"Connie? On a farm? Well, now, Muriel, you do know her a little. And in any case, her father won't hear of it. The breeches, Muriel. And then, it isn't as if there wasn't plenty to do here. I'm sure that I could do with a little more help."
Muriel was ready to go downstairs. She shivered in the cold room. Her mother still talked.
"If only she would be reasonable. . . . So naughty to her father."
With Mrs. Hammond's complaints still trickling over her, Muriel went down to a supper of fish-pie and apple-tart. It somehow failed to stimulate her. Her father had gone out, as usual. Connie sat glum and injured, eating incredible quantities of fish-pie, to assert her independence.
Muriel lay afterwards in an arm-chair in front of the morning-room fire. There were magazines that Mrs. Hammond had collected for the Hospital, and Muriel loved magazines. She saw photographs of lovely ladies in pearls and white veils, "Working for our brave lads," "Helping with the wounded," "Among our hospitals." It had become fashionable for beauty to go meekly dressed, with clasped hands, and the light directed becomingly upon a grave profile.
"I ought to go to bed," she thought, but it was cold upstairs.
The lovely ladies soothed her. She almost forgot to think about Godfrey, and how she had let him go. She almost forgot the deathliness of spirit that her years of failure had left for her, and that had come between her and Godfrey, so that she could not hold him when he came. Indeed, she knew that she had lost him long before he came to her. But until he had kissed her, she had never looked like this into the future, to see how it held nothing more of life for her.
She lay back luxuriously, warming her toes, and letting the friendly heat of the fire steal through her body.
"Signora Clare Alvarados," she read, below a full page photograph of a most lovely lady, "is the daughter of Félix Duquesne, whose delightful comedies have taken by storm the French-speaking public. Signora Alvarados has recently returned to London to take part in the organization of concerts for our brave lads in the hospitals. All society is speaking of her beautiful soprano voice. It will be remembered that her husband was killed about a year ago in a tragic motor accident in Chile."
It was Clare, more radiant than ever, smiling out of the paper at Muriel with the friendliest of all friendly smiles.
The concert for the hospital was almost over. Muriel, who had been selling programmes, leant against the radiator and felt its friendly warmth comforting her. Across the row of bobbing heads, she could see Mrs. Neale's gaunt head and her untidy hair. Duty had brought Mrs. Neale to the concert, and duty was keeping her there until the end, but the strained lines about her mouth, and the misery in her long face could hardly be due entirely to Mrs. Purdon's rendering of "Little grey home in the west."
Something had happened to Godfrey. He was still in London, so it could not be the worst thing that happened to men during the war. Muriel hardly thought that it was even a sudden order to the front. She told herself that it was this, but she knew, just as she knew after the bombardment was over, that she had lost Godfrey now a second time.
She wished that the concert was over. She was so tired of everything that happened. Connie, working among the mud and turnips of the sheep-fold at Thraile, was immensely to be envied. How like her to win her domestic battles, when Muriel always lost hers! Since Connie had gone, Muriel was more securely tied to Miller's Rise than ever.
Against the other radiators, and by the two curtained doorways, the other girl programme-sellers talked, as they waited, to officers from the Wearminster camp. It was the same everywhere. At the Pictures, on motor-cycles, at the garrison sports, here at the concert; everywhere life was regulated upon the partner system. Since their visit to Scarborough, Mrs. Hammond had taken fewer pains to provide Muriel with a man to save her face, because she too was expecting Godfrey Neale to write. She did not know what had happened in the hall at 199 The Esplanade. She did not know that Muriel had made herself cheap and then just let him go.
A scattered fusillade of clapping followed the stately exodus of Mrs. Purdon from the platform. One far more vigorous heralded the entrance of Queenie Saunders, a florist's daughter from Kingsport. Queenie was an L.R.A.M. and really she played the piano quite well, thought Muriel. Also her silk-clad ankles below her short skirt were pronounced fetching by Captain Galtry.
"Fetching. I should call her very fetching," he remarked to Mrs. Waring with the air of a connoisseur.
"Fetching?" echoed that lady archly. "What does she fetch?"
Muriel turned away. That precisely was what she wanted to know more than anything else in the world. She lost the end of the concert in a bitter reverie.
Mrs. Neale stood beside her.
"Ah, good evening, Muriel."
"Good evening."
They made way for the crowd brushing past, and Muriel was conscious then that Mrs. Neale approved of her.
"It's a long time since I saw you."
"Yes." She would speak naturally. "The last time was when Godfrey brought me over to tea, when we met out walking."
"Yes." Mrs. Neale now was silent.
Muriel thought, "I believe that she would have been glad if he had wanted to marry me." She felt grateful to Godfrey's mother.
