She saw the God of her early school-days, a benign and patriarchal creation of her own emotions, bidding her be submissive and content, and smiling on her with approbation that curiously resembled Mrs. Hancock's.
She saw Clare; and immediately her desires altered. To be good meant to be gay, to be loved, to be beautiful, to dance through life right up to Godfrey's arms.
She shivered. That vision had soon died. Beauty and gay success in love could not be hers. What vision then? She saw her mother, the passionate devotee of the great god of People. She saw herself accepting now new standards. The thing that mattered in Marshington was neither service nor love but marriage, marriage respectable and unequivocal, marriage financially sound, eugenically advisable, and socially correct. She had sought it. Oh, no doubt she had sought it but never found, for though Godfrey Neale had kissed her he had not unnaturally forgotten. In the emotional reaction after a crisis of fear, she had found the only sign of the satisfaction that she had sought as love.
Then she had gone to Thraile. She saw more clearly now the reeling nightmare of those days, when she had lost all touch with sane reality. At Hardrascliffe and at Marshington she could deal with a given crisis according to known rules, but at Thraile she had been swept right off her feet, having no standard of her own to hold by. She had wanted to help Connie and had followed a policy of blind opportunism, blundering from one notion to another. Connie in trouble must be married. Connie, when married, must have life made tolerable. This she had seen, and, seeing thus, had acted. But never once had Muriel Hammond, Muriel who sought before all things excellence of conduct, never once had she thought clearly about what it all meant. She had never once lifted her head higher than Connie's, but had left to Mr. Todd the task of trying to make clear what her sister and Ben had done. But when you faced it frankly, you saw that it all came to this. At Marshington the only thing that mattered was marriage. Connie, who knew this, who was wild and reckless but who at least was brave, had ruined her life and Ben's, had saddened Eric's, and had brought her family to bitter shame. Muriel, with no less intention but less courage, had sat at home and waited and grown bitter. And now she was still waiting and her youth was passing by.
And yet, and yet, it had not been her own way to want this only. A respectable marriage had not always been the one goal of her life. She had dreamed dreams. She had seen visions, but her visions had faded before the opinion of others; she had lacked the courage of her dreams. And now there was left to her nothing but Marshington. She could not even go away. It had trapped her in the end, for she had shut her eyes to anything beyond its streets, and was a prisoner now to her own blindness.
"The only thing that Marshington cares about is sex-success." Delia Vaughan had said that. Muriel did not believe her. It was true enough, quite true.
Her hands dropped from her face. She looked as she had looked thirteen years ago across the moonlit fields to the dark city.
Well, Delia had been proved right at last. What next?
"My dear," remarked the vicar, far more gravely than he was accustomed to remark upon things in this curious, interesting, troublesome, but not grave world, "you are killing yourself."
Delia lit another cigarette with trembling fingers and swung herself on to the library table.
"Nothing of the sort," she replied brusquely. "Merely a little run down by an unvaried diet of quarrelling, press campaigns, acrimonious public meetings and stale fish. I don't know whether the indigestion has been due to the debates or the fish. I suspect the former. Most of my co-habitants at Morrison House seem to survive the fish with imperturbable appetites. My dearest Father, do not at your eleventh hour begin to play the heavy parent with me. Always hitherto I've admired your dignified self-restraint about my eccentricities a good deal more than I have considered it advisable to state—and now—well, really, just because I happen to have had two or three bilious attacks!"
The vicar removed his glasses slowly, leaned back in his chair, and looked up at his daughter. "It seems to me a little uncharacteristic of you, my dear, who have always been almost arrogantly neglectful of your bodily needs, to throw up your work in the middle of what I take to be a monumental campaign of militant good intentions, and to come down for a fortnight into the country because you have had three bilious attacks."
Delia removed her cigarette from her smiling lips and blew out a squadron of smoke rings that floated in beautiful order along the firelit air.
"Oh, well," she said, swinging her legs. They were painfully thin legs, thought the vicar, judging from what he could see of them. Owing to his daughter's attitude he could see a considerable extent. "I suppose that I might as well tell you—I've not been particularly well for some time. I don't know what it is. I suppose that I have been overdoing things a little."
"Sixteen hours a day?" queried the vicar mildly. "Meetings in Hyde Park, heart-to-heart talks with bishops, members of parliament, and prostitutes—really quite alarming articles in the Press, my dear, and all this office work. Your Twentieth Century Reform League sounds so terribly—strenuous."
"The twentieth centuryisstrenuous. To tell the truth, there are so many men and women doing nothing with their leisure that those who have any sort of responsibility towards society are nearly bound to overwork. However, Dr. Boden——"
"You went to a doctor then?"
"She's a friend of mine. She works at the crèche and shelter home we run in Plaistow. She said that I ought to live somewhere—not in a club—where they'd keep meals and things for me. I ought to diet or something—you know, on unstale fish and eggs and things. But you know, Father, it's all absurd. How can I afford a house and servants—or to live in one of these communal palaces where everything is just so? She suggested that I should take unto myself a friend and share a flat with her—someone of a meek and domestic disposition—not herself. She's married and has four children. But now, father, can you honestly imagine me living peacefully with another woman, installedà deuxin—say Aberdeen Mansions? Why, the poor creature would have a fearful time."
"She would. The worst of being a reformer is that you can't stop—even at your friend's characters, can you?"
Delia rose and pressed out the ashes from her cigarette against the hearth rail.
"I haven't any friends—of that sort," she said slowly. "You can't when you're really working hard. I have heaps of colleagues, but"—she shrugged her shoulders—"you know, since Martin was killed I do find it so awfully hard to keep my temper with other people. They infuriate me simply for not being he—because they dare to go on living, being so much less worthy of life, when he is dead. Of course it's entirely my own fault, and in my sane moments I realize how impossible I am to live with. But, however hard I work for some sort of vague idea of a regenerated society, I always seem to be fighting people instead of loving them." She laughed, pushing back her smooth black hair with her tobacco-stained fingers. "I am like one of St. Paul's unfortunates, who give my body to be burnt, not having charity. So I suppose my sacrifice is worth nothing."
There was a little catch in her voice. Her face in the firelight was almost fantastically wan, the face of a fighter prematurely old.
"Really," protested the vicar, "you terrible idealists give more trouble to law-abiding, peaceful people like myself than all the sinners God ever put into the world to leaven the lump of good intentions. Which reminds me—I've got one coming to tea."
"Good heavens! Who? Which? Idealist or sinner?"
"I don't quite know. A problem anyway. I do wish that you young women would let me alone."
"A young woman? Oh, father dear,don'tyou think I've had enough young women? I wanted the cloistered solitude of male society for a little."
"It's Muriel Hammond. You remember her?"
"Oh, yes. Well, it might have been worse."
"I'm worried about her, Delia."
"Hum. I gathered from your letter that you were. Light gone out or something?"
The vicar nodded, his finger-tips pressed together.
