the stackyard.

It was the evening of Eliot's first day. He and Anne sat out under the apple trees in the orchard.

"What on earth have you done to Colin?" he said. "I expected to find him a perfect wreck."

"He was pretty bad three months ago. But it's good for him being down here in the place he used to be happy in. He knows he's safe here. It's good for him doing jobs about the farm, too."

"I imagine it's good for him being with you."

"Oh, well, he knows he's safe with me."

"Very safe. He owes it to you that he's sane now. You must have been astonishingly wise with him."

"It didn't take much wisdom. Not more than it used to take when he was a little frightened kid. That's all he was when he came back from the war, Eliot."

"The point is that you haven't treated him like a kid. You've made a man of him again. You've given him a man's life and a man's work."

"That's what I want to do. When he's trained he can look after Jerrold's land. You know poor Barker died last month of septic pneumonia. The camp was full of it."

"I know."

"What do you think of my training Colin?"

"It's all right for him, Anne. But how about you?"

"Me? Oh, _I'm_ all right. You needn't worry about me."

"I do worry about you. And your father's worrying."

"Dear old Daddy. It _is_ silly of him. As if anything mattered but Colin."

"_You_ matter. You see, your father doesn't like your being here alone with him. He's afraid of what people may think."

"I'm not. I don't care what people think. They've no business to."

"No; but they will, and they do...You know what I mean, Anne, don't you?"

"I suppose you mean they think I'm Colin's mistress. Is that it?"

"I'm afraid it is. They can't think anything else. It's beastly of them, I know, but this is a beastly world, dear, and it doesn't do to go on behaving as if it wasn't."

"I don't care. If people are beastly it's their look-out, not mine. The beastlier they are the less I care."

"I don't suppose you care if the vicar's wife won't call or if Lady Corbett and the Hawtreys cut you. But that's why."

"Is it? I never thought about it. I'm too busy to go and see them and I supposed they were too busy to come and see me. I certainly don't care."

"If it was people you cared about?"

"n.o.body I care about would think things like that of me."

"Anne dear, I'm not so sure."

"Then it shows how much they care about _me_."

"But it's because they care."

"I can't help it. They may care, but they don't know. They can't know anything about me if they think that."

"And you honestly don't mind?"

"I mind what _you_ think. But you don't think it, Eliot, do you?"

"I? Good Lord no! Do you mind what mother thinks?"

"Yes, I mind. But it doesn't matter very much."

"It would matter if Jerrold thought it."

"Oh Eliot--_does_ he?"

"I don't suppose he thinks precisely that. But I'm pretty sure he thought you and Colin cared for each other."

"What makes you think so?"

"His marrying Maisie like that."

"Why shouldn't he marry her?"

"Because it's you he cares about."

Eliot's voice was quiet and heavy. She knew that what he said was true.

That quiet, heavy voice was the voice of her own innermost conviction.

Yet under the shock of it she sat silent, not looking at him, looking with wide, fixed eyes at the pattern the apple boughs made on the sky.

"How do you know?" she said, presently.

"Because of the way he talked to mother before he came to see you here.

She says he was frightfully upset when she told him about you and Colin."

"She told him _that?_"

"Apparently."