"Have you had any news of Godfrey lately?" she asked, feeling that it was perhaps the bravest thing that she had ever done.
"Yes. I suppose that you would call it news."
Muriel knew then what was coming. She knew too that she herself must say it.
"Is he engaged to Clare yet?"
Mrs. Neale turned upon her. "You knew?"
"Clare was my friend," said Muriel.
"She wrote to you?"
Muriel shook her head.
"I have not heard from her since she wrote to tell me of her engagement to Signor Alvarados."
"Then how did you know? Godfrey wrote?" Mrs. Neale's dark eyes flashed an accusation at her, as though she said, "You little fool, why couldn't you hold him? You had your chance, and you would have been inoffensive. If he had married you, he would still have been mine. You could never have stolen him from me, and now he has gone. You little fool."
"I knew that he was in love with her. I knew that she had returned to England. He loved her from the time that he first met her. And he has been accustomed to get what he wants."
"That was a boy and girl affair. And, then, she's so unsuitable. A girl like that would never settle down to the country. She'll paint the drawing-room yellow with black stripes and fill the house with Italian tenors and try to be Bohemian. Godfrey would hate it."
"Godfrey wanted to marry her. She—she'll find him a change from the men whom she has met lately." The thought came to her, "Who is Godfrey, that here we all are with our lives centred in his?" She thought of him as she knew him to be, a little stupid, kindly and sure of himself. Only in loving Clare had he ever been brushed by the wings of divinity, and Clare was the one person whom he could encounter who valued her own personality before she thought of his. "When it comes to it, Clare will be more selfish than Godfrey," she thought, and yet knew that for his sake she was glad that they had met again. For herself, she only knew that life had conquered her. She could not look into Mrs. Neale's sad, ugly face.
"I'm sorry," she said, shuffling her foot along the floor. "Men do as they like. That's where they're different. We just wait to see what they will do. It's not our fault. Things happen to us, or they don't. We stretch out our hands and grasp nothing."
Godfrey's mother turned on her again.
"Stuff and nonsense. A clever woman can do as she likes. I was eight years older than Godfrey's father, and I have never been a beauty, but I married him and I bore him a son, and I've kept Godfrey's confidence till now. I let him do as he pleases, because I want my son to be his own master. I did as I pleased when I was young. He must face his fences and take his tosses himself. He's been his own master since his father was killed, but he is that because I please that he shall be."
"Some people never do as they please. They are bound by a sort of burden that they call duty."
"Duty? I've no patience with this pother about duty. I suppose that some people would say that it's my duty to keep Godfrey from making a fool of himself now. I shan't. Life's too short. I've no patience with this talk about souls."
Nobody, reflected Muriel, had been talking about souls, but Mrs. Neale was like that, frequently breaking through the barrier of speech and alluding to the hidden thought that lay beyond. That was why Marshington privately thought her a little mad.
"My Sealyham bitch pupped in the drawing-room on Tuesday afternoon. I've lost my parlourmaid in consequence."
"Really? Oh, aren't maids impossible these days?" broke in the soft voice of Mrs. Hammond. She had drifted gently up to Mrs. Neale, after having just given Mrs. Waring to understand that the present mistress of the Weare Grange was talking to her successor.
Her mother would have to know about Godfrey, thought Muriel. This was going to be the part that hurt her most of all. She remembered the incident of Connie and Dr. McKissack. Better use the same treatment here, and have it over quickly.
"Mother," she said brightly, "have you heard Mrs. Neale's splendid news? Godfrey's engaged to Clare, Clare Alvarados, Clare Duquesne, you know. They met again in London."
Only for the flicker of an eyelid, did Mrs. Hammond hesitate.
"Really?" she said. "How splendid, dear! I am glad, Mrs. Neale; such a nice, bright girl. Do you know, I always had a feeling that something like that might happen there. I've always had a warm place in my heart for Clare."
She did it so well that Muriel herself hardly knew how much was true. Perhaps more than she thought, for her mother had already seen a way to transform her defeat to victory. As Muriel bent over the treasurer's table five minutes later, counting the money from the programmes, she heard her mother say to Mrs. Marshall Gurney:
"Yes, you know, she was Muriel's great friend. We are so delighted. Right from the first. . . . I take quite a credit to myself for the match . . . Lord Powell's niece, you know, so suitable. And so nice for Muriel if she comes to live at the Weare Grange."
"The strain of this terrible time," remarked Mrs. Hammond, "is almost too much. We must have a little recreation sometimes to take our mind off—all the horrors." Her small hand fluttered vaguely, brushing aside the horrors like a swarm of flies.
