Anne Severn and the Fieldings | Page 8

carry me. I can walk."
Eliot went on grumbling while Colin trotted happily beside them. "You're a fearful ass, Jerrold. You're simple ruining that kid. He thinks he can come butting into everything. Here's the whole afternoon spoiled for all three of us. He can't walk. You'll see he'll drop out in the first mile."
"I shan't, Jerrold."
And he didn't. He struggled on down the fields to Upper Speed and along the river-meadows to Lower Speed and Hayes Mill, and from Hayes Mill to High Slaughter. It was when they started to walk back that his legs betrayed him, slackening first, then running, because running was easier than walking, for a change. Then dragging. Then being dragged between Anne and Jerrold (for he refused to be carried). Then staggering, stumbling, stopping dead; his child's mouth drooping.
Then Jerrold carried him on his back with his hands clasped under Colin's soft hips. Colin's body slipped every minute and had to be jerked up again; and when it slipped his arms tightened round Jerrold's neck, strangling him.
At last Jerrold, too, staggered and stumbled and stopped dead.
"I'll take him," said Eliot. He forbore, nobly, to say "I told you so."
And by turns they carried him, from the valley of the Windlode to the valley of the Speed, past Hayes Mill, through Lower Speed, Upper Speed, and up the fields to Wyck Manor. Then up the stairs to the schoolroom, pursued by their mother's cries.
"Oh Col-Col, my little Col-Col! What have you done to him, Eliot?"
Eliot bore it like a lamb.
Only after they had left Colin in the schoolroom, he turned on Jerrold.
"Some day," he said, "Col-Col will be a perfect nuisance. Then you and Anne'll have to pay for it."
"Why me and Anne?"
"Because you'll both be fools enough to keep on giving in to him."
"I suppose," said Jerrold bitterly, "you think you're clever."
Adeline came out and overheard him and made a scene in the gallery before Pinkney, the footman, who was bringing in the schoolroom tea. She said Eliot was clever enough and old enough to know better. They were all old enough. And Jerrold said it was his fault, not Eliot's, and Anne said it was hers, too. And Adeline declared that it was all their faults and she would have to speak to their father. She kept it up long after Eliot and Jerrold had retreated to the bathroom. If it had been anybody but her little Col-Col. She wouldn't have him dragged about the country till he dropped.
She added that Col-Col was her favourite.
xi
It was the last week of the holidays. Rain had come with the west wind. The hills were drawn back behind thick sheets of glassy rain. Shining spears of rain dashed themselves against the west windows. Jets of rain rose up, whirling and spraying, from the terrace. Rain ran before the wind in a silver scud along the flagged path under the south front.
The wind made hard, thudding noises as if it pounded invisible bodies in the air. It screamed high above the drumming and hissing of the rain.
It excited the children.
From three o'clock till tea-time the sponge fight stormed up and down the passages. The house was filled with the sound of thudding feet and shrill laughter.
Adeline lay on the sofa in the library. Eliot was with her there.
She was amused, but a little plaintive when they rushed in to her.
"It's perfectly awful the noise you children are making. I'm tired out with it."
Jerrold flung himself on her. "Tired? What must we be?"
But he wasn't tired. His madness still worked in him. It sought some supreme expression.
"What can we play at next?" said Anne.
"What can we play at next?" said Colin.
"Something quiet, for goodness sake," said his mother.
They were very quiet, Jerrold and Anne and Colin, as they set the booby-trap for Pinkney. Very quiet as they watched Pinkney's innocent approach. The sponge caught him--with a delightful, squelching flump--full and fair on the top of his sleek head.
Anne shrieked with delight. "Oh Jerry, did you hear him say 'Damn'?"
They rushed back to the library to tell Eliot. But Eliot couldn't see that it was funny. He said it was a rotten thing to do.
"When he's a servant and can't do anything to us."
"I never thought of that," said Jerrold. (It was pretty rotten.) ... "I could ask him to bowl to me and let him get me out."
"He'd do that in any case."
"Still--I'll have asked him."
But it seemed that Pinkney was in no mood to think of cricket, and they had to be content with begging his pardon, which he gave, as he said, "freely." Yet it struck them that he looked sadder than a booby-trap should have made him.
It was just before bed-time that Eliot told them the awful thing.
"I suppose you know," he said, "that Pinkney's mother's