"O flower of all the world, O flower of all,I see thee in my garden and I dareTo love thee, and though my deserts be small,Thou art the only flower I would wear."
"O flower of all the world, O flower of all,I see thee in my garden and I dareTo love thee, and though my deserts be small,Thou art the only flower I would wear."
"O flower of all the world, O flower of all,
I see thee in my garden and I dare
To love thee, and though my deserts be small,
Thou art the only flower I would wear."
"O flower of all the world," thought Godfrey, seeing only Clare's glowing dress, her hands, her perfect arms.
"I dare to love thee," triumphed Dennis Smallwood's pleasant baritone voice.
Clare Duquesne was going back to Germany, to flirt with dapper little German officers. A good thing that she was going. Godfrey knew her type.
"A rotten song, that, isn't it?" he growled. "Smallwood plays a decent game of tennis. I wish that he'd stick to it."
"He sings rather well. Ah!Mon Dieu!"
"What is it?" Godfrey was all solicitude.
"Nothing. Except that our friend Connie is going to sing, and I—I have heard her before."
Her whisper soothed the young man's ruffled feelings. He did what all the evening he had been intending not to do. This connection with the Hammondménagehad gone far enough. He said:
"Look here, do you ever care to ride, Miss Duquesne?"
"When I have a mount," she answered.
"When the birds go north again!" shrilled Connie.
"I wondered if perhaps, I've got rather a jolly little mare, a perfect lady's hack. My mother was going to ride her, but she hasn't been awfully fit, and hasn't been riding much. It would be a perfect charity if you would be good enough to exercise her. If you could come up one afternoon."
Clare smiled demurely. "Well, if Mrs. Hammond does not object, we might all come up one afternoon."
"All?"
"Well, you can hardly expect me to go alone, surely?"
He saw that it was not possible, but a new scheme was at work in his mind.
"Look here, I'll get the mater to ask up the Hammond girls one afternoon next week, if you'll sing to us to-night."
Clare frowned. "You see," she confided, "I've received not exactly orders but intimations that I am to keep in the background to-night. I'll sing when I go to tea with your mother."
"You'll sing to-night," said Godfrey. He was determined now that she should do so, not so much because he wanted to hear her, as because he wanted her to do something just because he willed it. "Just wait until Connie has sent those birds north again, and then you shall sing."
She shook her head, but as Connie left the piano, Godfrey rose.
"Mrs. Hammond," he said, "we have had a great stroke of luck. I have persuaded Miss Duquesne to sing."
So Mrs. Hammond had to be delighted, and Clare followed Muriel to the piano, and whispered to her. Muriel nodded once or twice, a frown of responsibility upon her face. She was a good accompanist, and had played for Clare many times at Heathcroft.
Mr. Hammond, leaning back in his chair, winked at Colonel Cartwright. "Now we shall have a treat," he said.
Muriel began to play. Her soft dress faded into the white walls of the room. Her hair was a brooding shadow above her earnest face. But about Clare was nothing pale nor shadowy. Her vivid dress had caught all light and colour from the room, and held them, glowing with barbaric splendour. She stood, not stooping over her music like the Marshington young ladies, but by herself in front of the piano, her head lifted proudly with the triumphant power of undaunted youth.
The accompaniment paused. The last chord hung for a moment poised above the waiting stillness. Across the room Clare looked full into the expectant face of Godfrey Neale.
Then she sang.
She had chosen Mignon's song, and at first she sang plaintively the cry of the lost maiden. But, at the end of the verse, with the sweeping melody of the refrain, she released the full power of her voice.
"Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin!Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn."
"Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin!Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn."
"Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin!
Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn."
Mrs. Hammond pulled herself together. She could not understand German. Neither, she was thankful to reflect, could Arthur or the girls; but of one thing she was certain. No one could have sung with such impassioned appeal a song that was completely proper.
She decided that Clare must sing no more.
Directly the song was over, she rose amid the spontaneous applause that for once replaced the conventional thanks of Marshington "musical at homes."
"Thank you so much, Clare, dear. That was very nice. And how clever of you to remember all that German by heart. You must have worked very hard. And now, Arthur, did you say that you were going to carry the colonel and Mr. Neale off to bridge? Mr. Vaughan, you play, don't you?"
So Godfrey heard Clare sing no more, but at the end of the evening, when the company met again to say good-bye, she smiled up at him.
"Well," she said, "and when are we coming to tea?"
All the way home in his mother's stuffy little brougham, Godfrey forgot Clare and talked about the roof to be repaired on the Thaskholme cottages, and the agent at Mardlehammar; but as he ran up the shallow steps of the Weare Grange he suddenly saw Clare standing, the delicate contour of her face outlined against the curtain, her provocative smile teasing him.
"Damned pretty little minx," he told himself, determined that he would not be caught so soon. And, as he undressed, the song which he found himself whistling, with a cheerful disregard for time or tune, was not Clare's song, but Dennis Smallwood's.
"O flower of all the world, O flower of all."
During the morning, Connie had hoped that it would rain; but wind and weather never favoured her. She walked mutinously along the muddy road, splashing in and out of puddles in the vain hope that she might thus leave her mark upon Clare's polished boots. How exactly like Clare, to be walking booted and habited along the road to the Weare Grange to ride with Godfrey Neale, while Connie, who adored horses, was only going to tea with his mother.
"And she's mad," reflected Connie bitterly.
"It was nice of him to send for the saddle," remarked Clare. "I thought that I should have to walk there carrying it on my head like the ladies walk in Palestine."
"What?" said Connie wearily. "Have you been there too?"
Muriel laughed nervously. It was difficult to keep the peace.
"We've never been allowed to ride since Father's accident," she said. "Years ago he let his favourite horse down on the road from Kepplethorpe market. It was badly hurt, I think, and he had two ribs broken. But he was frightfully angry with it for failing him, so he never said anything to anyone, though he must have been in great pain. He just walked back to the house and got his gun, and went back and shot it. He fainted afterwards, and was brought home and was frightfully ill for ages, and when he got better he sold all his hunters and wouldn't let any of us ride again. But he loves driving."
"Ah, poor Mr. Hammond," murmured Clare, but without much interest, for the road had turned, and to the right the hedge was broken by tall gates of delicately wrought ironwork, as fragile in appearance and as strong in reality as the barrier that enclosed the Neales from Marshington. Beyond the gates, half a mile of straight, shining road led to the grey square house. There was no park, but in the fields between the house and highway fine elms and chestnuts spread their naked boughs above the great Weare cattle, grazing with slow serenity on the vivid grass.
"So this is the Weare Grange," observed Clare. "What a delightful house! But,Dieu, how dull to live here all the year round."
But to Muriel the place was magic. She could not believe that real people moved behind those solemn windows. The still winter day, the cold light of the pale sun, the mouldering stonework of the terrace, were all part of a waking dream. A thrush, starting suddenly from a wet bough, shook down the rain-drops on to her face. She woke from her dream. This was the Weare Grange. She and Connie and Clare were going there to tea. This was the amazing adventure which the gods had brought her.
She did hope that Connie would behave.