On the table before her the cards made bright little flower-beds on a green baize lawn. She touched their shining smoothness delicately, reassuring herself that her room was all right, and her guests, and the tall vases filled with daffodils and expensive branches of white lilac. Empires might crash and gay youth march to dark destruction, but the ace of trumps was still the ace of trumps, and Mrs. Hammond had taken her place in Marshington.
"Hearts," announced Mrs. Parker. "Connie home on leave, I see."
"Two diamonds. Yes. She's home for ten days. So nice to have her back," murmured Mrs. Hammond, hoping that Mrs. Parker had not seen the vision of Connie in her breeches. "The girls have gone to Kingsport to the Pictures."
"She looks well."
"Yes. The country life suits her splendidly. She always was fond of animals and things. Oh, what anastyhand you have given me, Mrs. Cartwright! I'd never have let you be dummy if I'd known. Of course the work is hard, but so many girls are working so hard now. The Setons of Edenthorpe, both Gladys and Hilda, you know, are helping on the stud farm at Darlidd."
The Setons, thought Mrs. Hammond, gave a flavour of respectability to Connie's doubtful profession. Again, since Connie had gone, she had been forced to build a victory on the foundations of defeat. It was lonely, tiring work, though the bright room helped a little, and the flowering chintzes, and the sight of Mrs. Parker's sensible face across the table. But all the time, at the back of her mind, a memory haunted her of Mrs. Neale's gaunt face, and of Muriel saying, "Have you heard the news?"
"So nice," she murmured above her cards, "to know that at last Connie has quite found her vocation."
She smiled gently, as she gathered up the odd trick with the gesture of innocent surprise that explained why Marshington never realized that Mrs. Hammond always won her games.
Mrs. Parker raised her bushy eyebrows.
"Vocation? Girls have no business with vocations. Their vocation is to get married, as I told Daisy when she wanted to study art. Art! Have you seen the great child lately?"
Mrs. Cartwright made the appropriate observations upon the charm of Mrs. Parker's grandchild, and then asked her hostess, "You mentioned the Seton girls just now. Wasn't it Gladys that Godfrey Neale used to flirt with so?"
"Gladys? Well, people talked of course, but we knew that there was nothing in it. All the time since he met her at our house when she was almost a schoolgirl he has been in love with Clare Duquesne. He and Muriel are such good friends, you know. He used to confide everything in her."
If only Muriel would give her a little help! The girl had been so secretive and queer lately. Mrs. Hammond knew that she used to adore her. But she had been so silly, always so cold and stand-offish even with Godfrey. She never gave him half a chance.
"No trumps," she declared vigorously, and settled down to enjoy a sporting hand.
But she was to be allowed no peace.
"Have you met Lady Grainger yet?" asked Mrs. Parker.
"Er—no, not yet. Dummy's lead, I think."
"Of course they are bound to be rather exclusive. People in their position. I naturally had to call, because my husband is to be her doctor. Lady Grainger is quite charming."
Mrs. Hammond rearranged her cards, stately queens, complacent kings, cherubic knaves. The hearts were chubby and gracious, but pointed too, like herself, the diamonds slim and elegant, like Mrs. Waring. If only people could be arranged as easily as cards! Here was a shy spade queen, and here the king of hearts, magnificently stiff and spectacular. Put them together, Muriel and Godfrey. Here was Connie, a jolly little diamond queen. One could couple her with this club knave, and so be spared from the menace of any failure there. And Arthur, he was this diamond king, blandly helpless, staring at her face upwards from the cloth. She could lead off with him, seeing that she held the ace in her own hand (she would always do that, she thought) and then gather him, safely, safely, into the pile of tricks before her. There need be no more nights of waiting, no heart-breaking humiliation when she held her head high before Marshington, knowing that Arthur down at the Kingsport Arms was making love to the fat barmaid. Of course he was drunk. He had once told her that no husband of hers would make love to another woman while in his sober senses. But since he had taken to playing billiards with that Ted Hobson, there were too many occasions upon which his sober senses forsook him. Ah, if only she could gather him safely in among the decent people. If only, for instance, a man like Colonel Grainger, horsy, genial, yet to be trusted, so they said, would take him up! Arthur responded so to his environment.
"I have done my best. I have done my best," she told herself. But she knew that there were new heights to scale. Besides, now, the stakes were doubled. She felt that Arthur's future depended upon her success with the Graingers. If the new Commandant at Kepplethorpe Camp opened the doors of his Mess to Arthur, then Mrs. Hammond might sleep at nights again. Besides, in spite of everything, she loved him.
