"Hobgoblin nor foul fiendShall daunt his spirit . . .There's no discouragementShall make him once relentIf he do but consentTo be a pilgrim."
"Hobgoblin nor foul fiendShall daunt his spirit . . .There's no discouragementShall make him once relentIf he do but consentTo be a pilgrim."
"Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
Shall daunt his spirit . . .
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
If he do but consent
To be a pilgrim."
The driver unfastened a gate and led the cart along a rough field road bordered on one side by a broken wall of piled grey stones. At the top of a steep incline another wall enclosed a narrow strip of mud, and tangled, stunted bushes known as the garden. Beyond it, facing westward across the moors, stood the High Farm. Stark bare to all winds that blew were its grey walls. Five narrow windows above and four below stared blankly at the winding road, like eyes without eyebrows. A few farm buildings huddled to the south and crept behind the shelter of the hill, but the house stood square to the wild wind and the wild sky and the waiting menace of the moor.
"Is—is this Thraile?" Muriel faltered.
Connie smiled at her, a queer light smile of pride, of fear, of challenge.
"Yes, this is Thraile all right. The High Farm—Muriel. Muriel—the High Farm. Now you are properly introduced. And very nice too, Idon'tthink!"
The wind caught her laugh and snatched it away, as it had caught the smoke of the ascending engine.
Mrs. Todd drew her pie from the oven and sniffed it appreciatively. Its billowing crust was slowly ripening to the rich gold of maturity. Its savoury smell satisfied her. She replaced it, shut the oven door with meticulous care and rose stiffly to her feet, her corsets creaking as she moved. She began to grumble aloud cheerfully:
"All I can say is—if Miss Muriel can't eat a bit of good pie like that, she can go without. Good meat houses there is, and bad 'uns there is, and no one can say that Meggie Todd's near wi' her lads, nor lasses neither, though I'm fair sick o' these Hammonds. What wi' Mr. Hammond trampin' round like a mad elephant an' Mrs. H. mewing round like a sick cat, you might ha' thought Ben had murdered their lass instead o' marrying her."
She clapped a dish of bacon on to the long table and whisked her oven cloth on to a nail beside the stove, for she did nothing without enormous vigour.
"A fat lot o' use it is, me havin' Connie front ways if she's not going to give a hand wi' t'work, but s'always gadding round after her fine relations. Ah suppose William 'ud tell me that the wife's kin are a scourge sent from God for t'original sin o' t'husband," and she tossed the head that had once been the pertest in Follerwick. But she was not William, nor did she really dislike Connie as much as her words implied; but she found in these monologues of indictment an outlet for the accumulated irritation of reproaches born without resentment. She contemplated the clean white cloth on the table, straightened a couple of dishes on the dresser, then flew towards the yard door and the coal-house, murmuring as a parting message to the kitchen, "I'm sure the Lord made relations-in-law to square up for them as can't get married."
She had, indeed, good reason to see in relations-in-law a doubtful blessing. As Meggie Megson, the bright-eyed daughter of a Follerwick publican, she had been wooed with greater enthusiasm than discretion by William Todd of Thraile. A hasty marriage ensured the legitimate birth of her eldest son, Matthew, but did not quiet the uneasy conscience of her lover. For a year of bitter recrimination alternating with reckless passion, he had lived with her as her husband, but before her second son, Benjamin was born, the Lord took vengeance upon the wickedness of William. A false step while manœuvring the thrashing-machine robbed the wild young Todd of his left leg, and so much injured his spine that he lay now always on a couch in the front parlour, contemplating the inexorable justice of God and the unending pageant of the sky from the west window. William Todd did not so much find religion as religion found him, the sunless, menacing religion of a tramping preacher, part Calvinist, part Wesleyan; a religion wherein strange anomalies of predestination strove with a Pauline emphasis upon justification by faith, without which, in spite of the admonition of St. James, works were dead. Meggie accepted her husband's religion as she had accepted his love. Finding herself regarded as an enticement sent from the devil, she listened with patience to the outpourings of St. James, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God . . . but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then the Lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin, and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death." But she endured with less tranquility the continual assurance that from her sons, Matthew and Benjamin, such sin and death should come. Since, however, things were as they were, she proceeded to her cooking, scrubbing, baking and nursing with undiminished vigour, comforted, perhaps, by the thought that if her husband despised her only less than he despised his children at least he could not do without her.
William's mother unfortunately also tended to regard her son's accident as something in the nature of divine retribution, not for compromising a publican's daughter, but for marrying her; and when it became known that Ben, the weakling, the awkward boy whom every one conspired to brand as "wanting," had got Connie, the land-girl, into trouble, then the fierce scene of personal remorse, impotent bitterness and denunciation had been visited, not so much upon Connie, as upon Mrs. Meggie, since she was clearly the root of all evil at the High Farm. Yet, after Connie had returned to the High Farm as Ben's wife, it was Mrs. Meggie who continued to make her new life bearable. To tell the truth, Mrs. Meggie was secretly glad that Ben had married under any circumstances. Between the grim couple of invalids in the front parlour and the boisterous conviviality of farm workers in the kitchen, she had been unconsciously numbed with loneliness, and the prospect of a daughter-in-law pleased her gregarious temperament. Then too, she was glad that Ben, whom his father and brother despised for lack of virility, should have been the first to marry after all.
As she bustled from the stone-paved yard this evening, and called up the long passage, her heart, though she hardly knew it, was softened to the thought of her Ben's little child.
"Polly, Alice, Gert, come on some of you. Give me a hand wi' t'table, now."
From the draughty darkness came a gust of song and laughter.
"Who, who, who, who, who were you with last night?'Twasn't your sister, 'twasn't your ma!Ah, ah, ah, ah, a—ah, ah! ah!"