"Yes, I suppose that is it—her light has gone out. Why, Delia? You know that I cannot provide myself as you can in a moment with biographical information to come to the aid of my psychology. What is wrong with her?"
"Wrong environment, intellectual idealist of limited capacity, not too much will-power, immense credulity and ridiculous desire to live up to other people's ideas of her, stuck in Marshington. Of course she was bound to find out some time."
"Find out what?"
"That this is the last place on earth for a woman whose mind runs upon other lines than the smooth road to matrimony, and whose personality isn't usually attractive. I'm glad she's come to her senses at last."
"She hasn't."
"She's not going to marry Mr. Robert Mason, is she?"
"Not that I know of. But I believe that she'd marry the dustman if he asked her."
"Good Lord. Bad as that? Poor child. Well, what are we to do. Take her and shake her?"
"I don't know. I leave her to you, my dear. As I have always said, I disapprove entirely of your sweeping condemnation of provincial towns. Your views on matrimony are appalling, especially as——"
"As I was inconsistent over Martin? But, Father dear, haven't I explained to you a million times that it isn't marriage I object to—only marriage as an end of life in itself, as the ultimate goal of the female soul's development——"
The door opened.
Mrs. Raikes, the vicar's housekeeper, looked in.
"Miss 'Ammond, sir."
They rose to welcome Muriel.
She came forward with characteristic timidity and shook hands with Delia and her father.
"I hope you're better?" she inquired of Delia.
"Better? I'm all right. Never been ill."
"You look very tired," remarked Muriel.
They gave her tea, the vicar absent-mindedly poking the fire with his boot. Now that he had handed over the problem of Muriel to Delia, he felt that he had done his duty, and might return to the congenial contemplation of mediæval taxes.
When tea was over he murmured some vague excuse about preparing a sermon and vanished hurriedly.
"Doesn't Mr. Vaughan want to prepare his sermons here?" asked Muriel.
"Not he. He hasn't gone to prepare a sermon either. If we went into the garden we should probably find him wandering up and down among the daffodils swearing softly over Pollard'sEvolution of Parliament, which he calls a brilliant book, but most wrong-headed. Isn't it extraordinary that historians always seem quite pleased to find each other brilliant, but simply can't admit that they are anything but wrong-headed?"
"Do they? I don't know any historians. They don't live in Marshington—except your father, and of course we don't see much of him. I'm not surprised. We really aren't a very exciting lot of people." Again she laughed self-deprecatingly. "You know, you are very lucky, being so clever and going to Newnham like that. It must be frightfully nice——"
Delia lit another cigarette thoughtfully. "Smoke? No? You don't, do you?" Muriel shook her head. "You don't mind if I do, do you? I've got into rather a bad habit of doing it too much lately. You know, I've often wondered why you didn't go to college."
"I—oh, I—well, really as a matter of fact I did once think that I should like to. But I wasn't particularly clever you know."
"The last thing that one requires to make good use of a college education is brilliance. You want intelligence and industry and a sound constitution. The brilliant people can manage without it."
"Oh—well, it wasn't only that." Muriel leaned forward with her small hands stretched towards the fire.
"She doesn't look more than eighteen now," thought Delia. "What a solemn little child she is."
"You see Mother wasn't frightfully keen on it," explained Muriel sedately.
"Did you ask?"
"No, not exactly. I sounded Aunt Beatrice, who always knows these things. She said that they would be awfully disappointed if I wanted to leave them, and it did not seem worth while to me to make a fuss and to upset every one because I overestimated my own ability."
"Usefulness seems to me a question of intention rather than ability," remarked Delia. "Don't you think that this self-deprecation of yours was a little like cowardice? You hated an upset, and so you decided that you lacked ability."
She glanced sideways at Muriel, who still looked primly meek, facing the liquid flames.
"I wanted to help Mother too," said Muriel, seeking justice.
"Hum. And you thought that by helping your mother you would escape the responsibility of having to help yourself, didn't you? It was the difficult choice you couldn't face, not your own inefficiency."
Would Muriel take offence? Delia, well used to the outrage of her companions, watched the sensitive curve of Muriel's mouth tighten. Would she be too poor-spirited to make defence? Or too ungenerous to accept criticism?
For some time she did not speak. Delia was half afraid lest at the outset she should have wounded her too deeply, have frightened her away from any possibility of contact. She began to abuse herself as a tactless fool before Muriel's quiet little voice began again reflectively:
"I think that you are probably right. I was a coward. I've always been afraid. Desperately afraid—but not of unpleasantness exactly. I was afraid quite genuinely of hurting other people, of my own limitations, of the crash and jar of temperament. I—you won't laugh at me, will you?—wanted frightfully to be good. I did not realize what life was like, that nobody has a chance. It's all very well saying that I should have done this or that. Things happen against our will. Always being driven and we follow—voices." Her own voice gained intensity. Bright patches of carmine flared into her pale cheeks. "They promise us all sorts of things," she said, "happiness, success, adventure—don't you know? Of course you don't, you're clever. But we listen, we think that we are moving on towards some strange, rich carnival, and follow, follow, follow. Then suddenly we find ourselves left alone in a dull crowded street with no one caring and our lives unneeded, and all the fine things that we meant to do, like toys that a child has laid aside."
"My dear"—Delia's voice was softer now—"you are very, very wrong. You speak as though we had no choice in the matter."
"We haven't," said Muriel stubbornly. "Oh, you're clever and all that," her manner seemed to say, "but you can't deceive me now a second time."
"You are quite wrong," Delia answered slowly. "It's all very well to talk about life this and life that. You can't wriggle out of responsibility by a metaphor. Your life is your own, Muriel, nobody can take it from you. You may choose to look after your mother; you may choose to pursue a so-called career, or you may choose to marry. You may choose right and you may choose wrong. But the thing that matters is to take your life into your own hands and live it, accepting responsibility for failure or success. The really fatal thing is to let other people make your choices for you, and then to blame them if your schemes should fail and they despise you for the failure. What did you mean to do in Marshington?"
"I hardly know. All sorts of silly things—I put fine names on to all the conventional ways for killing the time between a girl's school-days and her marriage." Again Muriel laughed. "Oh, I've been a fine fool, fine. You know what you once said to me—'The only thing that counts at Marshington is sex-success.' I didn't know then what you meant, and I hated your criticisms of the sort of life my people lived. I thought them so disloyal."
"I know. Loyalty plays the devil with people until they see that its first true demand is honesty."
"If only I'd been like you," continued Muriel. "It's all very well for you to talk about choices and things, you know. You've really had everything. The best of both worlds——" She looked up unexpectedly. "Do you know that there was a time when I could have killed you—just for jealousy?"
"Really? When?" asked Delia with interest.