The bell of the Weare Grange was one of the most powerful defences of that social fortress. It had a round, rusty head, and a long, stringy neck. Muriel put up her hand (and incidentally her new glove) and pulled. There was a harsh screeching sound. The neck extended three good inches from the wall. She let it go. Nothing happened. She pulled again. No faintest tinkle reached her ears.
"Let me try," said Connie.
"No, no, it may have rung."
They waited on the shallow steps, smudged with bird droppings and the multitudinous paw-marks of the dogs. Muriel's courage began to trickle away more rapidly than it had come. No wonder that only the Marshall Gurneys from all Marshington had dared to call upon the Neales. That bell was in itself a social snub.
"You're no good. Let me try," urged Connie. She thrust Muriel aside, pressing her knee against the wall, and tugged at the bell with both hands. A grinding, screeching sound, followed by a far-off tinkle, rewarded her just as a cheerful-faced young manservant appeared in answer to Muriel's second ring.
He took Muriel unprepared.
"Er—er—is Mrs. Neale at home?"
There was a blurred vision of vast hall, a confusion of shy greetings, the departure of Godfrey and Clare to the stables, and the fortress was entered.
"Once we really get started it will be easier," Muriel told herself.
It was not so. Mrs. Neale had dragged herself away from her kennels and rabbit-hutches at her son's request, but even her devotion to him could not make her genial to the Hammond girls. She disliked the whole affair, and only the knowledge that she could not stop it had brought her to face Muriel and Connie, seated in her great eighteenth-century drawing-room, across the wreckage of her afternoon.
She attacked Muriel first.
"Do you ride too?" she asked.
"No, I'm afraid I don't."
"I often used to meet your father with the Weare Valley hounds."
Muriel nodded dumbly.
There was a pause.
"Your sister ride?"
Connie made no answer. She was looking through the long windows, from which she could see Clare and Godfrey cantering side by side along the level green of the wet grass.
Mrs. Neale turned again to Muriel.
"You like dogs?"
"Not very much."
"Cats?" flashed Mrs. Neale.
"Fairly, when they're clean."
A withering glance. "Perhaps you like goldfish?"
"Fairly. Yes. I mean I do rather," confessed the hapless Muriel.
Enchanted castles are apt to conceal an ogress or two. Mrs. Neale felt disposed to let the Weare Grange live up to its reputation. Between her abrupt boredom and Muriel's timidity, the afternoon appeared interminable to Connie. She hated the white and draughty drawing-room. She hated the small gilt clock ticking in the corner. She hated the mixture of ceremony and discomfort, of wealth and squalor that characterized the house shared by Godfrey and his mother. The place seemed to be getting at her, making her feel vulgar and schoolgirlish. The thought of Clare and Godfrey riding together in the winter sunshine maddened her with jealousy.
But it was Muriel who relieved the situation.
After a longer pause than ever, she looked round the room and saw a single photograph on a table near the fire-place.
"Is that Mr. Neale when he was a little boy?" she asked in desperation.
That was enough for Mrs. Neale. Upon one subject alone could she be trusted to break her habitual silence, and Muriel's ingenuous questioning went direct to her heart. From the drawing-room to the smoking-room, from the smoking-room to the long gallery marched the procession of three, recapitulating pictorially and photographically the stupendous progress of Godfrey Neale from the nursery to Oxford, and from Oxford to the mastership of the Weare Grange and Mardlehammar. Connie, stumbling behind the other two, tripping over dogs and carpentering tools, grew full and more full of passionate resentment. When the riders appeared again by the terrace, so warm, so happy, so pleased with life and with themselves, Connie, who was neither warm nor happy, nor pleased, could bear it no longer.
"Well," snapped Mrs. Neale, with her stiff smile that seemed to creak from lack of use. "Good ride?"
"Ripping. Golden Girl went like a bird, and Miss Duquesne is a real sp—sportswoman."
Connie pushed her way past Muriel down the terrace steps.
"Mr. Neale, can I try?"
"Oh, Connie," began Muriel's shocked voice.
"Do you ride, Miss Hammond? I'm so sorry. I thought that you didn't. I would have found you a mount," lied Godfrey.
"I used to ride a lot before Father had his accident and would not let us any more."
The story was well known in Marshington, where picturesque incidents were not common. Here was a trouble that Mrs. Neale could understand.
"If she really wants to, let her have a trot down the drive while I order tea."
"Connie, you can't. You can't really," protested Muriel. To have stormed successfully the Neale citadel, to have come creditably through the ordeal of the drawing-room, and then for Connie to behave like this, was too bad.
But Connie was determined. The dogged look which Mrs. Hammond knew well upon her husband's face had descended upon Connie.
As for Godfrey, he had no desire to ride with a lumpish schoolgirl after that wonderful afternoon, and yet even he felt a slight compunction at the way in which he had used the two Hammond girls. He knew the glacial atmosphere of his mother's drawing-room.
"But she hasn't a habit or anything," Muriel pleaded.
"That doesn't matter. I have often ridden without," laughed Clare. "Here, take my whip."
She held Golden Girl for Godfrey, while he went to tie his own horse to a ring on the terrace wall. She watched him loosen Blue Boy's girths and tie one end of the reins round the ring.
"Aren't you going to ride?" asked Connie.
But even for his conscience' sake Godfrey would not risk the breaking of the yellow mare's knees.
"No, I think I shall walk this time."
Connie stood before the mare. Somehow she seemed to have grown miraculously taller. The saddle upon which her rider must sit was miles up in the air. The chestnut head tossed restlessly. Even Clare's caressing fingers could not quell the baleful frenzy of the rolling eye.
Godfrey returned.
"Now, put your foot on my knee, Miss Hammond, and hold the reins so, and the saddle here. I shall count one, two, three, up. When I say up, you must jump. Don't worry about the stirrup. That comes later."
Connie obeyed the directions. Golden Girl seemed to grow before her like Alice in Wonderland after she had eaten the magic cake. Was it a cake she ate? Connie could not remember. She could hardly see the sky, or Clare, or Godfrey. A huge yellow mare blotted out heaven and earth.
"One, two, three, UP!" called Godfrey. "Oh, but you must jump, Miss Hammond."
"So sorry. I wasn't quite ready," lied Connie. "Will you count again?"
"One, two, three, JUMP!"
Connie jumped. Unluckily the mare jumped also, and Connie landed back into a puddle sending a shower of water over Godfrey's perfect breeches.
"Oh, Connie, give it up. Don't make a fool of yourself," whispered Muriel. Then she remembered her own school-days, and the rock. "Look how you are splashing poor Mr. Neale."
"That's all right," said Godfrey heroically. After all it was the Hammond girl who was making a fool of herself, not he. "Now then, we'll try again."
Connie jumped. A strong hand seemed to lift her up, up into the cold clear air. She jumped with such a will that she almost seemed to fall on to the other side of the mare, but not quite. There she was, mounted at last, while Godfrey Neale placed her muddy boot in the stirrup, and Clare arranged her short serge skirt.
"Ah, now that is excellent," said Clare. "Hold the reins so, and press your left knee well against the pommel. Sit square and face the horse's head."
"You and your horse's head!" laughed Connie. "You talk as though I'd never been up before."