She marked her score in firm old-fashioned figures, beautifully formed. It was from her that Muriel had inherited her pretty writing. Her jewelled fingers hovered above the tablet. She knew what she must do. As though she had hitherto been too much absorbed in the game to mention it, she said, "I haven't called on Lady Grainger yet, but Mrs. Neale has promised to take me up with her one day."
As she shuffled the cards, the rings on her white fingers twinkled above the green baize table, but though she drew satisfaction from her lovely, polished nails, she sighed a little.
Meanwhile Muriel and Connie sat luxuriously on the two-shilling red plush seats at the Palace Picture Theatre in Kingsport. Muriel had paid for the tickets and for the blue paper bag of chocolates on Connie's knee. This was to be Connie's evening out, because Thraile was a remote place, dull and far away from cinemas or railway stations. Even if you have found your vocation, reflected Muriel, it must be queer to live eight miles from a railway station.
That was a rhyme. Station, vocation. "Dear Connie has found her vocation, eight miles from a railway station." "Dear Muriel has found her vocation in no particular occupation." So nice, you know. That was the kind of thing that Mrs. Hammond was always saying.
Well, perhaps it was true, regarding Connie at any rate. Somehow the calves and sheep-folds described in her uncommunicative letters had smoothed the lines of discontent from her full lips, had deepened the glow of her rich hair, and lit in her eyes a light of happiness. Connie talked so much that she never explained anything, but all day long her jolly laugh filled the house. When she was silent, Muriel could hear its echo. Yet it was difficult to believe, although Mrs. Hammond said that it was so, although her common sense told her that it must be so, that these changes were only due to sheep and calves.
The film which Connie had chosen to see was called, "The World Heart of Woman, a Story of Deep Human Interest, of the Triumph of the Mating Instinct. For Adults Only." According to the Cinema authorities there was only one thing in which adults took any interest. But Muriel found that this bored her rather terribly.
She turned from the triumph of the "Mating Instinct" on the screen to its manifestation among the audience. She could watch that little girl nestling cosily against the soldier's tunic just in front of her. She could watch the couple on her right, while they groped for each other's hands before the warm darkness shut them in together. She watched the couple on the screen, grimacing through a thousand flickering emotions, until they faded into each other's arms and out of the picture, to the long drawn wail of violins from the Ladies' Orchestra. Why did everything always conspire to mock and hurt her? To show her how she sat alone, shut out from the complete and happy world?
The man on the screen wore his hat like Godfrey's, a little to one side; but he lacked Godfrey's solemnly unconscious realization of his own importance. There was a moment during the picture when he stooped above the heroine and brushed with his lips her hair, her forehead, her upturned face. The heroine appeared to respond in the correct and satisfactory manner. Why could some women do these things, and others simply throw away their chances? Muriel hated this competent cinema heroine.
"I wish that they'd put on Charlie Chaplin, or some one really funny," she said crossly. "I'm so sick of all this sentiment."
She disliked the couple in front of her so much that she wanted to hurt them. Their smug, self-satisfied faces munched chocolates so stupidly. The girl lifted her lashes just as Clare lifted hers, heavily as though they were weighted.
"I adore Angela Tharrap, don't you?" mumbled Connie, her mouth full of chocolate cream. "I saw her once at the camp cinema at Hurlescar. They get some jolly good films there. This was called 'Midnight Passion,' and was simply great."
"I thought that she was much too fat for the part and was rather vulgar," said Muriel.
"Oh, Mu, she's ripping. And the fellows at Hurlescar all go crazy over her. Have another choc? You're so terrified of anything with a bit of go in it. You ought to let yourself go a bit more. Be jollier. I wish that you could meet Poppy Saddler, one of the girls at Thraile. Now sheisa sharp little customer, vulgar as you make 'em, but clever. By Jove, she can beat Violet Lorraine on her own ground any day. We have some ripping sing-songs after work."
Muriel did not reflect that the life at Thraile sounded less desolate than they had all imagined. She was thinking, "Let myself go?" and feeling again the gloom of the passage closing round her, and the numbness of her will as she lay in Godfrey's arms, and the shock as her mother's voice dropped into the emptiness of her mind. She had broken away because she always had run when her mother called; but Godfrey would never understand.
