"If you were the only girl in the worldAnd I were the only boy."
"If you were the only girl in the worldAnd I were the only boy."
"If you were the only girl in the world
And I were the only boy."
The desire to tell some one, to find a sane and comforting adviser in this world gone mad, urged her almost irresistibly. She would go and tell Mrs. Todd. She would tell Mat. They would help her to look for Connie.
"Nothing else would matter in this world to-day,We would go on loving in the same old way."
"Nothing else would matter in this world to-day,We would go on loving in the same old way."
"Nothing else would matter in this world to-day,
We would go on loving in the same old way."
She laid her hand upon the latch of the door.
If she told, they would all follow her. They would all know what had happened to Connie. They would all know what Connie had done.
She had to tell. She could not bear alone this dreadful burden of responsibility.
If she went now either she would find Connie, reason with her and bring her back, or else it would be too late for any one to help Connie, too late for any army of lanterns, swinging down the hill, to pierce those dark waters of the Fallow.
"There would be such wonderful things to doI would say such wonderful things to you!"
"There would be such wonderful things to doI would say such wonderful things to you!"
"There would be such wonderful things to do
I would say such wonderful things to you!"
A chair shrieked against the paved floor. Somebody was going to leave the room. If she told now, it would be a betrayal. She must go alone.
With a little choking cry she turned and fled.
The bolts were stiff and heavy, but when she had dragged them aside the wind tore at the door and hurled it open. The frail strength of her shoulder could not push it back. She let it swing.
Along the flagged yard, down the two steps and into the strip of narrow garden Muriel ran. Oh, but she must hurry, hurry, hurry, or it would be too late. The garden path was steep and slippery. A thaw had set in, and the ground under her thin shoes was wet and yielding. Once she leapt aside as a white cat darted out at her from the potatoes. Once her serge skirt caught on a stunted gooseberry bush.
Out through the wicket gate and on to the field road ran Muriel. The first field was a grass pasture; she remembered that. It led straight down, with the bottom gate a little to the right. If only she had stopped to find a lantern! It was quite dark now. The stars were veiled by tattered shreds of cloud. She could not see the road before her feet, but only feel the short, uneven turf, and the steady sloping of the long hill. If she faced down hill she would find the way.
The high heel of her shoe caught in a rut, and she fell headlong, her cheek against the chill, wet turf. Even as she lay there for a second, dazed and breathless, something moved from the shadows at her side, and with a little shriek of horror she remembered that in this field wandered the cows and horses.
She sprang up, never heeding the pain of her wrenched ankle or the mud clinging to her skirt. Every breeze that touched her hot cheeks was now the fiery breath of bulls; every clump of furze the dark form of a furious stallion. Blindly sobbing she ran, while the strong wind seized her and blew her kindly down the shadowed hill.
Almost before she hoped for it she found the wall. But the gate? The gate. Standing to regain her bearings, she heard the dull thud of feet tramping behind her down the hill.
The wind whistling on her neck came like the breath from a bull's nostrils. Clutching at the rough stones, bruising her knees and her thin elbows, she scrambled up the wall.
By this time she did not know whether she was running to save her own life or her sister's. The black arms of the trees swept over her, their wild heads tossing, tangling the vagrant stars. Their branches creaked; their twisted fingers snatched at her, caught at her hair and scratched her face, only to swing back again with mocking lightness. The trees terrified her. At any minute they must come down upon her. She heard the sharp splintering of the wood; the rush of branches like a mighty sea; the vast arms that embraced her, dragging her down, down as they fell faster, faster and the great weight overwhelmed her.
There she would lie crushed and bleeding on the hill-side, and Connie would lie deep below the swirling waters of the Fallow.
She dared not risk the trees. She scurried towards the centre of the field, stumbling blindly among the turnips. Twice she struck her foot against them, falling and recovering herself.
Her breath came now in painful sobs. Across her chest lay a sharp bar of iron that hurt her as she breathed. The wind through her silk blouse whipped her shoulders.
Oh, she would never find her way. Why hadn't she brought a lantern? Why hadn't she told the others? What madness sent her alone, running wildly down these dreadful fields? And when she reached the river, if Connie were not there, what could she do!
A rope, stretched straight across her way, nearly flung her down again. Panting, she felt along it. A rough net—a net. Her mind, unaccustomed to the ways of farming, refused to register its use. She forced it down with both her hands and stepped across it.
As she paused, it seemed as though again she heard those footsteps following; but perhaps they only were the beats of her own heart. She started forward.
A worse nightmare than ever laid hold upon her. She was surrounded by a moving horror. Soft formless things pushed up against her knees, her waist. Each way she stumbled, they bore down upon her. The starlight showed her just a dim, pale sea heaving waist-high all round her, before the wild clouds swept across the one patch of clear sky and left her blind with panic and the dark.
She could bear no more. Perils of darkness, perils of tempest, perils of bulls and wild living things she had withstood. Even the peril of Ben's frenzied face and uplifted hand had not appalled her. But this heaving horror engulfed her. She must fall.
She put out one hand and touched rough, soft wool; a familiar cry rang out beside her, "Baa-a-ah!" another followed. Echo followed echo across the sheepfold. She turned and pushed her way out from among the clustering flock, regaining the assurance of the road. The trees might swoop above her. Her feet might slip beneath her, but the road was sure. On and on she ran, though now she knew no longer the object of her running. Through one gate, then another, then another, and the woods closed down upon her. The path grew steeper. A light rain blew in her face like wave-flung spray. She did not notice it. The bushes caught at her. The branches tore her hair. Then, suddenly, quite close beside her, she heard the rushing of the river.
She remembered why she had come, and stood quite still to listen.
"Connie!" she shouted. "Connie! Connie! Connie!"
Parallel with the river ran a narrow path. It wound up Fallowdale for several miles until it crossed the Pilgrim's Bridge at Barwood. Up this path Muriel ran, the tangled woods on her left hand, the river on her right. Without a gleam the water swirled beside her, now dashing angrily against the stones, now sliding deep and dark between the banks.
"Connie! Connie! Connie!" called Muriel. The wind snatched at her futile little voice. The river drowned it. The high trees mocked her, clashing their long arms together.
"Connie! Connie!" she sobbed. The pain in her bruised ankle throbbed unceasingly. Her hands were torn. Her knees hurt. She felt forlorn and utterly defeated.
"Connie! Connie!"
Along the path before her, something moved.
"Connie!"
The figure stopped. It hesitated, then started forward. A twig snapped in the darkness. Then, though the river ran silently here the noise of it rose like a flood, thundering in her ears.
"Connie, darling! Stop! I want to tell you something."
She dared not run too quickly. A false step, and she might feel those ice-cold waters close above her head. If she delayed, though, she might hear the splash of Connie's final plunge.
"Oh, Connie, please don't go so fast. I can't keep up. Please stop."
In the dark, Connie turned to face her.
"Muriel—what do you want? Why have you come?" With a sudden sharp anguish, "Have you got my letter?"
"Your letter? Your letter? No. Ben's got your letter."
"Ben? Of course he has! Of course. Oh, isn't that like you, Muriel! You come down here to me, but you let Ben have the letter! I might have known. Here I've been telling myself that perhaps you'd find it and not say anything and just come down here, and now—I might have known!"