But for all her defiant gaiety, she felt that indeed she hardly had. Golden Girl was different from the old, lop-lobbing pony. When she thrust down her disquieting head, there seemed to be little enough between Connie and the gravel drive. Still there she was. She looked patronizingly down at the group below, at Mrs. Neale, grimly amused, at Clare laughing back at her, at Muriel, white-faced and anxious.
"I'm ready," she said.
They began to walk sedately down the drive. Now that Golden Girl was actually moving, Connie found it less alarming. Indeed, she told herself, it was good beyond all dreams of goodness. The great house gaped at her from a score of long, blank windows. On the steps stood Clare, now only a spectator in the drama, and by the side of the mare walked Godfrey Neale, Connie's companion for as long as she could keep the mare's head turned away from the house down the long drive.
"You all right?" he asked.
"Rather. Don't bother to hold the reins, please. I'm really quite used to it."
Dubiously he let her go. Just to show her independence, she touched the mare lightly with her whip. It started.
"Steady, steady, old girl. Ride her on the snaffle, Miss Hammond. Her mouth's awfully sensitive. She won't stand the curb."
Curbs and snaffles were all the same to Connie. These slippery, writhing strips of leather slid through her hands as the mare tossed her head. She struggled to arrange them to her satisfaction. In another minute Mr. Neale might say, "Don't you think that we had better turn?" and back they would go to that awful drawing-room and to Clare's easy triumph.
Connie sat straight, her red, wind-blown head high. The reins slipped in her left hand, but her right held Clare's riding-crop. She would show them that even if she could not ride like Clare she too was a sportswoman.
Again she flicked her whip. The mare broke into an uneasy trot, shaking Connie up and down in the unfamiliar saddle.
"Hold hard," called Godfrey, stretching out his hand for the slack rein.
"It's all right. This is splendid," cried Connie and, with set teeth, gave the mare another cut.
The mare shuddered. For one moment Connie felt the earth rise to meet her. Then she was suddenly jolted down into the saddle. The shaking trot gave place to a rhythmical rise and fall, the wind brushed past her, touching her wide bright eyes, her flying hair, and Connie was away at full gallop down the drive.
"Stop her," cried Clare, running down the terrace steps. "Stop her, you idiot. The mare's bolting."
"It's all right. The gate will stop her," Godfrey called. For all his swiftness he could not reach her now.
"It won't. We left it open. Don't you remember?"
"Oh, damn!" Connie mattered less to Godfrey than the mare, but both were serious propositions.
He stopped now. Clare, running, was nearly up to him. He faced her on the drive. There was nobody else in the world then but Clare and Godfrey, looking for some solution of the problem into each other's eyes. Muriel, hurrying behind Clare, felt this even then.
Without a word, Clare ran back to Blue Boy.
"Quick. You must catch her before she reaches the road," she said, tugging at the knotted strap.
"The girth's not fastened," cried Muriel, who knew just enough to see this.
Godfrey never listened. He was mounted, had turned, and was off along the drive in pursuit of Connie's flying figure.
The yellow mare was going hard, making for the gate at the south end of the drive. Godfrey, seeing this, swerved suddenly to the right.
"Where's he going? The gate's not there," cried Muriel, running blindly along the drive. Clare followed, picking her way delicately among the chalky puddles. Then she stopped, watching the stooping figure on the great black horse.
"He's going to take the hedge. And he said that he'd never found a horse to leap it yet! Bravo, the sportsman!" she breathed. Her eyes shone. A smile of excitement parted her lips. The dimple flickered on her cheek.
Muriel gasped. "To jump? With his girth unfastened, and only one rein?" She nearly sobbed. "He'll never do it."
"He will. He will. Did you ever see such riding?"
Above the blackness of the hedge, against the transparent, water-coloured shimmer of the sky, the great horse and his rider thrust up suddenly a black silhouette. They hung for a moment thus, poised between earth and sky, then disappeared.
"Ah, good," whispered Clare, with a little sigh of pure enjoyment.
"But they'll be killed," moaned Muriel.
"Not they," laughed Clare.
The two girls walked in silence down the drive. By the gate the hoof-marks swerved to one side, cutting deeply into the turf, as though Connie had made one desperate effort to pull up. Then they went on again, along the rough, chalk road.
"They've gone a long way," remarked Clare imperturbably. "Your sister is having a good run for her money."
"Oh, Clare, don't joke. What if they are killed?"
"Killed? Nonsense. Why, here they are!"
Over the brow of the rising ground they came, Godfrey leading both the horses, Connie by his side, limping a little, spattered with mud from head to foot, her hair wild, her cheeks flaming.
"I didn't fall off," she announced jubilantly. "Not until right at the very end. Oh, it was glorious. I galloped, and Mr. Neale galloped. We had a race, hadn't we, Mr. Neale? Did you see him jump the hedge? Oh, Muriel, you do look queer. Your eyes are popping out of your head. Were you frightened? I wasn't frightened a bit, although we went at a terrific rate right down the field."
"I was," laughed Godfrey. "I was in a blue funk."
Clare looked at him. "How high is that fence?"
"I don't know. N—nothing much." It confronted them then, laced thick and high with blackthorn, a nasty obstacle under the best conditions.
"With a loose girth and one rein," half-whispered Clare. "That was great riding, Mr. Neale."
They walked back to the house together, Connie chattering all the way. She was upborne upon the wings of triumph. She had conquered her fear, conquered Muriel's prudishness, and Clare's attractions, and the indifference of the Weare Grange. She was happy.
Muriel saw her happiness with a sudden heartache, for she saw also what Connie did not see.
She saw that this adventure was not even their adventure. It was Clare's and Godfrey's—Clare's because she had taken upon herself the command of rescue, Godfrey's because her whisper of praise had fallen upon him like an accolade. Connie had been merely a pretext for Godfrey to perform deeds of daring before Clare. At tea-time, though with remorseful attention Godfrey handed to Connie cakes and little biscuits such as she loved, it was Clare to whom, in the intervals of his duties as a host, he turned and smiled.
There was an unwritten rule at Miller's Rise that one bathed at night, not in the morning. Morning baths consumed the washing-up water, and even if they did not they had not been the custom, and so were not approved. Muriel, who accepted all domestic theories with reverence, frowned anxiously as, on her way to her mother's room, she heard Clare's voice upraised in ablutionary song behind the bathroom door.
Ever since the episode of the ride a week before, Muriel had been worried by her mother's attitude to Clare.
Mrs. Hammond was polishing her nails when Muriel came in. It was their custom to hold a little conference in Mrs. Hammond's room before breakfast if Mr. Hammond had left the house early upon business.
"Well, dear? You dressed? Are you tired after last night?" Mrs. Hammond's nails shone like polished pink glass as she held them up to the light. "Muriel, that wasn't Clare whom I heard just now in the bathroom, was it? Didn't Annie take her some hot water? Surely you told her that we——"
"I expect it was because of the dance last night. It was too late to bath when we came in." Recently, Muriel always seemed to be explaining Clare's actions to her mother. It was a duty that she hated.
"I think it unnecessary. Clare is evidently a little selfish, or else inconsiderate. This house is not a hotel."
Wasn't it? For a moment of bitterness, Muriel wondered whether to Clare it was much more. She crossed to the window, and stood looking out into the rain-soaked garden.