The thought that she too had known romance came to her from the scented darkness of the cinema. For the first time she felt pride in the episode at Scarborough. She began to hug the thought that, if they all knew what had happened to her then, they would feel greater interest in her. "I am like Mariana in the Moated Grange. I am like Elaine the Lily Maid of Astolot. I loved him, and he left me. He would have loved me if Clare had not come." She told herself that Clare had wooed him away; Clare,La Belle Dame sans Merci, the enchantress who had cast a spell upon his heart long, long ago, so that when she called him he must go to her, though it were half across the world. And he had followed, lured by her strange wild beauty, and she would lead him through perils and dark places, hungry and thirsty for her presence. But now and then in the hot evenings, he would remember a grey northern town, and the crashing tumult of those nightmare guns, and the face of a girl who smiled at him below the lifting fog. Surely he would remember her as a cool, gracious presence. Perhaps, even, long afterwards, when Clare had wearied of him and left him sad and old and disillusioned, he would return to where Muriel awaited him, faithful and tender still across the years.
The Ladies' Orchestra played slowly, the long notes dropping one after the other into the close atmosphere.
"The winter has gone and the spring is here,The spring is here."
"The winter has gone and the spring is here,The spring is here."
"The winter has gone and the spring is here,
The spring is here."
They played Solveig's song, and Muriel followed to herself the wistful words, building a charmingly sentimental dream out of her relationship to Godfrey.
When the Pictures were over, she walked with Connie to the station.
"Jolly good?" said Connie.
"Not bad at all. I liked the funny one at the end," replied Muriel, still in her softened mood.
But they missed the 9.45 train, and had to wait for the 10.20, and Muriel, as she walked up and down the platform, began to remember that all this was nonsense, that Godfrey Neale had never thought about her any more than he thought of Phyllis Marshall Gurney or Gladys Seton, that every man kissed a girl these days before he went off to the front, and that she really had not even loved him, and never would be loved, and that the world was a grey place where nothing ever happened.
The station seemed to be perfectly enormous and nearly empty, except for some porters playing about with milk cans that they clashed together like giant cymbals. The London train slid silently along the platform, its doors falling open and the passengers tumbling untidily out on to the platform.
"Why," said Connie, "isn't that Delia?"
Turning, Muriel found her hurrying along the platform, a suit-case in her hand.
"Good evening, is the 10.20 still running? Good. I did not want to spend a night in the hotel. Hullo, Connie. You having a holiday? How goes the land work?" As usual, Delia went straight to her point.
"Great, thanks; I'm chief shepherd, head cook and bottle washer to the pet lambs." Incredible good humour! Muriel, accustomed to Connie's sulky antagonism to the vicar's daughter watched them with amazement. Connie continued, "And how are you getting on? Got leave?"
"Yes, ten days. I've come home to be married." Delia's fine lips twisted comically. "A fearful indiscretion, but Martin bought a special licence, and Father insisted on doing the thing himself. We had not intended to ask the blessing of the Church upon the union of two sceptics, but it appears that Father hardly thinks a registry office legal."
The solemn round face of the illuminated clock stared down at them. Muriel expected Connie to say something nasty, but she disappointed her. With a shock, Muriel realized that she was disappointed, that she would have taken satisfaction in her sister's sarcasms, though she herself felt incapable of showing the unaccountable resentment that she felt against Delia's drooping slenderness, and the ironic delicacy of her pale face.
"'The Triumph of the Mating Instinct,'" whispered a horrid little voice in Muriel's mind. "She's just like all of them, fearfully proud of herself."
Connie merely said:
"Oh, how exciting. Which day? When are you expecting Mr. Elliott? Shall we be allowed to the wedding? What are you going to wear?"
It was all very curious, and not a bit like Connie.
As they jolted back to Marshington in the hot, stuffy train, Muriel looked at Connie and Delia sitting opposite her, side by side. And on Delia's thin brown face, and on Connie's plump jolly one, brooded the same expression of serene expectancy.
It was very curious indeed.
Muriel could not forget that expression upon Delia's face. It haunted her throughout a restless, interminable night. It rose with her next morning and stared at her across the breakfast table. All the way down to the hospital she repeated, "Martin Elliott's coming home to-morrow to marry Delia." Somehow she felt that if it had been anybody else but Delia she would not have cared.
At the hospital she was cross and intolerable. She snubbed poor Rosie Harpur, who gushed to her about the beauty of Delia's face now that she was happy. When she stood behind the screen, dusting the mantelpiece in the hall outside the nurse's room, she heard their voices as they drank their eleven o'clock cup of tea.
"My dear, don't speak to Hammond unless you want your head snapped off."
"What's come over her these days? She used to be so meek and mild and now she's like a hedgehog—all claws where she isn't prickly." That was Nina Farrell, whom Muriel had liked.
"Sour grapes, I should think. Sick that her little friend, Delia, has got off at last, and they say that Connie's clicked with a young farmer up in the North Riding. Muriel's just getting to be a thorough-going cross old maid."
