She started towards the shed which stood in the trees, away from the house. She was conscious of the woman watching her as she went, though she did not look back. She felt slightly perturbed for some reason. A faint breath of discomfort had blown upon her enchanted mood, loosening the warmly peaceful spell.
Anna went into the shed. Sidney turned round in the shadowy place and stood watching as the door opened. Her vivid, animal eyes were wide with astonishment, her black brows questioningly tilted.
‘Anna-Marie!’ she said.
‘Yes. I’ve come to see you. At last.’
Sidney had been brushing a dog; the bright, black, satiny creature squirmed on the box in front of her, under her restraining hand. Anna noticed the strong, brown, capable hand, as it held the animal down. She remembered the touch of that hand, affectionate and cool and solid. Sidney was dressed in a smock, with leather gaiters on her legs, which gave her a clean farmer’s boy look. It was a look which Anna did not know. Sidney was straight and stiff. Her beautiful amber eyes seemed quenched in the dusky shed. She did not say anything.
‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ said Anna, coming near. ‘Haven’t you got anything to say to me?’
She held out her hand. With a graceful slouching movement Sidney reached out and touched it. It was strange to feel again the touch of the firm, rather square-tipped fingers. Just for a moment they rested on Anna’s hand: then slipped coolly away.
‘I must hang on to this creature,’ said Sidney. ‘Otherwise he’ll be off into the blue.’ She looked down at the crouched, sleek-coated spaniel. The black body of the dog was tense as a coiled spring, bursting with energy and life.
Anna looked on uneasily. She felt disappointed. They were like two strangers together. She did not know what to say.
‘Aren’t you glad to see me?’ she asked again, rather plaintive. She looked at Sidney with a pale, strained face.
‘Yes — in a way,’ answered Sidney, reluctant. ‘And in a way — no.’
She looked down at the dog which was beginning to jerk in sharp, nervous spasms, trying to escape. The droop of her head, the lounging, downward grace of her body was curiously painful to Anna, the suggestion of concealment and reservation where all had been open loyalty. The fine, V-shaped point of hair on the nape of her neck was heartrending. Anna felt a wave of melancholy, the air of the shed was permeated with a vague, general sadness. She drew it in with her breath: down, down it sank, travelling through all her veins, down to the bottom of her heart.
She knew this was the end. But she must make Sidney look at her. Sidney must raise her head.
‘Why not altogether glad?’ she asked, dejected.
Sidney looked up at her unwillingly. Her eyes were troubled. She seemed changed, a little bit coarsened, in her farmer’s smock. The least little bit brutalized. As if contentment, and her passion for animals and for the country, were beginning to deaden some bright spark in her. It was a grief to Anna to see the wane of that keen, shy fineness that she had loved.
Sidney released the dog. Like a glossy black bolt it shot off, out through the open door, into the yellow afternoon of winter sun.
‘I’ve got used to things now,’ said Sidney. ‘I’ve got my life here where I’m happy. I don’t want you to come and break everything up for me.’
She looked at Anna with glazed eyes, the amber-brightness filmed over with distress. Her face was colourless, unhappy and constrained.
‘Aren’t you being rather unkind?’ asked Anna. But her voice was weary and low, without expression. She looked wan in her disappointed sadness, as she gazed at Sidney. She knew it was all over.
‘Unkind!’ exclaimed the other, a flash of emotion going over her face. ‘Unkind! It’s you who have been unkind all along.’
‘I — in what way?’ Anna hardly understood what Sidney was saying. The words meant nothing to her. She simply stood looking at Sidney, abstractedly, in her grief. Sidney turned her head aside. Once more the fine, dark, arrow, head of hair was visible on her pale neck. Then she looked at Anna again. The amber-coloured eyes held the blue-grey eyes, across the shadowy shed. So they took a final, secret, protracted farewell of one another, silently, over the dim space, while their voices murmured without significance.
‘You never came to see me. You never wrote properly. You never explained. I thought you had forgotten,’ came the voice of Sidney.
‘I couldn’t help it. Everything was against me. I couldn’t get away,’ Anna answered wearily, blank, like a somnambulist.
Sidney flashed at her, fiercely, and accused her.
‘Why did you marry the man?’ she cried, almost brutal in her accusation. ‘Why? Why?’ And accusing, she frowned at her, savagely, with a certain desperation of frustrated love. Anna winced at her violence. But she felt herself numb, numb. The noise of words meant nothing. And Sidney’s very bright eyes flashed at her with passion, a passionate reproachfulness like coals of fire.
‘You could have stopped me,’ said Anna softly. ‘You could have prevented the marriage.’ And to herself she kept repeating: ‘You. You. Only you.’ She did not know if she had spoken the words aloud.
‘How?’ asked Sidney. A trace of the well-known mockery was in her tones. ‘How could I have stopped you?’ She stared at Anna. Her eyes had a strange yellowish brilliance, distracted, mocking, with the queer process of animalization at work underneath.
Anna was silent for a moment. Then she said slowly:
‘How? — well — I don’t know how.’ She stared gravely at Sidney. ‘But you could have done it. Just as you could still prevent my going to the East — even now — if you wanted to.’
Sidney said nothing. She seemed to be reflecting. Suddenly she made the slightest movement with her hand, her eyelids fell once, and lifted, flickering, over her bright eyes. Anna’s heart bounded in her breast. She almost woke out of her numbness. Then Sidney stiffened again. She seemed to close up again in stiffness. Her face went neutral and blank. But in her eyes, which had changed slightly, there was a glaze of finality. She had decided against Anna. Anna knew it. And her heart fell back numb as her hope left her. The numbness took possession of her heart, and left her without power or animation, hopeless.
‘But you don’t want — do you?’ she murmured involuntarily, hopeless, like a condemned person. A faint, sick smile came from somewhere to the corners of her mouth.
Her face was pale and submissive, with a strange, painful acquiescence, as though the will had been destroyed in her. So she looked at Sidney, as if hypnotized. There was the slight smile on her mouth. Sidney frowned darkly, with black brows. She leaned a little to Anna; but her spirit held back, relentless.
‘It’s too late now — isn’t it?’ she said, in a voice that made Anna tremble.
‘Too late!’ Anna repeated, with narrowing eyes. She gave a curious laugh, almost of derision. ‘Yes. I’ll go away.’
But as she moved, with her face averted, to go out of the shed: as she passed in front of Sidney: Sidney moved too, in her farm-boy’s smock, and followed her. Anna brushed through the webs of sunshine, under the trees. At the edge of the spinney, near the lane, was a gate which she must pass. Here she paused, hesitating, and Sidney paused beside her.
Anna found nothing to say. She stood abstracted, looking downwards at the yellow leaves spangling the ground.
‘Good-bye,’ said Sidney, with her mannish intonation. ‘Good-bye, Anna-Marie. I’m sorry — sorry! But you’re the one responsible. You’ve made things go this way.’ She smiled a thin, subtle smile, like a wild creature’s, but inexpressibly wistful. The old wild, shy charm was still alive in her, attractive, so attractive, in spite of the coarsening smock. Her slouching, animal grace made Anna tremble, under the numbness.