"Who, who, who, who, who were you with last night?'Twasn't your sister, 'twasn't your ma!Ah, ah, ah, ah, a—ah, ah! ah!"
"Who, who, who, who, who were you with last night?
'Twasn't your sister, 'twasn't your ma!
Ah, ah, ah, ah, a—ah, ah! ah!"
The voices rose to a shrill crescendo, accompanied by the screeching gasps of Bob Wither's concertina, and the tramp of nailed boots on the floor.
Mrs. Todd opened the door of the back room, releasing a flood of lamplight and tumultuous clamour.
"Come on, you lazy good-for-nowts. Put down yon thing, for goodness' sake, Bob. Alice, where's Gert? Feeding pigs this time o' day? What, how often did I tell you that ye'll never make a farmer by gettin' up to feed stock ower' nights? Be off now, some on ye, to see if light cart's come yet. Hurry and get gone, then you'll get back."
They scattered under her genial despotism.
"I'll help, Ma. Where's forks?"
The kitchen rang to the clatter of pots, of tongues and the shouted refrain of their song, "Who were you with last night?"
Thus Muriel, who had clambered down stiffly from the dog-cart, and dragged her suit-case along the unlighted corridor, came suddenly upon a scene of firelit tumult and huge gaiety. Connie pushed open the kitchen door and marched in. The noise stopped. Every one looked at the new-comers.
"Well I never! If you're not here already and no one ever heard you! Connie, did Sam go to loose out for you? So this is Muriel? My, aren't you wet! You're not as big as your sister, are you? Take after your mother likely. Here, Mat, where are your manners? Dolly, Alice!"
"Pleased to meet you," said Dolly pertly.
Alice set a saucer cheese-cake on the table, nodded at Muriel, and took from her pocket a bundle of crochet that never left her. Some women take to crochet as others do to cigarettes. Alice, flicking at hers with unsteady fingers, was hiding herself from any possible embarrassment. Her thin face bent above her work.
"Where's Ben?" asked Connie abruptly.
"Didn't he come to help you down? There now! Well, he must be up in fold yard. You'd better go and get your wet things off. Go on. Take her up, Connie. Polly go and help carry Muriel's bag. Connie, get a dry pair o' stockings on for Heaven's sake. We can't have you catching cold, at all events." This with an uncontrollable wink at Muriel.
"When did Ben go out?" asked Connie stubbornly, ignoring her mother-in-law's injunctions.
"I don't know. When did he go, Mat?"
"Half an hour. He went to help Sam." Alice the land girl raised her face for a minute from her crochet to give her information, then thrust it down again. It was a thin, freckled face, with long fair lashes and a sharp up-tilted chin. Muriel found herself standing and facing Alice, while the rain dripped from her coat on to the white scoured floor.
"Go along with you now, messing up my floor!" cried Mrs. Todd, and shooed them vigorously from the kitchen.
"Well," remarked Connie, as they stood together at last in the large square room to which she had brought Muriel. "And what do you think of it all?"
Muriel looked round the bare walls, papered with a grotesquely botanical pattern and texts on strips of cardboard. The wind blew the texts backwards and forwards against the wall. It drove the lace window-curtains out into the room, and sent the carpet rippling in long waves across the floor. Through the window she could see nothing but a veil of twilight rain.
"How can I say what I think of it till I've seen some more?" she temporized, pulling off her wet coat and pushing the hair out of her eyes. "It's all frightfully different from what I expected. The front of the house is so grim, and yet, when you come to the back and see all those jolly people—— They seem to enjoy life, Connie. And then Mrs. Todd. She may be a bit of a Tartar, but I like her eyes. And then, there's Ben's father, and old Mrs. Todd, aren't there?"
Connie laughed bitterly, "Oh yes. There's my respected father-in-lawandold Mrs. Todd. I wonder if you'll likehereyes?"
"Why not? Oh, Connie, you ought to take your wet things off. Now, at once."
"I'm all right." Connie pulled off her oilskin and felt the sleeve of her woollen coat below. "I'm quite dry." But she sat down on the bed and began to unlace her boots.
"Why shouldn't I like old Mrs. Todd's eyes?" persisted Muriel.
"Oh, she gets on my nerves. She sits in her chair in that awful little room and looks and looks and looks. She looks right through you, Muriel. She sees just everything. All the things you ever thought or did or—anything.
"They say she's got the 'sight'—you know, second sight. I think she's just uncanny. And she's so frightfully old, you know. Not like a person at all—like a tree, all twisted. And then she's always nibbling things, little bits of biscuit and soft sweets and things. Like a mouse. And then her bright eyes. Ugh!"
"But then, do you see her much?"
"No, thanks! I keep out of her way. But she sees me. She never misses anything. Oh, dear me, no! and she knows all about—all about Ben and me. It's awful, Mu. Sometimes I think I'll have to kill her or run away or something."
"How do you mean? She knows all about Ben and you? Every one here does, don't they?" said Muriel slowly. She had understood from Mr. and Mrs. Hammond that the Todds had accepted Connie's position as regrettable but without alternative.
"Oh, yes, in a way they know. The girls don't exactly, but they suspect. Mu, it's awful. We used to have such jolly times, singing in the back room and going off to concerts at Follerwick camp, and all that. Now it's awful. I'm out of it all. They hardly talk to me, and we all used to laugh at Ben, and they don't know what to make of it. And old Mrs. Todd hates me, and the old man's mad. He's got religious mania or something and he's quite potty. Mrs. Meggie's all right, but nobody cares much what she says except Ben, and he's still more scared of his father." Connie's bootlaces dropped from her hands and she sat forward, huddled on the edge of the bed, staring at her sister.