"Just after Martin Elliott was killed. You'd had the best of everything. Love to remember and work to do. Oh, I know you think you've suffered. Every one says 'Poor Delia!' I could have killed them. There you were with nothing to reproach yourself for, with no bitterness of shame, but a mind full of sweet memories. Why, you don't know what it is—the awfulness of a life where nothing ever happens; the shame of only feeling half a woman because no man has loved you; the bitterness of watching other girls complete their womanhood. And I didn't so much want marriage. I wanted to feel that I had not lived unloved, that there was nothing in my nature that cut me off from other women, made me different—Oh, I know that this sounds very primitive. We are primitive perhaps in Marshington. But what do I know of the world outside this village? I'm nearly thirty. People tell me that I look like a child. I feel like a child—beside you, for instance. But I do know this. That if ever I had a child and it was born a girl and not beautiful, I believe I'd strangle it rather than think that it should suffer as I've suffered!"
"Why—Muriel!"
"Oh, yes. Perhaps you're shocked. I know." The fire died from her voice. She dropped her head on to her small, clasped hands. Very wearily she spoke, "Oh, well. I suppose it does me good to say what I think, just once. Anyway what does it matter? I'm twenty-nine and to all useful intents and purposes my life is as much over as though I were ninety. I'm stuck here, I shan't marry. I don't know what else to do. You say that I've never made a choice—through cowardice. I dare say that you're right. But it's too late to begin now."
"Things are never too late, only more difficult."
"You would say that, now, wouldn't you? I'm sure that you're a splendid lecturer, Delia. You must be able to tell people an awful lot of good home-truths. You get so much practice, don't you?"
Delia smiled ruefully. She rose and crossed to the tea-tray and poured herself out a cup of quite cold tea, allowing Muriel to talk on.
"Do you know," said Muriel with mild surprise, "I never could stand up on a public platform, but I do believe that if I could I should be able to tell your audiences things you never could?"
"Of course. I'm sure of it."
"You know," she paused, as though she were thinking of some quite new thing, "you don't know half the time what you are talking about."
Up shot Delia's eyebrows. "I might have expected this," she told herself gleefully. "I might have known that when Muriel really did begin to talk we should hear some surprising things." Aloud she said, "Go on."
"You rail against faults like mental slackness, and sloppiness and being content with other people's standards. But you don't know what they mean. You're clear-sighted. I don't believe that's nearly so much a merit as a gift. How can you know what blindness is when you can see? But I know what it's like. I know what fear and stupidity and muddle-headedness can feel like. Because I did not recognize them till it was too late does not take away from me now the right to see them in other people—But I can't. What's the good here? Only—I wish—I wish that if you see anyone else in the same sort of muddle as I was in—ten years ago—you'd—you'd really make it clear to them."
"I blame myself—I blame myself," said Delia. "I should have made things clear."
"Oh, no. You mustn't think that. Why, you were the one person who ever lifted a hand to undeceive me. It was my fault. I was too arrogantly sure of my own righteousness to listen. I was too much set on living up to other people's expectations of me. You—you always——" She swallowed heavily, but went on. "Do you know, you've always meant a lot to me—I think—I think I used to sort of idealize you—as the person I might have been if I had not been such a fool."
"Me, Muriel?"
"Yes—er—it was impertinent, wasn't it?" Again she laughed, and rising hurriedly began to draw her gloves on, blushing and shy. "Good-bye, it has been most awfully good of you to talk to me like this. I—I shan't forget it. Please will you say good-bye to Mr. Vaughan for me?"
Delia turned from the tea-tray.
"Where are you going?"
"Going? Back—home—to Miller's Rise," said Muriel with surprise.
"Oh, no, you're not," commanded Delia. "Sit down a minute."
"But I'm keeping you—I——"
"No, I'm going to keep you. Please sit down."
Meekly, Muriel sat down and waited. She had to wait for a long time. Delia folded a derelict slice of brown bread and butter and began to cut it into neat, rectangular disks upon her plate. When she did speak, her question was quite unexpected.
"Have you a great deal of patience, Muriel?"
"Patience? Me? I—I haven't much idea."
"No—no. N—o." Delia's fingers tapped at the round brass tea-tray. "No, you wouldn't know. Really it seems incredible that—however—you're keen on accounts and things, aren't you?"
"Yes—I—suppose I am. I'm not much——"
"Good at them, though? Of course not. Nobody is without a proper training. However, if I remember the Nursing Association you have quite a genius for method. Do you like house-keeping?"
"That depends. At home it's such a routine now. I often used to think it would be lovely to have a little house all of one's own—only again the necessity of sharing it with a husband was an obstacle."
"I see."
"But I must really go. You'll be getting tired of talking about me——"
"Oh, no, I shan't. For Heaven's sake sit down and do be a bit more interested in yourself. You'll have to hear a lot of home-truths before I've finished with you. By the way, I'm ill."
"Ill? Oh, I was afraid——"
"Not very ill. But I shall be, unless I change my way of living. I ought to move into a flat, where I can have special meals and a more or less selected diet. I have enough money for the diet, but not for a whole servant to cook it, nor a whole flat to keep her in, and I certainly haven't time to cook my meals myself. What would you suggest?"
"Why? I should suggest that you should get some one to share a flat and do the housekeeping."
"Yes, of course. That would seem to be the obvious thing if it were not for one difficulty. I am an impossible person to live with. Look at me. I live largely on platforms and in publicity, which is always uncomfortable for one's friends. I suffer abominably from indigestion and consequently my friends suffer from my temper. I insult bishops and civil servants from platforms for the good of their souls. I'm running one of the most provocative and militant societies in England. I'm pursued by anonymous letters, threatened libel actions, and clergymen with outraged susceptibilities—and I mind it all damnably. I'm not a scrap heroic. I quail before every adverse criticism; I'm hag-ridden at night by memories of things that I might have done, and haunted all day by a sense of furious impotence. I'm never in the same mood for two minutes running, and all my moods are irritating. Worst of all, when my own affairs go wrong, I always blame the first person who happens to be near, and, try as I will, I can't reform myself. You see, I have no right to ask anyone to live with me."
Muriel was silent for a long time. Then she said:
"You may be partly right, but I think you exaggerate. The girl who came to live with you might be happier in some circumstances, but those might be beyond her power, and at least she'd have the satisfaction of knowing that she was living with someone who needed her. If you are unpleasant to your immediate neighbours sometimes," recollections of early chapters in Delia's career lit the ghost of a smile in Muriel's eyes, "at least you try to be of some use to the world at large. One may be alarmed by you, but one can't despise you. It's living with people whom you suspect are using you for ends that you yourself despise that kills you. It's having nothing to do, not having too much, which is intolerable. I should go ahead and ask anyone whom you can think of. Let them refuse if they will. But do see that you get a good cook."
"Muriel," laughed Delia, "do you know that you are quite a lamb?"
Muriel stared at her as though she had gone mad.
"It's all right," Delia reassured her. "I'm not going to tax your charity."
"How? What do you mean?"
"By asking you to come and share my flat and work during the day in the office of the Twentieth Century Reform League."
Into Muriel's face the quick light leapt and died.
"No, no, of course not. I'm much too stupid. But I hope you'll find someone nice."
