THE CROWDED STREET




                          BY THE SAME AUTHOR

                             ANDERBY WOLD

                            THE BODLEY HEAD




                          THE CROWDED STREET

                          BY WINIFRED HOLTBY


                                LONDON
                    JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD.




                        FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1924


  MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY JARROLD AND SONS LTD. NORWICH




                                  TO
                         JEAN FINLAY McWILLIAM
                          AN UNWORTHY RETURN
                          FOR THE DELIGHT OF
                              HER LETTERS




           "Beware!
         You met two travellers in the town
         Who promised you that they would take you down
         The valley far away
         To some strange carnival this summer's day.
           Take care,
         Lest in the crowded street
         They hurry past you with forgetting feet,
         And leave you standing there."
                                                         VERA BRITTAIN




                               CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE
PROLOGUE--DECEMBER, 1900 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   1

                                BOOK I

CLARE--JUNE, 1903-APRIL, 1907. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15

                                BOOK II

MRS. HAMMOND--JANUARY, 1914-SEPTEMBER, 1915. . . . . . . . . . . .  97

                               BOOK III

CONNIE--SEPTEMBER, 1915-FEBRUARY, 1916 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

                                BOOK IV

MURIEL--AUGUST, 1920 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289




                               PROLOGUE

                            December, 1900




                          THE CROWDED STREET


                               PROLOGUE


From the crowded doorway to the piano at the other end of the room the
surface of the floor stretched, golden, empty, alluring. Ladies in
white trailing gowns, the mothers and aunts of other little girls at
the party, drifted across it like swans on a lake. Their reflections
floated after them, silver-white along the gold. When Muriel rubbed
her foot against the floor she could feel with joy its polished
slipperiness, broken only at rare intervals by velvet-brown knots in
the wood.

Mrs. Marshall Gurney was talking to Mrs. Hammond, so Muriel could wait
in the shelter of the doorway. Soon she too would have to cross that
shining space and join the other children on the chairs near the wall.
She was grateful for the interval of waiting. It was fun to stand
there, peering round her mother's skirts at the straight rows of
cracks running together up the floor till they met somewhere under the
piano. It was fun to watch the black jackets of small boys approaching
small girls in stiff muslin dresses who grew like paper flowers round
the walls. It was fun to tell herself over and over again that this
was the Party, the Party, the Party--and even while saying it to know
that the Party lay in none of these things; neither in the palms nor
the piano, the pink sashes nor the programmes, even though these had
pencils dangling seductively from scarlet cords; nor in the glimpse of
jellies and piled-up trifles seen through the half-open door of the
supper-room as she walked along red carpets to shake the terrifying
splendour of Mrs. Marshall Gurney's white-gloved hand. No, the Party
lay in some illusive, indefinable essence of delight, awaiting Muriel
beyond the golden threshold of the hall.

"Muriel has been looking forward so much to your party," Mrs. Hammond
was saying. "She has never been to one at the Assembly Rooms before."

Mrs. Hammond was small and soft and dove-like. She cooed gently when
she talked, and visitors spoke of her to Muriel as "Your Dear Mother."
For the Party she wore a new lilac satin gown and amethysts round her
pretty throat. Muriel knew that she was more beautiful than anyone in
the world.

Mrs. Marshall Gurney replied in the deep throaty voice that belonged
to her because she was Mrs. Marshall Gurney. Muriel could not hear
what she said, but Mrs. Hammond answered with her gentle little laugh,
"Oh, yes, she's only eleven and rather shy." So Muriel knew that they
were talking about her.

Grown-ups, of course, always did talk about children as though they
were not there. Muriel wished that it wouldn't make her feel hot
inside as though she had been naughty, or had begun to cry in front of
strangers. Connie, she thought enviously, rather liked it.

What did it matter? What did anything matter? She was at the Party.
Her new dress had been made by her mother's dressmaker. It had cost
her hours of breathless standing, trying to keep still while that
dignified lady crept round her on her knees, with pins in her mouth,
for all the world as though she were only nine and a half like
Connie, and were playing at bears. There had been a lengthy ceremony
of dressing before the nursery fire, with Connie dancing around
irrepressibly, wanting to try on Muriel's sandals and silk mittens,
and to touch the soft folds of her sash. All the way to Kingsport,
dangling her legs from the box-seat of the brougham--she always rode
outside with Turner, because to sit inside made her sick--Muriel had
watched the thin slip of a moon ride with her above the dark rim of
the wolds, and she had sung softly to herself and to the moon and to
Victoria, the old carriage horse, "I'm going to the Party, the Party,
the Party."

And here she was.

The ecstasy caught and held her spellbound.

Most of the chairs round the wall were full now. Mrs. Marshall Gurney
had been seized upon by Mrs. Cartwright. "It's nearly time to begin
dancing," said Muriel's mother. "We must get your programme filled.
There are a lot of little boys here whom you know. Look, there's
Freddy Mason. You remember him, dear, don't you?"

Muriel remembered Freddy. Once, when they had all gone to tea at his
father's farm, Freddy had taken Connie and her to play on the stacks.
They had climbed a ladder--dizzy work this at the best of times,
paralysing when Freddy followed close on one's heels, recounting
grisly details of recent accidents. Half-way up, Muriel had felt her
hands slip under the weight of a great sack of corn, and the earth
sprang up to meet her before the grinding thud of her shoulder on the
ground, when she fell as those poor men had fallen. She had scrambled
fearfully across the slippery barley straw, shuddering from the pain
of a fall that she had felt, although she still miraculously crouched
on the top of the stack, instead of lying broken in the yard. She had
sat with her legs hanging over space at the top of Freddy's lovely
slide, clutching at the treacherous straw with desperate fingers,
watching the hens, small as flies, pecking in the yard below, while
fear tickled the soles of her feet, and fear breathed on her paling
cheeks. Then, as merciful release or culminating agony, she was not
sure which, Freddy had pushed her over, and she had dropped limply
down, down, down, with a blinding rush, till she lay half buried in
straw below the stack, past hope, past fear, past speech, past agony.
That had been a long time ago. But she did not now want to dance with
Freddy.

"I don't think----" she began in her prim little voice. She was about
to add--"that I want to dance with Freddy," when Mrs. Hammond finished
her sentence for her.

"Of course he'll want to dance with you, dear." Mrs. Hammond claimed
that she knew what went on in Muriel's mind--her own child's mind. She
often finished Muriel's hesitating sentences for her. "You mustn't be
so shy, dear," she reproved gently. "Well, Freddy, how is your mother?
I hope her cold is better. You know my little Muriel, don't you? Of
course. You were so kind showing her round your nice farm that summer.
Dear me, what a big boy you've grown since then! She did enjoy it,
didn't you, dear?"

The edge of Muriel's chair had become a shelf of yielding straw,
slipping, slipping beneath her. Miles away below, hens, small as
flies, pecked on the polished floor.

"Where's your programme, dear?" asked Mrs. Hammond. Muriel produced
it, but hope died in her heart as the scarlet pencil moved in Freddy's
stubby fingers.

Polka, barn-dance, waltz. . . .

Her eye ran down the list of dances. Freddy's name alone marred the
virgin whiteness of the opposite page. At the thought of the second
polka she shivered. Still, he had only asked for one dance. That could
not spoil the Party.

A gentleman with a red flower in his buttonhole crossed the room and
sat down by the piano. From the way that he walked, Muriel knew that
he was going to be one of the funny ones. She could always tell.

The gentleman ran his fingers along the piano like playing a scale,
only prettier. In a minute the black coats and muslin dresses would
twirl together in a solemn polka. Muriel did not want to dance. She
wanted to sit and watch the moving figures weaving strange patterns of
shadow across the gleaming floor. She wanted to hear the music, and to
tap her foot against the side of her chair to the beat of its "_One_,
two, three, four."

The rows round the wall dissolved. Already Nancy Cartwright--a forward
child, Mrs. Hammond said--had lured her blushing partner towards the
centre of the room. A second couple followed, and a third.

"Haven't you got a partner for this?" asked Mrs. Hammond.

"Not just for this, Mother," Muriel murmured, vaguely aware of duty
unfulfilled.

"Oh, dear, well, let me see," said Mrs. Hammond.

She rose and began to search the room. Muriel wanted to run, to call,
to stop her; but she dared not venture into that revolving traffic of
dancers. She sat very still, while the circling skirts brushed against
her knees.

If only she could be quiet, and watch and listen, somehow during her
vigil the Party would come upon her.

From the ceiling swung dark festoons of gleaming laurel and holly, and
vivid flags, and lanterns of orange and vermilion. A child's laugh
rang out, challenging the echoes of the skipping tune. Oh, be still,
be still, said Muriel's dancing heart, and somehow here shall be
delight.

The drooping leaves of a palm tickled the back of the pianist's neck.
His left hand stopped banging out the bass chords and swooped as
though to kill a fly. It missed the leaf, and flung itself back on to
the keyboard to do justice to the Fortissima of the Coda. Back swung
the leaf over the edge of his collar. Up went the hand, clutching and
waving. There followed a battle royal between the palm and the polka.
Muriel's chuckles now rose to her throat, but, being a polite child,
she sought to stifle them. This would be something to tell Connie.
Connie might be trying sometimes, but her sense of humour was superb.

With a savage tug the gentleman at the piano had wrenched a leaf from
the palm and flung it aside. At the expense of the polka he had
striven for peace. With a sudden burst of rapture, Muriel saw that it
was the wrong leaf. Her laughter broke out, delicious, uncontrollable.

Of such delights was the Party made.

Mrs. Hammond stood by Muriel's side.

"Muriel, dear, here is Godfrey Neale. He arrived late and has not got
a partner for this dance."

Muriel rose politely to do her duty. Mrs. Hammond was so obviously
pleased that Godfrey had not found a partner. And, after all, the
thing to do at parties was to dance.

Muriel did not dance well. Madame Bartlett, whose classes she attended
every Wednesday, said that she was a stick. Music was beautiful,
especially the sort that made clean patterns of sound, interlacing
like bare branches against a clear sky. But while Muriel's mind
responded to its movement her body did not. She hopped round Godfrey
with disconsolate politeness. Only her feathery slenderness made his
progress endurable.

He was taller than she, and much, much older. Quite fourteen, she
thought with awe. Godfrey Neale, Godfrey Neale; vaguely she was aware
of him as something splendid and remote, of a lovely house behind tall
iron gates on the road to Wearminster.

They bumped into another couple.

Muriel became suddenly and devastatingly aware of her own shortcomings.
She tried to remedy these by moving her feet with conscientious
accuracy.

"_One_, two, three, hop! _One_, two, three, hop!"

"I beg your pardon," murmured Godfrey.

Only then did she realize that she had been counting aloud.

The next hop brought her down with unexpected violence on to Godfrey's
shining dancing pump.

"Sorry!"

"Oh, that's nothing. A fellow kicked me at f--footer last week and
made no end of a bump."

"Did he really? How awful! Did it hurt?"

"Oh, nothing to speak of. I say! That was a near shave!"

In her concern, Muriel started suddenly to the right and nearly
accomplished the downfall of the offending palm. She had just been
summoning her courage to lay before this dazzling creature her
greatest conversational gift, the story of the tickling episode. But
their latest peril put her tale to flight. Still, she felt that some
further effort was required of her.

"Do you often go to parties?" She whispered so softly that he had to
ask her to repeat her question.

Repetition emphasized its inanity. She blushed, gulping and trying to
control her quavering voice.

"Do you often go to parties?"

"Not very often. These things are a bit slow. I like footer, and
riding. I'm going to Winchester next autumn."

"Oh!"

Muriel wondered what mysterious connexion bound Winchester to
parties. Winchester, county town of Hampshire. Was that right?
Hampshire--Winchester-on-the-Itchen. Muriel had been considered rather
good at geography. Places could come real to you. Winchester. Parties.
She saw the city, rich with swinging lanterns, while down the lighted
streets from every window the tunes of polkas beat and sang.