"But Ben found it first. What could I do?"
"Of course he did. He would. Oh, now for Heaven's sake go home. I'm sick of you. Can't you leave me alone just for a minute? What do you want? Why did you follow me? Go back. Go back, I tell you."
"No, no. I can't leave you here. You mustn't—you—you'll make yourself ill."
"Ill? Shall I?"
Muriel dared not move. If she advanced one step she feared lest Connie, mad with recklessness, should plunge into that dreadful river. And if Connie did jump in, what could she do? Connie was heavy. The river was so deep, and Muriel could not swim. She became dazed with panic.
"Connie, dear. Connie, come home. It's terrible for you out here in the dark. Come back with me. It's all right. I won't leave you."
"If you come a step nearer," cried Connie's furious voice, "I shall jump straight into the river. So there!"
Suddenly the absurdity of the situation struck Muriel. Here she was. Here was Connie. If Connie chose to drown herself, Muriel was completely powerless to stop her, because she was so small and Connie so much stronger.
At the realization of her impotence, Muriel's self-control gave way. She flung up her head and laughed, peal after peal of helpless laughter.
It was the last sound that Connie had expected.
"What's the matter? Are you mad? That's right then, laugh away! I suppose that you think it's funny that I should have made a mess of my whole life. I can be in hell if I like, and all that you can do is to stand there and laugh. I suppose that you read Eric's letter and saw that he—that he would have married me—Eric. Eric."
Muriel stopped laughing and came forward, laying her small hand on her sister's arm. Connie seemed to be unaware that anyone was touching her.
"Oh, it's damned funny, isn't it? I wonder that I don't laugh myself. You never thought at Marshington that your respected sister was anyone's mistress, did you? Only once, I tell you. I thought that he would marry me. I'd heard they would. I was fed up, and at least it was worth trying. It was that little fiend Alice who ruined me. Of course she liked him, but she kidded us that it was Ben she cared about. Ben. Ben! Come to think about it, we might ha' known that she was fooling us. Who'd care for Ben, with his great gawky body, Ben the big soft idiot! I ask you! That's my husband, Muriel. Good joke, isn't it? I swore to love, honour and obey that thing, because Alice told me Eric had married Cissie Bradfield and showed me a newspaper cutting, and I was green enough to believe her. Oh, she was clever. My God, she was clever. I'd just been home on leave, you know, that time we met Delia on Kingsport Station. I was happy then. I thought he cared. Then I came back here and Alice told me—showed me the cutting. He was just going to Mespot too. I wrote. He never answered." She stopped, choking.
"Never mind that now, Connie, dear," Muriel said timidly. "Come back with me. You'll get so wet."
Connie shook off her hand and went on speaking. It was as though, having decided to tell the truth at last, she could not stop.
"If I'd been cheap with one, I'd be cheap with all. There'd be no end to my cheapness. If Eric had had me and didn't want me, then Ben, who wanted me, should have me. Oh, I was wild, I didn't care. I didn't care what happened. Muriel, you don't know. You'd never been like that, stuck there in Marshington, longing to get away, every one round you getting married. It wasn't as if I hadn't tried other things. I wanted to chicken farm; I wanted to go away and do just anything. But Mother wouldn't let me. It was just men, men, men, and make a good match."
She shivered violently. The rain was now sweeping in great gusts along the valley. It splashed from the bare branches on to their heads. Slowly they began to walk along the path.
"Well—I didn't make a good match. Look at Godfrey Neale. When I was a kid I used to think him wonderful. Then Hugh McKissack. Mother made me think I liked him and that he would marry me. Look how he fooled us both. Then Eric came——"
Connie's voice mingled with the rushing of the river and the rustling rain among the trees. She lifted her head and spoke into the darkness, taking no heed of Muriel.
"He wasn't much of a fellow perhaps, in lots of ways, but he was a jolly sight better than lots of the men we used to meet. And I wanted so much to be married. He said his father wouldn't let him marry till he'd become a proper chartered accountant. He was still articled or something when I met him that night at the Kingsport dance. Hugh McKissack had just turned me down. Oh, I was desperate. I flirted with him. He said I was a sport. We—we got on. Oh, you won't understand. When I went to stay with Betty Taylor at York, I met him again. I went there so that I could meet him. Chase him? Who'd taught me to chase men? Of course I did. Don't all women? Hadn't mother? Then he said I didn't care for him. I wasn't going to show him at first, so he said 'Prove it.' I—you don't know. I thought he'd slip away just like the rest of them. I said I'd prove it. We went away to Scarshaven together for three days, before I went to Buxton to the Marshalls. You thought I was there, and nobody found out. I thought he'd marry me. If anything went wrong, he said he'd see me through. There was a time, just once, on Scarshaven station when he came to meet me, I thought I couldn't do it. Then he smiled. Oh, you—you—you don't know what it's like to love a man! I couldn't turn him down."
She stopped and clung to Muriel, who could only hold her tightly, murmuring silly words of comfort, neither shocked nor grieved, but gently pitiful. "Poor Connie. Oh, poor Connie!"
"Then the war came. He was sent up to Follerwick. I stuck it at home for a bit. I tried once to get through to see him, but I couldn't arrange it easily. I saw that if I stayed at home I never should get away without being found out. Then he told me about Thraile. The Todds were advertising for land-girls. I'd always liked outdoor things, and I was mad to come. You know the row we had at home. Then Mother heard that the Setons were doing land-work. How I blessed those girls. So she gave me her blessing too and off I went. Oh, but I was happy. You don't know. I'd never been happy like that before. He was at Follerwick and I at Thraile. We used to go for concerts and things, and I'd meet him and go off for long walks on the moors. We didn't do anything that you'd call bad. Somehow when it was so easy, we did not want to in the same way. We were like kids. We'd race up and down hill hand in hand. He'd come and sit sometimes on the old sheep trough when I was cleaning turnips and we'd talk. It was all as easy as the beasts and flowers and things. I dun'no. We were just great pals. We didn't talk of marriage or anything. That didn't matter. Then I came on leave." Her voice hardened. "When I got back that Alice told me he'd had to go off suddenly to Aldershot. He didn't write—or, if he did, she got hold of the letters. Possibly he didn't write. He wasn't the pen-scratching kind. Then the news of his wedding came, and the newspaper cutting.
"Oh, I think I went mad. I do really. You see—I'd been fooled so often. I wanted to hurt every one, myself most of all. And Ben was always hanging round. I hadn't noticed him while Eric was there. But after—after I heard about Cissie I used to tease Ben, just to spite him and myself. I said he wasn't a man. I—Oh, I led him on. He was such a great, green, religious baby, terrified of his father. Then I made him—do it."
Her hands clutched at her sister's arm. Her dragging step moved onward, and her toneless voice talked on and on, taking a bitter satisfaction in the telling.
