Anne Severn and the Fieldings | Page 5

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. He turned into the old nursery that was
the schoolroom now, and found Eliot there, examining a fly's leg under
his microscope. It was Eliot that he wanted..
"I say, you know, Mum's making a jolly mistake about that kid. Trying
to go on as if she was Anne's mother. You can see it makes her sick. It
would me, if my mother was dead."
Eliot looked as if he wasn't listening, absorbed in his fly's leg.
"Somebody's got to tell her."
"Are you going to," said Eliot, "or shall I?"
"Neither. I shall get Dad to. He'll do it best."
vii
Robert Fielding didn't do it all at once. He put it off till Adeline gave
him his chance. He found her alone in the library and she had begun it.
"Robert, I don't know what to do about that child."
"Which child?"
"Anne. She's been here five weeks, and I've done everything I know,
and she hasn't shown me a scrap of affection. It's pretty hard if I'm to
house and feed the little thing and look after her like a mother and get
nothing. Nothing but half a cold little face to kiss night and morning. It
isn't good enough."
"For Anne?"
"For me, my dear. Trying to be a mother to somebody else's child who
doesn't love you, and isn't going to love you."
"Don't try then."

"Don't try?"
"Don't try and be a mother to her. That's what Anne doesn't like."
They had got as far as that when John Severn stood in the doorway. He
was retreating before their appearance of communion when she called
him back.
"Don't go, John. We want you. Here's Robert telling me not to be a
mother to Anne."
"And here's Adeline worrying because she thinks Anne isn't going to
love her."
Severn sat down, considering it.
"It takes time," he said.
She looked at him, smiling under lowered brows.
"Time to love me?"
"Time for Anne to love you. She--she's so desperately faithful."
The dressing-bell clanged from the belfry. Robert left them to finish a
discussion that he found embarrassing.
"I said I'd try to be a mother to her. I have tried, John; but the little
thing won't let me."
"Don't try too hard. Robert's right. Don't--don't be a mother to her."
"What am I to be?"
"Oh, anything you like. A presence. A heavenly apparition. An
impossible ideal. Anything but that."
"Do you think she's going to hold out for ever?"

"Only against that. As long as she remembers. It puts her off."
"She doesn't object to Robert being a father to her."
"No. Because he's a better father than I am; and she knows it."
Adeline flushed. She understood the implication and was hurt,
unreasonably. He saw her unreasonableness and her pain.
"My dear Adeline, Anne's mother will always be Anne's mother. I was
never anywhere beside Alice. I've had to choose between the
Government of India and my daughter. You'll observe that I don't try to
be a father to Anne; and that, in consequence, Anne likes me. But she'll
love Robert."
"And 'like' me? If I don't try."
"Give her time. Give her time."
He rose, smiling down at her.
"You think I'm unreasonable?"
"The least bit in the world. For the moment."
"My dear John, if I didn't love your little girl I wouldn't care."
"Love her. Love her. She'll love you too, in her rum way. She's fighting
you now. She wouldn't fight if she didn't feel she was beaten. Nobody
could hold out against you long."
She looked at the clock.
"Heavens! I must go and dress."
She thought: "He didn't hold out against