"I don't see that they have any right to hate you," cried Muriel hotly. "After all—it was their precious son—who——"
Connie's blue, miserable eyes darted a quick glance at her sister's face, then dropped again to her boots.
"Oh, yes, I know, but you could hardly expect them to remember that."
She kicked off her boots and sat with her feet in their black woollen stockings swinging from the bed.
"Every one hates me," she said miserably. "Mr. Todd thinks I'm a judgment from hell fire or something, because he was a bit wild when he was young. And Alice—well, to tell the truth, I think that Alice was in love with Ben and she'll get her knife into me whenever she can. She's as jealous as anything. And Mrs. Todd's a bit queer because she's so fond of Ben and is afraid I shan't make him happy. She knows I'm going to get him away from this place too as soon as the war's over and we can get a farm. Oh, it's no picnic I can tell you."
Muriel was apparently engaged upon fastening the front of her velveteen dress. Really she was thinking about Connie. "I mustn't be sentimental. Connie evidently pities herself quite enough. She's not really displeased because Alice is jealous. And Mrs. Todd is kind, I'm sure. Mother said I hadn't to let her harrow my feelings. Connie always did make the most of her own sufferings." She fastened a press hook below the brown fur edging of her dress and asked quite casually:
"But Ben, of course he stands up for you?"
"Oh, Ben would be all right. But he's frightened of his father, and Alice worries him, and it's rotten living on here in this house. You never get away from them all for a minute, and tea's the worst. They all sit there round that big table and they eat and eat. And I've got to sit there and feel that they're looking at me and thinking things, an' nudging each other if I've got a headache. And then they all go giggling and carrying on in the back room and I've got to sit about with Mrs. Meggie. And I can't go into the farm because it's such hard work, and it's such beastly weather. And you never see anyone. Oh, I'm so bored and bored and bored!"
"It'll be better when the baby's come. You'll have lots to do then."
"I don't know. Sometimes I just get scared. I wish I was going home to have it. It's awful here. Ben gets fed up with me because I'm not so jolly as I used to be. He doesn't say anything, but I know. Why didn't he come and meet us to-night, I'd like to know? Oh, they just treat me here as if I was dirt. They think it's an honour for me to have married into their beastly family. The Todds! who live in the kitchen, and Mrs. Meggie was a barmaid, and—well, look at this room! You see what they're like."
"I don't. I haven't seen them all yet. I haven't even seen Mr. Todd."
"Oh, he's mad. He's gone quite potty. He reads the Bible all day and talks like a lunatic. Ben says he's not so frightfully poor really. They've done badly since his accident and all that, but he's got a lot of land. There's a little farm over at Fallowdale that's let out to tenants. If he'd let Ben and me go there——"
She leant forward, biting her nails, a singularly unattractive figure in her sagging skirt and the old crimson jersey that she had worn at Marshington. Muriel deliberately went to her case and drew out a clean handkerchief from her lavender-scented satchel. Part of her mind was conscious of a satisfactory contrast between her own trim orderliness and Connie's abandoned self-commiseration. Part of her thoughts were dazed with a sad wonder. Was this the ennobling power of suffering and tragedy, this nauseating muddle of petty resentment and self-pity? Wasn't it really rather a waste of time and energy to try to help people as impossible as Connie?
She stood with her face towards the window, a pucker of thought between her brows.
Suddenly from the bed came a little cry. "Oh, Mu, Mu! I am so awfully glad you've come. I know you'll help me. You will help me, won't you? I've been so beastly miserable!"
Muriel capitulated.
Her position in this household might be most unpleasant, and Connie might not be an easy person, but at least she had appealed to Muriel. Somebody wanted her. Somebody needed her.
She returned to the bed and opened her arms wide. Tear-stained but comforted, Connie tumbled in. They sat there until Mrs. Todd called up the stairs:
"Come along, girls. Tea's ready."
"Oh, Connie," cried Muriel, "and I've never let you tidy!"
"Oh, Lord, and there's such a song and dance if we're late. For goodness' sake go down and say I'm coming."
Go down? All alone! into that formidable crowd of quite strange people? Muriel hesitated. Then the courage of her new resolve returned to her.
"Oh, well, I suppose I shall have to do harder things than this if I'm really going to help Connie," she reflected.
With her head high and her eyes shining she felt her way down the uneven stairs.
The battle of Thraile had begun.
It was not going to be easy, but then Muriel was not quite sure that she wanted ease. She found herself at last comforted by a situation that demanded from her action, prompt action. That was what she found so terribly difficult, the action on her own initiative. Thraile was alarmingly different from Marshington, where nearly all judgments could be obtained ready-made from social conventions or from Mrs. Hammond. At Thraile nobody seemed to care what she did except Connie, and Connie as a councillor was worse than useless, for between moods of sullen silence, boisterous humour and hysterical despair she had lost even her very moderate supply of common sense.
For a fortnight Muriel stayed on at Thraile, watching and talking and thinking, thinking, thinking. She had tramped over the dark moor before the house; she had wandered down the farm that fell away behind it, acre after acre of drab stubble and harsh grass land, to the swirling waters of the Fallow. But whether she trod the sheep-tracks girdled with frost, or sat in the stuffy parlour listening to the endless tale of Connie's woe, the same conviction urged her.
She would have to speak to William Todd.