"Muriel," her mother's voice continued from the dressing-table, "do you know how long your friend intends to stay?"
"Her father comes to England on the 24th." Muriel knew what would follow.
"Oh." There was another pause. Muriel could hear the soft brush, brush of her mother's nail pad. "Well, of course that's all right. We can manage, I suppose, though of course it comes rather hard on me now that I am so busy over Christmas and everything. Still, if Clare likes to take us as she finds us, I dare say that we shall get through. Still I had thought that perhaps she would have been able to—— Oh, and that reminds me, about Saturday night, dear, at the Warings'. There is no need when we go out like that for Clare to push herself forward in that way. She is only our visitor, after all, and that time Mrs. Waring particularly wanted to hear how Connie's singing had improved. There was noneedfor a stranger to monopolize the whole programme."
"But they kept asking Clare to sing."
"Naturally, they had to say something out of politeness, but nobody meant her to go on and on like that. However, I should not have mentioned even that if it had not been for last night."
Muriel could feel the stiffening of her mother's figure before the looking-glass. She, too, braced herself for battle.
"I—I don't know what you mean, mother."
"Now you know perfectly well what I mean. Clare is a very nice girl in a way, and up till now it has been quite a pleasant visit. I have managed to keep things running smoothly. But I realize that, with her continental upbringing, she has rather different standards from those which we think proper in Marshington. How many dances did she have last night with Godfrey Neale?"
Then Muriel knew that Clare would have to go.
"Oh, five or six perhaps. But——"
Between the mist-shrouded valley and the sodden lawn, Muriel could see a vision of Clare and Godfrey as they had danced together, of Clare's laughing face, of her strong young arm pressed firmly against his black coat, of the swing and balance of their turning figures. She caught her breath.
"Well," remarked Mrs. Hammond, "that may be all right for Ostend, but when you consider the position that Godfrey holds in Marshington——"
The dancing figures swayed towards Muriel. So near they came, they almost warmed her with their glowing happiness. She pressed her small, cold hands against the window-sill, and gazed out towards the dripping trees.
"Just come and fasten my dress, dear. No, the bottom hooks first. Clare's very selfish. She wants everything for herself."
Was she? Was she? Muriel, fastening hooks and eyes at complicated angles knew that in spite of last night, in spite of everything, she had a fierce desire for Clare to stay. What if she did dance with Godfrey Neale? Who else could match her for charm and for daring? Yet, even while Muriel told herself that this was as it should be, she remembered the dragging hours of the Kingsport dance, while she sat by the wall and the couples passed her, the girls' dresses swinging out against her knees. She remembered how she had tried to compose her face into an interested yet indifferent smile above her fan, as though she did this sort of thing because she liked it, not because her mother's valiant efforts to fill her programme were unavailing.
That fear of being left out was horrible.
"If Clare does go," thought Muriel, "that won't make Godfrey look at me."
She went downstairs to order breakfast. "If Clare doesn't go, Godfrey will never look at anyone else." Why care whom Godfrey looked at, whom he knew? Why did she feel this silent force of her mother's will coming between her and the most glorious friendship that she could ever know? Who cared if Clare danced every dance with Godfrey Neale—not that she would, because she said that he bored her just a little when he was not riding or dancing or doing something with his body?
If only all the people whom she loved would care for one another and not make her feel disloyal because she could not share in their distastes, how simple life would be!
As she ran downstairs, Muriel heard her mother meet Clare on the landing.
"Well, Clare, good morning. How are you after last night? Not tired? That's right. I'm so glad.Sonice you looked too!"
Clare went; the winter dances came, and Muriel's programme still remained half empty. Connie returned to Heathcroft. Aunt Beatrice came to stay and went. Muriel continued to be grown up. Her hair sat more securely on her shoulders now. She grew accustomed to the whiteness of her neck above an evening frock. She paid calls with her mother; she dusted the drawing-room. She went to church assiduously, seeking in the Early Service for an emotional satisfaction that she could find no other way. She bought and read shilling copies of the classics. She began to study Astronomy with the help of three second-hand textbooks and a toy telescope, but here she found herself handicapped by lack of instruments and tuition. She did the Nursing Club accounts for her mother, who was at this time much occupied by charitable works. She took piano lessons with Fräulein Heissler every Wednesday in Kingsport. The days passed quickly enough, and yet something seemed to be lacking. Then, in April, came Clare's letter.
Muriel dear, it may amuse you to hear that I am going to be married. His name is Ferdinando Alvarados. He is a Spaniard, but he lives mostly in South America, where it is gloriously warm and you live on oranges and play the guitar. I am not going to have a career, thank Heaven, but I'm going to try being very rich instead. Félix and Mamma are disappointed but resigned, and Ferdie is the most amusing thing God ever made. I adore him and am very happy. Needless to say, he thinks that I am the loveliest thing in the world, which just shows his good taste. When are you going to get married? How is dear, quaint Marshington? Did I ever write to thank you for the good time that you gave me there? I don't believe I did. Forgive me. I never was brought up properly, as I think that your mother saw. If you ever see Mr. Neale now, tell him that I never met a nicer mount than Golden Girl. My cousin's gees in Ireland were nothing to her.
Yours to eternity,
Clare.
The letter came the day before the Conservative Club Picnic. Politics in Marshington were of particularly acute interest that year. Mrs. Marshall Gurney, it is true, held the presidency of the Club for the third time running, but when Mrs. Hobson was elected treasurer Mrs. Waring had to replace Mrs. Parker as the secretary.
"Whatever the men may choose to do," said Mrs. Parker, justly indignant, "I will not countenance the introduction of just anyone on our committee. Hobson himself may be a very decent man and a good Conservative. But we never have had a publican's wife on the committee, and if I can stop it we never will. Even if the Duchess of Northumbria goes in for indiscriminate toleration, in Annabelle Marshall Gurney that sort of thing is pure affectation. One might as well be a Radical, like all the Nonconformist clerks in Marshall Gurney's office."
So Mrs. Parker left the committee, and Mrs. Waring reigned in her stead. Mrs. Hammond, who had only recently decided to show an interest in politics ("The new Conservative candidate was such a nice man"), after some mental struggle resolved not to follow Mrs. Parker into the wilderness, although she had once been a useful ally, but declared herself a supporter of Democracy and Mrs. Marshall Gurney.
It was therefore particularly distressing that the day before the picnic Mr. Hammond should have announced himself to be unwell, and have retired to bed.
"Oh, well, dear," Mrs. Hammond told Muriel, "you will just have to go alone."
"Oh, no, Mother. I should hate to do that. Do let me stay and look after Father, you know that there's nothing really wants doing. You go instead."
"It's quite impossible." Mrs. Hammond picked up her husband's supper-tray. "I like to think that you can enjoy yourself. Go along, dear, and have a good time. I shall manage."
Muriel knew that her mother had wanted to go. She knew that, as far as Mr. Hammond was concerned, the maids could have administered to his wants. But she had slowly come to realize that the passion which had once led Mrs. Hammond to commit her single social indiscretion could still draw her aside from that concentration on her position which had once or twice moved Muriel to vague uneasiness.