"Oh, no, she's not," protested Rosie Harpur, in her thick, rather foolish voice. "She's all right. She told me this morning that she does not want to get married, she doesn't approve of it or something. She's frightfully clever really, full of ideas and things."
Muriel flicked her duster above charts and inkpots, and then fled. She knew now what they thought of her, a thorough-going old maid, mean and spiteful. She saw herself with the eyes of those young girls beyond the door. She contrasted their gay, ruthless youth with her bitter maturity. She saw the ten wasted years that lay behind her, and her barren future. She saw herself, grown sour with disappointment, grudging to Delia her happiness, to Connie her liberty, fretting herself over tasks that others might have performed as well, and having to learn generosity from women whom she despised, like Rosie Harpur.
She did not go to the Nurses' Room for her tea. She loitered instead about the wards and passages. The hospital was as usual over-staffed, and there was little enough to do. She walked the mile and a half home, hating herself with a fierce and bitter hatred.
Yet where had she gone wrong? What had she done? All her life she had tried to do the right thing. It was not her fault that things had gone wrong. She had wanted to be clever, but had sacrificed her intellect to her mother's need. She had meant to be like Delia and had grown like Rosie Harpur, because her duty had lain at home. She could have made Godfrey propose to her, but her fatal diffidence betrayed her. She could not stir herself to effort for her own sake. She had let him go.
And Delia was to be married to-morrow.
She endured the evening, though at supper she was curt and silent, hardly speaking to Connie, who had returned in high spirits from playing tennis with the Masons. Deliberately she seemed to wound herself by her resentment, forcing her lips to ungraciousness and her eyes to cold distaste, because she was conscious of having behaved badly, yet felt too weary of spirit to make amends.
Later, when Connie settled down to play rag-time, she could bear it no longer. She took her hat and walked out by herself along the road to Wearminster. She did not care in which direction the road lay, so long as she could walk away from herself and her own wretchedness. Her feet were tired, and her back ached, but the more her physical weariness oppressed her, the more she forced herself to go forward.
A dull sea of mist covered the valley, and the road stretched before her into a grey twilight.
Martin Elliott was coming back to Marshington to-morrow. On Friday he would marry Delia. Nobody would ever want to marry Muriel, and Godfrey was engaged to Clare.
She thrust her head forward, and walked into the mist, blind with pain. She never saw Delia until she was right upon her. They stood on a slight rise of the ground, where the tattered foam of mist curled round the hedge, like waves of a soundless sea, then fell away into the low lying fields. Delia had been walking towards Marshington, and the two women met face to face.
Afterwards Muriel remembered that, clear beyond the haze, three bright stars shone above the sycamore tree. She looked at the stars, because she could not bear to see Delia's face.
"What has happened?" asked Muriel, with a small hushed gesture.
Delia's voice came out of the mist, flat and dead:
"Martin was killed yesterday. Knocked down by a motor-lorry in Amiens station. Just the sort of idiotic thing that he would let happen to him."
A light breeze crept up the valley and shook the branches of the sycamore tree. It lifted a lock of dark hair and blew it against Delia's eyes. Delia never stirred nor spoke. She and Muriel stood quite still, with the knowledge of this thing between them.
"If he had been killed in action," Muriel said at last.
"He had no business to go and die now," stormed Delia. "He hated the war. He hated its barbarous futility and cheap sentiment. He only wanted to finish his great book. There were a thousand things for him to do. He had a great desire to live."
"You must finish the things for him."
"Don't be a fool. It was his work. He wanted to do it. If he had been a cripple, he could have borne it. If he had been blinded, he would have triumphed over it. There was no handicap that he could not have conquered. But now, now, he has no chance to fight."
She struck her hands together, in her urgency of pain. Then abruptly she said, "Good night," and swung off down the road. Her tall, bare-headed figure was engulfed in the soft grey distance.
Muriel did not go on, and would not follow her. She sat down on a heap of broken flints beside the road, feeling as though a storm had swept past her, with the force of Delia's angry grief.
Her lips moved, "Poor Delia, poor Delia," but there was no pity in her heart. She thought of Martin Elliott as she had seen him that afternoon at the Vicarage. She remembered his words, "Only sorrow comes upon us with a sudden blow, but happiness is built from long years of small pleasant things. You can't put that into a short story."
Where was Delia going, raging with her grief and anger through the mist? What should she do? She would walk away into the night with her sorrow, but she would return to face what life might bring her. And she would find that there were still amusing and exciting things, interesting friends, companionable talk, a little fame perhaps, and the consciousness of good work done. She would not forget, but her busy mind would have no time to linger with grief, and when she remembered it would not be with bitterness. She would still keep her love letters to read over, and her fresh unspoilt memories of happy hours. She had been lifted above envy or reproach. Sorrow such as hers would give her pride to bear it, and everybody would honour her dignity of loss. The dead, reflected Muriel, at least are always loyal.