"When I found out that I was going to have a baby, I was scared. I told you that they turned me out. They didn't. I ran away. Father found that out after he came down to Thraile that day. Really, he was awfully decent to me. He seemed to understand. But at first the Todds were awful. That terrible old man. Only Ben was decent. I believe he was fond of me. Funny, wasn't it? He thought he'd sinned black sin for me, and made me sin, and he must make it up to me. And then, while I was waiting for the wedding, that was a queer time. I used to pretend that it was Eric I was going to marry. Honest I did. I quite enjoyed it. Even when we got here, married, it might not have been so bad. Do you know," she said reflectively, "I believe that if I'd never known Eric I'd have been content with Ben. He's a dud of course, but he'd do anything for me. It's nice to have someone who'd sell their souls for you, until they think they've sold it. That was just it. Old William Todd would never let Ben alone. He was always on at him. If we could have gone away together. . . . Well, I used to think we would go and get a farm and settle down. I like children too. Then—to-day." It was Connie's turn to laugh now.
"I say, if there's a God, mustn't he have a jolly time laughing over the things that come too late? Here's a priceless joke now—me married to Ben, and a kid coming, and Eric ready to marry me when he comes home. Ben's child! Ben's child! And it might have been Eric's!" The laughter turned again to choking sobs. Breaking suddenly from Muriel's arms, Connie collapsed on the bank and crouched there, crying softly.
"I meant to kill myself. I knew I might funk it though. I always do. I put that letter where Ben would see it and know what had happened. So I could never go back to him. I thought I'd settle it for good and all. And I'd hurt Ben too. He'd been so stupid. The more beastly I was to him, the more patient he was with me. Rather like you, Muriel. Oh, you patient people! I bet you're responsible for half the suicides that happen. He was so proud to think I'd marry him too! He—me!"
Muriel knelt beside her on the wet stones. "Get up, Connie. You'll be ill. Get up. It's so wet."
That was all she could say, silly futile things.
"Ill? Oh, Muriel, you are a fool. Don't you see, I can't go back? I can't go anywhere. Oh, my God, I haven't got the pluck to kill myself, and there's nowhere in the world for me to live! You're a beauty, you are. You always turn up when it's too late to help. What shall I do? I don't want to die."
"We'll go away together. Listen. Listen. I'll make Father let us have some money. He's fond of you. If Ben turns you out, he'll pay. I can get work now in war-time too. We'll both go away. We'll—Oh, what's that?"
A light, swinging between the trees, gleamed suddenly round the angle of the rocks. A yellow splash of lantern light moved along the path. Through the rain came the sound of running footsteps.
"Who's that? Who's that?"
Her voice was sharp with fear.
"Is that Muriel?"
Connie's hand gripped her like a vice. Connie screamed in sudden terror.
"Muriel, it's Ben. Don't let him hurt me! Don't!"
Muriel stood up. "Ben, what do you want?"
The lantern swayed and stopped. In that moment Muriel thought that Ben had come to kill his wife.
"Is Connie there?"
"Yes." Connie's voice was calm now.
"Ben, you shan't hurt her," cried Muriel.
"I shan't hurt her." She could hear that he too was now calm. The voice that spoke from the darkness was a man's voice. "Connie, I want to ask you something."
"Well?" Still she was defiant. "What do you want?"
"When did you last see—yon—yon fellow?"
"Eric Fennington?"
"Ay."
"In the summer. Before I went on leave, but——"
"I thowt so. You fooled me properly, didn't you?"
"But——" Connie rose slowly to her feet. She stood now facing her husband. He raised the lantern and flashed it full upon her. "Ben," she said.
"Have ye anything to say? Ye laughed an' mocked at me. Ye treated me like a boy without pride, or honour. Then, when yon fellow let ye down, you found that I was man enough to give his child my name." He spoke now without bitterness. His steady, even voice was strange to them. They stood before him, afraid of his new dignity. Then Connie said:
"Ben, that's not true."
"Eh?"
"I—I saw Eric in the summer, but it was—in March when we—when we went together. The only time, I swear."
"And when is the child coming?"
"April."
"Is yon true, Muriel?"
"Yes."
"How many lovers did yer have before this—officer fellow?"
"Eric, only Eric."
"Is yon true, Muriel?"
"Yes, Ben, I am sure of it."
They waited, while in the darkness Ben received back his lost honour. When he spoke again it was with a shy confidence.
"Oh, well, I reckon ye'd better come home out o' t'wet, Connie. I wanted ye to kill yourself at first, and then I thought mebbe I'd better let you speak for yourself first. But if yon's false, what you've told me——"
"It's not."
He sighed wearily. "Oh, well, best come home, Connie."
"Do—do the others know?"
"Nay. An' they won't. This is our affair. T'letter's in my pocket. I'll burn it an' fake some tale. Coom on, Connie. I——" He had forgotten Muriel. They were alone together in a world new made.
"I want my child," said Ben.
They turned; he put his hand on her arm, and they went up the path together.
Muriel stood alone beside the river; then she too moved forward, following the lantern's light.
The situation having been lifted again out of Muriel's hands, she did not for some time contest the way in which it was being handled. For the space of one evening, Ben seemed to have attained to manhood. So much the better for Ben. So much the better for Connie. So much the worse perhaps for Muriel, who was again left with no one in life having great need of her. Directly Connie was better, Muriel meant to go home. For Connie, not unnaturally, was ill. The evening's escapade had resulted in a severe chill, caught, she explained, because while going for a walk to cure her headache, she had fallen and wrenched her ankle, and lain in the rain until Ben and Muriel found her.
Well, she would soon be better. It never occurred to Muriel to protest against the standard of Thraile nursing. She followed Mrs. Todd about the chill, dark bedroom, acquiescing in suggested remedies. After all, what else could one do in someone else's house? It was nobody's fault that the fire in Connie's bedroom smoked, or that Dr. Merryweather was old-fashioned. Besides, she herself had a sore throat, and a bruised knee, and a weary battered spirit. Events must take their course. The whole household being incalculable and detached from sane life as she knew it, Muriel could not bring herself to think it real at all. She brushed her own torn skirt and Connie's, and carried trays upstairs for Mrs. Todd, who, with three invalids and the large family to manage, still remained imperturbably cheerful. Then, somehow, quite without Muriel realizing their importance, several things happened very quickly; the doctor's second visit; Ben driving off into the rain to Follerwick; her mother's arrival by the evening train.
Muriel stood in the room once shared by Alice, Gert and Polly, fingering silver jars upon the roughly stained dressing-table, and wondering how her mother always contrived to carry an atmosphere of Marshington drawing-rooms into the most incongruous surroundings.
"I can't understand it. I can't understand it," repeated Mrs. Hammond, methodically unwrapping her slippers from her linen shoe bags. "You say that she went out in the rain . . ."
"It wasn't raining when shewentout," explained Muriel for the second time. "It began to rain later—after she had fallen."
"I can't help thinking, dear, that there was some grave irresponsibility. Knowing how careless she is, you never ought to have let her go out alone. It never should have happened—and then—since, Muriel, why didn't you see that a second opinion was called in?"
"We didn't think that she was so ill.—Dr. Merryweather——"
"Oh, Dr. Merryweather! A North Riding country practitioner—really, Muriel. But of course, dear, you never had any initiative, had you? Well, it may be all right now."