"_One_, two, three, four! _One_, two, three, four!"

The music stopped. In the fairy streets of Winchester, and in the
Assembly Rooms of Kingsport there was silence.

Godfrey dropped Muriel's hand and clapped vigorously. He faced life
with a genial determination to find every one as pleasant as they so
obviously found him. Though he had not exactly enjoyed his dance with
Muriel, he smiled down at her kindly. She was a queer little thing,
but not bad, though she couldn't dance for nuts.

She smiled back at him gratefully, as though she said, "Thank you for
not telling me how badly I dance."

He enjoyed the comfortable feeling of having conferred a favour on
her. Muriel's smiles were like that.

The polka was not repeated. The pianist turned to concentrate his
attention upon the palm. Godfrey led Muriel back to her mother.

"Did he ask you for any more dances, dear?"

"No, mother."

That was the first dance. A second and third followed while Mrs.
Hammond talked to Nancy Cartwright's mother, and no one took any
notice of Muriel. She sat quietly, enjoying the Party. There seemed to
be no better thing than to watch and listen.

Mrs. Hammond turned.

"Let me see your programme, dear."

On the empty page Freddy's name sprawled, conspicuous in its isolation.

"Dear me," observed Nancy Cartwright's mother, "doesn't Muriel know
the children here? I must get Nancy to introduce her to some little
boys. Nancy's getting such a little flirt. So popular . . ."

"Muriel is very shy." Mrs. Hammond's voice was, for her, quite stiff.
"She really knows almost every one. But of course I like a child to be
a child; and she hasn't been going about in the way these Kingsport
children do."

But in spite of her implied contempt for the more sophisticated
Kingsport children, Mrs. Hammond rose at the end of the dance and
found another partner for her daughter. He was a small, pink person in
a very short Eton jacket. He danced even worse than Muriel, and in
their progress they managed to do a considerable amount of damage to
the other couples. After two turns round the room he deserted her with
relief. She stood by the door, a little dazed and intimidated, while
far away she could see the haven of her mother's chair separated from
her by a whirlpool of frothing muslin dresses.

Near the door sat poor Rosie Harpur. Everybody called her "poor Rosie"
in a general conspiracy of pity. She had not yet danced one dance. Her
plump hands grasped an empty programme. Her round head nodded above
the frill of her white frock like a melon on a plate. She had
straight, yellow hair and staring blue eyes, and reminded Muriel of
her doll, Agatha, whom three years ago she had discarded without
regret.

Funnily enough, Mrs. Marshall Gurney was talking about poor Rosie at
that moment. Muriel could hear quite well.

"Poor Rosie, I really don't know what to do with that child. I wish
that they wouldn't bring her to parties. One has to ask her of course,
for the parents' sake, but it's hopeless to try to find her partners."

Muriel's orderly mind registered a new item of information. The
unforgivable sin at a party was to have no partners. To sit quietly
in the drawing-room at home was a virtue. The same conduct in
the Kingsport Assembly Rooms was an undesirable combination of
naughtiness and misfortune. In order to realize the Party in its full
magnificence, one must have a full programme. All else was failure.
Enjoyment of the music, the people, the prettiness--all this counted
for nothing. It was not the Party.

Shame fell upon her. Taking advantage of the general confusion when
the dance ended, she tried to steal unobserved from the room. Mrs.
Marshall Gurney, however, saw her.

"Well, Muriel, quarrelled with your partner? How are you getting on?"

"Very well, thank you."

"Plenty of partners?"

Plenty? Oh, yes, plenty. Three was more than enough. Muriel tried to
reconcile her conscience to the lie.

"Yes, thank you," she said.

The great lady nodded.

"That's right, then."

Muriel ran away.

She hadn't told a story. She hadn't. All the same, she felt as though
she had.

Under the stairs she found a twilight alcove that would serve to hide
her confusion. She was about to enter it when the murmur of voices
told her that it was already occupied. Back to the cloak-room she ran,
growing now a little desperate in her longing for solitude. A motherly
old lady in black silk and bugles looked up from her seat by the fire.

"Well, dearie, have you lost something?"

Not daring to risk a second prevarication, Muriel fled.

The door of the supper-room stood open. Inside she saw a glitter
of glass and silver, of quivering crimson jellies and high-piled
creams, of jugs brimming with orange cup and lemonade. There were no
questioning grown-ups to drive her from that sanctuary. She slipped
inside and curled up on a chair near the door. From far away came
sounds of music, of laughter, of occasional faint echoes of applause.

She drew her programme from its hiding-place in her sash and, with her
head cocked on one side and the tip of her tongue between her lips,
began to write.

"First polka . . . Godfrey.

"First Schottische . . . Billie.

"First waltz . . . Frank."

And so on, to the end of the list. When the programme was full she
surveyed it with pride. Now, if anybody asked her, it could be
exhibited without shame.

How pretty the tables looked! In every tumbler a Japanese serviette of
coloured paper had been folded. One was like a lily, one a crown.
Kneeling up on her chair she hung ecstatically over one arranged like
a purple fan. A silver dish, filled with pink sweets and chocolates in
silver paper, stood at her elbow. How perfectly enchanting it all was!

Nobody could mind if Muriel took one sweet. They belonged to the
Party, and she was at the Party. They were there for her. And as she
did not dance. . . . She used so little of the Party.

She stretched out tentative fingers and took a sweet, the smallest
sweet, for she was not a greedy child. Daintily biting it, crumb by
crumb with her firm little teeth, she ate every morsel with fastidious
delight.

This was the Party. At last it had come to her, almost. Shielded
safely from the alarming and incomprehensible regulations of the
world, she could find the glorious thing that had kept her wakeful
through nights of anticipation.

She did not notice when the music ceased.

Suddenly there came a sound of voices from the corridor. An invisible
hand flung wide the door, and they were upon her.

The room was full of people, and they were looking at her, mothers
with disapproving faces, little girls and boys with smug and
round-eyed wonder, her own mother horrified, almost in tears, Mrs.
Marshall Gurney, tactful and insufferable.

"Of course your little Muriel is welcome to the sweets. I dare say
that she felt hungry. Children so love these almond fondants--from
Fuller's."

"Oh, Muriel, how _could_ you be so naughty?"

It was dreadful to see her mother look like that.

"Muriel Hammond's been stealing all the sweets! I say, do you think
she's left us any supper?"

That was Freddy Mason. He was laughing. They were all laughing.
Laughing or scolding, or looking the other way and pretending not
to notice.

It was more terrible than the worst of nightmares.

But the hour that followed was more terrible still. Her mother wanted
to take her straight home, but Mrs. Marshall Gurney would not allow
that. There she had to sit on that chair by the door all through
supper. She had to try to eat the patties and cakes and jellies. She
simply could not swallow.

"She's full up already," said Nancy Cartwright ruthlessly.

How could Muriel explain that it had only been one little pink sweet,
the smallest of the sweets, not even the fat round one with an almond
on it?

They made their escape as soon as possible, Muriel and her shamed,
unhappy mother.

The drive home was almost the worst of all.

"Muriel, how could you be so naughty, dear? How could you disappoint
me so?"

Fat tears ran down Muriel's cheeks, and dripped on to the collar of
her scarlet cloak.

Because her mother had forgotten that she had to ride outside,
half-way home, Muriel began to feel sick. But she dared say nothing,
for all that she could say must be used as evidence against her.

"I never thought that my little Muriel could be so naughty and so
greedy. Didn't you _know_ that people at parties don't go and eat up
all the supper? I don't know what Mrs. Marshall Gurney will think."

It was dreadful.

But how could she explain that it had only been the smallest sweet?

When they reached home, Connie was bobbing up and down on her bed in
the firelit nursery.

"Was it lovely?" she demanded. "Was it lovely, Muriel?"

Mrs. Hammond spared Muriel the pain of a reply.

"Muriel has been a very naughty girl, Connie. And you must lie down
and go to sleep and not talk to her."

To be told no more? Muriel naughty? Good Muriel? Muriel who had always
been held up as a model to naughty Connie? Here indeed was a nine
days' wonder.

Connie snuggled down with expectant submission in her blankets; but
even after Mrs. Hammond had kissed Muriel "Good night" with grave
displeasure the culprit would say nothing. She lay gazing at the
flickering fire-light with wide, tear-filled eyes, and saying over
and over to herself, "The Party was spoilt, The Party was spoilt."

For, in her unhappiness, this was the most poignant anguish, that by
some mysterious cruelty of events Muriel had never found the Party.




                                BOOK I

                                 CLARE

                        June, 1903--April, 1907




                                   I


On the evening of June 23rd, 1852, Old Dick Hammond, then still known
as Young Dick, locked the door of the little oil-shop, dropped the key
in his pocket, and turned westward up Middle Street in Marshington.
Beyond the village, black against the sunset, a broken windmill
crowned the swelling hill, even as the hill crowned Marshington.

"One day," he vowed to himself, "my son shall marry a lady and build a
house on Miller's Rise."

It was typical of Dick that he made his vow before the first sack
had been sold from the factory that eventually brought to him his
moderate fortune. Yet more typical was the promptitude with which he
forestalled his son and began himself to build the house at Miller's
Rise. When Young Arthur Hammond rode to Market Burton to court Rachel
Bennet, a house stood already prepared and waiting for his lady.
Whatever other objections the Bennet family might have raised against
Rachel's lover, at least they could not deny that he was offering her
the finest home in Marshington.

Fifteen years after Arthur's wedding, the house was more than a mere
dwelling place. Wind and rain had dimmed the aggressive yellow of the
brick walls, half covered now by ivy and the spreading fans of
ampelopsis. The tender olive and faint silver-green of lichens had
crept across the slates roofing the shallow gables. The smooth lawn
sloping to the laurel hedge along the road, the kitchen garden
overstocked until it suffered from perennial indigestion, the stiff
borders by the drive, wherein begonias, lobelia and geraniums were
yearly planted out, regardless of expense; all these testified that
the vows of Old Dick Hammond had been fulfilled in no grudging spirit.

"Eleven bedrooms, three real good sitting-rooms, and no making up for
lost space on the kitchens," Dick had declared. "When you go in for
bricks and mortar, go handsome. It's a good investment. Houses _is_
summat."

The house had been something more than the symbol of Old Dick's
fulfilment. It had been the fortress from which Rachel Hammond had
advanced with patient fortitude to recapture the social ground that
she had forfeited by marrying Dick Hammond's son. Old Dick had
mercifully died. When his continued existence became the sole obstacle
to the fulfilment of his vow, nature performed her last service to him
and removed it.

The death of her father-in-law had made it a little easier for Rachel
Hammond to live down the origin of his son, but even by 1903 she still
spoke with deference to Mrs. Marshall Gurney, and never passed the new
store on the site of the old oil-shop without a shudder. She kept her
difficulties to herself, and no one but her sister Beatrice knew how
great at times had been the travail of her soul. Beatrice alone stood
by her when she ignored the early callers from the Avenue and the
Terrace. No small amount of courage had enabled a young bride to
refuse the proffered friendship of auctioneers' wives and the
Nonconformist section of the village, when refusal might have meant
perpetual isolation. Old Dick Hammond had been a mighty witness before
the Lord among the Primitives; but for a whole year of nerve-racking
anxiety his daughter-in-law sat in the new house that he had built,
awaiting the calls of that Upper Marshington to whom Church was a
symbol of social salvation, and Chapel of more than ecclesiastical
Nonconformity.

Beatrice alone supported Mrs. Hammond when she carried the war into
the enemies' camp by inviting a formidable series of Bennet relatives,
Market Burton acquaintances, and Barlow cousins to purify the social
atmosphere of Miller's Rise. Sunday after Sunday these invincible
reserves appeared in the Hammond pew. The success of that campaign had
been slow but solid, and Mrs. Hammond, sitting in her elm-shadowed
garden on this summer afternoon bowed in gracious but satisfactory
acknowledgment to the hand that waved from Mrs. Waring's carriage,
rolling handsomely along the road.