Last night she had written to her mother:
You see, the position here for Connie really is intolerable. Mr. Todd, the cripple, really rules this house. He loves Matthew; but because he considers him to have been "born in sin" he doesn't think it right to love him, and makes up for it by hating Ben, who has always been rather weak and sickly. Or else he just pretends to hate him, and really loves them both. I cannot say, for he is a queer man. Every one is terrified of him, though the girls think that he's quite mad. Anyway the point is that Ben and Connie are unhappy here and ought to get away. The farm girls suspect things and make jokes about Connie. Mr. Todd and Matthew both bully Ben. Ben and Connie are never alone together for a minute except at night. They are getting frightfully self-conscious and always under a sort of restraint which must be bad for them. Mr. Todd has a little farm at Fallowdale, quite a nice little house, which he was going to give to the first son that married. Now he says that Ben can't be trusted away from him at Thraile. I am sure that if Ben and Connie could get away together, they would be happy. Ben really seems to be very fond of her. I am going to speak to Mr. Todd myself, but, if he won't listen, I do wish that you or Father could do something. And couldn't we take Connie into a nursing home for when the baby comes? It's not that they are unkind to her here, and they make her as comfortable as they can, and she need do no housework unless she likes. It's only that they ought not to be here with all these people.
I am so sorry about your cold and father's indigestion, and I quite understand how busy you are about the luncheon party. I would come home and help you with it, but I really don't feel that I can leave here just yet, please, if you can do without me. If Mrs. Cartwright worries you about the Jumble Sale again, do tell her that Mr. Vaughan specially told me that we could not have the Parish Room until February 14th because of the Red Cross Exhibition. It is very nice of you to say you miss me, and you do understand why I'm staying on, don't you?
Please give my love to Father.
Your loving daughter,
Muriel.
P.S.—Can't you get Aunt Beatrice for the luncheon?
She simply could not help writing her letter. It was the nearest approach that she could make to asking for the advice that she so sorely needed. It brought her into touch with homely and familiar things before she plunged irrevocably into the deep waters of her own decision.
She had sat wrapped up in her thick grey cloth coat in the bare chilliness of her bedroom, reading and re-reading the neat, small handwriting that always looked as though it might be going to say something interesting and that never did. She felt about it as soldiers feel about letters written on the eve of an advance. From a strange place she stretched out her hands to grasp, perhaps for the last time, at the safety of the known world.
But she had not posted the letter. Re-read in the cold light of early morning criticism, she had decided that it promised more than her feeble courage might perform. A scrupulous mental honesty had made her recognize her weakness long ago. "I am going to speak to Mr. Todd," she wrote, but nobody should read the words till she had spoken.
All the same, the last letter from Mrs. Hammond, one of a resigned but plaintive series, had to be answered. That was just as well, for it set a limit at last to Muriel's procrastination. The postman came to Thraile at six o'clock, leaving the letters and taking away with him any written by the household. If Muriel could only end that awful interview before six, she still might post her letter to her mother.
On paper it had seemed so simple; but then on paper and to Mrs. Hammond it would have been impossible to do justice to the atmosphere of Thraile. Those were two terrible people, sitting in the small front parlour; the old lady mumbling and rustling from the arm-chair by the fire, whose bright unseeing eyes could yet see everything; the cripple lying stretched before the window, his fiery spirit slowly burning through his mutilated body, until it seemed that it must quite consume all that was mortal and regain the liberty it proudly craved.
It was all very well pretending that she did not mind. For nearly an hour that afternoon, Muriel had walked along the steep moor road with Connie, listening to the angry emphasis of her reiterated words. To comfort her, Muriel had said, "All right, I'll speak to him." She did not add that for nights now she had dreamed of the approaching interview, had seen herself standing in the bright stuffiness of that over-heated room, confronting the fierce relentlessness of those piercing eyes, feeling her own gentleness driven away in blind surrender out into the whirling darkness of the passage. And supposing that she made things worse? Supposing that he resented her interference? That he himself had been thinking of sending Ben to Fallowdale, but perversely changed his mind at Muriel's blundering suggestion?
Standing in the corridor she pressed her thin hands against her face. As though she could feel through the door the repulsion of his violence, she shrank against the wall. His fierce tongue probed her softness; his strength had outraged her submission; his independence, exaggerated almost to insanity, bruised and bewildered her well-tutored mind. "He's mad. He's mad," she thought. "Better not go at all than break down in the middle."
From inside the parlour the cuckoo-clock piped suddenly five hollow notes. "Five o'clock. If I mean to post that letter I must go in now—now."
She went forward and tapped at the door.
She had been in before several times with Mrs. Todd, but always had retreated as soon as courtesy made possible. Never before had she been in alone.
The room now seemed to float in liquid firelight. Upborne upon the flickering flood she could see here a jar of delicate gilt and ivory beneath a fiery glass bubble; there the corner of a polished picture-frame; a wool worked footstool, the basket of sewing that Mrs. Meggie had left on the table. Slowly the quivering movement steadied before her eyes, and from the dancing shadows the solid bulk of old Mrs. Todd's chair rose like an island, and there by the window she saw William Todd.
He lay as usual gazing out across the moor, his hawk-like profile outlined against the melting silver of the wintry sun that flowed between dark banks of hill and sky. All the Todds had sharp features and noses hooked almost to a deformity, but sickness had emaciated a naturally lean face, until William Todd was terrible enough to see.
Muriel closed the door very quietly, and went across to the couch in the window. Even when she stood beside him, he did not seem to see her, but lay as still as the furniture or the dark moor. The room was silent. Only the light flames rustled like the restless wings of a bird imprisoned in the hearth and the old woman nibbled and mumbled in her sleep. Far, far away from Marshington was this firelit parlour. Muriel spoke timidly.
"Please, Mr. Todd, can I speak to you a minute?"
"Evidently. You see that. Ah cannot get away."
A certain broadening of the vowels betrayed William Todd's county, but he spoke with a readiness unusual among the tongue-tied farmers of the Riding, and possessed a command of language won from long reading of the Bible, dog-eared theological tracts, and a surprising quantity of the more easily acquired English classics.