With gentle efficiency, Mrs. Hammond took control of the situation. Never had her conduct been more completely admirable. She had found her younger daughter seriously ill with pneumonia, her elder daughter in a strange condition of nervous paralysis, an impossibly inconvenient house, and a family complicated by the most uncomfortable relationships. Almost at once she made her influence felt. Muriel found herself shrinking into the shadows. She never remembered afterwards how she passed her time in that house grown hushed with concentrated anxiety. Once she remembered meeting Ben upon the landing. His face was drawn and grey. She remembered his long feet in their drab worsted stockings and the silly appeal in his light grey-blue eyes.
"Muriel," he had said in a hoarse whisper, "she ain't going to die, is she?"
"No, of course she isn't," Muriel answered irritably. How could she die, now that everything had just been put right? Of course she wasn't going to die!
He twisted the smooth knob at the top of the staircase. "She mustn't die," he whispered again. "I couldn't stand that, I tell you I couldn't." He cast a sidelong glance down stairs towards the passage where the door of the front parlour stood open. "Father says that it'll be the judgment of God upon our wickedness if she does die."
"What does he know about it? She won't die."
"I can't bear it," he repeated, his mouth agape, his eyes that nature had intended to be meek and kind staring ahead with a sad, unnatural concentration. "I couldn't abide to think of her dying in her sin."
"You don't think that at all. She's not in sin—any more than I am. You're talking nonsense. She's going to get well. And in April your baby will be born. And Mr. Todd will let you both go off to Fallowdale." She nodded at him reassuringly, as one nods to a child, and then went upon her quiet, mouse-like duties.
Three more days passed. A nurse had come from Hardrascliffe. Mrs. Hammond sat up half the night, and Muriel the other half. Mrs. Hammond wore a white apron over her pretty dresses. Her cool fingers had been denuded of their rings, but their little pink nails shone like jewels. The farm girls all had lost their heads and hearts to her. They wondered how on earth a dowdy little thing like Muriel, and a big jolly girl like Connie, could have had such a duck of a mother. Mrs. Todd treated her with cheerful and unimpressionable independence. Muriel followed her submissively, like a scolded child, knowing herself to be in disgrace, and yet never hearing a word of the reproach that she knew her mother felt.
Connie, she found inarticulate and pathetic, only occasionally cross and difficult. Most of the time she seemed to be uncannily obedient.
Once in the early morning, when Muriel was so sleepy that she had to hold her head right forward, so that it would not fall back against her chair, Connie's queer, grating whisper roused her.
"Mu——"
"Yes."
"It would be a queer thing if I was to die after all—wouldn't it?"
"Don't be silly. You aren't going to die."
"I don't want to. I want to have the baby. I'd like to have a house of my own, and a little Ford car, so that Ben and I could run in to Hardrascliffe for week-ends."
"Of course you will."
"Don't let me die, Mu."
"There's no question of your dying."
But she did not get better quickly. One night her temperature raced up, and she began to talk dangerous nonsense about Eric, while Muriel endeavoured to keep her mother from the room, and Mrs. Hammond, with heroic fortitude, stayed in and quietly controlled the situation. Then there was a miserable early morning when the oxygen cylinders did not arrive from Hardrascliffe; and, when the light crept through the curtains, Muriel stood in dry-eyed wonder while Ben buried his head in Connie's counterpane and wept loudly with an illogical wholeheartedness.
It was most terrible to see men cry. Muriel wondered whether her father would cry when he came. Anything might happen in a world where Connie had been allowed to die. A sense of baffled impotence seized Muriel. Connie had been preserved so miraculously through two crises—God could not really have let her die.
She wandered round the silent house, very weary but yet more bored, wishing that she could even join the nurse's secret ministration up in Connie's bedroom, rather than have this desolating feeling of no purpose. Then Mrs. Todd, with practical kindness, set her to wash up breakfast plates, with a significant nod to Gertie—"Muriel is going to be taken bad next if we don't look out." And afterwards Mrs. Hammond, with a dignity of self-control that astonished every one but Muriel, called her upstairs and gave her letters to write, and began to discuss details of the funeral.
Mr. Hammond was in London. He could not reach Thraile until Tuesday morning, even by travelling all night. Mrs. Hammond therefore had to make her own arrangements—the funeral to be at Follerwick, the letters to all relations, the notices to the Yorkshire papers.
"Have you been to see Mr. Todd, since——?" asked Mrs. Hammond, delicately pressing down the flap of an envelope.
"No, Mother, why?"
"Well, dear. I do think that one of us ought to go to him. Just to show that we—that, well, I do think that we ought. And I don't feel——" Bravely she pushed aside her tears with a small handkerchief.
Muriel walked slowly down the stairs. The little parlour was flooded with afternoon sunlight. Through the uncurtained window, Muriel could see the moors frozen to hard, black beauty, cold as stone beneath the cold, clear light.
William Todd was lying by the window. Ben, a forlorn and uncouth figure in his ill-fitting black clothes, sat on the chair beside him, his large red hands upon his knee.
Muriel came into the room quietly and shut the door. She wished that she knew what was the right thing to say.
"I am very sorry, Mr. Todd," she said at last, feeling that somehow it was what he should have said to her.
"You are sorry. Your sister is dead. My son tells me that she did not die unrepentant. I am glad. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. When men shall say Peace, and all things are safe, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as sorrow came upon a woman travailing with child, and they shall not escape."
"No," answered Muriel, "I suppose not." But she thought all this to be irrelevant. She felt sorry for Ben, who sat there with bent, dumb bewilderment, but she did not know what to say. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry that the baby for whose sake he had forgiven Connie had never been born. She only said: "Ben has been splendid, Mr. Todd, all through her illness. I am sure that you will understand far more than I—— Do be—please be—nice to him."
The cripple's bright eyes seemed to pierce her brain.
"Shall not the Lord deal justly with his own? You tried to save your sister from the punishment of man; but a greater than man had judged before you. But, thank God, her death has not been quite unfruitful. My son, my son has even seen the error of his ways."
William Todd turned his face to the young man. A queer twisted tenderness broke for a minute the clear lines of his face. Then it hardened again. His son sat without movement, his eyes upon the carpet.
"Ay. That's so," he murmured dully.
The old lady by the fire nodded and smiled at Muriel, nibbling a pink sweet. She was happy because she had outlived her grandson's wife.
Ben followed Muriel from the room.
"How much does your father know?" asked Muriel.
"Nay. I don't know. He's said nowt but what he knew before. But he is right. The destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed. It was for the ungodliness o' my soul, he says, the Lord took my wife and my child."
He raised his head with a smile of ghastly pride, as though consoled by the Lord's impressive punishment of his offence.
"Ben!" cried Muriel, no longer sorry. "You don't really think like that. You can't think like that." Connie and miserable sinners simply could not live together in the same thought. Connie was a person, intensely alive, wilful and foolish, made for enjoyment and companionship. She was not an instrument of God sent for the punishment of any man's misdeeds.
Ben stared at her foolishly. Then without a word he passed her by and stumbled up the stairs.
Next morning Mr. Hammond came. He saw Muriel in the hall.
"Where's Rachel?" he asked.
"Upstairs, Father. I'll show you."
He followed her, stepping softly up the winding stair. Mrs. Hammond stood in the doorway. On her face was an expression of relief, anxiety, tenderness. Now that he had come, she wanted nothing more.