She had not wanted to go, and her spring hat had not come yet from Kingsport, and the morning of the picnic had been strained and harassed at home because of Father, and Mother's disappointment, and the rest of it. By the time that she arrived at the yard from whence the picnic was to start in hired waggonettes she was wishing that she never need have come.
There stood Mrs. Marshall Gurney with a bunch of primroses on her sables, and Mrs. Waring, looking elegantly worried as she stooped with herlorgnetteover a bunch of papers, and Mrs. Hobson, fussing backwards and forwards between the gate and the already laden waggonettes. Everybody looked terribly smart and confident and self absorbed. The space between Muriel and the waggonettes was painfully wide. She wanted to shrink away on to her seat and be forgotten.
"Any room in the last waggonette?" called Mrs. Marshall Gurney.
"Quite full up," returned Mrs. Hobson, with the metallic crispness of one who may have a Yorkshire accent but knows that she is as good as many of those who haven't.
"Any room in your carriage, Phyllis?"
But Phyllis Marshall Gurney regretted that she had promised to keep the only seat available in her carriage for somebody else, and blushed deeply as she said it. Muriel was almost ready to retire defeated, when Delia Vaughan called to her from the first carriage. Grateful but embarrassed, Muriel went forward, and climbed in among the knees and new tweed skirts of the élite of Marshington. She counted them surreptitiously, Adelaide Waring and a cousin, Dennis Smallwood, Nancy Cartwright, Bobby Mason and Delia. A man for every girl except herself. Wise by experience, she sighed, thinking of the long day before her. At Heathcroft, if you had no partner, you could at least walk with the last couple in the crocodile. At Marshington it seemed that you could only sit and look forlorn among the sandwiches.
The waggonettes waited.
"Are we never going to start?" asked Adelaide.
Mrs. Marshall Gurney and her committee were conferring hurriedly.
"Did anybody see Mr. Neale on the way down?"
Nobody had enjoyed that honour.
"I suppose that heiscoming?"
From every waggonette Muriel could feel the tension of anxiety. A Primrose Picnic without Godfrey Neale would be like lamb without mint sauce. Phyllis Marshall Gurney's pretty face grew pale beneath her pink hat.
"Ah, here the conquering hero comes," laughed Nancy, who was still secure in the pose ofenfant terrible. "It's more effective to be late, isn't it?"
Godfrey Neale strolled into the yard. His breeches were beautiful, his smile the most disarming, his confidence superb. Phyllis Marshall Gurney gripped more tightly the hand-rail of her waggonette. Delia Vaughan nodded carelessly. Godfrey made his apology to the waiting committee, and moved towards the carriages.
Muriel calculated rapidly. If he joined the waggonette in which she sat he would make the numbers of males and females equal. She held her breath.
Godfrey hailed Miles Buchanan in the last carriage, exchanged a greeting with Phyllis Marshall Gurney in the second, and then climbed up beside Delia Vaughan in the first. The carriages rattled down the village street into a world glittering and green. In every meadow the grass stretched upright blades like thirsty tongues to drink from the dripping trees; but the clouds had broken and blew about a radiant spring sky like wind-tossed feathers.
"It's going to be fine," observed Adelaide complacently. "I'm glad that I put on my new light tweeds."
"Stunning," commented Dennis, exhibiting his well-shaped leg. "What about my own light tweeds?"
Everybody seemed to be in high spirits. After all, the drive would not be so bad, thought Muriel. She could watch the grey, flat road unwind like ribbon behind the waggonette. She could see the clay-red furrows of the ploughed land, and she could hear the cry of sea-birds circling behind and around the plough. Some magic lingered in the fresh spring air.
Lunch was pleasant enough too, although she found herself seated on an unsteady log between Mrs. Hobson and Colonel Cartwright, who had motored to the woods. He at least was bent upon enjoyment. As an old campaigner he insisted upon showing every one how to do everything, from lighting a fire with two matches, to opening ginger-beer bottles with a walking-stick.
"Dangerous things, picnics," he declared to Muriel, determined to show her how to be jolly too.
Anxious to learn, she said sedately:
"Why, Colonel?"
He winked at her. "Ah, the spring, and a young man's fancy, happy hours and woodland bowers, and chaperons asleep under the trees."
"I don't think that that sounds very dangerous," said Muriel politely, and received a light flutter of laughter from the party as a reward for hernaïveté.
But she was soon to learn where for her the danger lay.
After lunch Adelaide's cousin, Mr. Weathergay, said to Nancy:
"There's a jolly old church, I hear, at Ribbleswaite, that seems the sort of thing one ought to see. Won't you show it to me?"
And Nancy giggled that churches weren't much in her line, but she wouldn't mind a walk.
Then Miles Buchanan bore off Freda Mason, and her two brothers wrangled for the right to escort Mrs. Farrell, a charming girl, who was staying with the Warings. The company scattered into couples and quartettes. Muriel still sat on her log, playing with a strand of long coarse grass, and hating picnics.
She saw neither the budding woods nor the delicate cream of primroses upon the banks. She saw only the ignominy of her own position, and with averted head she dug her fingers into the soft turf as couple after couple vanished through the trembling curtain of foliage. She was glad that her mother was not there to see her shame, and yet this probably only meant a short respite, because Mrs. Waring was certain to betray, as she had done before, the curious solitude of Mrs. Hammond's daughter.
From the other side of the abandoned meal she could hear Delia's careless voice:
"Well, you can lie and smoke in the sun if you like, Godfrey. The grass is wet, and you are growing fat from idleness, but I don't care. I, the only Socialist among you, am going to celebrate Primrose Day properly and pick primroses. Coming too, Muriel?"
No wonder that Delia was unpopular, monopolizing Godfrey all through lunch, and then abandoning him to smoke his pipe alone. The sheer wanton waste of it appalled Muriel. She shook her head.
"No, thank you," she said, shivering a little at her courage. To have gone with Delia would have been to put an end to her misery, but it would also have been a confession of defeat.
Delia went, and Muriel was left alone upon her log. Bobby Mason, defeated by his brother in the contest for Mrs. Farrell, was pretending to do something scientific to the fire, and Mrs. Marshall Gurney was directing the repacking of the luncheon baskets. She looked round the clearing, then beckoned Bobby majestically to her side.
"Go and make yourself agreeable to the Hammond girl, for goodness' sake," she commanded. "We want to hold a committee meeting here."
Muriel could feel the young man approaching her. She guessed why he had come. She was half crying with shame and weariness.
"Like to see the jolly old church, Miss Hammond?"
Dumbly she nodded. They too went.
The young birches curtsied round them. A delicate earthy scent of ferns and leaf mould and wet grass rose to their nostrils. Muriel saw and felt nothing, but she heard Bobby Mason say:
"Been to Burley Woods before, Miss Hammond?"
"No. Have you?"
"Er—no."
There was a pause.
"Going to play golf this year, Miss Hammond?"
"No. I don't think so. Are you?"
"No—er, in the office you know. Men like myself haven't much time."
"I suppose not."
The silence grew more gloomy.
Muriel rehearsed to herself the coming interview with her mother.
"And what did you do, dear?"
"Oh, I went for a walk to see an old church with Bobby Mason."