"You—you can'twantto come—if I did ask you?"
"You mustn't ask me. I'd get on your nerves."
"But you can'twantto come?" repeated Delia incredulously.
"More than anything I can think of at the moment," said Muriel.
"But you can't think what it's like. It's quite impossible."
Muriel stood looking at her. Then suddenly she sat down at the table facing Delia.
"I want to get away from Marshington," she said. "I've wanted to for months—for years I think. I didn't know how—I'm no good at acting for myself. I thought that there was nowhere else for me to go. I thought that the only means of escape for me was marriage. But if you want me, if you'll help me," her urgent, hurrying voice was not unlike her mother's now, but there was in it a note of appeal that puzzled Delia, "If you'll only help me to get away. You said that I never made a choice. I didn't only because it seemed to be no use. It's no good choosing a thing that you can't do. But if you'll give me work, show me some way of being useful——"
"But supposing you get tired of it? Or supposing I do? Supposing that you get on my nerves? I shall not scruple to let you know, and there's even the conceivable possibility that I might not live very long. They say I must be careful. I can't be. I shall be impossible to live with and possibly worst of all from your point of view, you may find yourself totally unsuited for the kind of life."
"Well, I could always go again."
"And come back here? Muriel, would you? I'm terrified of taking you out of the one environment you know into one equally impossible for you, and leaving you neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring."
"But I don't know this environment and it doesn't know me. I'm living like—like a person that I'm not. Oh, you don't know it all, I can't explain, I never can, but I've seen things that happen out of this environment. I've seen cruelties and ruin and wretchedness that even you don't dream about, and if you don't help me to get away, I've got nobody, I've been—nearly mad sometimes—just trapped, feeling there's no escape from Marshington—Please, Delia, oh, I do so—need you."
Delia took out her handkerchief, rolled it into a ball, opened it out and looked at Muriel.
"You need my need for you more than you need me, I suppose really," she said. "Well—we must think it over, but I warn you you'll be exchanging the evils that you know for an infinitely worse evil that you don't know——"
"I don't care——"
The door opened and the vicar wandered in.
"Delia, Delia, have you seen my glasses?"
"Oh, Father, come in, do. We want you," said Delia quickly. "I'm in such a mess."
Mrs. Hammond's elder daughter left Marshington with far less ceremony than had attended Connie's departure. When it actually came to the point of telling her mother that she was going to London, Muriel was astounded at the ease with which she gained permission. Mrs. Hammond of course, would not find it at all pleasant living alone without her only daughter. Aunt Beatrice might be persuaded to stay, but nobody would consider that quite the same thing. And then, what would peoplesay?People, who saw that Muriel was leaving her mother, and with Delia Vaughan of all people, and for the Twentieth Century Reform League of all terribly "modern" and uncomfortable organizations.
"Naturally, you would not be expected to consider me, dear, I suppose," Mrs. Hammond had said, "but when you think what the Reform League is and how immensely people criticize it—I've heard that the new branch started in Kingsport has already upset the vicar of St. Simeon's, because several of the girls from his Bible-class have joined the club and are talking about politics and their votes and things—so very unwise, when most of them ought to go into service. The crèches and things may be a good thing, but I do think . . ."
Nevertheless, she had let Muriel go, publishing over the bridge table the news of her conversion to modernity.
"What I think," she had informed Mrs. Marshall Gurney, with a delicacy in refraining from comparisons that could not fail to point more strikingly at Phyllis, "is that it's so verywrongof mothers, in these days, to stand between their daughters and progress. The girls nowadays are doing such splendid work. Of course it needs a certain amount of brains, but Muriel always was so excellent with figures. I understand that Lady Ballimore-Fenton—the President of the League, you know—is a simply charming woman. Muriel will find it most interesting."
Muriel found it interesting, but the interest hardly surprised her so much as the difficulty, and this Delia had in no way exaggerated.
Muriel arrived at King's Cross with her ham sandwiches still untasted, her mind confused, and a terrified determination to be successful. She had half hoped that she would find Delia waiting for her at the station, and a flat waiting for her ready warmed and furnished in some convenient part of London. She found instead a gloomy, indifferent terminus, a rattling taxi, and the comfortless austerity of Morrison House, the interior of which reminded her more nearly of the Kingsport Baths than anywhere else. The small guest-room into which she was shown by a slatternly maid had been christened "The Morgue" and lived up to its name.
She heard that Delia was ill in bed, and went along the passage to her room. She found her propped up by pillows dictating letters to an obviously intimidated but competent secretary.
"Oh, Muriel—wait a minute. Yes, yes, Miss Beach? Where were we? 'The demonstration proposed to take place on July 15th in the Kingsway Hall will be postponed in order that an answer from the Home Secretary may first be received. As the deputation has been fixed for July 30th, we hope to hold the Kingsway Hall meeting on August 1st, which will just avoid Bank Holiday. I hope that the altered date will not affect your kind promise to speak for us—Yours truly . . .' That's all, I think. Well, Muriel? Arrived? Found a flat for us yet? I've got an internal chill or something and can't get up, as you see."
Muriel, who had caught the early train, forgotten to eat her lunch, and found her own way to Morrison House with much fear but with considerable self-congratulation, felt that this was a cold reception.
"You'll have to do it yourself," continued Delia. "Get a furnished one. I'll give you the addresses of some agents in Bloomsbury. Miss Beach, have you a directory there? You might go round this afternoon, Muriel. The sooner the better."
But, after Miss Beach had left the room, she had turned to Muriel with her rare swift smile.
"My dear child, you are in for a dreadful time. I've got my hands full of work. I'm feeling perfectly rotten—which means bad tempered and you'll have to do everything yourself. Can you face it?"
"Do you want me?"
Delia glanced comically round the room. A cup half full of boiled milk that stood on a pile of papers on the dressing-table had grown cold; the washstand paraphernalia had been swept aside to make room for a typewriter; ink pads, stamps, directories and ledgers strewed the chairs and floor; and in the middle of the litter Delia lay on the disordered bed with a coat buttoned over her blue striped pyjamas.
"Now, doesn't it rather look as though I wanted you?" she said.
That was enough for Muriel.
House agents scared her, but furniture shops offered her unalloyed delight. Her instincts of economy refused to allow her to take a furnished flat. She braved motor-buses and tubes, she faced landladies, caretakers and decorators. When Delia, nearly convalescent but still shockingly unfit for work, departed northwards on a speaking tour, Muriel worked almost day and night to prepare a home for them both. She spent part of her own dress allowance on blue curtains and hand-painted lamp-shades and the most luxurious of soft arm-chairs for Delia's weary body. Here at last Delia, who had missed the softer things of life, should find a home.
On the afternoon of her expected return, Muriel could hardly keep still. Twenty times she went to the window, twenty times she looked back with satisfaction on the restful charm of the sitting-room. Roses in rough blue vases; dark bookshelves ranged against the plain buff walls, space, space everywhere and a complete absence of irritating decoration—surely the room meant the materialization of her dreams?