Muriel watched her father enfold her mother in his great arms. She, the imperturbable, the gently adamant, gave herself up to his rough mastery, and found rest there. Neither of them noticed Muriel.
"There, there, little woman," he said softly, stroking her bowed silver head with his large hand. "It's all right. It's all right. Poor Connie. You did your best. You did everything, little woman, I know. You've been wonderful."
She let him treat her like a child. Before him alone she lost her perfect self-command. Muriel saw this with the jealous perception of the onlooker. "They don't want me," she told herself, and went downstairs.
On the morning of the funeral came the wreaths, piles and piles of them, colder than the snow now white along the moorland. Their sickly smell filled the stone house. "It is the smell of death," thought Muriel.
The land-girls stole about, red-eyed, admiring, withcrêpebands round the arms of their tunics.
Dolly lifted a card.
"Oh, come and look at this," she whispered to Gert. "With deepest sympathy from Colonel and Lady Grainger."
Mrs. Hammond, black-veiled and pathetic, entered the hall. They all fell back respectfully. She leaned above the lilies, touching their waxen trumpets with a gentle finger. She also lifted the card.
"Oh, Muriel, how kind of them!" she cried softly. "How very, very kind."
But Muriel went away and cried bitterly because Connie was dead, and now she had not even a sister left who needed her.
The meeting of the House Committee for St. Catherine's Home was over when Muriel entered the room. Down the dining-room table of Miller's Rise were scattered notebooks, sheets of blotting-paper, and occasional inkpots. Mrs. Hammond, in her black and white dress, talked with animation to the Honble. Mrs. Potter Vallery. When Muriel saw this, she smiled a little. Nobody noticed the smile but Mr. Vaughan, and it made him feel vaguely uneasy.
He had not been to Miller's Rise for a long time, not indeed since the spring of 1916, when he had called to offer his sympathy after Connie's death. Miller's Rise was not very near to the Vicarage, and he hated calls, and though Mrs. Hammond was charming up to a point—rather a low point perhaps—the vicar never felt quite happy in her old-rose drawing-room. He sat now a little apart from the assembled ladies, hoping very much that Mrs. Cartwright, or Miss Rymer, the Matron of St. Simeon's, would not consider it their duty to approach him sociably. He found that Marshington committees depressed him because nobody was quite whole-hearted over anything. Even when the House Committee laid a request for new clothes-horses before the General Committee, everybody seemed to weigh the question in the balance against Mrs. Potter Vallery's approval or Mrs. Cartwright's possible discomfiture. Hedging from self-interest to sentimental altruism, weighing a hundred side-issues against the case presented, they gave their opinions from policy rather than conviction. This distressed the vicar. But he had decided long ago that these committees were very good for the ladies, and did little harm to the Rescue Work, and that God frequently pours the waters of His mercy from imperfect vessels. So, with one eye on the clock, the vicar had taken the chair at this "extraordinary" but quite usual meeting, wondering how soon he could escape to his peaceful library and "The Personnel of the Estate of Clergy during the Lancastrian Experiment." Whenever particularly bored by the limitations of his parishioners, he fled to the study of the limitations of his countrymen in former centuries and found it consoling.
"You're always thinking about the identity of the pseudo-Walsingham or whether the Confirmatio Cartarum was a propagandist forgery," scolded Delia, "while all the time souls are being snatched away by the devil under your very nose."
"My dear," he would assure her mildly, "if I did not sometimes remove my attention from the short-comings of my neighbours, the first soul to be so snatched would be my own. Nothing leads so promptly to damnation as the critical contemplation of other people's souls." And yet it seemed that here before him was a soul in evident need of some form of salvation. The vicar felt unhappy.
Muriel Hammond had no business to be cynical. Now, Muriel Hammond, Muriel Hammond. What had happened to the child?
The vicar cast back his thoughts. "I ought to keep card-index biographies of my parishioners," he told himself. He could remember so little about her. A small, very shy school-girl, a quiet little thing at tennis parties, and—hadn't she once been secretary of the Nursing Association? Surely those beautifully symmetrical figures still decorating the books were hers. And then—till about a year ago, she had been a regular communicant. The vicar was stirred by a recollection of that small virginal face upraised in an austere rapture of devotion. Her great shining eyes had looked beyond him, as though they gazed on holy mysteries.
The eyes that now stared coldly at Mrs. Hammond could certainly see no holy mysteries. It was doubtful whether they saw even the common kindnesses and uncertain altruisms that lit occasionally the drawing-rooms of even Darkest Marshington—another phrase of Delia's. The vicar studied more closely the neat, indifferent figure. Muriel's clothes were prettily chosen but negligently worn. Mrs. Hammond, perhaps, had been responsible for the choice. Muriel's manner combined the boredom of distaste with the confusion of timidity. The vicar watched her moving from chair to chair, picking up conversations, hovering on the edge of confidences, turning away again before contact was established. He watched her shepherding the committee ladies into the drawing-room for tea, hearing her half-apologetic invitations, her laugh abruptly breaking off, her sentences deferentially curtailed. Her indifference shattered his serene detachment. No girl of her age ought to look like that. He screwed up his mild short-sighted eyes, seeing her for the first time not only as a personality but as a problem.
What had been happening to the girl? Her sister had died; but mortality was a usual experience, and the vicar had seen no sign of affection deeper than the unexcited tolerance common to most sisters in the relationship between Muriel and Connie. A love affair? He had heard of none, and Muriel seemed to lack that particular intensity which made of love a devastating experience to women like—well, Delia. She had not even been away doing war-work, where the realism of more harsh experience might have cut her off from her old interests.
The dining-room had emptied.
Muriel turned from the door and saw the vicar.
"Aren't you coming into tea, Mr. Vaughan?"
He smiled his shy conciliatory smile. "Has Mrs. Cartwright gone into the drawing-room?"
"Yes, I think so."
"Muriel—I appeal to you. I want some tea, I would like one of your mother's scones. Are there scones? Good. But to get them I must face Mrs. Cartwright, and Mrs. Cartwright wants to tell me for the seventh time this afternoon that it was false economy to refuse to pay Sister Lilian's railway fare to Hardrascliffe. Now won't you take pity on me? Mayn't I be spoiled for once and have my tea in here?"
"Oh, yes, I should think so," said Muriel in the tone of one but faintly interested in the eccentricities of an old clergyman.
As she left the room, Mr. Vaughan frowned and accused himself with quite unusual acrimony for having been led aside by the raptures of constitutional research from the more pressing spiritual needs of his parishioners.
"Only," he explained to himself, rather as though he were arguing with Delia, "they probably know so much better than I do the things belonging to their peace." At the thought of the limitations of his wisdom he groaned wearily and bowed his head forward into his hands with a half humorous despair.
Muriel re-entered the dining-room with a tray and tea. He noticed that she had taken the trouble to arrange a small tray daintily with a white cloth and a little teapot and a covered dish of toasted scones. Usually he ate his meals with impatience at the inconvenient necessity, but this afternoon he had set himself to observe.
"Won't you bring a cup too? Have you had your tea?"
"I—no, really. I shall have mine afterwards in the drawing-room."