"Oh. That was nice, I expect. That boy's coming on, I think. They say that he's doing very well in his father's office," followed by a swift look at Muriel's face, and a reflection that the Masons were quite successful timber merchants even if the boys were reputed to be a little brainless.
Muriel did so much want to make her mother happy.
The silence oppressed them like a heavy weight. It grew fecund with other silences. They walked through the springing woods.
It was like that all the afternoon.
Then, when they had returned to the clearing and had finished tea, Delia returned. Godfrey Neale had gone to find her and they appeared together. Her eyes shone. Her thin cheeks glowed with colour. An elfish, secretive smile of happiness quivered on her lips, and her hands were full of primroses and great sprays of beech leaves.
"Did you have a good time?" asked Phyllis Marshall Gurney wistfully.
Delia nodded. She was standing to eat her tea, for the rest had finished. A thick slab of cake replaced the primroses, and she and Godfrey swooped upon the last of the tartlets.
Muriel climbed into the waggonette, and sat still, hating Delia. Somewhere in the woods that day had lurked happiness and beauty and gay liberty. Delia, who cared for no one, who was selfish, had been free to find them. And Godfrey Neale had followed her unsought.
She was talking to him now, softly under cover of the rattling of the wheels, only Muriel with an effort could hear stray fragments of their conversation. Delia was scolding him about some girl.
"My dear Godfrey, you are as tenacious of your rights over a practical stranger as you are over your own tenants. The girl probably forgot you months ago."
The carriage jolted on. Bobby smoked moodily. His duty for the day had been done. Adelaide chatted with her cousin. Delia was talking again. "You think too much of your unconquerable charm. You won't be fit to speak to until quite three women have refused to marry you."
Godfrey pulled placidly at his pipe. He appeared to enjoy her lecturing, as people do who prefer to have their personality criticized rather than ignored.
Muriel thought that she understood. "They're talking about Clare," she said to herself. "And he doesn't know that she's engaged." She felt glad that she knew something which neither Delia nor Godfrey knew. She was no longer powerless, but armed. She could, if she would, make a difference to the lives of these two Olympians. She, Muriel, could one day say to Godfrey Neale, "Do you know that my friend, Clare Duquesne, is going to be married?" He would take notice of her then.
She still felt proud, though chilled and stiff, as she climbed out of the waggonette, and said good-bye to Mrs. Marshall Gurney.
When Delia Vaughan suggested, "I'm going your way. Shall we walk together?" she answered with indifference, as though she were accustomed to such offers.
"Well, and how do you like living at Marshington?" asked Delia as they left the yard.
"Very much, thank you," she answered primly.
"Good, what do you do with yourself all day?"
"I help my mother. We have been very busy with the Nursing Club lately. And I sew a good deal. And I study music and astronomy."
"Music and astronomy?" The vicar's daughter looked at her in genuine surprise. "How delightfully mediæval that sounds! But why astronomy? You can't study it in Marshington properly, can you? Do you mean it seriously? Are you going to college or somewhere?"
Muriel shook her head. "Oh, no. I could not go away. My mother and father need me at home. I just do a little reading on my own."
Delia looked wonderingly at her small, secret face. "Look here," she began, "you can't go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on a thing, and it's a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is a coward's way of shifting responsibility on to some one else. Reading at Marshington! It's only a sort of disguise for the futility of life here. I know. I've tried it."
She was warming up to her favourite topic. Her dark eyes glowed above the trailing boughs of beech. Muriel, unaccustomed to exhibitions of strong feeling, looked coldly at her.
"Do you seriously intend to stay here all your life?" asked Delia. "To wash dishes that the next meal will soil, to arrange flowers that will wither in a week, to walk in fear and trembling of what Mrs. Marshall Gurney will say, although you know quite well that she hasn't got the intelligence to say anything worth saying?"
Intelligence? Muriel remembered how once she had suggested to Aunt Beatrice that she would like to go to college, and Aunt Beatrice had replied, "Well, dear, it isn't as if you were as clever as all that, is it?" And reluctantly Muriel, with the memory of the elusive mathematics prize before her, had had to admit that she was not as clever as all that.
"We can't all be clever," she said, without much joy in the thought.
"Clever? who said that we all had to be clever? But we have to have courage. The whole position of woman is what it is to-day, because so many of us have followed the line of least resistance, and have sat down placidly in a little provincial town, waiting to get married. No wonder that the men have thought that this is all that we are good for."
Muriel looked at her with grave distaste. She knew what her mother had to say about the suffragettes.
"Because I happened to be an idealist," remarked Delia, with the solemnity of twenty-two addressing eighteen, "Marshington could never forgive me. It could not forgive me for thinking my education incomplete unless I sought it beyond the councils of Marshington matrons. I happened to think that service of humanity was sometimes more important than respectability. I valued truth more highly than the conventional courtesies of a provincial town, while Marshington spends half its time in sparing other people's feelings in order that it may the more effectually ruin their reputations."
Muriel remembered hearing what Delia had said to Mrs. Cartwright over the Nursing Club accounts. She felt interested but uncomfortable. She had never been to a college debating society, and was unaccustomed to hearing what she called rudeness defended on principle. Also, she distrusted all this talk, feeling that she could be an idealist, too, without making so much fuss about it.
"But of course," continued Delia, "women in Marshington are not expected to have Ideals, only sex."
Muriel knit her brows. Sex conveyed to her merely a synonym for gender, masculine, feminine or neuter. She sought for more familiar ground.
"I certainly am not going to college, because my mother needs me at home. I am not unhappy here. Some of us have to stay at home. I have my duty too," she added stiffly.
Delia looked at her, a queer sidelong glance below her long lashes. Then she laughed a little. "And I am being properly called to order for pursuing my selfish ambitions while you are following the path of virtue?"
They had come to the Vicarage gate, and stood below the budding trees.
"Well, well," smiled Delia, "I hope that you will be happy. I suppose that it's no good arguing. But for goodness' sake stay with your eyes open. Remember, there's only one thing that counts for a girl in Marshington, and that is sex success. Turn and twist how you will, it comes to that in the end. The whole of this sort of life is arranged round that one thing. Of course it's an important thing, but it's not the only one. If that's what you are after, stay by all means, and play the game. But if you can't play it well, or if you really care for anything else, clear out, and go before it is too late."
She opened the gate of the Vicarage garden, and stood for a moment looking down at Muriel.
To her surprise Muriel answered her gravely, with a wistful obstinacy that stiffened her slim, small figure as though for some great act of courage.
"It's all right to talk, Miss Vaughan, but we all have to do what we think right, haven't we? And some of us can't choose. We have to take life as it comes. I don't see why I shouldn't be doing just as much my duty here as you where you are." Then, feeling that she was not being very explicit, she added, "I hope that you will be very happy at Cambridge."
"Thank you," said Delia with equal gravity. Then quite suddenly she laughed. "That's the second time you've snubbed me, Muriel, you strange child. Good-bye. Don't hate me too much."
She held out her hand, then with a flutter of bright green leaves she had vanished, lithe as a wood nymph, queer, graceful, and confusing.
Muriel walked home, thinking of Clare and Godfrey, Delia and college, and the meaning of sex-success.
