Anne Severn and the Fieldings. Sinclair May
lids, under dark eyebrows; of the innocent white nose; of the whole soft, milk-white face. Even her sleek, dark hair smiled, shining. She was conscious of her power to make him come to her, to make herself felt through everything, even through his bereavement.
The subtle Eliot, looking over the terrace wall, observed her and thought, "The mater's jolly pleased with herself. I wonder why."
It struck Eliot also that a Commissioner of Ambala and a Member of the Legislative Council and a widower ought not to look like Mr. Severn. He was too lively, too adventurous.
He turned again to the enthralling page. "The student should lay open the theoracic cavity of the rabbit and dissect away the thymous gland and other tissues which hide the origin of the great vessels; so as to display the heart … "
Yearp, the vet, would show him how to do that.
iv
"His name's Benjy. He's a butterfly smut," said Jerrold.
The rabbit was quiet now. He sat in Anne's arms, couching, his forepaws laid on her breast. She stooped and kissed his soft nose that went in and out, pushing against her mouth, in a delicate palpitation. He was white, with black ears and a black oval at the root of his tail. Two wing-shaped patches went up from his nose like a moustache. That was his butterfly smut.
"He is sweet," she said.
Colin said it after her in his shrill child's voice: "He is sweet." Colin had a habit of repeating what you said. It was his way of joining in the conversation.
He stretched up his hand and stroked Benjy, and Anne felt the rabbit's heart beat sharp and quick against her breast. A shiver went through Benjy's body.
Anne kissed him again. Her heart swelled and shook with maternal tenderness.
"Why does he tremble so?"
"He's frightened. Don't touch him, Col-Col."
Colin couldn't see an animal without wanting to stroke it. He put his hands in his pockets to keep them out of temptation. By the way Jerrold looked at him you saw how he loved him.
About Colin there was something beautiful and breakable. Dusk-white face; little tidy nose and mouth; dark hair and eyes like the minnows swimming under the green water. But Jerrold's face was strong; and he had funny eyes that made you keep looking at him. They were blue. Not tiresomely blue, blue all the time, like his mother's, but secretly and surprisingly blue, a blue that flashed at you and hid again, moving queerly in the set squareness of his face, presenting at every turn a different Jerrold. He had a pleasing straight up and down nose, his one constant feature. The nostrils slanted slightly upward, making shadows there. You got to know these things after watching him attentively. Anne loved his mouth best of all, cross one minute (only never with Colin), sweet the next, tilted at the corners, ready for his laughter.
He stood close beside her in his white flannels, straight and slender.
He was looking at her, just as he looked at Colin.
"Do you like him?" he said.
"Who? Colin?"
"No. Benjy."
"I love him."
"I'll give him to you if you'd like to have him."
"For my own? To keep?"
"Rather."
"Don't you want him?"
"Yes. But I'd like you to have him."
"Oh, Jerrold."
She knew he was giving her Benjy because her mother was dead.
"I've got the grey doe, and the fawn, and the lop-ear," he said.
"Oh—I shall love him."
"You mustn't hold him too tight. And you must be careful not to touch his stomach. If you squeeze him there he'll die."
"Yes. If you squeeze his stomach he'll die," Colin cried excitedly.
"I'll be ever so careful."
They put him down, and he ran violently round and round, drumming with his hind legs on the floor of the shed, startling the does that couched, like cats, among the lettuce leaves and carrots.
"When the little rabbits come half of them will be yours, because he'll be their father."
"Oh—"
For the first time since Friday week Anne was happy. She loved the rabbit, she loved little Colin. And more than anybody or anything she loved Jerrold.
Yet afterwards, in her bed in the night nursery, when she thought of her dead mother, she lay awake crying; quietly, so that nobody could hear.
v
It was Robert Fielding's birthday. Anne was to dine late that evening, sitting beside him. He said that was his birthday treat.
Anne had made him a penwiper of green cloth with a large blue bead in the middle for a knob. He was going to keep it for ever. He had no candles on his birthday cake at tea, because there would have been too many.
The big hall of the Manor was furnished like a room.
The wide oak staircase came down into it from a gallery that went all around. They were waiting there for Mrs. Fielding who was always a little late. That made you keep on thinking about her. They were thinking about her now.
Up there a door opened and shut. Something moved along the gallery like a large light, and Mrs. Fielding came down the stairs, slowly, prolonging her effect. She was dressed in her old pearl-white gown. A rope of pearls went round her neck and hung between her breasts. Roll above roll of hair jutted out at the back of her head; across it, the foremost curl rose like a comb, shining. Her eyes, intensely blue in her milk-white face, sparkled between two dark wings of hair. Her mouth smiled its enchanting and enchanted smile. She was aware that her husband and John watched her from stair to stair; she was aware of their men's eyes, darkening. Then suddenly she was aware of John's daughter.
Anne was coming towards her across the hall, drawn by the magic, by the eyes, by the sweet flower smell that drifted (not lavender, not lavender). She stood at the foot of the staircase looking up. The heavenly thing swept down to her and she broke into a cry.
"Oh, you're beautiful. You're beautiful."
Mrs. Fielding stopped her progress.
"So are you, you little darling."
She stooped quickly and kissed her, holding her tight to her breast, crushed down into the bed of the flower scent. Anne gave herself up, caught by the sweetness and the beauty.
"You rogue," said Adeline. "At last I've got you."
She couldn't bear to be repulsed, to have anything about her, even a cat or a dog, that had not surrendered.
vi
Every evening, soon after Colin's Nanna had tucked Anne up in her bed and left her, the door of the night nursery would open, letting a light in. When Anne saw the light coming she shut her eyes and burrowed under the blankets, she knew it was Auntie Adeline trying to be a mother to her. (You called them Auntie Adeline and Uncle Robert to please them, though they weren't relations.)
Every night she would hear Aunt Adeline's feet on the floor and her candle clattering on the chest of drawers, she would feel her hands drawing back the blankets and her face bending down over her. The mouth would brush her forehead. And she would lie stiff and still, keeping her eyes tight shut.
To-night she heard voices at the door and somebody else's feet going tip-toe behind Aunt Adeline's. Somebody else whispered "She's asleep." That was Jerrold. Jerrold. She felt him standing beside his mother, looking at her, and her eyelids fluttered; but she lay still.
"She isn't asleep at all," said Aunt Adeline. "She's shamming, the little monkey."
Jerrold thought he knew why.