Anne Severn and the Fieldings | Page 9

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 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