Anne Severn and the Fieldings | Page 9

dying?"
"I didn't," said Jerrold. "But I might have known. I notice that when you're excited, really excited, something awful's bound to happen.... Don't cry, Anne. It was beastly of us, but we didn't know."
"No. It's no use crying," said Eliot. "You can't do anything."
"That's it," Anne sobbed. "If we only could. If we could go to him and tell him we wouldn't have done it if we'd known."
"You jolly well can't. It would only bother the poor chap. Besides, it was Jerry did it. Not you."
"It was me. I filled the sponge. We did it together."
What they had done was beastly--setting booby-traps for Pinkney, and laughing at him when his mother was dying--but they had done it together. The pain of her sin had sweetness in it since she shared it with Jerry. Jerry's arm was round her as she went upstairs to bed, crying. They sat together on her bed, holding each other's hands; they faced it together.
"You'd never have done it, Anne, if I hadn't made you."
"I wouldn't mind so much if we hadn't laughed at him."
"Well, we couldn't help that. And it wasn't as if we'd known."
"If only we could tell him--"
"We can't. He'd hate us to go talking to him about his mother."
"He'd hate us."
Then Anne had an idea. They couldn't talk to Pinkney but they could write. That wouldn't hurt him. Jerry fetched a pencil and paper from the schoolroom; and Anne wrote.
Dear Pinkney: We didn't know. We wouldn't have done it if we'd known. We are awfully sorry.
Yours truly,
ANNE SEVERN.
P.S. You aren't to answer this.
JERROLD FIELDING.
Half an hour later Jerrold knocked at her door.
"Anne--are you in bed?"
She got up and stood with him at the door in her innocent nightgown.
"It's all right," he said. "I've seen Pinkney. He says we aren't to worry. He knew we wouldn't have done it if we'd known."
"Was he crying?"
"No. Laughing.... All the same, it'll be a lesson to us," he said.
xii
"Where's Jerrold?"
Robert Fielding called from the dogcart that waited by the porch. Eliot sat beside him, very stiff and straight, painfully aware of his mother who stood on the flagged path below, and made yearning faces at him, doing her best, at this last moment, to destroy his morale. Colin sat behind him by Jerrold's place, tearful but excited. He was to go with them to the station. Eliot tried hard to look as if he didn't care; and, as his mother said, he succeeded beautifully.
It was the end of the holidays.
"Adeline, you might see where Jerrold is."
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 passage 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