"She must like it, she must like it," she told herself, and for the first time in her life was confident that she had done well.
The electric bell pierced the silence with deafening shrillness. She ran to the door. Delia's figure stood in the passage. Delia, tall, dynamic, ruthless, swept in.
"Muriel, oh, thank goodness you're here! What did you do with Hansard for May 21st last year? That wretched Cutherlick man has threatened to denounce me for misstatements in my Lincoln speech. We shall have a libel action some time. I've got to fly down to South Cross by the 5.40 if I can catch it to answer him to-night at this meeting."
"What meeting? What speech? Oh, Delia, you can't; you're worn out. You must——"
But Delia brushed past her into the lovely little room. She never saw the blue vases nor the lamp-shade nor the cushions. She was down on her knees flinging books from the shelves on to the beautiful new carpet.
"Where in the name of fortune did you put the Hansards? I'll never catch that train. Why couldn't you put the things where I'd find them? Have you a kettle boiling? Can't I have some tea before I go?"
But, when Delia had found the Hansards and the notes of her Lincoln speech and had telephoned to Lady Ballimore-Fenton, no time was left to drink the tea that Muriel had prepared. She rushed away to catch her train, leaving the overturned dispatch case on the floor, the bookshelves in a chaos and her bedroom littered with the disorder of her haste.
It was then that Muriel realized the disadvantages of trying to please people possessed by an idea. For nearly two hours alone in the flat, she forced back a desire to run away—could she face this continual possibility of Delia's displeasure? Could she continue to please somebody who never acknowledged her efforts?
"I'm being just as unselfish as she is," Muriel told herself indignantly. "This is my flat as much as hers. I've spent far more money on it. I've had all the trouble of making it nice. She ought just to havesaid—it doesn't take a minute to say 'how pretty.'"
But Muriel's resentment passed when Delia, almost blind with fatigue, stumbled into the flat just after midnight.
"It's all right," she said, and that was all. But she allowed Muriel to take her hot tweed coat, to pull the hair-pins out of her heavy hair, to bring her soup in a blue and yellow bowl, and a fishsoufflémade as only Rachel Hammond's daughter could have made it. For half an hour she accepted passively. She ate, drank, and allowed Muriel to prop the cushions behind her in the new arm-chair and put the bowl of yellow roses on the table by her elbow and light her cigarette. Then she lay back, smiled, and looked round the room.
"Well, Muriel," she said, "I always knew that you had discrimination, but this amounts to genius. One day your husband will be grateful to me for giving you a little training in the wifely habit."
"But I'm not going to marry," protested Muriel.
Delia flicked the ash off her cigarette. "You must learn never to argue with tired people," she said sternly, then smiled and fell fast asleep there in the big arm-chair without even waiting to be taken to her pretty bedroom.
After Delia's return, Muriel's life in London fell into its new routine. She spent her mornings in the office of the Twentieth Century Reform League, entering figures in big ledgers and reviving her acquaintance with double entry and other mysterious systems. She found that her old love of figures returned to her. Method was pure joy. She reduced to order the chaos of the office slowly and peacefully, taking each day a new section at which to work.
She organized the little household in 53a Maple Street, keeping a stern eye on the "daily help," the housekeeping books and Delia's appetite. She filled her days entirely with small trifles, seeing at first no farther than her ledgers and Delia's hollow cheeks, which surely began to fill out a little under her vigorous treatment of stout and milk and new-laid eggs. Yet somehow she did not feel completely safe. Such obvious things as there were to do she did and did quite competently, but always she felt that one day some problem would present itself or some crisis arise and that she would be lost again.
Delia seemed to be both pleased and fattened by her ministrations, but that did not make her entirely contented with Muriel's companionship. One night she came in irritated and disturbed. A newspaper article had questioned her sincerity. She pretended to ignore such criticisms, and could not. They rankled while she laughed at them. She stalked up and down the flat, hurt and sore, and uncertain what to do.
"I'm awfully sorry. I wish I coulddosomething," sighed Muriel helplessly for the fifth time.
"Do. Do? Oh, you never do anything except the things I tell you. You're always wringing your hands and looking sorry, but I always have to think of the things todo."
This statement Muriel felt to be true rather than kind, but she accepted it with chastened fortitude.
Between alternating doubt and happiness, Muriel worked throughout the summer and the autumn. There were weeks when she was oppressed by fear and wretchedness. Her life counted for so little. She was not really helping Delia much. Each week brought tenderly reproachful letters from her mother. They stirred Muriel to vague disquiet. All this sort of work was well enough—this Reform League, for instance. No doubt it was a good thing that a great society run by women should try to draw all classes into social service, by clubs and settlements in every town where mill girls might meet with daughters of barristers or squires to discuss crèches and canteens and recreation rooms, or to carry out political propaganda for the purposes of forcing through social legislation. Still, was it quite the thing for which she had been born, or was she only trying to cover the shame of her retreat? Delia would talk for hours of this dream of service; of an army without distinction of class or age moving forward towards the betterment of England. "Political knowledge, education in citizenship, co-operation, sympathy, no one class needs these things," she used to say. "We shall never see any improvement while the rich and the well-educated think that they can help the poor exclusively. The rich and educated need the experience of the poor. The poor need contact with culture and with leisure. We all need the organization of our capacity for citizenship. The realization of the corporate Will." Muriel sat and listened, thinking hard. Sometimes her own life seemed to her a very little thing, of bitterness born from brooding over folly, of petty disappointments magnified to tragedy, of imagination run riot. "But Connie?" she would say. "You can't argue away Connie's ruined life. Even if I have simply been foolish and mistaken, what was it that forced Connie to seek escape in such wild recklessness? There must be other people like her; what can we do?"
She was beginning to find a new foundation for her thoughts. Her concentration upon the intensely personal problem vanished.
She used to talk to Delia, in her soft, serious voice, feeling her way towards her new ideas.
"I can't help thinking that Lady Ballimore-Fenton ratherlikesa fight for the sake of a fight," she reflected. "Surely it doesn't do any good to pretend that all the people who don't quite agree with her are scoundrels. She knows it isn't true."
And Delia would smile and shrug her shoulders. "I believe that you think that we're a poor lot, Muriel."
"I don't. I'm awfully happy here. Only it does sometimes seem very difficult for people to be really interested in questions like housing or illegitimacy and to keep their sense of proportion. So often things are wrong just because nobody quite knows how to put them right. And gentleness is a great power and a great beauty."
Delia smiled her twisted smile. "You put all your platform pearls into your private conversation, Muriel. I wonder? I wonder how much you really care for all this. After all, you are right in one sense. We are all rather apt to lose our sense of proportion. But, because we deal with people in their social capacity, it doesn't mean that we disregard their private selves. We are all of us partly workers for some movement and partly men and women. It's a queer thing, this sex business. You go along quite happily disregarding it for years, then suddenly something comes along that rouses the sleeping thing—and away we go, over the windmills." She caught her breath.