"But I—but I," she moaned, "have been cheated even of my memories. There is no past hour on which I can think with pride. Delia thinks herself sad because she was once loved. But I would give all that I possess to share her tears if I could have her memories. I—I am hungry for her pain."
Then like a storm her tears swept down upon her.
The spring passed; the summer came, and in September Mrs. Hammond gave her dinner-party. It was no formal party, and therein lay the proof of that lady's genius.
The Graingers had been satiated with Marshington hospitality. Their simple souls had quailed before champagne suppers with the Marshall Gurneys, and exclusive little dinners with Mrs. Waring. But these Hammonds seemed to be natural, homely people. Where other ladies talked of the County and politics and the vulgarity of their neighbours, Mrs. Hammond gossiped gently about servants and the price of butter. She seemed generous too, and spoke kindly of the queer, absent-minded vicar, attributing much of his parochial deficiencies to the shock of that terrible tragedy in the spring when his would-be son-in-law was killed. The old man had cared so much more than his daughter. So Lady Grainger came to think of Mrs. Hammond as a nice woman.
Meanwhile, Miller's Rise had been thrown open to the young officers of the camp. Sunday after Sunday they came to play on the tennis-courts, to strum rag-time on the drawing-room piano, and to consume quantities of cigarettes. Two pleasant but foreseen results rewarded Mrs. Hammond. The first was that Mr. Hammond became interested in the young men, and liked to talk aeroplanes with Bobby Collins, and machine guns with Captain Lowcroft, and horses with young Staines. The boys found him to be a jolly good sort, and missed him when he was not there. All of which was excellent for him.
Secondly, the fame of Miller's Rise reached the ears of Colonel and Lady Grainger, and since they took a real interest in their subalterns, and since the tone of Marshington society had distressed them, they became immensely grateful to the Hammonds. So it happened that one evening in September Colonel Grainger met Mrs. Hammond at Kingsport Station, and stopped to thank her for her kindness to the boys.
"I wish that Maude and I were young enough to be included in your invitation," he added wistfully.
"Well, if you promise not to spoil their fun, as a great favour, I'll give you a pass!" laughed Mrs. Hammond. "As a great favour."
The only thing that spoiled it was that Mrs. Marshall Gurney could not hear.
On this Thursday evening, the colonel and his wife had joined the party. Till now, it had been uproariously successful. The colonel sat pulling at his moustache and smiling quietly, and Lady Grainger's kind little round face beamed all over with pleasure, and Mr. Hammond was on his very best behaviour. He had told her only his most presentable stories, and treated her with the exaggerated gallantry that he sometimes thought fit to show to his wife's friends, and which Lady Grainger found to be "so quaint and old-fashioned and nice."
As for the boys, they needed no entertainment. They were eating dessert now, and Bobby Collins with an intent, serious face, bent over the orange skin that he was carving.
"What is it, Mr. Collins?" asked Muriel. She rather liked these boys, who treated her like a pleasant kind of aunt, and whom even Mrs. Hammond never regarded in the light of anything more intimate than a stepping-stone to the Graingers.
"Pig," replied Bobby comprehensively.
"I beg your pardon?" Young Smithson raised his head from Muriel's other side. "Kindly repeat that word."
"Pig," repeated Bobby obligingly, and continued to play with his knife.
"Do I understand," shouted Smithson in mock wrath, "that this epithet is intended as an insult to that charming lady?"
"Understand what you like. Aha! I've done it," cried Bobby in triumph.
Smithson rose with dignity and bowed to his hostess. "Pardon me, Mrs. Hammond," he declared with dignity. "But words have just now been said in this room which no gentleman could pass. An insult has been offered to your charming daughter. Ahem! Mr. Collins, in the name of Miss Hammond, I demand satisfaction."
The table was in an uproar. Muriel, blushing but amused, looked along a line of laughing faces to her mother.
"A duel, a duel!" shouted Captain Lowcroft. "Pistols for two and coffee for one on the Hangman's Heath in the morning."
Bobby Collins, very round and solemn, arose and faced Smithson across Muriel's dark head.
"A plague upon your mornings, sir. I will fight now, with oranges, upon the lawn. And it shall be to the death."
"Outside with you then, for goodness' sake," cried Mrs. Hammond. "Remember my china!"
They trooped outside together.
The September night was warm and still. A great harvest moon hung low above the elm trees. The windows, carefully curtained by order of the government, left the house mute and dark, but white moonlight lay along the level lawn, and moonlight touched the laughing, running figures.