She put down her sewing and gazed dreamily beyond the garden. The air
was heavy with sweet summer sounds and scents, melting together into a
murmurous fragrance; the breath of the wind on new-mown grass, the
cooing of doves, the sleepy orchestra of bees. On the upper stretch of
lawn the two little girls, Muriel and Connie, were making a restless
pretence at lessons with the governess, Miss Dyson.

Mrs. Hammond paused in her work, a faint frown on her smooth forehead.
Then she spoke, to herself rather than to her sister:

"Mrs. Cartwright said yesterday that Mrs. Waring is sending Adelaide
to school."

"School?" echoed Beatrice. Having been offered no clue yet, she knew
not whether to approve or to decry. Seventeen years spent as the one
unmarried daughter of a large family had taught Beatrice Bennet that
she existed only upon other people's sufferance. Since her parents had
died, she passed her time in a continual succession of visits from one
brother or sister to another, paying for their hospitality by lending
her approval, such as it was, to register or to confirm their own
opinions.

Mrs. Hammond had not hitherto expressed her opinion on the subject of
schools. Beatrice could therefore only wait and listen.

"To school?" she repeated, as her sister kept silence. "Did she say to
which school?"

"She was uncertain." Mrs. Hammond resumed her sewing. Her plump, white
hands with round, beautifully-polished nails, conveyed in repose a
deceptive impression of gentle ineffectiveness. Directly she began
to hem, inserting and withdrawing her needle with sharp, decisive
movements, the flashing diamonds on her finger cut through the
idle softness of that first impression. Her hands never fluttered
uncertainly above her work. She moved directly to the achievement of
her aim, or she kept still. Just now she sewed, with rapid ease, a
petticoat for Connie.

"Connie's hard on her things," she observed. "You'd hardly believe how
fast she grows, and then she tears them like a great tom-boy." She
sighed, clipping off a thread with her sharp scissors. "Mrs. Waring
seems to be thinking of York for Adelaide."

"There are good schools in York," suggested Beatrice.

"Well, there's the Red Manor School. Miss Burdass is a lady. Daisy and
Marjorie are going there, and now perhaps Adelaide. But I'm not sure."

"Mrs. Marshall Gurney's little girl still has a governess, hasn't
she?" suggested Beatrice with a helpful air.

Mrs. Hammond's eyes turned for one instant to the drooping figure of
Miss Dyson, now trailing wearily towards the house.

"Mrs. Marshall Gurney found a treasure in Miss Evans," she remarked
dryly. "I have already tried five for the children. You know that; but
they seem to be either feeble sorts of creatures like this Miss Dyson
or pert young minxes like that Porter girl. Mrs. Marshall Gurney
hasn't got to deal with Arthur."

Mrs. Hammond never alluded directly to those other troubles of her
married life unconnected with her husband's social position; but
Beatrice nodded now in perfect comprehension. With a spinster's
licence, she always believed the worst of husbands.

"Besides," her sister continued, "it's not only governesses. I was
talking it over last night with Mr. Hammond." She called her husband
Mr. Hammond sometimes from habit, because her subconscious mind
recognized that conversation with Beatrice was conversation with an
inferior, and prompted her accordingly. "He agreed with me that the
girls must go somewhere where they'll make nice friends. After all,
there are really very few nice people round Kingsport."

Beatrice followed her sister's glance beyond the flat meadows to where
Kingsport lay veiled in a light haze from the river Leame. The city
rose so slightly from the fields and gardens that its silver houses
gleamed like a pool of mercury poured on stretched green cloth,
leaving little drops and flattened balls before it had rolled
together Marshington, Danes, Kepplethorpe, and Swanfield over on the
pale horizon.

"I have to think of the future," Mrs. Hammond remarked.

Her sister nodded.

"Have you decided, then?"

"I did mention Heathcroft to Arthur. Mrs. Hancock's school is not very
large, but the dear Bishop recommends it, and I understand that even
the Setons of Edenthorpe thought of sending their little girls there."

"The Setons. Now, let me see, aren't they some connection of the
Neales?"

"Mrs. Neale was a Miss Henessey, and the Henesseys are cousins to the
West Riding Setons."

All Bennets had the gift of tracing genealogies by faith rather
than by sight. A naive confidence in the magic of Birth dignified a
curiosity that arose not from snobbishness alone.

A shadow fell across the lawn, darkening the upturned daisy-faces at
their feet.

"Well, well, well! Gossiping your heads off as usual, you two women?"
boomed Mr. Hammond's hearty voice.

They turned and looked up to where his figure dominated them,
ponderous, aggressive, radiating heat and energy. Arthur Hammond had
driven from the mill, but his great legs were encased from the knees
downwards in leather gaiters, and from the knees upwards in vast
checked breeches. His face was crimson, and his thick, darkly red hair
damp with perspiration. He wiped his head and whiskers with a blue
silk handkerchief, smoothing carefully into shape the heavy moustache
of which he was inordinately proud. He beamed contentedly upon his
women.

"Well, Mrs. H., how's tricks?"

His wife flushed slightly at the vulgarity of his phrase, even while
she felt, faintly across a gulf of disenchantment, the fascination of
his great virility.

"We have been discussing a school for the children, Arthur," she said,
her pretty voice as usual reacting with increased gentility in his
presence. "Beatrice agrees with me that Hardrascliffe has many
advantages."

"Bee knows a thing or two, what? Well, Mrs. H., I leave it to you. I
make the cash, Bee, but I let my wife do the spending."

It was true. His faith in her perspicacity was absolute. His offences
against her womanhood had never dimmed his appreciation of her wisdom.

"You really think that it would be the best thing, Arthur?" Mrs.
Hammond asked, with an assumption of deference only permitted when she
had already made up her mind.

"Ay, ay. Do what ye will with the lasses. If they'd 'a been lads, I
might ha' had sommat to say."

He lowered his great bulk slowly into the third garden chair. The
little girls came running across the daisied lawn, Connie dancing
ahead, Muriel following more sedately. Though she was fourteen, Muriel
still looked a child in her short holland dress and round straw hat.

"Father, Father," shrilled Connie. "When did you come home? Have you
been to Kingsport? How did the new bay mare go?"

They were singularly alike, Arthur Hammond and his younger daughter.
He smiled down at her with fond assurance.

"She went like old Miss Deale goes when she sees the curate coming
round t' corner."

"What do you mean, father? How does she go?"

"Arthur, I wish that you wouldn't say such things before the
children," reproved his wife's sweet voice.

He laughed enormously, putting his hand out and drawing Connie closer
to him, and thinking what a jolly thing it was to be sitting in
his pleasant garden with the day's work done, and an evening of
uninterrupted domesticity before him.

"Ay, Connie," he asked, "how would you like to go to school, eh? At
Hardrascliffe with old Mrs. Hancock, who'd beat you like anything if
you're a bad girl?"

"Oh, Father!" Connie glowed rapturously, understanding exactly how far
his threats were serious.

Muriel stood quietly before them, her slim hands clasped, her grave
eyes contemplative. She saw the sun lighting the pale brown of her
mother's hair to the soft shadow of gold. She saw the deep blue of
her aunt's flowing skirt against the speckled green and white of the
unmown stretch of lawn. She saw her father and sister, their two red
heads together, plotting some game of boisterous childishness that was
peculiarly theirs. She saw the wind among the lime trees tumbling
their leaves to delicate patterns of green light and shade.

Her wide eyes narrowed with the intensity of her secret thought.

"Mother," she asked unexpectedly, "do you suppose that there are many
families in Marshington as happy as we are?"

A faint shadow crossed her mother's face, like a wind-blown cloud
across a flower. Then she answered with the gentleness that she
reserved especially for her children.

"Well, dear, I hope that many families are happy."

But Mr. Hammond, thrusting Connie aside, clapped his hand against his
thigh and guffawed loudly. "Well, if that doesn't beat everything.
That's a real good 'un, that is. A happy family, well, well, well.
Which puts me in mind, Bee, did you ever hear tell of Bob Hickson and
_his_ happy family?"

Beatrice, part of whose profession it was to have heard no tale
before, gathered her scattered wits to give attention. Connie, bored
by the prospect of a tale that she had heard before, danced off among
the grass and buttercups; but Muriel, who had put her question
seriously, stood patiently watching, a little puzzled, a little
rebuffed, a little sad.




                                  II


So Muriel was sent to cultivate suitable friendships under the
guidance of Mrs. Hancock. Because she believed that school was a place
where one learnt things, she had been pleased to go. She wanted to
draw, to paint, to play the piano as no one before had played it.
Most of all, she wanted to learn about Higher Mathematics and the
Stars. Muriel felt rather vague about the exact meaning of Higher
Mathematics. But she knew that she found in figures a sober and
unfailing delight. They slid through her mind like water, separating
easily into their factors, uniting quickly for multiples and
additions, revealing their possibilities at a glance as a clear pool
reveals the pebbles below its water. Then in figures lay a comforting
assurance of absolute truth. In a world where Muriel was beginning to
suspect that most conclusions were at best a compromise, she found
triumphant satisfaction in the unquestionable certainty that, in all
places and at all times, two and two made four.

At Marshington, Muriel's odd tastes had been discouraged. At school,
she felt assured that she would reach her heart's desire. She would
make wonderful friendships, win all the prizes, filling her beautiful
mother's heart with pride, and Heathcroft with the glory of her
triumphs.

Before a week had passed, she began to make discoveries. First, with
a dull ache of disappointment, she found that school was not so
different from Marshington after all; indeed, in a queer way the new
place seemed to be more familiar than her home, as the type may be
more familiar than the individual. At home, for instance, her mother
said, "Muriel, I wish that you would keep the school-room cupboard a
little tidier." At school untidiness became a crime, to be punished
by order marks, to the disgrace of the whole form or bedroom. The
accidental regulations of Marshington life were shaken out of their
environment and transformed into infallible rules.

For Mrs. Hancock had been a wise woman when she founded her private
school for girls at Hardrascliffe. Opening in business an eye to the
main chance that she would have closed in private life, she realized
that a head mistress has to make a choice. Generations are like
divinities, and he who is not for them is against them. A school must
be run either for the parents or for the children. As a business
woman, Mrs. Hancock knew that the parents who pay the bills are the
indispensable factor of success. She also knew that, for most of her
parents, the unacknowledged aim of education was to teach their
children to be a comfort to them. And how could a child be a comfort
to parents whom she makes uncomfortable? Mrs. Hancock determined that
no education received in her school should be responsible for this
disaster.

Possibly these considerations influenced her when, during her first
term, Muriel unexpectedly asked for an interview. In response to her
"Come in, my dear," a small shy person stood before her, whose slight
figure was tense with a tremendous effort of courage.

"Well, Muriel?" Mrs. Hancock smiled, with that famous motherly manner
so much praised among her parents.

"Mrs. Hancock----" hesitated Muriel. Her temerity was born of deep
desire. "You said that those of us who wanted to learn special
subjects and things--extras--might come and ask you."

"Well, dear, I don't remember, though, that your mother said---- Now,
let me see, where is her letter?" Mrs. Hancock searched among the
orderly papers on her desk. "I don't remember that she asked for you
to learn any extras, except dressmaking, perhaps, if it fitted in to
your time-table."

"It wasn't Mother. It's me." Muriel groped her way to an untutored
request. "I want--please, may I have lessons on Astronomy?"

"Astronomy?" Mrs. Hancock gasped. "My dear child, what are you talking
about?"

Muriel, whose opinion of the wisdom of all grown-ups was sublimely
high, did not take it upon herself to explain. She only protested
fervently that she wanted to, always had wanted to, know more about
the stars, and to do calculations and things. It must be confessed
that it all sounded rather silly. The triumphant thing, the towering
audacity of her desire, collapsed into the futility of ruined hopes.
She felt that the tears were coming. Her unique adventure beyond
habitual self-effacement was going to fail. She gazed appealingly at
the head mistress.

