"You don't want to go to India?" Eliot's heart began to beat as he asked
his question.
"I want to work. To work hard. To work till I'm so dead tired that I
roll off to sleep the minute I get into bed. So tired that I can't
dream."
"That isn't right. You're too young to feel like that, Anne."
"I do feel like it. You feel like it yourself--My farm is to me what
your old bacteria are to you."
"Oh, if I thought it was the farm--"
"Why, what else did you think it was?"
Eliot couldn't bring himself to tell her. He took refuge in apparent
irrelevance.
"You know Father left me the Manor Farm house, don't you?"
"No, I didn't. I suppose he thought you'd want to come back, like me."
"Well, I'm glad I've got it. Mother's got the Dower House in Wyck. But
she'll stay on here till--"
"Till Jerrold comes back," said Anne bravely.
"I don't suppose Jerry'll turn her out even then. Unless--"
But neither he nor Anne had the courage to say "unless he marries."
Not Anne, because she couldn't trust herself with the theme of Jerrold's
marrying. Not Eliot, because he had Jerrold's word for it that if he
married anybody, ever, it would not be Anne.
* * * * * It was this assurance that made it possible for him to say what he had
been thinking of saying all the time that he talked to Anne about his
bacteriology. Bacteriology was a screen behind which Eliot, uncertain of
Anne's feelings, sheltered himself against irrevocable disaster. He
meant to ask Anne to marry him, but he kept putting it off because, so
long as he didn't know for certain that she wouldn't have him, he was at
liberty to think she would. He would not be taking her from Jerrold.
Jerrold, inconceivable ass, didn't want her. Eliot had made sure of that
months ago, the night before Jerrold sailed. He had simply put it to
him: what did he mean to do about Anne Severn? And Jerrold had made it
very plain that his chief object in going to India was to get away from
Anne Severn and Everything. Eliot knew Jerrold too well to suspect his
sincerity, so he considered that the way was now honorably open to him.
His only uncertainty was Anne herself. He had meant to give her a year
to forget Jerrold in, if she was ever going to forget him; though in
moments of deeper insight he realized that Anne was not likely to
forget, nor to marry anybody else as long as she remembered.
Yet, Eliot reasoned, women did marry, even remembering. They married and
were happy. You saw it every day. He was content to take Anne on her own
terms, at any cost, at any risk. He had never been afraid of risks, and
once he had faced the chance of her refusal all other dangers were
insignificant.