When she arrived home, she found her mother coming from her father's room with an empty tray. The happy, satisfied expression that her face wore rarely transfigured her. She looked charming as a girl when she smiled at her daughter and said: "Well, dear, did you have a good time?" And Muriel replied, "Yes, thank you, mother. Bobby Mason took me to see the old church at Ribbleswaite."
That night she stood before her bedroom window and pulled back the curtains that Mrs. Hammond liked her to keep drawn. ("It looks so bad, dear, to see an uncurtained bedroom window. Even if people can't see anything, they always think that they can.") There were no stars in the deep sky, but from the darkness of the garden rose the thin and unmistakable breath of the spring. Muriel stood with outstretched arms holding back the curtains.
Down there in the valley lay the wonderful, perilous, grown-up world, holding its carnival of adventure and romance.
She pitied Connie, a child who was still at school.
She pitied Delia, who was, after all, still at college, which was only a kind of glorified school.
She thought of herself, holding the key to Godfrey Neale's happiness or sorrow, she alone, who knew that Clare was going to be married. She was sorry for Godfrey, who, she was sure, had fallen in love with Clare; but the thought of her power was more exciting to her than pity.
Oh, lovely, rich, full, adventurous life, teeming with experience, glowing with beauty, hurry, hurry, hurry! Let me come to you and learn your secret, in your strange carnival of love and tears!
The soft wind fanned her cheeks as though it were the breath of life itself. She sank upon her knees, holding out her arms to the heavy darkness of the sky.
Down in the valley, the lights of Marshington winked at her, one by one.
Against the car the wind hurled the challenge of a thousand angry spears of rain. With blow after blow they assailed the leather hood, only to break and fall helplessly to the streaming road.
"What a night for a dance," groaned Mrs. Hammond. "If I had known what it was going to be like, I really shouldn't have come, though I hate to disappoint you."
But even if she had known, she must still have come, and not only because she hated to disappoint the girls. For matters at Miller's Rise were growing desperate. Morning after morning Mrs. Hammond had come downstairs to find her daughters confronting her like the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual failure, Connie always bored and restless, Muriel becoming yearly more prim and silent. It was 1914 already, and nothing done. Adelaide Waring's husband at York earned £2,000 a year. Nancy Cartwright was now Nancy Buchanan, and even Daisy Parker, as Daisy Weathergay, lived in a little corner house along the Avenue, and kept a nice little maid, and paid calls, and shopped down the village street with one of those painted wicker baskets on her arm.
Of course there was Dr. McKissack. Surely, surely he must mean something. If only one were more certain of Connie. If only that queer, reckless strain in her nature would not make her do unconventional things that men disliked. She was so like Arthur, and yet in a woman, somehow, it did not do to be like Arthur. In the darkness of the car, Mrs. Hammond's face grew weary, thinking of bitter things. Her troubles were not confined to the spinsterhood of her daughters.
The car lurched and jolted round a corner into the mean street that crouched before the Kingsport thoroughfares.
"Muriel, I do wish that you would not tread on my shoe," complained Connie. "You know that they're my best ones. It isn't as if I could get a new pair any day."
"I'm sorry. I didn't see."
"No. You never do see. Mother, why can't we have an allowance? I'm sick of this beastly dependence upon Father. It's all to gratify his vanity. He'll take us in to Kingsport to buy a rotten hat, like when he bought my velour before Christmas, and I was simply pining for new furs. It's just to hear us say thank you, and to feel how generous he is."
"Oh, Connie, I've told you before that I have done my best. Don't let us start the discussion all over again."
"It's all very well, but if you'd only let me go on that chicken farm with Hilda there wouldn't have been any need to discuss it."
"And you wouldn't have been going to a dance to-night either. You know quite well that you would never have made it pay. We don't want to start all that again, surely."
They were passing through the main streets now, and the lamps looked through into the warm stuffiness of the car.
"At any rate," said Mrs. Hammond, calling up her courage, "it is going to be a nice dance." She had said that so many times. "You did say that the doctor was coming, didn't you, Connie?"
"He said he might." Connie's manner was off-hand, but in the darkness her face softened, and her brown eyes glowed with expectation.
She didn't care twopence for the little Scotch doctor, she told herself; but she was sick, sick, sick of Miller's Rise. She was sick of dressing up her fine young body, which nobody cared to see. She was sick of living through the long months of the year all on top of Muriel and her mother, sick of scenes with her father, because he would neither let her go away nor give her the allowance that she considered necessary. And she was sick of her mother's fretful hints and of her father's stupid chaffing. She was weary of cinema romances, where true love always triumphed. She was weary of Marshington reality where her school friends and neighbours smirked at her above their diamond half-hoops, or simpered at her over piles of trousseaulingerie. At twenty-one she had smiled when other girls talked about proposals; at twenty-two she had blushed and answered irritably; at twenty-three she had lied shamelessly and shrieked her noisy, jolly laugh. At twenty-four she would have no further need to lie.
She pushed back a curl of springing hair, and tried to imagine married life with Hugh McKissack. The wind enfolded the car in the fierce caress of brushing wings, tumultuous as love, as love, thought Connie. "Love," she whispered to herself, "Love, love, love," as though by an incantation she could call it to her.
There was a sentence inThe Romance of Emmelineby Sylvia Carlton, that had sung itself into her seeking mind.
". . . And as he approached her, her heart beat faster. In all that crowded room they were alone. He only took her hand, but his eyes caressed her, and youth and spring, sweet with laughter, clamorous with birdsong, leapt from the loneliness to meet them. Their formal greeting sang like a passionate poem, and in the shadows of her eyes he saw the amorous darkness of the perfumed night."
"Hugh McKissack," thought Connie, remembering the way in which his kind, short-sighted eyes peered through his glasses. Could men ever make you feel like that? Godfrey Neale, Freddy Mason, Captain Lancaster whom they had met at Broadstairs. She let a procession of "possibles" pass through her mind. At least if Hugh loved her he would take her away. "Let now thy servant depart in peace," thought Connie foolishly, "according to thy word. For my reproach hath been taken away from me. . . ." She felt strangely happy and yet urged by a strong desire to cry.
"Muriel, just see if that window is quite shut. There is such a draught."
"We're just there," said Muriel, peering through the rain-smeared glass, and wondering if she would be able to catch Mrs. Cartwright in the cloak-room to ask about the nursing subscriptions. Muriel's life had centred largely round the Nursing Club, ever since Mrs. Potter Vallery had taken up the Fallen Girls' Rescue Work, and Mrs. Hammond had abandoned the Club for her committee.
"Is there an awning up? I do hope that there is. Where is my bag, girls?"
The cars crawled forward, spilling their burdens of satin and furs and gleaming shirt fronts on to the damp red felt below the awning. As the Hammonds passed, a girl in a rain-soaked hat trimmed with wilting plumes called from the dingy group watching on the pavement:
"Good evening, Mrs. 'Ammond, 'opes you enjoy yourself!"
"Who was that girl?" asked Muriel, slipping off her cloak.
Her mother frowned. "One of the girls who used to be at St. Catherine's. They have no business to come and waste their time watching the people arriving at a dance. We got her into a decent situation too."