Then, with a kindliness that Muriel found consoling even though it
sounded the death knell to her hopes, Mrs. Hancock explained how
there were some things that it was not suitable for girls to learn.
Astronomy, the science of the stars, was a very instructive pursuit
for astronomers, and professors (these latter being evidently a race
apart), but it was not one of those things necessary for a girl to
learn. "How will it help you, dear, when you, in your future life,
have, as I hope, a house to look after? If you really want to take up
an extra, I will write to your mother about the dressmaking. You are
quite clever with your fingers, I think, and though it is usual to
begin a little later, perhaps----"

"But, but----" Muriel began. She knew now quite certainly that she had
resolved to become a great mathematician. She was not quite sure what
this involved, nor could she trace her resolution to the day when she
first read _The Life of Mary Somerville_ in the _Lives of Fine Women_
Series. She was certain that fate held for her something more exciting
than dressmaking lessons, and yet her initial failure sapped her
courage. She resigned herself to the wisdom of Mrs. Hancock.

Whatever doubts Muriel might have felt about that wisdom, Mrs. Hancock
had none. Acceptance of the conclusions reached by experienced and
older people, Muriel was told, was one of the first lessons to be
learnt by rash, unthinking youth. One day Muriel would laugh at her
childish fancies. She did not want to be considered different from
other girls, did she? Mrs. Hancock had noticed with regret a tendency
to hold herself aloof, to be a little odd. That should not be. Muriel
must learn to conform to the standards of other, wiser people. One day
she would be grateful to Mrs. Hancock.

Muriel, of course, was grateful. She failed to explain to her head
mistress that her aloofness was not of her own making; but she had
learnt her lesson. She never again asked Mrs. Hancock for anything
until she said good-bye to her on her last day at school.

And yet that interview affected her life more deeply than she might
have guessed. For at the dressmaking classes, Muriel met Clare.




                                  III


It happened during Muriel's second term. She sat in the big school-room,
opposite to the door that led up three steps into the hall. The
dressmaking class was half over, and Muriel, while her fingers
carefully tacked gathered nun's veiling, allowed her thoughts to dance
away as usual into a delightful day-dream. Always at this time Muriel
used her leisure moments to compose the next instalment of a secret
serial history of which she was the heroine. In her dreams, her
failures and timidities slipped from her. She became fascinating and
audacious. Mistress of life, surrounded by adoring friends, she stood
triumphant, poised on the threshold of some great adventure.

At the moment, having rescued the head girl, Rosalie Crook, from a
terrible death by drowning, Muriel, still pale and dripping, was
received upon the storm-swept sea-shore into the magic circle of
"Them," the great ones. "They" were the élite, the prefects and the
games captains, the popular and famous, surrounded by the ineffable
prestige of tradition-making youth. Yet Rosalie, with tear-filled
eyes, bent forward to her companions. "Did you know," she cried,
"that Muriel has often been lonely and neglected? Do you know that she
has lived in hourly dread of croc-walks, for fear lest she should not
have a partner; that she has shrunk in terror from Speech Day, in case
no one should ask her to sit next them? That she has been at school
two terms, but nobody has asked her to be their friend? Who will be
her friend now? I, for one, would have liked that honour, girls, that
honour." Her voice quivered with emotion as They, with one accord,
rose to claim the friendship of Muriel Hammond. The raging wind swept
their ringing voices out to sea, as . . . the door opened and Mrs.
Hancock entered, followed by Clare Duquesne.

Muriel rose obediently with the rest of the class, according to the
Heathcroft rule of courtesy, but afterwards the action appeared as
the natural result of instinctive allegiance to the triumphant
personality, not of the head mistress, but of Clare.

Clare stood at the top of the three steps, smiling down at the class,
not shyly, not stupidly, but with an assured and indestructible
friendliness. She was as much mistress of the situation as a famous
actress who has entered amid deafening applause to take her call. Not
beautiful, but with the confidence of beauty, not tall, but with a
radiant suggestion of height, Clare was utterly unlike anything that
Muriel had seen before. From the surprising bow upon her sleek brown
hair, to the shining buckles on her trim brown shoes, from her odd
short dress of pleated tartan to the frill of muslin round her firm
young neck, she defied all Marshington and Hardrascliffe conventions
of the proper attire for young girls of fifteen. Wholesome as an
apple, tranquil as a September morning, and unmysterious as a glass of
water, she yet held for Muriel all mystery and all enchantment. From
that moment, without calculation or condition, Muriel gave her heart
to Clare Duquesne.

"Now, girls," announced Mrs. Hancock. She never called her pupils
"young ladies," having informed their parents that this savoured of
middle-class gentility. They, anxious to fling off the least suspicion
of resemblance to the class to which they almost all belonged, had
approved with emphasis. "Now, girls, I want you to make room in your
class for Clare Duquesne. She has come unexpectedly in the middle of
the term because her mother has been called to the South of France on
account of her father's health. I want you therefore to be specially
kind to her, and to give her a pleasant welcome, as I know that you
will."

Having made her speech, Mrs. Hancock prepared to withdraw, but this
surprising Clare forestalled her.

"Thank you immensely," she said in her clipped, precise voice,
speaking as though English were a well-known yet foreign language to
her. "It is very kind of you to take so much trouble over me. But,"
she bubbled with laughter, the dimples quivering in her rounded
cheek, "I have no talent with my needle. Félix bet me five francs
that I would never learn even to sew on a button."

Mrs. Hancock, slightly surprised, but still benevolently gracious,
smiled kindly. "And who is Félix, Clare?"

"Félix? Didn't you know? He's my father." She turned to the class with
an engaging air of frankness. "You know, Mamma and I always call him
Félix, because she hates to hear me say Mamma or Papa. It makes her
feel her age, she says, and when you are on the stage it is a crime to
feel your age--on account of the dear public, is it not so?"

Clare's voice deepened to the rich intonation of Sophie O'Hallaghan,
the charming Irish-American actress who had married the half-brother
of Lord Powell of Eppleford, and who was, incidentally, Clare's
mother.

Mrs. Hancock had not intended to divulge the profession of Clare's
mother. It was, she considered, the approval of the dear Bishop
always in her mind, a delicate subject upon which one might have
expected Clare to preserve a little reticence. Especially since Félix
Duquesne had been considerate enough to write his distinguished but
embarrassing French prose in--French, and was, through his family
connections, of unprecedented value as a parent. But Clare knew no
more of reticence than a lark on a spring morning or a kettle on the
boil. She saw no reason for Mrs. Hancock's sudden stiffness, and
continued to smile at her with complete urbanity.

"Well, Clare," replied the head mistress, "I think that perhaps while
you are at school you had better refer to your father by his proper
title. Is there an empty place, Miss Reeve, for Clare? Now girls, go
on with your work. There is no reason for you to let Clare's arrival
interrupt it. You can continue just the same."

She swept from the room, masking a faint uneasiness behind her
gracious majesty of deportment, but for the first time questioning
her wisdom in admitting this new pupil.

In the school-room, however, Providence for once had favoured Muriel.
The empty chair to which Clare was conducted by Miss Reeve was next to
hers, and when Clare turned towards her with that dazzling smile
Muriel knew, for all Mrs. Hancock might say, that things would never
be quite the same for her again.




                                  IV


The term after Clare's arrival Muriel lay in bed staring at the faint
blur against the wall where Clare lay asleep. The room was dark and
still, but near the pale translucent panels of the window the curtains
stirred as though moved by the breathing of the seven girls.

The miracle that had led Clare to her on that first day still endured.
Clare and Muriel slept in the same room. Of course that did not mean
that they were friends. Clare had immediately marched with her
cheerful serenity right into the most exclusive circle of the elect,
of "Them." But to see Clare was an education; to speak with her a
high adventure. To sleep in the same room with her, to see her
bath-salts and her powder, only permitted at Heathcroft because she
was her father's daughter, to touch her underclothing, embroidered
in a Belgian convent--this was to live perpetually on the threshold
of a marvellous world, removed by millions of miles from school or
Marshington.

She was wonderful, this Clare Duquesne. At night Muriel would raise
her head above the bed-clothes and try to tell herself that this was
really true, that the world was large enough to hold people so
different as Clare and Muriel. Muriel, for all her brave dreams, knew
herself to be of those whose eager, clutching hands let slip prizes,
friendships and achievement, as quickly as they grasp them. But
Clare, lazy, careless, happy Clare, laughed when she made mistakes,
was amused by her arithmetic, hopelessly confused by premature
acquaintance with the metric system, cared nothing for her erratic
spelling, and swung up her average of weekly marks by her staggering
proficiency in languages. Her supremacy at singing and dancing cost
her no more effort than the wearing of fine raiment cost the lilies of
the field. Her French and German were more fluent than her clipped,
accentuated English. She could swear in Spanish, order a dinner in
Dutch, and write a love-letter in Italian. Impish as a street-urchin,
sophisticated as a cocktail, fearless of life, loved by it and its
lover, judging no man as no man judged her, she dazzled Heathcroft as
a glorious, golden creature not wrought from common clay.

Muriel's heart went out to her in a great wave of adoration.
Passionate emotion, stronger than any she had known, even on the
hushed silver morning of her First Communion, filled her small body
like a mighty wind.

"Oh, I would die for her," she breathed ecstatically. "O God, if
you've planned anything awful to happen to Clare, let it happen to me
instead. I could bear anything for her, even if she never knew how I
cared. But do let me know her. Let me get to be her friend!"

Forlorn hope, thought Muriel next day, preparing reluctantly for the
school walk. As usual the time was trapping her, and she had no
partner. Life at Heathcroft being organized upon the partner system,
this was Muriel's daily and hourly terror--to have no one to walk
with, to be driven as an enforced intruder to walk with the last
couple in the crocodile, to feel the checked resentment of the juniors
upon whom she was thus imposed.

She stood in front of the small glass, pushing the elastic of her
sailor hat beneath her long, brown plait, and thinking, "Well, there's
one thing about Connie coming here next term. I'll never have to walk
alone again." Which just showed how little at this time she knew her
Connie.

Then she heard Clare's voice.

"Will you not walk with me, Muriel?"

Muriel gasped. She could not believe that Clare had spoken. But there
was no other Muriel in the school, and no other voice like Clare's.
Yet, Clare, who could walk with "Them," surely she would never ask
Muriel? They never walked with those who were not of the elect. They
would not so imperil their dignity. But, of course, Clare never
bothered about her dignity. Years afterwards, when Muriel referred to
"Them," Clare asked with interest, "Who were 'They'?" But when Muriel
said, "Oh, you, and Rosalie and Cathie and Patricia. All the people
who counted." Then Clare laughed. "Oh, was I one? How perfectly
thrilling! And I never knew. What things we miss!" But now Muriel
only blushed and asked: "I beg your pardon?"

"I haven't got a partner," Clare said. "Will you walk with me?"

Muriel, blushing and palpitating, answered, "If you like." Always,
when she was profoundly moved, she became a little stiffer and more
prim, not gauche, but prim, like a Victorian teapot, or a bit of
sprigged muslin.

Clare never noticed. She was arranging her blue serge coat with the
air of a mannequin trying on a Paris model.

"Would you mind holding my collar straight?" she asked.

They took their place in the crocodile.

All the way along the Esplanade Clare chattered. Muriel at the time
was too much bewildered by her strange good fortune to remember
everything that Clare was saying, but she retained a glowing
impression of Clare skating outside a gay hotel in Switzerland, of
Clare in a box at the Comédie Française, listening to one of her
father's plays, of Clare crossing the Irish Channel in a ship, and
being sea-sick all the way. It was perhaps the most unquestionable
proof of Clare's attraction that even her sea-sickness became
distinguished.