"Martin?" whispered Muriel.
"I suppose so. We've all got a—Martin. That was physical as well as mental suffering. That was why it was so damnable. My mind misses him still—will always, I suppose. My body—well, thank God, who made a singularly imperfect world in order that men might work off their superfluous energies in order to straighten it!"
"But, Delia," cried Muriel, "you don't only do this work in order to forget—as a sort offaute de mieux?"
"No, no." Delia sat down in the arm-chair, her chin on her hand. "No. Two-thirds of me are wholly engrossed in it, and those two-thirds are of the more enduring part of me. You too. You won't always be content to stay with me. You've got the domestic instinct too, which I haven't. And you're not really absorbed heart and mind in the work. It interests you now—but—I wonder. One day some one will call to you, and back you'll go to Marshington."
"No. Not to Marshington. Never. Besides, nobody will call."
"Won't they? Won't they? You can't get out of it like that. Wait a little."
Muriel waited.
Muriel sat by the fire at 53a Maple Street knitting a jumper for Delia. The flames glowed on the silk between her fingers, until the sheen of it gleamed like molten copper. The supper table was laid for two. Blue and yellow pottery, a vase filled with tawny chrysanthemums, and Muriel's workbag of bright-coloured silk hanging from the chair, gave to the room an intimate charm.
Muriel herself was pleasant enough to look upon. Her thin cheeks still were pale, her features insignificant; but instead of diffidence and dissatisfaction her face now wore a look of quiet waiting, of humour nun-like and demure, of a composure that would quicken to keen sympathy. Her parted hair was brushed sedately from her small, serious face; her blue dress of soft woollen stuff was finished daintily by collars and cuffs of finest cream material, the firelight sparkled on the coquettish buckles of her really pretty greysuèdeshoes. Muriel Hammond of Miller's Rise had vanished; Miss Hammond of 53a Maple Street was a very different person.
When the bell rang sharply, she put aside her knitting, glanced round the room, and went to the front door. Callers were always coming to the flat at all hours. At first they had come intent upon finding Miss Vaughan and laying their troubles before the redoubtable champion of social reform. Latterly many had been quite content to find Miss Hammond, no longer a nonentity, but a grave little lieutenant, who listened to their protests or pleadings or denunciations with serious attention, and upon whose undemonstrative consideration they relied. Muriel did not know this. She still held herself to be very stupid, and dreaded committing the final error of judgment which should cut her off from Delia's tolerance for ever. Even now as she went to the door, she was reckoning rapidly the many people who might even at this hour be coming to lay their recriminations or requests before the organizing secretary of the Reform League. She opened the door and looked into the gloom of the passage.
"G—good evening," remarked a voice, incredibly familiar, yet unexpected. "Is Miss Vaughan in?"
She opened the door wider and the light from the electric lamp fell upon Godfrey Neale's tall figure. He was staring past her to the sitting-room, not recognizing to whom he spoke.
Godfrey. Godfrey. For a moment Muriel was dumb. A thousand doubts and fears and memories rushed to her mind. An emotion that she hardly recognized clutched at her throat. Tenderness, consternation and regret all smote her. She shrank back into the shadows of the little hall.
She could not face him. Godfrey, who had been wounded and a prisoner; Godfrey, who must have suffered agonies unthinkable; Godfrey, for whom she had endured such suffering—it was impossible that she should speak to him unmoved. She was caught in a trap, whence she could not escape. She forced herself to answer:
"Miss Vaughan is out."
He recognized her voice. "Muriel Hammond? By all that's wonderful? W—what are you doing here?"
If only his voice had not faltered with that familiar heart-rending little stammer. If only his face, smiling down upon her, had not recalled the moment when he smiled down from the motor-lorry, riding towards the peril of a bombarded city; if only the lean hand that he thrust forward had not reminded her of his hand outstretched in congratulation after the tennis set, when she had made herdébutat the Recreation Club; if he had been quite different, she might have borne it. But his familiarity stunned her. His nearness raised a thousand instincts and emotions that she had thought to be long dead and decently interred.
She gave him her cold hand quietly.
"Won't you ask me to come in?" he asked. "Or shall I be in the way?"
Without a word she went before him into the sitting-room, and stood, dumb and unnerved, beside the supper table. His quick glance seemed to take in everything, each charming detail of the long, low room, the firelight leaping on the plain blue carpet, the piano, the books, the flower-decked table.
"You were just g—going to have your dinner?" he asked.
He seemed to be taller than ever, and his brown face was thin. Those were the only differences. His nose still hooked very slightly over the small winged moustache. The brows over his kind, honest eyes were still dark and smooth and level. He still had the same regal aspect of bearing himself as though the whole world knew that he was Godfrey Neale of the Weare Grange, confident, dominating and victorious. No, that was wrong. The victory had somehow failed him. Something had subtly changed his self-confidence, his air of conquest, and with the loss of confidence some slight charm failed.
"I had thought that Delia would catch the 5 train. That means that she would have been home for supper. But she must have missed it by now," she said in a low voice.
"When will she be back?"
"I'm afraid not until late now—about eleven. It means that she will stay for dinner at the place in Sussex where she's speaking."
"Are—are you staying here, then?"
"I live here. Didn't you know?"
He shook his head. "Stupid of me. I hadn't realized. I've not seen Delia for ages. Only once since I left Germany, and then she was in such a hurry I hardly grasped anything but her new address. I never thought that she would be out."
It was like him to forget that people had other interests beside those concerning him.
"I'm sorry she's out. Won't you sit down?"
She prayed that he might go. She dared not trust her composure for much longer. She looked blindly round the room for help. If only he would go! His nearness hurt and bruised her. If only Delia were here, so that she were not left alone, trapped in the flat, bound to her task of hospitality by her recollection of his friendship for the vicar's daughter.
"Thanks, very much," said Godfrey. "If I may really—a—look here—are you doing anything to-night?"
"I? No—not exactly." She spoke before she thought.
"Then won't you come out and have some dinner with me? I'm up in town alone, missed the 5.30 train for Kingsport. It's rotten spending the evening alone at an hotel. You'd be doing a work of Christian charity to come."
"I suppose Clare's out of town," thought Muriel. She said: "I really don't think that I'd better leave the flat. Delia might still come." Her hospitable instincts overcame her panic. "Won't you—won't you stay and have supper here with me?"
She had not meant to say it. She did not want it. Even as she spoke she felt the whole of her personality rising in revolt, seeking to drive him from her. But he could not be so cruel as to accept. He would not force her thus to sit alone with him, in the unavoidable intimacy of that room.
He put down his hat with a sigh of relief.
"By Jove, are you sure that you can do with me? It's awfully g—good of you. I do so loathe a beastly evening alone in London."
"He takes it for granted that we've got plenty of food," thought Muriel. "He takes it for granted that I shall be pleased to see him, to wait on him, to give him supper. Oh, how dare he come here? How dare he? How dare he?"