"I wanted to talk to you about Connie," Muriel continued. "You know that when—when she had—to—to——"
"To marry my son to save her own name from the disgrace that justly followed her own action. Well?"
This was not a promising beginning, but at least it seemed to Muriel, that, considering his own record, he was being a little unfair.
"Well," she said, more hotly than she had intended. "I don't see myself that it was such an awful thing to do. After all, many people don't even marry."
"Because the many have sinned, does that excuse the guilt of one? I think not."
This was dangerous ground. Muriel shifted her position. It was too late now for retreat. She spoke hastily.
"I didn't come to talk to you about whether Connie sinned or not. I don't pretend to judge such things. What I do feel is that somebody ought to tell you that living on here is being frightfully bad for them. They're never really alone together for a minute. Every one whom they see and every one where they go reminds them of what they once did. People laugh and sneer—and—oh, it's terrible. You can't see it of course, or you'd have known, I'm sure, how impossible it is."
"Please go on. This is no doubt very interesting."
"It isn't interesting, Mr. Todd, really. It's horrible. Oh, do let them go away. Please let them go. You've got a farm at Fallowdale, haven't you?"
No answer came to her from the shadows. Fearfully she continued:
"Well, why don't you let Ben farm it? Let them go off and live together, make a fresh start all on their own. I'm sure they could be happy. Connie loves farming, and they'd have the baby. Oh, I know you'd find they'd be far happier. Just those two, where they could forget what a bad start they'd made. It's cruel, it's just cruel to make that one mistake an ever-living shame to them because other people smile and sneer and insinuate, people who are probably every bit as bad but just more careful. How can they be happy like this?"
She stopped, amazed by her own temerity. Beyond the moor the last silver gleam of sunlight lay like an outstretched sword between the dark embrace of hill and sky. William Todd lay watching it for a long time before he moved. Then he said slowly:
"You seem to set great store by happiness."
She was surprised. Eagerly she tried to see his face through the growing shadows as she said:
"I do, I do. Surely it's the right of people to be happy!"
"Really? To think o' that now! Are you happy?"
"I?" Three months ago she had told herself that she was the most miserable of frustrated women, but to a stranger she would have laughed nervously and answered, "I'm all right." Somehow at Thraile and to this madman, one spoke the truth if possible. She answered thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. No, I don't think I'm happy. I've never really had any of the things I wanted most. I've never done anything I meant to do. I'm a failure, I suppose. Nobody needs me . . ."
"Well?" He cut short the flow of self-revelation, so alien to Muriel's usual habit. "And do you think that I am happy? or Meggie, my wife? or my mother there? Do you think that God Himself is happy? What then do you expect for your sister and my son, eh?"
She could answer this, but her speech came stumblingly.
"But if we see any way to make people happy. . . . They have a right to all possible happiness. Now if Ben and Connie could go to your farm at Fallowdale, they might forget—everything, and just be—happy."
"You think that they have a right now to be happy, having sinned. I tell you, young woman, that I too sinned when I was young, and walked wildly before the Lord after the lusts o' my own flesh. And I too thought to cover the wickedness o' my ways from the sight o' men by asking the Lord's blessing on a union made in hell. But the Lord is righteous and in Him is no shadow of turning. He laid upon me the blessing of this judgment. I had desired with the desire of the flesh for my own lusts, and with the desire of the world for my ambitions. The Lord took away from me the means of all fulfilment. He laid His hand upon me, and I lie here while others reap what I have sown. I lie here while my own sons bring forth the fruits of destruction. The Lord is just. He gave, and He hath taken away. Blessed be His name."
"I know you've suffered," she cried softly, "but, because you are unhappy, do you think that you have the right to make them suffer? After all, it's a tremendous responsibility to undertake the Lord's judgments without His wisdom. I thought that you were keeping Fallowdale from Ben because you couldn't afford to let him have a separate farm, or because you were afraid he couldn't manage it; but if it's just because you think he ought to suffer as you suffered. . . ."
"Did I speak o' suffering for myself? You seem to have a queer notion of the ways o' things. Do you think that I could make your sister happy if I wanted to, or Ben the godly man I would ha' had him be? From their own hearts and deeds comes their own misery."
"Yes, but really, Mr. Todd," persisted Muriel desperately. "Really and truly living here makes it all worse. It's estranging them."
"Their shame estranges them."
"It's making Connie bitter. She's getting to despise Ben because the girls laugh at him."
"That is part of their punishment."
"It's not. It's not. Why should they be punished? And why should you do it?" She drew a deep breath and felt as though all winter's storms passed over her as she said, "It's like a sort of pride to you. You think that because the Lord punished you in a special way you sinned some great, particular sin. I don't believe that it was a great sin and probably your accident was nothing but an accident, and you've been brooding and brooding until you think that you had a dispensation of providence specially made for you, so now you are going to make one for somebody else. I hate your religion or whatever you call it if it gives you the right to make other people miserable!" She broke off, suddenly appalled at her own arrogance. This was what people did if they spoke out of character. They always went too far. Oh, it was this queer, terrible place that made every one behave unlike themselves! If Connie had never come to Thraile, nothing would ever have happened, she was certain.
She stood in the dark room, waiting for him to destroy her.
She had to wait for a long time.
The clock ticked. The fire rustled. From the old woman's chair broke little snatching sounds of difficult breath. Her asthma was troubling her in her sleep.
At last Muriel heard the slow voice of William Todd. Again his gentleness amazed her.