Before Muriel had said three words, the girls had reached the cliffs
beyond the Esplanade. Beyond the asphalt and clipped box hedges of the
Promenade, the cliffs sprawled untidily. They were not even real
cliffs, but ragged slopes, overgrown with coarse grass and tamarisk,
sprinkled with yarrow, and patched with stunted bushes of rusty gorse.
Far below the tide crept up in circles, flat as paper, and washed
back, dragging with white sickles at the shelving sand. The place had
a deserted look, and Clare was bored.

"What shall we do now?" she asked obligingly, when Miss Reeve gave the
order to break rank.

She waited for Muriel to entertain her.

"Oh, I'll do anything _you_ like," said Muriel fatally.

They strolled along the winding path. Abruptly to their right rose a
steep rock, witness of the time before the landslide, when the cliffs
had been cliffs. For fifteen feet it frowned above the way to the
sands. Clare stood still, gazing at it in contemplative silence. Then
she had an idea.

"Muriel," she suggested, "do let's see if we can climb that rock. No
one can see us now. Miss Reeves's miles away. I'll go first. Come on,
do."

Clare was like that. She never noticed natural things except as a
potential background to her own action. But, having decided to act,
she was prompt. She tore off her gloves and faced the rock. Muriel
stood, suddenly smitten dumb by an agony of apprehension. But without
looking back, Clare began to climb. Agile as a cat, she scrambled with
firm hand-grips and burrowing toes, clutching at the sheer side of the
rock and chuckling to herself.

"Clare! You can't. You'll fall. You'll be killed."

Muriel meant to cry out all these things, but somehow she said
nothing. She only stood at the bottom of the rock while a sick
numbness robbed her of her strength.

Then Clare was up. She swung herself easily on to the summit of the
rock. Her figure was outlined against a windy sky. Her laughing face
looked down at Muriel.

"It's glorious up here," she called. "But what a wind! I say, do come
on, Muriel!"

Before she had thought what she was doing, Muriel began to climb.

"Whatever I do, I mustn't funk in front of Clare," she thought.

Her fingers tore at the sharp ledges of the rock. Her toes slipped on
the uneven surface. She grasped at a brittle root of broom. It came
away in her hand. She almost fell. Unused to climbing, blind with
fear, she hardly saw the places for her hands to hold.

Clare, completely oblivious of her distress, stared calmly out to sea.

"Oh, Muriel, there's such a big steamer on the horizon. Do hurry up
and tell me where it's going."

But Muriel could not hurry. She was beyond hope, beyond sight, almost
beyond fear. For she had just remembered Freddy Mason's stories of the
Ladder, and how the men carrying sacks up it had overbalanced and
fallen to their doom, far in the yard below.

Her grasp loosened. Rock and sky swung round her. Her feet slipped on
the narrow ledge.

She must not fail Clare; here was the time to test her courage.

Fear swooped upon her, tore her fingers from the rock, poured drops of
perspiration on her forehead.

"Clare!" shrieked a voice that was not surely hers. "Clare, I'm
slipping!"

Clare's round face appeared between the edge of the rock and the
reeling sky. Clare's voice remarked imperturbably: "Oh, well, if you
do fall you haven't far to go, so it won't hurt. But hold on a bit and
I'll give you a hand."

She came over the edge again. Her solid, shapely ankles were on a
level with Muriel's hat, her eyes. A firm hand reached down for
Muriel's clutching, sticky one.

"That's all right. Come along. You've got a great dab of mud on your
nose, Muriel."

She never faltered. Somehow they both scrambled over the edge. Muriel
flung herself down on the short turf, too sick and humiliated to
notice even Clare.

She had disgraced herself. She had failed. Her cowardice was flagrant.
Far from conducting herself heroically, she had risked Clare's own
safety because she was afraid. Far more than her nerve had failed
then. Her confidence in her whole personality was shaken. Black with
the unlit blackness of youth, the future stretched before her.

"Muriel"--when Clare pronounced her name it sounded warm and
golden--"do you not think that the girls here are like children?"

Muriel opened her eyes and stared as if to discover some connection
between this remark and her own disgraceful exhibition of childishness.
But there was none. Clare, astounding, incalculable Clare, had not
even noticed the tragedy of Muriel. She had taken it for granted that
if you couldn't climb, you couldn't, and that was your affair. She
continued meditatively:

"You must know what I mean, for you are different." Oh, glorious
triumph! Mrs. Hancock forgotten, Muriel glowed at the delightful
thought that she was different. "Have you not observed? How many of
them have had _affaires de cœur_? But very few!"

"_Affaires de cœur_?" It is hard to grope with a meagre French
vocabulary when one has just emerged from one physical and two
spiritual crises. Affaires! Muriel's knowledge of Marshington
phraseology assisted her. De Cœur--of the heart. Of course.

"Why, Clare, you can't mean being in love!"

"And why not?" asked Clare serenely. "I have had five affairs. There
was the student at the Sorbonne, and the man who played with Mamma in
New York, and my cousin Michael at Eppleford, and, and----"

"But were you in _love_ with them?"

"My dear child, no! Why should I be?"

"Then, how?"

"Dear me, _chérie_, have you never observed that I am very attractive?"

Her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous.

"What a solemn face! Muriel, do you ever smile? No, no, I shan't fall
in love for years. Perhaps never. But crowds and crowds of men will
fall in love with me. That's why Félix decided that I had better come
to school. 'They're beginning too soon,' he said. 'You mustn't cut out
your mother yet, child.' And he sighed. He's terribly sentimental, my
Félix. I'm sure I didn't mind. On the whole it bores me. Men in love
are so terribly alike, I think, don't you?"

Fascinating, incredible conversation!

"Of course, really, I'm rather grateful to Félix," Clare continued
sagely. "It's no use getting it all over too soon. And of course one
day one might go too far, and really I don't want to marry yet,
however rich he was. What do you think?"

"But, Clare, do--do men fall in love with _all_ women if we let them?"

"Why, of course. Else why be a woman?" Clare responded with
tranquility. "Of course there are some, poor dears, like Miss Reeve, I
suppose, and most schoolmistresses, and missionaries, and things, but
they are hardly _women_, are they?"

"I--I don't know. I----"

Somehow, it must be confessed, Muriel had always thought of these
unfortunates as women. That merely showed her terrible simplicity.
With a sigh, she pondered over her ignorance of Life.

"Oh, Muriel, do look at Miss Reeve coming up the path!" Clare darted
forward and peered over the edge of the rock. The young lady from the
Swiss hotel, the sophisticated philosopher on Life, had vanished. The
Irish urchin, impish, grinning, disreputable, took her place. "Do just
watch her hat bobbing along the path! It's as round as a soup plate.
Why do people wear such hats? It should be forbidden by law. Here,
hand me one of those little stones. Quick!"

Unthinking and hypnotized, Muriel obeyed.

Plop! went the stone, right into the middle of Miss Reeve's round hat.
Clare was back behind the rock.

"Oh, Clare, she'll see you," agonized Muriel.

Clare chuckled. "She won't. I never get found out."

But for once she was wrong. Her crimson scarf, blown by the wind,
waved a bright pennon from the rock. Nobody else at Heathcroft wore
such a scarf.

"Clare Duquesne, Clare Duquesne!" Miss Reeve's shrill voice was ripped
to ribbons of sound by the wind.

Clare leant down, smiling benignly upon the furious lady on the path.
"You called?" she inquired politely.

"What are you doing there? Come down! How dare you?"

"How dare I come down? Well, it does look rather steep. I'm not sure
that we can _this_ way," pondered Clare, her head on one side.

"Don't deliberately misunderstand me. Who threw that stone?"

"The stone?" Clare's innocent voice repeated, but Muriel knew that the
situation was growing serious. With the ardent heroism of a martyr,
she flung herself into the breach--in other words, her head appeared
over the rock by the side of Clare. Desire to serve her beloved had
vanquished fear, hesitation and conscientiousness.

"It wasn't Clare's fault, Miss Reeve," she called. "We were trying to
get to the other path, and--and I slipped, and that set some stones
rattling down, and Clare came to stop me falling, and I do hope that
nobody's hurt."

Relieved to find that this was not a situation requiring to be dealt
with by a major punishment, an embarrassing ordeal at the best of
times, devastating when the culprit was Clare Duquesne, Miss Reeve
contented herself with a haughty stare.

"I do not think that you two have been behaving very nicely. It is
not ladylike to climb these high rocks, and I am sure that it is
dangerous. Please come down at once, both of you."

It was impossible to scold two heads detached from bodies, appearing
from the sky like cherubs from a Christmas card cloud. Muriel and
Clare withdrew.

Safely back behind the rock, Clare chuckled delightedly.

"I didn't know you had it in you, Muriel; that was quite magnificent."

But Muriel, to her own surprise as much as Clare's, suddenly began to
cry, aloud and helplessly, like a little child.

"But, Muriel, _chérie_, what is the matter?"

"I don't know. I'm so sorry to be so stupid. I think--I--you know, I
didn't mean to tell a lie. It just came out."

"You? What? Is that all? But you didn't. We _were_ going to the lower
path--sometime. And that stone _was_ loosened with your foot. And you
did slip. That wasn't a lie. It was a stroke of genius."

Then, with a sudden access of delighted interest, Clare turned upon
Muriel.

"My dear, is it possible that you have a temperament? And I never
guessed it. But how very odd. I should not have thought it somehow. It
just shows that you never can tell. And I _have_ been so bored with
these suet dumplings of girls." _Them_! The elect and sacred "Them"
suet dumplings! Muriel forgot her tears. "Although I, thank heaven, I
have no temperament myself. That is why Félix says that I shall never
be a singer."

She flashed her dazzling smile upon the embarrassment of Muriel, who,
resolutely determined to acquire a temperament--whatever this might
be--immediately, was returning thanks to a benevolent providence who
sends success to people in spite of their own failures.




                                   V


Friendships at Heathcroft should usually be registered, like births,
deaths, and marriages, with all due publicity and certitude. It was
just like Muriel that, right up to the moment of leaving school, she
should never know whether she could really call herself Clare's
friend.

She stood on the platform, waiting for the arrival of the York train
that was to carry Clare off to London, Leipzig, singing lessons and
Fame. Clare, radiant, blossoming already into a young lady in a hat
sent by her mamma from Paris, smiled serenely from the carriage window
down at Muriel.

"Au revoir," she laughed. Her rich voice lightly dropped the words for
Muriel to take up or to leave as she would. Clare did not care.

"Good-bye, Clare," Muriel replied solemnly. She made no fuss about it,
for that would have been cheek, as though she had some right to mind
saying good-bye. "I hope that you will have a good time in Germany. I
expect that when I see you again you will be a famous singer. But
don't forget that if ever you _should_ want to stay in Yorkshire we
should love to have you at Miller's Rise."

"Oh, thank you, _chérie_, I shall not forget."

She smiled and waved her hand, tossing back to Muriel, like a fallen
flower, the invitation that had cost such terrific courage to propose.
But Muriel rushed away to her own carriage on the local line to
Kingsport with a sense of desolation that ached sullenly beneath the
excitement of being grown-up at last.

Because Muriel did not much care for babies, they pursued her in
railway trains and buses with relentless faithfulness. The carriage
into which she hurled herself after Connie's vanishing figure was hot
and overcrowded, and directly opposite to Muriel sat a baby, wriggling
on its mother's knee, its mouth smeared with chocolate and crumbs of
biscuits.

"Disgusting," thought Muriel. "How like Connie to choose a carriage
full of babies." For Connie was at this time indiscriminately
friendly, always scraping acquaintance with babies, all crumbs and
chocolate, or puppies, all smells and fleas. And now, because of her
lack of sensitiveness, Muriel at this crisis in her life had to endure
a slow train, where at every station people with baskets crowded in
upon her, even more hurriedly than her own overwhelming emotions.
Connie would come by this train, because it arrived at Marshington
half an hour before the express, and Muriel always tried to be
unselfish. She might have guessed what it would be like, for
circumstances never had much reverence for her feelings. Perhaps that
was why she had come to think that they did not much matter herself.

