Anne Severn and the Fieldings Part 7

She went into the house and saw Anne and Jerrold coming slowly down the stairs together from the gallery. At the turn they stopped and looked at each other, and suddenly he had her in his arms. They kissed, with close, quick kisses and then stood apart, listening.

Adeline went back. "The monkey," she thought; "and I who told her she didn't know how to do it."

Jerrold ran out, very red in the face and defiant. He gave himself to his mother's large embrace, broke from it, and climbed into the dogcart.

The mare bounded forward, Jerrold and Eliot raised their hats, shouted and were gone.

Adeline watched while the long lines of the beech-trees narrowed on them, till the dogcart swung out between the ball-topped pillars of the Park gates.

Last time their going had been nothing to her. Today she could hardly bear it. She wondered why.

She turned and found little Anne standing beside her. They moved suddenly apart. Each had seen the other's tears.

xiii

Outside Colin's window the tree rocked in the wind. A branch brushed backwards and forwards, it tapped on the pane. Its black shadow shook on the grey, moonlit wall.

Jerrold's empty bed showed white and dreadful in the moonlight, covered with a sheet. Colin was frightened.

A narrow pa.s.sage divided his room from Anne's. The doors stood open. He called "Anne! Anne!"

A light thud on the floor of Anne's room, then the soft padding of naked feet, and Anne stood beside him in her white nightgown. Her hair rose in a black ruff round her head, her eyes were very black in the sharp whiteness of her face.

"Are you frightened, Colin?"

"No. I'm not exactly frightened, but I think there's something there."

"It's nothing. Only the tree."

"I mean--in Jerry's bed."

"Oh no, Colin."

"Dare you," he said, "sit on it?"

"Of course I dare. _Now_ you see. _Now_ you won't be frightened."

"You know," Colin said, "I don't mind a bit when Jerrold's there. The ghosts never come then, because he frightens them away."

The clock struck ten. They counted the strokes. Anne still sat on Jerrold's bed with her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms clasped round them.

"I'll tell you a secret," Colin said. "Only you mustn't tell."

"I won't."

"Really and truly?"

"Really and truly."

"I think Jerrold's the wonderfullest person in the whole world. When I grow up I'm going to be like him."

"You couldn't be."

"Not now. But when I'm grown-up, I say."

"You couldn't be. Not even then. Jerrold can't sing and he can't play."

"I don't care."

"But you mustn't do what he can't if you want to be like him."

"When I'm singing and playing I shall pretend I'm not."

"You needn't. You won't ever be him."

"I--shall."

"Col-Col, I don't want you to be like him. I don't want anybody else to be like Jerrold in the whole world."

"But," said Colin, "I shall be like him."

xiv

Every night Adeline still came to see Anne in bed. The little thing had left off pretending to be asleep. She lay with eyes wide open, yielding sweetly to the embrace.

To-night her eyelids lay shut, slack on her eyes, and Adeline thought "She's really asleep, the little lamb. Better not touch her."

She was going away when a sound stopped her. A sound of sobbing.

"Anne--Anne--are you crying?"

A tremulous drawing-in of breath, a shaking under the bed-clothes. On Anne's white cheek the black eyelashes were parted and pointed with her tears. She had been crying a long time.

Adeline knelt down, her face against Anne's face.

"What is it darling? Tell me."

Anne shivered.

"Oh Anne, I wish you loved me. You don't, ducky, a little bit."

"I do. I do. Really and truly."

"Then give me a kiss. The proper kind."

Anne gave her the tight, deep kiss that was the proper kind.