Muriel, who liked to see pretty things herself, thought, "Now that is just the sort of thing that I should have thought that those girls would have liked to do." For the streets of Kingsport on a winter evening were curiously devoid of colour, and the procession of pink and mauve and lemon-coloured cloaks gleamed like the lights from a revolving lantern down the pavement.
Connie murmured with a hairpin in her mouth, "What awful cheek." Being unconventional in her own behaviour at times through lack of self-control, she had little patience for other people who had suffered from an aggravation of the same offence. Muriel, whose behaviour was always scrupulously regulated, had more sympathy to spare for the exceptional. All the same, she did not know very much about St. Catherine's. Her mother would never let her go near the Home. It was not nice that unmarried girls should know about these things. Muriel, whose mind was singularly incurious, accepted without question the convention that only substantially married women could safely touch their fallen sisters. Her mother, Muriel heard, was most zealous in their cause, so firm, so sensible, so economical upon the House Committee. It had been her work upon that committee that had brought her to the notice of the Bishop. There was no doubting her ability. Better leave such work to her, thought Muriel; yet, as she clasped a bangle over her white glove in the cloak-room, the girl's eyes haunted her, mocking from the rain. Beyond this room with its cosy fire, beyond the decorous safety of Miller's Rise, lay a world of tears and darkness, of sudden joy and hopeless ruin. Muriel shivered, then followed Connie and her mother from the room. It was, at least, another world.
In the door-way they met Mrs. Waring, still slim and elegant in pale grey satin.
"Ah, I'm so glad that you were able to come," she smiled. "And the girls. How nice; Adelaide has brought a few friends of Sydney's from York. I must introduce them to you. There's an Eric Fennington and Tony Barton, such dear boys and devoted to Adelaide. She's so popular in York, you know. Naughty girl, I tell her that Sydney will be jealous if she always has a trail of young men following her about. And then, what will the unmarried girls do if staid matrons like her monopolize all the men?"
Mrs. Hammond smiled gently. "Ah, well, you know. There are still just a few men left in Marshington. We are not all as adventurous as Adelaide, going to York. But then, of course, a different generation——" She glanced across the room to the goodly paunch and receding hair of Sydney Rutherford, who was earning £2,000 a year and who looked every penny of it. Then she broke off. "Oh, there is Mrs. Potter Vallery. I promised to keep her in countenance as the only woman here in a last year's dress."
Only since her acquaintance with Mrs. Potter Vallery had Mrs. Hammond dared to say nasty things to the Marshington ladies. The relief, after so many years of restraint, was immense. She crossed the room, leaving Mrs. Cartwright, whom Muriel had just released from contemplation of the Nursing Club, Class A. Subscribers, to keep Mrs. Waring company near the door.
"Poor Rachel Hammond is growing quite thin, isn't she?"
"Yes," murmured Mrs. Waring into her fan. "Running after Honourables is hard work. And then, of course, they say"—Mrs. Waring dropped her voice—"that Arthur Hammond——" She shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, poor woman! poor woman! I hope it's not true. I dare say that she feels Marshington relaxing." Mrs. Cartwright's good humour led her always to attribute human trouble to the defects of impersonal locality. It saved her from having to blame people. "I'm sure that I haven't been well all this winter. I did think of going to Buxton in the spring, but Mrs. Marshall Gurney says that it didn't do her a scrap of good."
"But I don't think that it was for a change of air so much as a change of scene that Annabelle went to Buxton."
"Scene?"
"Scene. For Phyllis and for herself. An exclusive view of the Weare Grange becomes a little tiring after a time. I dare say that Mrs. Hammond may try for a change soon, but I rather think that she has the more staying power." Having tried the waiting game herself and abandoned it, Mrs. Waring felt that she had a right to find amusement in a contest that had once engaged almost the whole of Marshington, but which had now, she considered, been reduced to the final round.
Meanwhile, having secured her smile from Mrs. Potter Vallery, Mrs. Hammond reviewed her daughters' programmes. She had grown accustomed to these early arrivals, followed by a determined search for partners, while she shepherded stray young men gently up to her waiting girls. She did it well, and also contrived to achieve a reputation for introducing men to other people's daughters; this was one of her more clever strokes of statesmanship. To-night she felt that her burden might be easier. For some time things had been working up to a climax. Well, if Connie went before Muriel, what matter?
"Let me see, Muriel, was it the first waltz or the fifth that you were going to have with Godfrey Neale? The fifth? That's right. And Connie, let me see, where was it you said that Dr. McKissack promised to meet us?"
"He never exactly said," Connie began.
"He's over there, talking to that girl in green. They've just come in," said Muriel.
"I expect that he's waiting for us; I'll go and tell him that we've come." As Mrs. Hammond crossed the room, she was thinking, "Dickie Weathergay proposed to Daisy at the Tennis Dance . . . Hugh McKissack, Dr. McKissack, my son-in-law. A very old Scotch family. I only hope that Connie keeps her hair tidy for once. A doctor. A professional man." But when the tender smile curved her lips as she approached the young man, it was because she had thought for a moment of her husband.
Dr. McKissack turned with a slight flush to face her greeting. Being not entirely shameless, the memory of many Sunday night suppers oppressed him. But he was a Scotchman, and wanted to marry, and had no private means, and cold saddle of mutton had been welcome.
"Ah, Mrs. Hammond, good, good. And how are ye? Glad you were able to come." Seeing her pretty, waiting face, he felt more nervous than was reasonable. But he was a man of courage. Had he not been, he never could have enjoyed his saddle of mutton. "I want to introduce you to my fiancée. I think that you know Miss Hemmingway."
Mrs. Hammond, who did not know the daughter of a retired grocer, bowed. She even continued to smile. "Of course. I am so pleased to meet you at last. Naturally I remember having seen you at dances and things for years, haven't I? But we've never really managed to meet."
She was even able to search out Mrs. Cartwright, and to remark casually:
"Seen the latest couple? That Hemmingway girl and Dr. McKissack? He's just told me that they are engaged."
Mrs. Cartwright nodded comfortably. "Yes, it's been coming on for a long time, I understand. I'm so glad for her sake, poor girl. People haven't been very nice to her."
"Well, I had never come across her before, but, considering who she is, I thought that she seemed quite a nice sort of girl. Most suitable, I think. I know the doctor a little. Used to entertain him when he first came here."
"Yes. I know how good you always are to the boys," Mrs. Cartwright said without irony. Because she had a charitable mind, Mrs. Hammond found her restful; but when she had left the shelter of her disarming simplicity, and found herself surrounded again by Warings, Parkers and their friends, her courage almost failed her. She had needed it so often lately. The infamy of it! The graceless, wicked ingratitude! All that cold chicken and salmon, and the saddles of mutton. Besides, she had liked the little man. She had thought that he liked her. She could have sworn that he liked her. Connie. Her small, tightly gloved hands locked round her fan. She felt tired and suddenly old; but there could be no respite for her. Already the orchestra was groaning and wailing before the first dance. The girls must have partners. Connie must be told without being upset. It was difficult to tell with Connie. She rather liked to make a scene, like Arthur, but without his faculty for success. Mrs. Hammond drew the soft feathers of her fan across her aching forehead, and went into the ball-room.