The world was all right. It was she who was wrong, caring for all the
wrong things. She could not, however hard she tried, stop herself from
loving Clare, though passionate friendships between girls had been
firmly discouraged by the sensible Mrs. Hancock. Their intimacy, she
considered, was usually silly and frequently disastrous. If carried
too far, it even wrecked all hope of matrimony without offering any
satisfaction in return. Love was a useful emotion ordained by God and
regulated by society for the propagation of the species; or else it
inspired sometimes the devotion of a daughter to a mother, or a parent
to a child. It could even be extended to a relative, such as a cousin
or an aunt. Or in a somewhat diluted form it might embrace Humanity,
engendering a vague Joan-of-Arc-Florence-Nightingale-Mrs.-Beecher-Stowish
philanthropy, to which Muriel aspired faintly, but without much hope
of realization. But Love between two girls was silly sentiment.
By loving Clare, Muriel knew that she had been guilty of extreme
foolishness. And she wanted so much to be good.

The words of Mrs. Hancock's farewell interview returned to her through
the smoke-laden atmosphere of the train. "My dear, to-morrow you are
going to take your place in the world outside your school, and there
are one or two things that I want you to remember. I believe that
sometimes you girls laugh at those words of Kingsley's, 'Be good,
sweet maid, and let who will be clever,' but they contain a great
truth, Muriel. Character, my dear, to be a fine womanly woman, that
matters so much more than intellectual achievement. To serve first
your parents, then, I hope, your husband and your children, to be
pure, unselfish and devoted, that is my prayer for each one of my
girls." Mrs. Hancock coughed. She had repeated this little homily so
often that she did not hesitate for words, and yet now and then,
unguessed by her hearers, would come a moment of wistful doubting
whether this message contained the final expression of her wisdom.
Below her worldly wisdom, Mrs. Hancock, like Muriel, wanted to be
good. "I want you to remember the school motto, dear, '_Læta sorte
mea_,' Happy in my lot. God will, I hope, give you happiness, but if
He chooses to send you disappointment and sorrow you will, I hope,
resign yourself to His dear will."

Forget? How could Muriel forget? It had been so sweetly solemn. A vast
desire seized upon her then to serve, to be devoted, to be faithful.
Sometimes at the early service she had knelt in the dim chancel, and
thought the fluttering candle flames above the altar to be stirred by
the soft breathing of the Holy Ghost. Then, too, she had prayed with
passionate ardour for self-abnegation and for service. But last night
the desire had swept upon her with rushing, mighty wings, and she
had stood gazing into Mrs. Hancock's face with eloquent eyes, and
murmuring, "I will try. I will try."

Connie's strident voice swung Muriel back from the dream of life to
its business:

"Did you say that his name was Tommie? That's a nice name, isn't it?
Tommie, Tom! No, my sister isn't fond of babies."

"Oh, I am," protested Muriel, always ready to sacrifice her tastes to
other people's feelings. "Sometimes," she added, respectful to the
truth. Her appealing eye sought those of the baby's mother, who nodded
understandingly.

"Lor, bless you! I know. A bit scared of 'em, eh? You wait till you've
had eight on 'em like me. Then a bairn's neither here nor there as the
saying goes. Ah've got six an' buried two, dearie me, but Ivy's in
service now, so I'm not complaining. The Lord's will be done, as I
says to Mrs. Dalton, who's had fourteen. The Lord's will be done so
long as He don't overdo it."

"Of course," smiled Muriel shyly, feeling somehow that the answer was
inadequate.

Was that really the end of it all? Six alive and two buried, and the
Lord's will being done, while one's face grew florid and coarse, with
a network of purplish veins across the cheek, and days and nights
passed in an endless race to keep abreast with small domestic duties?

Life's not like that. Life's not like that, vowed Muriel. Fiercely she
fought this sense of inexorable doom for the salvation of her dreams.
Surely God made the world most beautiful, and set within it to delight
man's heart music, and lingering scents, and the clear light of dawn
through leafless trees. To teach man the holiness of law, He set
the stars to ride their courses; for patience, He showed the slow
fertility of earth; for wisdom, He granted an eternal hunger that
would snatch its secret from the lightning, and their riddle from the
tombs of ancient men. He gave man beauty of body, and delight in
swift, free, movement. He gave him friendship, and the joy of service.
And, lest these things should be too sweet, and cloy with sweetness,
He gave him danger, that man might know the glory of adventure. And,
lest man should grow weary in his wandering, God gave the last and
deepest mercy, Death.

Not quite in definite words, Muriel thought this, but somehow her
heart told her that Life was this joyous, regal journey. She was grown
up. The whole world lay before her. The great adventure, which just
must end right, was about to begin.

She raised her hand to feel the long plait falling between her narrow
shoulders. Soon there would be a cold feeling at the back of her neck.
Her hair would be twisted up below her hat. Did being grown up really
make such a difference?

The train jerked on. Beyond the window the flat, dun country slid
past wearily. Hot July fields, ripening into dusty yellow for the
harvest, paddocks dried to rusted fawn, hundreds and hundreds of
allotments, variegated as a patchwork quilt, speckled with crazy tool
sheds, seamed with straight dykes, splashed here and there with the
silver-green of cabbages, or the faded motley of a wilted border of
July flowers--this was the country that surrounded Marshington. After
the ringing splendor of the wind-swept wolds, the stale flatness of
the plain seemed doubly depressing.

But Muriel was not depressed. Marshington to her was not a select
residential suburb of Kingsport, compensating for its ugliness by
its respectability. It was the threshold of life, the gateway to a
brimming, lovely world, whence she might start upon a thousand strange
adventures. Its raw, red villas were transfigured. Its gardens glowed
to meet her. When she could see from the right-hand window the
elm-crowned hill of Miller's Rise, her excitement almost choked her.

She leaned back in her seat, half wishing that she need never rise,
but Connie darted to the window.

"I say, Mu, hadn't we better pull the bags down? Look out! There's
your tennis racket. Where's my book box? My book box, Mu? Good-bye,
Tommie, bye-bye! See, Muriel, he's ta-ing his little hand at us!
Isn't he an angel? Oh, there's Father! Cooee, father, cooee! We're
here! We're here!"




                                  VI


It really mattered. To have a belt that fastened trimly on to one's
new serge skirt, a safety-pin that under no circumstances would expose
itself to public view, a straw hat that sat jauntily (so long as it
was not _too_ jaunty) upon one's piled up hair, all these things meant
more than just "being tidy."

Being grown up was puzzling. It seemed to make no difference at all in
most things, and then to matter frightfully in quite unexpected ways.
It meant, for instance, not so much the assumption of new duties as
the acceptance of new values.

Was she more stupid than other people, or did every one feel like this
at first? She was travelling in a land of which she only imperfectly
understood the language. Would she learn gradually, as one learnt
French at Heathcroft, or would the new significance of things suddenly
flash out at her, like the meaning of a cipher when one has found the
key?

"My dear child, you were never thinking of going to the Club with
_that_ terrible handkerchief? You must have a linen one. Scent? No, I
think not for a young girl. It seems a little fast, I think, Beatrice,
don't you? And whatever happens, a girl in her first season must not
give people the impression that she is fast."

People. People. Until she had grown up, Muriel had been woefully
ignorant of how important People were. At Heathcroft, if you were
naughty, you offended God. At Marshington, if you were "queer" you
offended People. Perhaps the lesser offence was noticed by the lesser
deity, and yet the eye of the All-Seeing could hardly have been more
observant than the eye of People, who measured worth by the difference
between a cotton and a linen handkerchief.

Muriel was going for the first time to the Recreation Club since she
had left school. Connie, who, being still a schoolgirl, cared for none
of these things, walked beside her in sulky silence. She disliked the
Club, because, as a junior member, she could only sit on the Pavilion
steps to watch the sedate activities of her elders.

The Club being on the north-west side of Marshington, the Hammonds had
about half a mile to walk from Miller's Rise, a half-mile which Mrs.
Hammond improved by final injunctions to her daughter.

"The first time is so important, dear," she said.

By the time that they had reached the wire-topped gate, Muriel was in
a state of frigid and self-conscious terror. In a dream she followed
her mother's lilac-coloured linen across the wide grass path to the
Pavilion, wondering whether she ought to smile at Mrs. Lane, and
whether her hat was straight, and whether that terrible pin was
showing yet above her skirt. But at last she was seated safely on
the steps with Connie, while Mrs. Hammond was swept away by Mrs.
Cartwright for a game of croquet. She sat quite still, waiting for the
familiarity of the things she saw to remove the strangeness of her new
attitude towards them. At least she could play her old game of
Watching People, a game made doubly thrilling by the realization that
now she, too, was one of the grown-ups. That thought amused her a
little as she listened to Mrs. Marshall Gurney's rich, authoritative
voice in conversation with Colonel Cartwright. Absurd that Muriel
should now be grown up-like Colonel Cartwright! He was not a real
colonel, Mrs. Hammond had once said. He had made lots of money by
manufacturing soap. (Was soap more vulgar than sacks? Father made
sacks.) But he had taken advantage of the Volunteer Movement to win a
bloodless victory over the more exclusive circles of Marshington. Even
Mrs. Marshall Gurney, who would hardly otherwise have known the
creator of the Cartwright Complexion, loved to punctuate her comments
upon life by "Ah, Colonel," and "Oh, Colonel."

She was saying it now.

"Ah, Colonel, if it were merely a question of leaving the Parish."

"Deuced fine girl, though, Mrs. Marshall Gurney, deuced fine girl."
The colonel gallantly hid the traces of a Yorkshire accent behind a
barrage of military phrases. "We shall miss her at the Club. I must
say that I like to see her playing with young Neale. They make a
damned fine couple."

"Oh, there's nothing in that, I do assure you, Colonel. Take it from
me. He really takes no more notice of Delia than of any of the other
girls about here. Except, of course, that she has had rather more
practice at tennis than most of the others, and he likes a good game,
being such a splendid player. He plays for his college at Oxford, you
know. The other day, he told Phyllis----"

"Of course"--Mrs. Parker's gruff masculine voice cut across her
pleasant amble--"Godfrey Neale knew the Vaughans long before Mrs.
Neale condescended to associate with any of us."

Mrs. Marshall Gurney bridled. Muriel could hear offended dignity in
every creak of her basket chair.

"I hardly think so, Mrs. Parker," she said with majesty. "I used to
dine at the Weare Grange when Godfrey was quite a little boy. After
her trouble Alice Neale turned to me a great deal. Why, Godfrey and
Phyllis . . ."

"Godfrey Neale never _looks_ at Phyllis M.G.," whispered Connie with
scorn. "Old Mrs. M.G. always makes out that they are bosom friends.
Doesn't he play beautifully, though?"

On the court to the right of the Pavilion, a vigorous set was in
progress. That tall splendid young man in the perfect flannels,
with his shirt just open enough to show his fine brown throat, and
the conquering air of the accomplished player in his sure, swift
movements, that was Godfrey Neale, really and in the flesh Godfrey
Neale, no longer a mythical but heroic figure, whose exploits, riches
and tastes were whispered breathlessly at Marshington tea-tables, or
described by the more imaginative with the assurance of intimacy.
That was Godfrey Neale. And Muriel had actually spoken to him. Once at
a dance, years and years ago, a party memorable for bitter shame,
Muriel had not only spoken but danced with Godfrey. He had been a
witness of her dire calamity. Did he remember?

"Well, I think it distinctly lacking in a sense of duty, that Delia
should go gallivanting off to college just now when her father's
getting old," the denunciation from the veranda continued.