"Do have it with me now. There's heaps of tea here. I feel greedy drinking all alone."
When she left the room to fetch her cup he sadly recognized her complete indifference, coupled with her recognition of him as a privileged person. Vividly aware of his unworthiness for privilege, he awaited her return.
She came in and sat down by the long table to pour out his tea. Her movements were gentle but hesitating. She held the china cup, the teapot, the sugar-tongs lightly but never firmly.
"Sugar?"
"Please—four lumps."
"Cream?"
"Please. A lot."
She did not smile and humour him as other girls would smile. Gravely she dropped four lumps and poured him a generous portion of cream. He frowned as he stirred the over sweetened tea, and only then remembered that he really hated sugar.
"Muriel, you don't belong to the St. Catherine's Committee?"
"No, Mr. Vaughan. Will you have a scone?"
"Thank you. Work among girls—you don't find it interesting?"
"Oh, quite. I hadn't particularly thought about it. I don't suppose that I should be much good."
"Well, it was not so much the girls that I was thinking of. The House Committee needs somebody to help with the accounts. I remember your excellent work with the Nursing Association. Mrs. Cartwright is a conscientious lady but no mathematician. It would be of immense service both to us and to the home if you would sometimes help her with the books."
"I'll ask Mother. I dare say I could."
He smiled at her. "I am sure that Mrs. Hammond could not mind. It depends upon what you would like. I don't want to urge more work upon you if your time is full."
She shrugged her thin shoulders. "I don't do anything much. I'll ask Mother——"
A hat-stand would have been more responsive.
He changed the conversation.
"Have you noticed much change in Marshington since the war ended?"
"Change? Here? No, I don't think so. People are still washing dishes to be dirtied at the next meal, and sitting at the same stools to add up other people's accounts, and giving tea parties to be envied by other men's wives."
"That's rather a pessimistic view of it, isn't it?"
"Is it? Yes, perhaps it is. I'm very silly I know." She laughed nervously. "Of course it's not as bad as that. But sometimes—one wonders—you know, I don't know how the war could have made a difference. It was only a grocery shortage here, and an influx of officers and the arrival of the Graingers."
"Ah, the Graingers. She was a nice woman. A friend of your mother's, I think."
Again that fleeting, unpleasant smile crossed Muriel's face. "Was she?" she said. "Oh, I suppose so."
"You know, you're a little hard on Marshington in war-time," he continued. "Did you never think of Mrs. Pinden carrying on her husband's business, of Dickie Weathergay, of Bobby Mason, of the women who sent their children to school, kept their homes together and spent their spare time doing all that they could at the depot and hospital although the postman's arrival was an hourly torment and the sight of every telegraph boy turned them sick? It may have been all rather small and petty, but it was a multiplication of that spirit that formed the bulwark of civilization."
"Oh, yes, of course," acquiesced Muriel, but her face seemed to ask "Is civilization then worth saving?"
"My daughter Delia, you know, was working in the Women's Army at the end of the war. She said that it was a revelation to her—the possibility for development among trivial-minded, half-grown, half-educated girls—a pity that it should have been left to war-time."
"Yes, wasn't it?"
The vicar could not face it. Conversation with Muriel was like conversation with a gramophone. There was something almost indecent in her apathy. She could not even uphold her own opinions.
"I am unhappy about Delia," he continued, experimenting. "She is working herself to death, living in one of these terrible clubs, and enjoying a diet almost exclusively composed of boiled eggs and fish kedgeree, as far as I can discover. She is very thin."
"She never was fat, was she? But I dare say that she will look after herself all right. She was always very capable."
"Since Martin Elliott's death," remarked the vicar meditatively, "she seems to have been capable of almost anything but sanity about her personal surroundings."
A gleam of the faintest interest awoke in Muriel's eyes.
"Poor Delia. Of course. It was terribly bad luck. But then, she has her work. Women who have their work have an immense thing, even if they are unfortunate in the people whom they love. It is when you have nothing, neither work nor love, nor even sorrow, that life becomes rather intolerable." She laughed again. "That does sound a dismal picture, doesn't it?"
He looked at her sharply. "Delia saw Godfrey Neale in London—he had just come back."
Muriel's tea-cup clattered softly in her saucer. The vicar almost started at his discovery. At last he had probed her terrible indifference. But even while he was congratulating himself, the light had died and Muriel's chill, equable little voice continued:
"I am very glad to hear that he has come back safely. Mrs. Neale worried terribly, and I am sure that Clare must be glad."
"Senora Alvarados was your friend I think?"
"A school-friend, yes."
The door opened and Mrs. Hammond entered.
"Oh, there you are, you two culprits! Really, Mr. Vaughan, I can't have you stealing my daughter like this, you know! Muriel, dear, there are thousands of empty cups in the drawing-room. My wrist aches. Do come and relieve me. Mr. Vaughan, Mrs. Cartwright is asking——"
"Oh, I know, I know," pleaded the vicar. "She has asked several times. Mrs. Hammond, don't you think that it would be a good idea if Muriel came to help us with the accounts for the House Committee? You know how difficult we people who have not mathematical minds all find them."
Mrs. Hammond raised her pretty eyebrows. "On the House Committee of St. Catherine's? Muriel? Well—really—I hadn't thought of it. Hardly the kind of work—I mean—not for a young girl—in contact with the sort of home like—well, really, what do you think yourself, Mr. Vaughan?"
"I think that the checking of bills for dust-pans and stair-rods can hardly be contaminating, even if they are to be used by reformed prostitutes," remarked the vicar dryly.
"Oh, well—it isn't quite that, you know. It's the idea of it. No other unmarried girl is on St. Catherine's Committee. It doesn't somehow seem to me quite the thing. Of course, if Muriel wants to very much—I never stand in her way over anything—girls do as they like nowadays, don't they? But I have always tried to keep her away from all thatsortof thing as much as possible."
The vicar was uncertain afterwards whether he had really seen that expression cross Muriel's face then—that scornful yet submissive aversion, which lacked spirit even to be violent. He answered bravely:
"I think that Muriel is almost old enough to judge for herself."
"I'm not really keen, if Mother doesn't want me to," said Muriel.
And yet, in the following silence, the vicar could feel the clash and tension of their personalities as clearly as though swords had crossed. In the St. Catherine's incident lay some secret significance for Muriel and her mother. Behind Muriel's untranquil quiet lay a suppressed resentment, and somewhere, but Heaven knew where, lay the solution of her problem.
The vicar sighed, shook hands and walked unhappily homeward to write a long and troubled letter to his daughter.
Muriel had been to tea with Daisy Weathergay. She had nursed the Weathergay babies (there were now two) and looked at Weathergay photographs, and endured the reiterated recital of the heroism of Captain Dickie Weathergay in the Great War. She had been made to understand, if indeed she had not already understood, that the War only really affected the lives of those women married or engaged to soldiers at the Front; and the recollection that she was of those who had no right to feel anxiety or relief brought sharply home to her the thought of Godfrey at the Weare Grange.
"They say she's never been up there to stay since he came home," Daisy remarked with the confident knowledge of the already married. "Of course I was always sure that it would never come to anything and I still don't believe he'll marry her. A foreigner——"
"She's not," protested Muriel.