Aloud she said: "Yes, do sit down. Take a cigarette. There are some in that little carved box on the mantelpiece. You don't mind if I go and get the supper ready, do you?"
He stooped to light a paper spill from the fire. "Sure I can't help? Sure I'm no trouble?"
"None, thank you," she said, and left the room.
Out in the kitchen, she did not begin to cook the fish that lay prepared with breadcrumbs and butter on the table. She crouched down upon the single chair, her face hidden in her hands, her body shaking. She felt herself to be outraged and assaulted. The agitation which he aroused in her violated her sense of decency. It was an outrage, a torture that she could be made to suffer by his presence. Did he think of her as a person? Did he remember that one kiss at Scarborough? The memory of his enfolding arms tormented her like the shirt of Nessus. Sham kiss, sham love, sham pitiful adventure, stirred by the recollection of sham peril—nothing more. Was this the emotion that had driven Connie to the river when she saw Eric's letter, knowing what she had done with Ben? Was this the revolt that had burnt and shamed her? What did she feel for Eric, love or hate? Violence of repulsion, or of love? Was this the love that she had always so idealized? No, no, a thousand times no.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" moaned Muriel.
The evening stretched before her in her imagination, a time of interminable misery. While Clare and her mother had been with her, she had been able to face Godfrey in Marshington; but to sit opposite him, alone and quite defenceless, while every word that he said, every line of his face lacerated her quivering nerves, how could she bear it?
She sat very quietly, only from time to time shivering a little, her thoughts beating back and back against the same stark problem. "How shall I face him?"
Then she rose, and as though spellbound began to move about the kitchen. She lit the gas stove, set the pan of soup on to boil, and began to fry the fish, not knowing what she did. On the table a newspaper had been spread to shield the scrubbed, white wood from grease. Mechanically she read: "At the reception given by Lady Marion Motley, several people of note were to be discovered among the crowd of guests thronging the historic stairway." What did she care for guests or stairway?
"L—look here, are you sure that I can't help?" said his voice from the doorway. "I'm an awful genius at cooking really."
She shook her head, not trusting herself for a moment to speak. Then she answered:
"I shan't be a moment. Go in and sit down. Don't be impatient."
She carried in the little bowls of soup.
"There's only cider, and lemonade; would you like lemonade?"
"Cider, please. You know, this is enormously good of you."
He smiled at her across the table.
"Not at all," she answered primly.
She felt as though the soup must choke her, and glancing towards Godfrey she saw that he too seemed to find it difficult to swallow. His lean brown fingers crumbled the bread upon his plate.
When she rose to bring in the fish, both of them had left their soup half finished. Conversation seemed to be difficult, but silence was quite unendurable. She lifted her eyes from her plate at last.
"Are you staying for long in town?"
"Only to-night. I'm going back to-morrow, thank the Lord. It's a filthy place, isn't it? What on earth makes you girls choose to live here, I don't know."
"Our work's here," remarked Delia-instructed Muriel. "Whatever its disadvantages, it is infinitely preferable to Marshington."
"Don't you like M—Marshington?" he asked simply.
"I loathed it with all my heart and all my soul and all my spirit," declared Muriel fiercely.
He stared at her in amazement that so guileless a creature should show such emphatic disapproval of something that he had always taken quite for granted until two hours ago. To her profound surprise he asked:
"I say, is there really something about M—Marshington that makes girls hate it?"
She blushed to the white parting between her smooth, brown wings of hair.
"Yes," she gasped softly, pleating the tablecloth between her fingers. "But I couldn't possibly explain to you."
"By Jove, I wish you would!"
"But it doesn't concern you," she said more softly. Neither of them took any notice of the meal before them. They faced each other like antagonists.
"It concerns me damned well," he muttered.
"You'd better ask Clare, then. She might tell you."
"Thank you—I don't need to ask Clare's opinions."
"No. I suppose not. I suppose that you wouldn't mind much either what she thought: opinions of women don't usually matter much to people like you."
He looked at her, his face drawn to an expression of pained surprise.
"I say—you know—don't be too hard on a fellow. I d—did jolly well care."
"Did?"
"Yes, did. She can go to the devil now for all I care."
"Really——" said Muriel, then most unnecessarily she added: "Have you—have you quarrelled?"
"No. We've not quarrelled. We just—I just—— Oh, damn it all. We've just come to an end of it, that's all."
"I'm sorry." It was all that Muriel could trust herself to say.
He rose abruptly from the table, went to the fireplace and leant against it. "Oh, it's all right. You'd have to know some time. Every one will know soon enough. I should have known. It was the b—beastly place. She said that she couldn't stand living at the Weare Grange—wanted to drag me up to town. Good Lord! One would have thought a kid of two would have known I couldn't stick leaving the old place. 'Tisn't as if there was only oneself to consider anyhow—let alone hunting and shooting and all that, I've got to look after the estate."
"Of course," said Muriel softly.
An extraordinary thing was happening to her. The pain of agitation slowly faded. She found herself growing calm, and detached, and full of sympathy.
"I might have known that she could never stick it," he continued, hardly noticing her, "all that being engaged to me when I was in Germany and all that—it wasn't so difficult. But I suppose that being engaged to a fellow is one thing and marrying him another. I might have known." Fiercely he turned upon Muriel. "I suppose you knew?"
"What?"
"That she—she'd never st—stick living at the Weare Grange. You were her friend."
Muriel shook her head. "I did not think," she said.
Indeed, she realized now how little she had thought of Clare and Godfrey. Never once had the question of their real happiness entered her mind, so much engrossed had she been with the thoughts of her own misery. It had been herself, not Godfrey, who had filled her dreams. The recognition of her own past egoism shocked her.
"You might have thought. You might have told me," he continued. "There I've been thinking, for years, that I was going to marry her. And all the time it really was impossible. She couldn't stand that life—wasn't fit for it. Spoiled by all this singing and publicity and having her photograph in the papers—wanted to fill the house with damned foreigners and Jews and things."
He was hurt and angry, wounded in his self-assurance, wounded even more deeply in the one thing that he had cared about more than he had cared for Clare.
"Wouldn't see it either. Wouldn't see my point of view. Didn't see why I shouldn't shut up the Grange and come to live in London, or Paris or some filthy hole. Good Lord, as if I hadn't had enough of dirty foreigners. Wasn't three years in Germany enough in all conscience? But no, she'd have her own way. She——"
He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. Muriel sat quietly, at the table, watching him.
"I told her that I wanted to marry a wife, not a p—prima-donna," he stormed. "I wanted someone who'd be a companion, who'd take an interest in my work. A man in my position wants some one to be his—his hostess, and look after his home and all that sort of thing. By Jove, she d—doesn't know what she's missed, though."
He turned to the fire, speaking gruffly and shamefacedly, amazed at the affront to his fine self-esteem, and too much of a child still to avoid seeking sympathy.
