i Anne did not go back to her Ilford farm at once. Adeline had made that

impossible.

At the prospect of Anne's going her resentment died down as suddenly as

it had risen. She forgot that Anne had taken her sons' affection and her

place beside her husband's deathbed. And though she couldn't help

feeling rather glad that Jerrold had gone to India without Anne, she was

sorry for her. She loved her and she meant to keep her. She said she

simply could not bear it if Anne left her, and _was_ it the time to

choose when she wanted her as she had never wanted her before? She had

nobody to turn to, as Anne knew. Corbetts and Hawtreys and Markhams and

people were all very well; but they were outsiders.

"It's the inside people that I want now, Anne. You're deep inside,

dear."

Yes, of course she had relations. But relations were no use. They were

all wrapped up in their own tiresome affairs, and there wasn't one of

them she cared for as she cared for Anne.

"I couldn't care more if you were my own daughter. Darling Robert felt

about you just the same. You _can't_ leave me."

And Anne didn't. She never could resist unhappiness. She thought: "I was

glad enough to stop with her through all the happy times. I'd be a

perfect beast to go and leave her now when she's miserable and hasn't

got anybody."

It would have been better for Anne if she could have gone. Robert

Fielding's death and Jerrold's absence were two griefs that inflamed

each other; they came together to make one immense, intolerable wound.

And here at Wyck, she couldn't move without coming upon something that

touched it and stung it to fresh pain. But Anne was not like Jerrold, to

turn from what she loved because it hurt her. For as long as she could

remember all her happiness had come to her at Wyck. If unhappiness came

now, she had got, as Eliot said, "to take it."

And so she stayed on through the autumn, then over Christmas to the New

Year; this time because of Colin who was suffering from depression.

Colin had never got over his father's death and Jerrold's going; and the

last thing Jerrold had said to her before he went was; "You'll look

after Col-Col, won't you? Don't let him go grousing about by himself."

Jerrold had always expected her to look after Colin. At seventeen there

was still something piteous and breakable about him, something that

clung to you for help. Eliot said that if Colin didn't look out he'd be

a regular neurotic. But he owned that Anne was good for him.

"I don't know what you do to him, but he's better when you're there."




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