"Oh, well, she's half French or something, isn't she? Anyway, I'm sure she'd never do for Godfrey. Now poor Phyllis—— Really, it is terrible, isn't it? Ever since he came home, she's looking so ill and pale, though I do think that she's a little fool to wear her heart on her sleeve like that——"
A pleasurable pride lifted for a moment the depression of Muriel's mood. She at least evidently did not share in the folly of Phyllis Marshall Gurney, yet as she said good-bye at the garden gate of Daisy's little villa her depression returned to her again. It accompanied her on the walk homeward, blinding her to the clear tracery of budding trees across the sky, to the silver serenity of the spring evening. She thought, "Connie's baby would have been three years old now. They might at least have left me the satisfaction of being an aunt." She thought, "What on earth shall I do when I get home? Read? All books are the same—about beautiful girls who get married or married women who fall in love with their husbands. In books things always happen to people. Why doesn't somebody write a book about someone to whom nothing ever happens—like me?"
She thought, "If only I'd done what Mr. Vaughan suggested about St. Catherine's Home, I'd have the accounts to do this evening. Mother says that Mrs. Cartwright's got the tradesman's bills into an awful mess. But it's not the sort of thing that young girls do. Oh, no! Men hate to think of girls being mixed up in that sort of thing! O God, O God, what am I going to do! How much does Mother know about Eric? How long can I bear living in the same house as those two, knowing what I know, guessing what they know, and hearing them lie and lie and lie?
"I must be sensible. What could Mother do about Connie but pretend that she knows nothing? Did she know about Eric, though, before she made Connie marry Ben? There was something between them. How much did she guess? Oh, what is the use of going all over this again? I must think about something else. If I don't think about something else I shall go mad. What's the good, what's the good? What else is there to think about? The tennis club opening? The Nursing Association, the Marshington people? What shall I do—having nothing to think about, and nobody's going to marry me, and I'm here always, always? How many years? Three since I left Thraile? Then I shall probably live another fifty."
She tried as always, to reason herself back into sanity. "Even if I can't love Mother any more as I used to; even if I know that she's calculating and hard and insincere, at least Father needs me. He has come to like me a little more—to know me." But Muriel knew this to be at least uncertain. When she opened the door of Miller's Rise, she felt the atmosphere of the house close in upon her. She heard through the morning-room door her father's voice, "But, look here, Rachel, for the Lord's sake!" And her mother's, gently complaining, "Oh, of course, Arthur, I know. You always thought of the girls before you thought of me. You always preferred to have Muriel do things for you——"
"Oh, by gad, this is too bad! Muriel's a good lass enough, but you know it's nothing to do with that. A husband's and wife's income are clumped together for taxation, and I'm damned if I'll let this rotten Government fleece me right and left. Muriel will get it anyway when we're gone, she might as well have a bit now—I'll tie up the capital so that no rascal can marry her for her money——"
"Oh, I don't think that you need fear that she'll marry, and it's all very well putting it down to the income tax, but you know as well as I do——"
Muriel put down her umbrella with a clatter on the hall table. She went into the sitting-room to find her father standing in flushed exasperation near the mantelpiece, her mother sewing with indignant concentration at the table, and Aunt Beatrice, ignored as completely as the carpet, crocheting doilies in the window.
Lately Mr. and Mrs. Hammond had argued much more frequently. Again it had been the Thraile incident that seemed to mark the turning point in their relations. Mrs. Hammond was blaming her husband for his bequest to Connie of the ungovernable temperament which had nearly brought ruin on the Hammond family. She was sore at her one failure, terrified now of another. Muriel could read in her increasing plaintiveness the anxiety that racked her, lest her elder daughter also should defeat her ends. And this continual strain was telling upon Mr. Hammond. He had married Rachel Bennet largely because she was pretty, clever and a lady. She brought things off. Arthur Hammond loved people who brought things off. He liked to pay dearly for good stuff, but he expected it to be good. Muriel remembered his advice, applied equally to horses and workmen, and, she supposed, to his wife, "Go for the best i' the market, pay top price, and let 'em rip." He had gone for the best on the market. He had given Rachel a free hand, till now she had always brought things off, but just recently she had begun to doubt her own capacity to triumph, not so much over circumstance as over other people's limitations. Connie had jarred her self-confidence, Muriel was wearing it fine, and Arthur Hammond was becoming bored.
Without taking off her hat, Muriel sat down by the table, wondering whether they would tell her about the argument. Whatever it was, it evidently concerned her closely.
"Muriel, dear, I wish that you would not sit about in your coat and skirt. You know how it spoils it to sit about in it indoors."
"Oh, all right, Mother." She rose to go.
"Here, M.," her father called her back, "I've got some papers I want you to sign after supper. Come to my desk in the dining-room."
Muriel guessed what these were. She saw her mother's eyes, hurt and angry, looking across the table to her. She went slowly from the room and closed the door.
She had not been in her own bedroom more than five minutes, and was slowly taking off her silk shirt blouse, when her aunt tapped at the door and came in.
"Oh, you're changing?"
"Yes," remarked Muriel, lifting a grey velveteen dress from her wardrobe. "What is it, Auntie?"
"Oh, I don't know, dear. Nothing in particular. Did you hear anything interesting in the village?"
"Nothing. Does one ever hear anything interesting in Marshington? What was the trouble downstairs, Auntie?"
"Trouble, dear? What trouble do you mean?"
Muriel picked up her dress and pushed it over her head. When she emerged from her temporary eclipse she said "Father and Mother."
"Oh—er—nothing, dear."
Muriel fastened an amethyst brooch carefully into her dress. She was thinking, "I really can't stand this feeling of secret exasperation in the house. I can't stand not talking to someone." Aloud she asked:
"Auntie, have you noticed—Father and Mother seem to get on each other's nerves now, like they never used to do?"
"Oh—I shouldn't say that, you know, Muriel."
"Oh, Auntie, you must have noticed it. What was it now about the income tax?"
"Oh, well, your father wants to invest some money in your name, to save super tax—just as a business investment, you know, and your mother——"
"Thinks that she ought to have it?"
"Well, yes, dear. But you know that wouldn't do. As your father pointed out, it doesn't act somehow if the wife has it."
"Mother doesn't like Father—doing things for me, does she?" Muriel reflected. "Perhaps you've noticed. She doesn't like my doing things for him either."
"Well, dear," Aunt Beatrice sat down in Muriel's arm-chair, eager to clear away doubts and difficulties, her eyes shining with excellent intentions, "you see, your father and mother have always been so verymuchto one another. Far more than most husbands and wives. Your mother gave up a great deal for your father—my family weren't at all pleased at a Bennet marrying a Hammond. We held a very good position in Market Burton, you know. And your mother has been wonderful, she has never looked back once. But naturally she expects—wants—would like to have the—the first place in your father's consideration."
"Of course," murmured Muriel, "and she is inclined to fear anything that might come between them?"
"Oh, yes, dear. Naturally. Though of course this money——"
"Of course—this money. That's hardly the point, I know. Just a trifle, which of course she will come to see in its true proportion. The real thing is that she does not like the idea of anyone else getting the attention which she naturally expects from Father."