"I rec'lect when I was a lad that I thought I knew pretty well everything worth knowing. My father went t'chapel and my mother went to church, and I'd have naught to do with either. So you hate my religion, eh? Now, I wonder if ye know at all what my religion is? Mebbe ye think ah've just got a kind o' spite against my son and your sister and ah justify it by the cloak of righteous disapproval, eh? That ah've just lain here fashing myself over my own soul and forgetting the right sense o' the great wisdom o' the children of this world. Is that it?"
She did not answer because she could not. She had said more than enough. Her mind was a dry husk, empty, blown before the wind of his strange spirit.
"Ye'd better sit down. Ah've had to listen to you say your piece. Now mebbe ye'll listen to me for a bit. You took it upon yourself to hate my religion. Ah misdoubt if you know what you're talking about." He paused, as though he sought a difficult word. "There is only one thing that matters, and that is the vision of the spirit. Men are poor things at best, but there's one power that dignifies them, and that's the sight o' something greater than this world. Folk nowadays are apt to call it truth or Science or whatnot. I call that glory God. We are born in sin and reared in wantonness, and there are those of us to whom no light is shown. We worship false gods most of our time. Our bodies and our pride and the opinion of our fellow men; but to the Elect there comes a day when they see, though through a glass darkly, the shadow o' that light."
"Well?" murmured Muriel.
"The Lord has said, 'Thou shalt have none other god but me,' but we can only worship what we know, and to all men the light is not vouchsafed, so that they worship false gods thinking them to be the true. Ah'm telling you, though ye'll forget it, and mebbe ye'll never understand, that the most precious gift to man is just this vision of his God. And once he has seen, then he must never rest. I remember when I was farmin' how always the moors were pressing on these lands. They never sleep, if we do. Ye may build your walls high, an' weed and dig, but slowly by night creep up the gorse an' heather, an' who's to say 'an enemy hath done this'? 'Tis the same wi' vision. Once ye have seen, there's never sittin' down and waiting for the Lord to come to you again. All foolishness an' rioting, all chambering an' wantonness comes in between a man and his own sight. Purity is a matter o' the spirit you may say, and what is a man's body that he be so mindful of it? In the body we live, and from the body we die, and a man can give his body mastery over his immortal soul; but the things o' the body come like wind and weather between a man and his clear spirit. For it is hard enough for any man to see the light, and harder yet to keep it burning clear. And if your light be darkness, then is man robbed of God. The last betrayal and the ultimate unworthiness is the defilement of the vision."
He paused, it seemed to be for a long time. Then he said: "I cannot let it be as though my son had never sinned. Wouldn't it be far easier for me to say, 'It doesn't matter. It was a little thing'? To say as you say, 'Well, he married her,' as if it made amends to God to hide your own wrong from the eyes o' men? I let him marry her, because it did no good to keep them from each other, and he would. But if my own son will use his own body as an instrument of pleasure, and thinks that as long as he gives his name to the child he does no ill, I'll not be still. If all this happiness you prate of were but the gratification o' their lusts ah'd say no more. But till he's shamed to his soul at what he's done, ah will not let him go."
"Oh, but he is ashamed!" she cried, striking her hands together with the force of her sudden sight. "They are ashamed, but of the wrong thing. They're ashamed not because they did wrong, but because they were found out. They must go away from this place to forget that. Please let them go. You'll see. Talk to Connie if you like. She does not understand you. Only let them go. If not——"
"Well?"
"I'll have—I'll have—I'll make my father come again and force them from you."
The man on the couch laughed at her. "Do ye think your father could do ought about it? While I mean Ben to stay here, here he'll stay. He married Connie because ah gave him leave. The boy's no man yet, and he's been living in sin. It must be as the Lord wills, I only wait upon His guidance."
His voice became suddenly flat with weariness.
"Go now and ask my wife to come to me."
She felt her way to the door and knew that she was defeated. She had done nothing, less than nothing. What could she do against the fires that consumed that fierce, relentless cripple? He puzzled her. He puzzled her. Her father had found him shrewd and grasping, well able to strike a good bargain. Her mother had found him strange but interesting, a self-educated man of unusual refinement for his environment. And she—surely he was sincere? Hefeltsincere. Yet, what was one to do for Connie?
She groped her way towards the kitchen door that thrust a bar of light across the blackness of the passage.
The postman leant against the table, a slab of saucer-custard in his hand, a mug of tea beside him. She remembered now her letter to her mother. What use was there to send it? They would never understand. She delivered her message to Mrs. Todd, and received in return a letter addressed to
"Miss Constance Hammond,
Miller's Rise,
Marshington,"
readdressed to The High Farm, Thraile. The envelope was crushed and dirty, and bore the foreign service stamp. She carried it to the room where Connie lay upon her bed, reading a novel.
"Letters?" she asked sleepily.
"One—forwarded from Marshington. That's all." Muriel retreated to her own room, sick and weary with defeat. She had done nothing, nothing. She had helped neither Connie nor herself. She felt that she hated William Todd.
Connie did not come downstairs at tea-time.
"She'll be tidying herself after lying down," said Muriel.
"She'll be crying over a letter from an old sweetheart," laughed Dolly.
Matthew winked at his brother. "There, Ben, lad, off ye go and see what's up wi' your wife. You'll have t'keep an eye on her letters now. Connie always was one for the lads. No followers!"
"Shame on you, Mat. Give over now," soothed Mrs. Meggie, pouring out the tea from a great brown pot. "You'll be bringing home a wife yourself one of these days, and then you'll laugh with the other side of your face. Well, Muriel, since you're the greatest stranger, bacon, cake or ham?"
Muriel gazed at the characteristic profusion. She was thinking of William Todd and the terrifying strangeness of the front parlour.
"Ham, please—a very little," she said.
"Muriel's lost her appetite because she hasn't had a letter too," jeered Dolly.
