Anne Severn and the Fieldings | Page 4

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