She began to arrange the little silver-topped boxes and hairpin tidies and pincushions upon her dressing-table with light, careful movements, while her mind worked feverishly.
"Father admires Mother immensely, doesn't he? More than most husbands about here admire their wives?"
"Yes, yes. I always said so. He thinks her wonderful. You know dear, of course, when you were younger I should not like to have said anything; but you must see some things for yourself now—your mother's influence has been wonderful over your father. She—she's always so—splendid," Aunt Beatrice returned to the word for lack of better definition.
Muriel, however, supplied the deficiency. "Yes, she always carries things off, doesn't she? It would be terrible if for once she did not carry things off. That's the quality he most admires in her. I'm afraid," she continued dreamily, "that that's why he's been less—lesscertainof her lately, aren't you? Because he isn't certain whether she's going to carry things off——"
"I don't quite see, dear—well, what?"
"Me, for instance," murmured Muriel. "It would be a terrible thing if after all she never got me off, wouldn't it? Especially after Connie's death. You know, it was a pity that I hadn't any brothers. Boys can go and get married on their own. But when women like you and I, Auntie, are left unmarried, it is rather a trial for our parents, isn't it?"
"Oh, but, dear, ofcourseyou will marry one day. It's early to talk——"
"Is it? Do you think I shall?" Muriel turned from the dressing-table and looked at her aunt. "I'm nearly thirty. Nobody has ever proposed to me yet. Do you think that it's likely?"
"Why, of course, dear. Heaps and heaps of girls marrylongafter they are thirty."
"Of course—there's a hope, isn't there, that one's life may not be utterly wasted—even at the eleventh hour—one might—marry?"
Even Aunt Beatrice could not bear everything. She rose from her chair and crossed to the window, a timid, inefficient, untidy little figure, with weak wistful eyes and a stubbornly submissive mouth; but there was a quiver of animation in her voice that Muriel had never heard before.
"I hope very sincerely, dear, I always have hoped that you would marry, both for your own sake and for your mother's. I am very fond of your mother. I was bitterly sorry about her terrible trouble with dear Connie, though I dare say that no one but another mother could know quite what it felt like to lose her child and grandchild together, so to speak. I should like for her sake to see you married. It would repay her for many troubles she has known."
Aunt Beatrice looked from Muriel's room to the darkening plain beyond the garden. Her gentle voice grew sharp with unconscious bitterness.
"But even more for your own sake, dear. You will marry, I am sure. Marriage is the—the crown and joy of woman's life—what we were born for—to have a husband and children, and a little home of your own. Of course there are some of us to whom the Lord has not pleased to give this. I'm sure I'm not complaining. There may be many compensations, and of course He knows best. But—it's all right while you're young, Muriel, and there's always a chance—and when my dear mother was alive and I had someone to look after I am sure no girl could have been happier. It's when you grow older and the people who needed you are dead. And you haven't a home nor anyone who really wants you—and you hate to stay too long in a house in case someone else should want to come—and of course it's quite right. Somebody had to look after Mother. Everybody can't marry. I'm not complaining. I'm sure they're very kind to me, but I sometimes pray that the good Lord won't make me wait here very long—that I can die before every one gets tired of me, and of having me staying round——"
The room was growing dark. Shadows grey and desolate stole from the long curtains. Only in the small, dim woman's voice lay the intensity of realization that has passed despair.
"I used to pray every night that I should never come to a time when nobody wanted me. There's no real need for me in this house. Rachel's only kind to have me here when there's room. Oh, Muriel, my dear, if ever a good man offers you the chance of a home, of children, of some reason for living, don't throw it away, don't, don't."
"I don't suppose that there is any prospect of my doing so," said Muriel. Part of her wanted to go and put her arms round her aunt and be gentle to her. The other part was fighting a grim battle to defer her vision of something that she wanted not to see.
It fought during the whole evening, during supper, during her signature of unintelligible papers at her father's desk, when he told her gruffly that she would now have an income of £350 a year minus income tax, which would return to her in some mysterious way after negotiations. "I could understand this myself if he would once explain," she thought. But he did not explain, and she had to return to the gas-lit drawing-room to face her mother's drawn mouth, her aunt's timid efforts to keep out of the way, and the aftermath of her father's temper.
There was nothing to do.
She sat down at the piano and began to play drearily. Her father rose, looked at her, and a few moments later left the room. They heard his car humming away down the drive.
Mrs. Hammond glanced up at Aunt Beatrice, then she continued to sew without further comment.
The silence grew unbearable.
"I suppose—er—Arthur's gone to the club, Rachel?"
"I suppose so. Muriel, pass me my other scissors, please."
Not a word was said about the money.
As soon as she could escape decently, Muriel kissed her aunt and mother, and went upstairs to bed.
The moon had risen. It threw light panels of grey across the dark floor of her room. Muriel left her blind undrawn, and went to stand where that afternoon her aunt had stood, gazing towards the twinkling lights of Kingsport.
Of course she had known for weeks that this was coming, but she had tried to shut her eyes against the truth. She could not stay at Miller's Rise.
Ever since Connie's death she should have known this. Her mother had failed with Connie, yet she had met bitter failure with such outstanding social strategy that it had become transformed to something like a triumph. But it had opened her eyes to the knowledge that with Muriel she might fail without hope of safety. You can hide the unhappiness of a marriage, but no one can hide in a provincial town the glaring failure of no marriage whatsoever, and every one in Marshington knew that poor Muriel Hammond had not had so much as an affair.
No, it was quite certain; she would never marry now. Better to face the fact and deal with it unflinchingly. What then? Could she stay there at Miller's Rise to "help her mother" indefinitely? She knew that her mother had never wanted help. Always the hope had been that she would marry. To this end alone had she been trained and cared for; and now she sat, meal after meal, between her mother and her father. She knew that they found her presence secretly humiliating. She was spoiling the best thing in the lives of both of them.
"I ought to go," thought Muriel. "But where? How?" What in the whole world was there left for her to do? She had abandoned all hope of a career to help her mother, and her mother did not need her, and she was unmarried. "Nobody wants me—I'm like Aunt Beatrice, living in fear of an unloved old age. I must have some reason for living. I must, I must. I can't bear to live without. I just can't bear it. Oh, what am I going to do with myself?"
From the calm valley the mist-veiled fields gleamed silver like still water. The unanswering moon sailed on across the sky.
She began to walk now up and down the room. She could not bear herself. She wanted to fling off her body. She wanted to become wildly hysterical, to sob and scream with a pain of despair that was physical as well as mental.
"What have I done to bring this on myself?" she asked, she to whom this terrible burden of negation proved a torture. "I always tried to do the best that I could see."
The best that she could see. She pressed her hands against her head. Some fugitive echo of memory lay in the words, sight, sight. "The last betrayal and the ultimate unworthiness is the defilement of the vision." That mad fanatic at Thraile, that warped religious maniac, what right had he, with his crude theories of self-mortification and God's vengeance, to come before her now with his dark prophecies of vision? Sight? What sight? Had she not always done the best that she had seen?
"We can only worship what we see." All very well to talk. She pressed her hands against her eyes and in the darkness she tried to read again the visions she had seen.