Alice said nothing. She lifted her heavy-lidded eyes to Ben's red face and sat watching him. Ben bent his head above his cup, drinking great gulps of tea.
"I found an old ewe on her back i' forty acre," he remarked to change the subject.
"Not one o' the cross-breds?" asked Mat with interest.
"Or was it our old friend Agatha?" interposed Gertie.
"Agatha? Who was Agatha?" asked Muriel. Her head ached and she wondered why Connie did not come downstairs, but she knew that tea-time at Thraile was a convivial meal and that "moping" was against the rules.
Dolly explained to her with avidity. "Last spring at Follerwick Camp an old bird called Agatha Anderson brought a concert affair down to give improving music to the fellows. You never saw such an old geezer! She had sort of woolly white curls round a long solemn face, just like a sheep. Well, one night Connie was coming back from Follerwick and right halfway across the moors she heard a sheep bleating, for all the world just like old Agatha. It had got strayed and hurt its leg, and was sort of huddled on a bank like the old platform. So she got up and brought it along with her and we called it Agatha."
"Brought it home? All by herself? Wasn't it heavy?" asked Muriel without interest. Surely Connie had had time now to do her hair. Wasn't she feeling well? Muriel knew how much she hated those Thraile meals. Perhaps at the last moment she had taken fright.
Polly was giggling. "By herself? I ask you? Our Con walk home from Follerwick by herself? Not 'arf! Ben, you were with her, weren't you, when she found Agatha?"
"No, I wasn't," said Ben stiffly.
"Oh, well then—it was one of the other fellows. Bill or Tubby or——"
"Wasn't it Eric Fennington?" asked Alice very quietly. She picked up her cup and drank, her light eyes never leaving Ben's flushed face.
Eric Fennington? To Muriel the name was not quite unfamiliar. "Who was Eric Fennington?" she asked, but without much interest, because she felt as though the powers of darkness were behind her locked away in the front parlour, and she was afraid.
"Eric Fennington," explained Dolly volubly, "was one of the lads all right. You bet he was! He was one of the officers at Follerwick Camp, two pips up, and a great flame of Connie's. I thought you'd know him. She said she met him at Kingsport, knew him well at home. My word, he was a knut! D'you remember when he hired a car and took us to the Movies at Scarshaven, Alice? And that time he put the alarm clock in the Major's box and it went off during the third act of 'Romance' with an awful row—just when that curate was beginning to carry on!"
"Old Eric's married, isn't he?" asked Matthew heavily.
"Married or engaged or something. It was you who saw that bit in the paper, wasn't it, Alice? Anyway he's in Mespot."
"Just as well, Ben, eh?" laughed Matthew. Ben rose, his mouth still full of pie. "Where you going, lad?"
"Up t'see why Connie don't come down," interposed Mrs. Meggie. "That's a good fellow."
Muriel watched him shamble from the room, an uncouth figure, part boy, part man. This overgrown weakling whom Connie had married, how had he done it? What had induced Connie to—to—Muriel wondered for the hundredth time how it had come about. Had she been sorry for him? Surely he cared for her. There was in his manner a hint of wistfulness, of manhood undeveloped. Had the craving for self-assertion forced him to madness, aping the passion of a man without a man's self-mastery? Connie had said that he had over-mastered her. It was difficult, watching him now retreat before his family's rough humour, to imagine him mastering anyone, even himself.
He did not return soon. Muriel sat through the long meal uneasily. What was happening upstairs? Had William Todd, as a result of her interview, sent for Connie, and was he convicting her again of sin? Poor Connie! Finally, when tea was cleared, Muriel climbed to Connie's room. The staircase was dark. Only a glimmer of starlight from the narrow window guided her. She paused outside her sister's door and called. No answer came. She opened the door. No light came from the room. She was about to go downstairs again, when the shadow by the bedside quivered suddenly. She stared into the darkness.
"Connie!" she said softly. "Connie, what are you doing there? Where's Ben?"
"Is that you, Muriel?" The voice made her start violently. "It's not Connie. It's me—Ben. Come in and shut t'door."
"Ben! What's the matter? Where's Connie?" A shrill little quiver of fear crept to her voice. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"
"Aw—come in and shut the door," he repeated. His voice terrified her. It was as though a dead man spoke. "Connie isn't here. She's gone."
"Gone? Gone where? I don't understand."
"She's gone to do herself in."
"Ben, what do you mean?" Oh, if only there was a light! The darkness pressed in suddenly upon her face and choked her.
"She's gone to do 'erself in. And I don't care. I wouldn't ha' stopped her anyway. She'd gone before I came upstairs. I expect she's gone down to the Fallow. She once said she would."
"Do you mean," said Muriel quietly, "that you think she's gone to—to kill herself? Oh, but what nonsense, Ben. Why should she? What nonsense! How dare you talk such wicked nonsense!" She stretched out her hand for the brass bed-post and stood there clinging to its solid comfort. "It's nonsense, nonsense. Connie—kill herself? Now—when I've just made things——"
"It's not nonsense," Ben said heavily. "I'll show you a letter."
"Letter? Letter? Did Connie write a—— Oh, for goodness' sake get a light and don't talk in riddles."
The bed creaked. Somewhere from the darkness moved a blacker darkness yet. She heard Ben's laboured breathing.
"Oh, be quick! Be quick!"
If they stood in the dark another minute she would scream.
Ben stumbled across the room. She heard him fumbling on the mantelpiece. Something fell against the fender with a light, splintering crash.
"I can't find matches," growled Ben.
"Oh, you idiot!" It was incredible that two people in such dire consternation should be tortured because they couldn't find the matches. It made her terribly angry, with a cold fury that she had not known before.
Ben was cursing softly in the darkness.
"I'll go and get some——" said Muriel.