"Old?" snapped Mrs. Parker, who was only forty-five herself. "I was
not thinking of his age, but that we should have to get a curate, and
I don't know who's going to pay for him. All that I do hope is that,
after all this, Delia will learn a little common politeness. I have
rarely met a more disagreeable young woman than she is now."

"Well, I can't see why we should have to pay for a curate in order
that the vicar's daughter might learn to be a lady," said Mrs.
Marshall Gurney, quite tartly for her. Usually her consciousness
of her own superiority helped her to regard with tolerance the
failures of other people. But Delia Vaughan, as the one person in
Marshington who refused to recognize that superiority, had committed
the unpardonable sin. She had done more than that. Mrs. Marshall
Gurney looked across the courts to where Phyllis, charming in her blue
dress, was playing languidly in a ladies' double while Delia flaunted
her intimacy with Godfrey Neale. Her heavy face hardened. "I can't
think where she gets it from. Her mother was a delightful woman, one
of the Meadows of Keswick, you know, and the dear vicar, even if he is
a little unpractical, is a scholar and a gentleman. I hear that his
last book has been a great success."

Mr. Vaughan wrote books. That was magic in itself for Muriel. _A
Critical Survey of the Relation between Scutage and the Subsidy_, his
latest triumph, did not sound frightfully thrilling, but it was a
manifestation of profound scholarship which left Marshington mystified
but complacent. Marshington liked to feel that its vicar's academic
distinction was in some way a tribute to its own intelligence.

"Jolly good shot!" cried Connie, as a cannon-ball service from Godfrey
Neale ricochetted along the grass and struck the step of the Pavilion
with a resounding thump. "Muriel, isn't his service _wonderful_?"

"Splendid," murmured Muriel absently, straining to catch further
scraps of gossip from the group behind her. She settled down again
just in time to hear Mrs. Parker remark acidly:

"Delia Vaughan is one of those girls who pride themselves that,
however objectionable they may be to your face, they are even more
offensive behind your back. _She_ may call it being outspoken. I call
it sheer ill-breeding."

The set was over. Bobby Mason collected the balls, and Daisy Parker
fluttered round him apologetically. "I'm so sorry that I played so
badly."

It always seemed curious to Muriel that Mrs. Parker should have such a
fluffy daughter. She supposed that Daisy must have inherited her
femininity from her father. Mrs. Parker, with her caustic tongue and
masculine garments, looked more like the mother of Delia Vaughan.
Muriel shivered with delightful apprehension as the victors strolled
towards the steps. Life could never be dull while it contained beings
so romantically distinguished as Delia and Godfrey Neale.

She heard Godfrey say, with his charming little stammer, "Thanks
awfully, p--partner. That was a splendid game."

Marshington gloried in Godfrey's stammer. In him it appeared as a
gracious concession to human weakness, a sign that in spite of
Winchester, Oxford, and the Weare Grange, Godfrey was a man of like
infirmities to other men.

But not even the stammer impressed Delia Vaughan. That disagreeable
young woman dropped idly on to the Pavilion steps quite close to
Muriel and sat leaning forward, her racket against her knees.

"Godfrey, is there any tea?" she suggested. "And you need not think
that the splendid game was due to _your_ good play, my friend. Your
first two services were abominable."

Fancy anyone daring to talk to Godfrey Neale like that!

Godfrey handed a tea-cup to Delia.

"Would you like some bread and butter, or shall I g--get you some of
those little round buns?"

"Have they sugar on top?" asked Delia.

"Sugar? No, currants, not sugar. There is only one bun with sugar on
it, and I want it for myself."

"Then you can't have it. How like a man to think that he has
an indisputable right to the best bun. Bring me the sugar one,
and--Godfrey, Miss Hammond hasn't had any tea yet. Have you, Miss
Hammond?"

"Oh, s--sorry," said Godfrey Neale, and handed to Muriel his other
cup.

Never before had Delia appeared to notice the existence of Muriel.
Godfrey had never spoken to her since the Party. And here was Delia
attending to her desire for tea, and Godfrey handing her his own cup!
The traitor blushes glowed in Muriel's face, and chased themselves
across her neck like the shadows of cloud across the tennis courts.

"Oh, I'm all right," she gasped. "Please keep that. It's your cup,
isn't it?" She could not bear this unendurable honour.

"You must have that. Godfrey can fetch another. He is growing fat and
lazy."

"Connie," desperately blundered Muriel, seeking as usual to cast the
responsibility of life's gifts on to someone else, "don't you want
this?"

"Godfrey, get two more cups," said Delia.

But Connie unexpectedly replied:

"No thank you, Miss Vaughan, Freddy Mason promised to bring me some."

"Did he?" whispered Muriel, under the sheltering stir of Godfrey's
departure back to the Pavilion.

"No, of course he didn't. But do you think I was going to have that
Vaughan girl showing off in front of me? You've got no pride, Muriel."

So after Godfrey Neale returned, Muriel, being without pride, drank
gratefully the cup of shame, while Connie thirsted proudly by her
side.

At that moment, Mrs. Hammond, returning from her croquet, appeared
round the corner of the Pavilion with Mrs. Cartwright. She saw Muriel
on the steps. She saw Godfrey Neale bending over her with a plate of
little cakes. Muriel, looking up, saw the sudden gleam that crossed
her face, like winter sunlight on a melting pool.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Neale. Home from Oxford, I suppose? Have you had
some good tennis?"

"I thought s--so, Mrs. Hammond, but my partner tells me that I have
been playing abominably," smiled Godfrey.

"Muriel, I hope that you haven't been scolding Mr. Neale," Muriel's
mother began.

Mrs. Cartwright's eye flashed balefully upon her. Between them, Muriel
was in despair. To say nothing was to act a lie, to let her mother go
on thinking that she had been honoured by Godfrey's partnership. He
would think that she was showing off. It was an unendurable position.

Muriel blushed; Godfrey Neale hesitated smilingly; Mrs. Cartwright
awaited in triumph the revelation of Mrs. Hammond's error. Delia's
clear voice cut the tension of the listeners:

"As a matter of fact, it was I who scolded Godfrey. He and Miss
Hammond are just about to take their revenge on me."

"Well, I hope that they are not _too_ hard on you," smiled Mrs.
Hammond, and passed on to her triumph, while Muriel sat speechless at
the unexpected turn of events.

"Look here, Delia, is that a challenge?" asked Godfrey, too polite to
show surprise.

"Of course. Directly I have finished my tea. Go and find Dennis
Smallwood and tell him that he can play with me. He's asked me about
six times to-day, because he wants to practise for the tournament. Of
course this is if Miss Hammond has no objection," she added, inclining
her head towards the miserable Muriel who sat crumbling her bread and
butter, and wishing that she might plunge into her tea-cup and remain
engulfed there for ever.

The proximity of the gods is exhilarating, but when they descend from
their machines they are apt to be a little overwhelming.

"I--I'm so bad," stammered Muriel. "I've hardly played this year. I
shall spoil your game."

"If I had thought that you played well," remarked Delia imperturbably,
"do you think that I should have chosen you as a handicap for
Godfrey?"

After that, there could be no escape. Godfrey returned, followed by
the obliging Dennis. Delia stood up and flung off her jacket.

Muriel felt a little sick. These things simply did not happen. If
only she could be a success. If only she could by some miracle play
brilliantly. She tried to picture the delight on her mother's face. In
a dream she rose, nervously fingering her racket.

"Muriel!" came Connie's hoarse whisper. "Your safety-pin's showing at
the back!"

She clutched at her belt. "Excuse me," she murmured.

"Toss for courts, please," commanded Delia, ignoring her.

"Excuse me," she repeated, measuring the distance between the steps
and the cloak-room door.

"The sun ought to be fairly well behind the roof," said Delia.
"Rough."

"Smooth it is. You'll have to face the sun," cried Godfrey.

"Come along, Miss Hammond."

"But----" protested Muriel weakly, but too late. Dennis gathered up
the balls and sauntered leisurely with Delia across the court. Muriel
was left, her back and the terrible, indecent safety-pin exposed to
the full gaze of Social Marshington in the Pavilion. Once, she had a
nightmare that while shopping in Middle Street all her clothes fell
off. Even that had not been as embarrassing as this.

Godfrey was measuring the net.

"Bit higher, Smallwood. G--good thing that we won the toss, Miss
Hammond. The sun's awful."

A good thing that they won the toss! Muriel, hearing a burst of
laughter from the Pavilion, felt sure that somebody had seen the pin.
She gave a sickly smile.

The other courts were deserted. The whole of Marshington was there on
the veranda. The whole of Marshington, finishing its tea, had nothing
better to do than to watch the set. Muriel felt fifty eyes boring
holes into her humiliated back.

Her mother would see. Her mother would see the pin. And the first time
was so important.

She made a despairing effort to recapture her self-possession. At
Heathcroft she had been counted as quite a steady player. Well, now
she would show Marshington. She would show them that, in spite of the
safety-pin, she could at least play tennis. If Godfrey Neale liked
girls because they played well, then he should have no cause to
dislike her.

"Service!" called Delia.

Muriel steeled herself for effort.

The first ball came driving, clean and straight, across the court.
Muriel, dazed but optimistic, put out her racket. The ball sped on
unchecked and bounded against the Pavilion steps.

"Fifteen love!" called Dennis.

"Hard luck," consoled Godfrey.

"I'm _so_ sorry," murmured Muriel.

Godfrey returned the second serve to Delia. She flashed it back to
him. Really, it wasn't _nice_ for a girl to drive so straight and so
efficiently. Delia's tall, white figure became to Muriel something
malevolent and ruthless.

Godfrey returned the ball again, but Dennis at the net put out his
long arm and sent the ball crashing down at Muriel's feet, to rise and
soar far above her head, beyond her reach, beyond hope.

"Thirty love," called Dennis.

"My fault. I didn't place it well," said Godfrey.

"I am _so_ sorry," pleaded Muriel.

Her time of trial came again. She stood up brave and stiff.

"Play!" called the vicar's daughter.

Muriel played.

She played with such goodwill that the ball rose into the cloud-flecked
sky.

"Forty love," called Dennis, polite but obdurate.

Godfrey Neale, infected perhaps by his partner's impotence, lost the
next point.

"Game," announced Dennis. "Neale, look to your laurels."

"Your service, partner." Godfrey smiled his charming smile. "I messed
up that last game fearfully."

Had he not seen that it was her fault? She could have kissed his hand
for his forbearance. Negotiating carefully, so as not to expose to him
at least the shameful pin, Muriel picked up the balls.

She could not decide whether to hold two or three. Which had she
generally done at Heathcroft? She could remember nothing. They seemed
suddenly to have grown large and slippery, heavier than cannon-balls.
Surely it must be bowls that she was playing, and not tennis?

She was losing her nerve. She felt it going, and she could not stop
it.

She would not lose her nerve.

She stepped back carefully, three paces from the line.

"Service," she called, in a voice that would not have roused a rabbit.

That, as it happened, was unimportant, for her first ball hit the net,
and her second, slow and careful to avoid mistakes, sailed gently into
the wrong court.

"Love fifteen," said Godfrey. "Bad luck, partner."

"_So_ sorry," repeated Muriel mechanically.

She _would_ serve the next one well.

"Play!" she shouted, and with all her strength she smote.

"Oh! Oh, Mr. Neale, I _am_ so sorry!" For Muriel's ball, driven at
last fair across the court, had hit the unfortunate partner right
between his shoulders.

"My fault," he said gallantly. "I got in the way. I stopped a
s--splendid service too."

Entirely unnerved, she sent a ball so cautiously that it dropped
before it reached the net. Godfrey picked it up and brought it to her.

Crimson-faced now, she was forcing back her tears. He looked down at
her, kindly, carelessly, not even noticing her discomfort.

"I say," he said, "I'm awfully glad that you hit me just now. It's a
favourite trick of Delia's, but if she sees other people doing it
she'll stop, just from perversity. She's a bit like a cyclone when she
gets going, isn't she?"

