That was dangerous, for poor Pinkney was at the War.
"Do you remember Benjy?"
"Yes, rather."
But Benjy was dangerous, too; for Jerrold had given him to her. She
could feel Colin shying.
"He had a butterfly smut," he said. "Hadn't he? ...Do you remember how I
used to come and see you at Cheltenham?"
"And Grannie and Aunt Emily, and how you used to play on their piano.
And how Grannie jumped when you came down crash on those chords in the
Waldstein."
"Do you mean the _presto?_"
"Yes. The last movement."
"No wonder she jumped. I should jump now." He turned his mournful face
to her. "Anne--I shall never be able to play again."
There was danger everywhere. In the end all ways led back to Colin's
malady.
"Oh yes, you wall when you're quite strong."
"I shall never be stronger."
"You will. You're stronger already."
She knew he was stronger. He could sleep three hours on end now and he
had left off screaming.
And still the doors were left open between their rooms at night. He was
still afraid to sleep alone; he liked to know that she was there, close
to him.
Instead of the dreams, instead of the sudden rushing, crashing horror,
he was haunted by a nameless dread. Dread of something he didn't know,
something that waited for him, something he couldn't face. Something
that hung over him at night, that was there with him in the morning,
that came between him and the light of the sun.
Anne kept it away. Anne came between it and him. He was unhappy and
frightened when Anne was not there.
It was always, "You're _not_ going, Anne?"
"Yes. But I'm coming back."
"How soon?"
And she would say, "An hour;" or, "Half an hour," or, "Ten minutes."
"Don't be longer."
"No."
And then: "I don't know how it is, Anne. But everything seems all right
when you're there, and all wrong when you're not."
The beautiful Jacobean house, the church and church-yard, Sutton's farm
and the rectory, the four cottages and the Mill, the river and its
bridge, lie close together in the small flat of the valley. Green
pastures slope up the hill behind them to the north; pink-brown arable
lands, ploughed and harrowed, are flung off to either side, east and
west.
Northwards the valley is a slender slip of green bordering the slender
river. Southwards, below the bridge, the water meadows widen out past
Sutton's farm. From the front windows of the Manor Farm house you see
them, green between the brown trunks of the elms on the road bank. From
the back you look out across orchard and pasture to the black, still
water and yellow osier beds above the Mill. Beyond the water a double
line of beeches, bare delicate branches, rounded head after rounded
head, climbs a hillock in a steep curve, to part and meet again in a
thick ring at the top.