She stumbled frantically along the passage. From the room shared by the land-girls came a flood of light, flowing out across the passage. Alice was sitting beside the lamp, darning a stocking.
Muriel looked at her with wonder. People were still darning stockings then? What a funny way Alice's hair grew back from her ears, with little silvery tufts along her neck. You could see them in the lamplight quite distinctly. What had she come for? Oh, the matches.
"Please, Alice, have you any matches?"
Alice looked up. "My! What a start you gave me! Matches? No. I had to borrow Mrs. Todd's! Why don't you get Connie's? She bags all my matches."
On then to her own room she must go. Hours, interminable hours stretched between her and the horrible nightmare of Ben's voice. Her own matches lay on the candlestick by her bed where she had left them. She lit the candle with shaking fingers, then ran again down the long corridor. The draught plucked at her candle flame; it fluttered ruddily within the pink screen of her hand.
She came back to Connie's room.
"Ben! Ben! Where are you?"
She set the candle down by the disordered bed. The little flame shook itself, quivered and then stood gallantly upright, showing the flower-decked walls, the coarse white counterpane, all heaped and crumpled, and Ben's white face—blank and passive, staring at her from beside the mantelpiece.
"Where's that letter?" asked Muriel.
As though in a trance he came forward and handed her a sheet of flimsy paper, pencil written. She glanced at it.
"This isn't from Connie! What do you mean? Where's Connie? What have you done with her?"
"Read yon," said Ben.
After one glance at his set face, she read:
Dear old girl,
There ain't no flies round Christmas time in Blighty, but there's jolly well nothing else in this old hole. It's as hot as—well any place we specially used to think of as being hot. I say, Kiddo, who's been having you on that I'm engaged? Your stately letter—written by the way some time in August—has been chasing me across the desert sands and under the deodar and all the rest of it until it knocked the portals of my heart (Good that? What?) about—well may be—two months ago. Who sprung that yarn on to you about Cissie Bradfield? It's old Ernest, my brother, she collared. They were married last July. I can't think how you made the mistake because Alice knows Cissie and knew all about it. If you'd asked her she could have told you. We have the same initials of course. Honest, Kiddo, I'm no hand at letter writing and time dashes by here, but you're barking up the wrong tree this time. You must know that you are the only girl in the world as far as I am concerned. Rumour hath it that in another two months we may get leave and then what about another room at Scarshaven Hotel and you "on a visit to your friends at Buxton," eh? I'm not the marrying sort you know, but sometimes I think that when this war's over, I'd like to settle down. How would the idea of being Mrs. E. F. seem to you, old girl? Not much in your line, what?
Anyway don't forget me,
Yours to a cinder,
Eric.
She read twice through this strange production, straining her eyes to decipher the crude, boyish writing. Then she looked at Ben. "I don't understand, what does it mean?" she said.
"Don't you? Don't you? Ay, but you do. You Hammonds, you're all alike, you, you——"
She gazed at him with open-eyed amazement. The boy whom she had thought of as a poor thing became instead a sneering raging fury. Completely beyond self-control, he turned upon her.
"You and your snivelling mother, coming down and weeping piety and her daughter's honour; and your bullying rip of a father, damn him! I bet you're all the same. You know jolly well what this all means. 'What about another room at the Scarshaven Hotel,' eh? And then she comes whining and sobbing to me and saying I must marry her because I've ruined her life! She and her honour. How do I know how many more Erics she's fooled on with? Blast her! Curse her!"
His weak face was distorted by rage. The candlelight danced on the red rims of his swollen eyes and on his trembling hand upraised as if he would strike Muriel.
She still sat on the edge of the bed, quite quietly. Her mind refused to register any thought but the name of her sister, Connie, Connie, repeated again and again without significance.
Ben dropped his hand. "She taunted me. She said I was no man. She pretended that she knew nowt o' this sort o' thing. She told me that she'd carried on with other fellows, just a bit, just playing like. And there was I, cursing myself because I'd done it. Calling myself a black sinner when I had no call to marry her, not even a farm o' my own yet, and all the time she was just laughing at me, fooling me. And I've been feeling myself under a heavy burden o' sin, with my guilt an' hers upon me, an' not daring to go round to chapel, and feeling the hand o' the Lord upraised against me. She led me on. She led me on. Let her drown now. Let her drown. I reckon she'll not swim long i' Fallow, and her burden o' guilt will weigh her down."
Muriel stared at him. "Ben. You've lost your head. It mayn't mean all that. She's your wife."
"She betrayed me. She betrayed me." He dropped his face into his hands and sat with quivering shoulders on the bed by Muriel's side. "She's shamed me. And I meant to prove myself a man." He began to sob, bitter grinding sobs that tore him with grief for his shamed manhood. "Ah never had a wife. Ah never had one. She fooled me. Ah've been fooled all my life. Ah've been fooled by God an' fooled by her. There's no faith left."
"Ben. Pull yourself together. You've got no right to accuse her till you know. When did she go? Are you sure she left the house? Which way would she take?"
He raised his haggard face and jeered at her. "Go an' find her. You're scared o' the dark, aren't you? Go an' find her corpse knocking about i' Fallow like an old sow drowned last Martinmas. Go on. Get out o' way." His voice rose to the shrill note of hysteria. "Get out o' here! This is my room. What are you doing in my room—you——"
He called her a name that she had never heard before. She turned to run, and saw him towering above her, fantastic in the candlelight. As she ran, she heard his voice behind her, calling, "Run, Muriel! Run! It's nice and cold in t'river."
The echo of his laughter drove her down the passage.
Outside the kitchen door she paused. The firelight, the call of cheerful voices beckoned her. From the back room came the shouted chorus of a song.