"I'd have been jolly d—decent to her. There aren't many men who'd have been as patient all these last months, though, standing meekly aside while she filled her flat with dirty little Jewish swine and mugs and pacifists. I—good Lord, I wonder how I stood it?" His voice dropped. Its wistfulness wrung Muriel's heart. "She used to be a jolly little kid, though."
He lowered himself into Delia's big arm-chair, and sat smoking fiercely. Without a word Muriel cleared the supper that they both had been unable to eat, and brought in coffee. He took it, thanking her but hardly noticing who she was. She realized that he had to talk things out, to run to somebody with his sad story. For indeed the thing that had happened hurt him deeply. He lied when he said that all he had sought in Clare had been a wife. Muriel knew that he lied, but because it was a lie she could have loved him. For Clare had been far more to him than a woman, beautiful, radiant, of rich vitality. She had been his ideal of all women, the star remote and bright which he could worship, the beauty that lay beyond all lovely things. Thus, though he had not known it, though now, perhaps thought Muriel, he would never know it, he had loved her ever since as a wild, pretty child she had smiled herself straight into his heart. But Godfrey was not the man to cast off everything for an ideal. He stood, and Muriel knew it, rooted and grounded in tradition. "He has roots," she thought and compared him with her father. Where Mr. Hammond was reckless, Godfrey was cautious. Where one was volatile, having no standards but his transient desires, no traditions but those of his creation, the other's life was only the chapter in a story, a long and not ignoble tale of Neales, stretching far back into the dim but dominating past. Mr. Hammond, standing alone, master of his own wealth and his desires, would woo or discard where he would. But Godfrey was far more than just himself. He was an embodiment of a legend, not all of his own making. He belonged to the Weare Grange far more than it belonged to him. So, when the inevitable conflict came between Clare and his home, there had never been cause for half a minute's hesitation. But the knowledge that such a choice had been inevitable, that his dream and the prestige of his position had not sufficed to hold her, had been very bitter. It was this that had robbed him of his air of conquest. His years in Germany had never touched him, for he carried the environment of the Weare Grange with him. That he could never lose. What he had lost was that fine and fugitive ideal, that sense of beauty born from something more universal than his own position, more sacred than the traditions which had formed his conduct. He, the man of property, of dignified assured possession, had been pursued by the passing urgency of that idealism which makes men poets and visionaries. The dream had left him now, and he would never see again the light that once had glorified his youth.
And Muriel, who realized this, for the first time considered him rather than herself. She saw that, with his dream, the legend of his strong, all-conquering charm lay broken. He had lost something that neither she nor anyone else could give him, and she was sorry, sorry, sorry—for him, not for herself.
She let him talk and smoke and fall into long silences, sitting moodily beside her fire. At intervals the cuckoo clock upon the wall called softly, clear small woodland notes. Her knitting needles clicked convulsively. At last he said:
"I suppose that I cared for her really less than I thought."
But this was disloyalty, and Muriel would not have it.
"No, no. You loved her truly. It was she who was not—quite what you thought you loved."
"I've been a damned fool," he muttered.
"You haven't. You must not think like that. Your love was fine, not foolish. You must not get bitter about yourself; don't spoil it. Don't think of her or of yourself as small. Think of her still as noble and beautiful. You were right to love her. You were." Her small voice grew urgent. Her grave, earnest eyes implored him. "Think of her as the loveliest thing that you knew, and of yourself as fine in loving her."
"She was a ripping kid—that time she came to Marshington."
"I know. I thought that too. I loved her at school as though she were something wonderful. She was like that."
"By Jove, she was," he said.
Though she knew him to be inarticulate, Muriel could imagine how the dancing flames again turned for him the rich silk of Clare's dress to the colour of very old dark wine. She could think of him seeing Clare's head uplifted proudly, and her white arms lying along the gracious flow and rhythm of her gown; she could feel his response to the gallant challenge of her youth.
"She's selfish—heartless as hell," half whispered Godfrey. "I was a fool."
"She's not. That's wrong and wicked." Forgetting herself, she slipped on to the hearth-rug and knelt there facing him, her eyes glowing, her small figure pregnant with the desire to save for him his dreams. "She's not selfish, nor were you a fool. She had an artist's temperament, swift and changeable. One should have seen—one should have seen. She did not understand you. She could not see what the Weare Grange meant for you. Look at her life—the publicity, the applause, the sunlight. She fed on the love and praise of people. It was her right. How could she come and bury herself in the country? How could she understand?"
He looked down at her eloquent face and her great shining eyes.
"Don't you see?" she implored him. "Don't you see you weren't a fool? It was inevitable that you should love her, seeing how beautiful she was. But it would have been wrong to try to make her your wife. You can't help yourself, any more than she can help being what she's like. Your wife must be quiet and controlled, understanding the ways of country life and the requirements of a house like the Weare Grange, valuing it as you value it, honouring its traditions. Over that at least, there must be no misunderstanding between you—and don't you see, however much Clare had wanted to, she couldn't understand!"
He looked at her, and slowly realization dawned upon his mind, clearer than resentment or self pity. "By Jove, you're right," he said. "She couldn't understand."
They did not speak again for some time. She, suddenly grown self-conscious, took advantage of her unconventional position to poke the fire, and then retreated to her chair.
At last he rose.
"It's after ten. I really m—must go. I say, you've been a brick, Muriel. I'll never forget it. I'm awfully glad that you were in. I believe that you understand me better than anyone—even than Delia. She's a decent sort but a bit—lacking in imagination if you know what I mean! You've been more decent than I can say."
"I haven't. I've been glad to be here." Her low voice never faltered. "You see, I loved—Clare. I should have hated it if you'd gone away—bitter—— It was all unfortunate—but—don't—don't be sorry that it happened, will you?"
She had risen now, and they stood facing one another, he, tall and weary, she, small and stiff with the battle for his dreams.
He thought, then slowly came to a conclusion.
"No. I'm not sorry that it happened." With the simplicity that she liked most of all in him, he held out his hand. "Thank you," he said, and at that moment was conscious neither of his magnificence nor of his wrongs.
She smiled up at him bravely.
"You've been a brick," he continued. "I felt that I had to tell someone. It's not the sort of thing, though, that you can talk over with another fellow quite, and I can't tell the mater much. She hates to think I've been upset."
Again his niceness and his simplicity moved her. She only shook her head.
"I'm glad you came."
They shook hands, and he left her. She heard his heavy footsteps down the stairs. For a long time he seemed to walk away from her, then, very far off, the street door slammed.
She went back to the fire and sat down on the hearth-rug. The room was full of his remembered presence, the scent of tobacco smoke, the crumpled cushion in his chair, the cigarette ash that he had spilled on to the hearth.
She leaned against the chair where he had sat, and so lay very quietly, gazing into the fire with eyes that did not see.
When Delia came in, nearly an hour later, she found Muriel asleep, her eyelids red with crying, her head down on the big arm-chair, and a little smile, childlike and tender, tilting the corners of her mouth.