There was madness in the air. Even Muriel, as she stood on the steps with Lady Grainger and her mother, felt the excitement, and laughed with them. She watched the figures on the lawn, moving out of the black shadows of the elm trees into the white field of moonlight. She watched young Staines and Captain Lowcroft separate the antagonists, measure sedately the paces between them, and supply them with their ammunition. Quick words of command rang out. A handkerchief fluttered down, silver-white in the moonlight. The fruit flew, the oranges glittering like golden metal.
"Your oranges," murmured Lady Grainger. "They are very naughty boys."
"Not at all," sighed Mrs. Hammond. "This is so good for them, a little innocent fooling. The oranges will be all the sweeter." She waved a pathetic little hand. "You see, I had no son to give."
"You have at least a very nice daughter."
"Two. My baby, Connie, is working on the land."
There came a burst of shouting from the combatants on the lawn.
"A hit! A hit! A palpable hit. (Whatever that means. I seem to have heard it somewhere.) Miss Hammond, your insulter is wounded."
With a groan Bobby Collins flung himself upon the lawn.
"Come and render first aid."
Muriel ran down.
Always afterwards she remembered kneeling there with her delicate dress carefully tucked up, binding a silk scarf round an imaginary wound in Bobby's shoulder. She remembered the sticky feeling of his tunic where an over-ripe orange had burst, and the sound of mad-cap laughter and those gay young voices. Then something made her look up, and beyond the drive, in the shadow of the elm trees, she saw a figure moving. Somebody was walking slowly and furtively, stealing from the darkness of one tree to another, a figure bowed and drooping, as though in pain or weariness. Almost it seemed to be familiar. Muriel thought of Delia, who had walked off through the mists four months ago; but it was not tall enough for Delia.
"It'll be somebody coming to see one of the maids," she told herself, and rose to her feet, for Bobby Collins was being lifted from the ground by three of his friends, and the procession moved towards the house.
Mrs. Hammond opened the front door to receive them. A flood of golden light poured out on to the steps, the drive, the disordered returning figures. Colonel Grainger bore a dish piled high with yellow oranges. Bobby was carried shoulder high by the laughing boys.
"The children. The absurd children," laughed Mrs. Hammond. "Come in. The Zeppelins will catch us if we leave our lights showing, and Arthur is a special constable."
As she watched the colonel tossing oranges to her husband, her face was happier than Muriel had known it for many years.
"Are they all in? Shut the door," said Mrs. Hammond.
Muriel turned to obey.
Out in the garden the watcher from the shadows had crossed the lawn. Somebody stood in the moonlight on the edge of the drive. The face was hidden, but again a curious familiarity in the attitude stopped the beating of Muriel's heart for a moment.
"I'm seeing things," she told herself. "That can't be Connie, for she's at Thraile. Somebody has come from the road to see whatever we were doing. We are being mad enough to bring anyone in."
She drew the heavy curtains across the hall door.
They flocked into the drawing-room for music, such music as had become part of the Miller's Rise programme. Mrs. Hammond and Lady Grainger sat in the big armchairs, and Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hammond looked as though they had smoked cigars together all their lives.
The boys grouped themselves around and on the piano at which Muriel sat, accompanying indefatigably.
"Prithee pretty maiden, will you marry me?" sang Bobby Collins, still bandaged and orange-smeared.
"Hey, but he's doleful, willow, willow, waly," shouted the chorus cheerfully.
Annie came into the drawing-room, her face stiff with importance, and crossed to Mrs. Hammond. Muriel saw her mother leave the room.
"The coffee's overboiled again," she thought, and yet for some reason, she felt stupidly uneasy. She could not put out of her head the thought of that watching figure on the lawn.
Mrs. Hammond did not return. The singers laid aside Gilbert and Sullivan, and took up the Globe Song Book.
"There is a tavern in the town, in the town,And there my true love sits him down, sits him down,And takes his cask of wine across his kneeAnd never, never thinks of me, thinks of me!"
"There is a tavern in the town, in the town,And there my true love sits him down, sits him down,And takes his cask of wine across his kneeAnd never, never thinks of me, thinks of me!"
"There is a tavern in the town, in the town,
And there my true love sits him down, sits him down,
And takes his cask of wine across his knee
And never, never thinks of me, thinks of me!"
"We want a drummer," declared Bobby.
"The gong. Where's the gong? Miss Hammond, may we get the gong? We can't live without a drum."
"Of course you can have it. Mr. Collins, go and fetch it from the hall."
Bobby went, leaving the door ajar. They watched for their drummer, Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hammond in high good humour, humming the refrain,