The humorous twist of his smile, the appeal to her criticism of his
friend, the flattery of his attention, soothed Muriel's injured
vanity. She giggled. Then with a sudden burst of confidence, she
whispered:

"She's like the Day of Judgment, I think. I always remember all my
misdoings in her sight. I--I'm terrified of her."

He laughed. "So am I, to tell the honest truth. But she's a ripping
sport really, so for goodness' sake don't tell a soul."

They laughed, sharing a secret together, Muriel and Godfrey Neale.
With one sentence he had drawn her in to the magic circle of his
intimacy. She forgot her double faults and the safety-pin. She began
to play to redeem his game against the girl who terrified him.

Her next serve went straight and hard. In her amazement, Delia failed
to return it.

"Fifteen thirty," cried Godfrey. "Well done, partner. Do it again."

She did it again, not once nor twice. For the rest of the set, she
played with serious care, keeping out of the way for Godfrey's
smashing volleys. The air shimmered with dancing gold. Never before
shone grass so green. Never were balls so white. Never was the joy of
swift movement so exhilarating.

They won the next game and the next. Delia, half amused at the little
Hammond child's spirit, was playing badly.

From the Pavilion, Muriel heard Mrs. Waring's voice:

"Your little daughter plays a good game, Mrs. Hammond. You must be
pleased to have her at home now."

"Yes, it is delightful. Naturally I missed her dreadfully," answered
Muriel's mother.

Someone beyond the net was asking, "Shall we play it out or have
sudden death?"

"Sudden death," declared Delia, in the voice of a judge; but Muriel
did not care. Neither death, pestilence, nor famine could affright her
now.

"Game--and set," said Godfrey Neale. "By Jove, Miss Hammond, we must
have some more like that!"

Sunning herself in his smile, she walked back to the Pavilion.
Congratulatory smiles met her. For some reason, utterly unguessed by
her, she had become a heroine. That Delia's defeat could be sweeter
than honey to Marshington never occurred to her. She accepted the
glory of the moment as it came.

"I say, Mu"--she had forgotten Connie. She turned upon her now with
sudden irritation. But Connie had had no triumph. She was thirsty. She
was bored. She thought that Muriel had had enough success--"do you
know that your safety-pin's come undone, and you've got your blouse
all out behind?"

Muriel fled to the cloak-room.




                                  VII


The excitement of Muriel's _début_ at the Club was not repeated. She
certainly went often enough, and once or twice Godfrey Neale spoke to
her. She did not, however, play with him again, but sat for most
afternoons on the steps of the Pavilion until asked to join a Ladies'
Double with Nancy Cartwright and Sybil Mason and poor Rosie Harpur,
who had also just left school, and who could play tennis no better
than she danced. Then the tennis season closed, and Connie returned
to school, and Muriel learnt how to order joints from the butcher's
and stores from the grocer's, and passed cakes at her mother's
tea-parties, and helped her with the accounts for the Mother's Union
and the G.F.S., and wondered when her real Life was going to begin.

Then came November and the Lord Mayor's dance, and Muriel woke up next
morning to remember that she had come out.

It would all have been wonderful, if only her hair had kept tidy. Next
morning she sat before her looking-glass and wrestled with aching arms
to cure her hair of its irresistible tendency to fall in heavy locks
upon her shoulders. It had spoilt everything, the band, the supper,
the confused medley of names upon her programme. From her first ball,
Muriel brought home only the memory of a scrambling rush to the
cloak-room, and of her mother's worried face bending above hers in the
long mirror.

She rested her chin on her hands and gazed at her thin, solemn face in
the glass, wondering whether she was really very plain, or whether she
would improve with time, as Mrs. Cartwright said that Adelaide had
done.

She was so much absorbed by these reflections that she did not at
first hear Annie, the housemaid, who knocked and came straight in with
the ostentatious familiarity of the old servant.

"Miss Muriel, a telegram for you."

"For me?" People were not in the habit of sending telegrams to Muriel.
She was not that kind of person.

"It's addressed to Muriel Hammond," remarked Annie stolidly. She, too,
found something unbecoming in the sending of telegrams to Miss Muriel.

Muriel took the envelope and fingered it. "Where's Mother?" she asked
slowly.

"Mrs. Hammond's in the kitchen."

"Oh."

For a moment, Muriel's training fought with her curiosity. Then her
training conquered. She seized her rope of hair, twisted it lightly
round her head, and fled downstairs with the unopened envelope.

Mrs. Hammond was alone in the kitchen writing up the menu for the day.
She raised her eyebrows at Muriel's flying entrance.

"Well, dear? Oh, Muriel, what have you been doing to your hair?"

"Doing it. Oh, Mother, there's a telegram."

"For me, dear?"

"No. It's for me." She hesitated, still afraid lest her mother should
consider the receipt of telegrams by her improper.

To her surprise, Mrs. Hammond took it quite calmly.

"Well, Muriel, who is it from?"

Muriel opened the envelope and read: "Can you have me week or longer
harribels have measles Felix not due England till 24th no money to go
Italy Duquesne."

She read it to herself. She read it aloud to her mother. She could not
believe her eyes.

"What does it mean?" asked Mrs. Hammond.

Muriel explained. "It's Clare, Clare Duquesne. You remember, my great
friend at Heathcroft, at least she wasn't exactly my friend, but I
always wanted her to be. She went to Germany to learn singing."

"Yes, but I don't understand. Does she want to come here?"

"Well--I--she--I think. It looks as though she had been going to stay
with the Harribels, and they had measles."

"But, who is Félix?"

"Félix is her father, Félix Duquesne, you know, the writer; he writes
in French, and it's Clare's mother who insists that he shall be called
Félix because 'Mother' and 'Father' make her feel so old and when you
are on the stage you have to keep young because of the dear public,"
Muriel explained, feeling that somehow she was not being as clear as
she might have wished.

"But, my dear child, you can't expect her to come here on her own
invitation like this at a moment's notice. I never heard of such a
thing. And uninvited. Really, I don't know what girls are coming to."

"But I did say--I mean I didn't ever think that she'd come, only I did
say that I knew we should be pleased to see her. You see----"

Mrs. Hammond frowned. "Now Muriel, this is really too bad of you.
Can't you see what a position you put me into? You know how much I
want you to have the things that you like, and I should have been glad
enough to let you have a school friend to stay at some proper time,
but you know that Father doesn't like just anyone, and just now----"

"Well, mother, of course if we can't have her--I mean if it's
inconvenient----"

Hope died from Muriel's grey eyes. Four months at home had taught
her that argument, when not wicked, was futile. It meant not just
difference of opinion, but a way of making things difficult for Mrs.
Hammond, who had to see that the house ran smoothly.

"Well, dear, of course you must see how impossible it all is. I don't
know anything about this girl. I'm very busy just now, and surely she
must have other friends in England? It's a queer name. Is she French
or something?"

"Half French, half Irish, I think. I don't think that she has any
relatives in England. The nearest that I know of are the Powells at
Eppleford in Donegal." Muriel's voice was sullen with resignation. She
had turned from her mother and stood, smoothing out the creases from
the telegram, while an enchanting vision of Clare faded into the limbo
of impossibilities.

"Powells, at Eppleford? Surely, where have I heard that? Why, is this
the girl of whom Mrs. Hancock spoke, Lord Powell's niece?"

"Yes. Did she tell you about her?" sighed Muriel, still without hope
and rather wishing that her mother would close a painful conversation.
She had been good. She had not pressed Clare's claims. For her
mother's sake, no one should ever know how bitter a disappointment she
had swallowed down, there by the kitchen table.

"But, dear, you never told me that she was a particular friend of
yours. I thought that that Janet somebody or other----"

"Oh, Clare wasn't exactly my friend." These things could not be
explained even to somebody as sweet and beautiful as Muriel's mother.
"She was so lovely and so popular. She knew all the--all the people I
didn't know."

In spite of her resolute stoicism, Muriel gulped. Her mother looked
sharply at her averted face.

"You really want her so much, then?"

"Oh, mother!"

"Well, I must talk to your father. It just might be arranged. But I do
wish that you had told me about this before, dear. You make things so
difficult for me. Why didn't you tell me, dear?"

"There didn't seem to be anything to tell until now," said Muriel.
"I thought that she had quite forgotten me. She never answered my
letters; I thought that she hadn't liked me much."

"Dear, you mustn't be so--so backward. People will take you at your
own valuation, you know, and there is nothing more objectionable than
the pride that apes humility. Now run away. Have you done the flowers
yet? I thought not. And for goodness' sake tidy your hair, and tell me
when your father comes in."

"Then--then, will you ask him?"

"Yes, yes, I'll ask him, though I can't say what---- Why, my dear
child! What? Now don't crush my dress!"

For Muriel had flung her arms round her mother's waist in an ecstasy
of gratitude for her sympathetic understanding.




                                 VIII


Because he wanted to drive the new chestnut mare, Mr. Hammond chose to
go to the station to meet Clare. Muriel could come too if she liked,
but the real reason was the mare. If there was one thing that Mr.
Hammond prided himself upon more than another, it was his knowledge of
horseflesh. The new mare was delicately perfect, from aristocratic
shoulder to quivering nostril. A network of soft veins trembled
beneath the shining velvet of her neck.

Muriel, terrified lest they should arrive too late, and always nervous
in the high dog-cart, watched her father draw the lash of the whip
lightly across the mare's back, playing it subtly as an angler plays
a fly. He flirted with the mare as another man might have flirted with
a pretty girl, chuckling because she was so daintily feminine and
capricious. He had forgotten Muriel and Clare.

"Father," she spoke softly, being more than a little afraid of him,
"we'll never be there in time." She watched for the curling smoke
between the chimneys.

"By Jove, what time did you say that your friend's train arrived?"

"3.45."

"Well, now, if I hadn't had to stop to tell Tom Bannister about that
order, we might just have done it. Maybe train'll be late."

But the train was not late, as trains never are except when you
need them to be punctual. A little stream of Marshington residents
had trickled out of the wicket-gate and separated up and down the
straggling length of Middle Street before Muriel and her father drew
up in the station yard. A shudder of apprehension stirred Muriel, who
for one awful moment feared lest Clare should never have arrived, or
lest, having arrived, she should have been offended that nobody was
there to meet her. How like Father not to bother just because he
thought Clare a child!

But when they appeared in the station, there at the end of the
platform, surrounded by three suit-cases, a roll of rugs, a side-saddle,
a hat box, a long, thin dachshund on a lead, and all the porters,
stood Clare. She turned and saw them. She came to meet them. More
beautiful and radiant than ever, in a grey travelling cloak, and a
little grey toque with a scarlet quill, she hurried forward with
outstretched hands to greet them, the dimples flickering in her cheek.

"You are Mr. Hammond, I am sure? But how good of you to come yourself
to meet me!" Her small _suède_ glove slipped into his capacious paw
and rested there a moment longer than was necessary, while she smiled
up at him, fearless, friendly, the least little bit in the world
amused. He was such an enormous father for funny little Muriel
Hammond! Muriel saw her father's big red face, first grave, then
surprised, then broadening out into a delighted smile. His blue eyes
twinkled.

"Well, now, Miss Duquesne, a nice sort o' welcome we gave you leaving
you like this all alone on the platform." He winked gaily at the
surrounding porters.

Muriel shrank back, a little hurt. They had greeted one another like
old friends, as though she did not count.

Then Clare saw her. "Muriel, my dear! How perfectly ripping to see
you again! My dear, it is good of you to have me. Behold me, a lone
creature lost in London, and the Harribels, with whom I was to stay,
all over measles and things."

"Very glad to have you, Miss Duquesne." Mr. Hammond rubbed a stiff
hand across his chin, a sure sign, as Muriel knew, that he was
pleased. "Now then, what about all this luggage, eh?"

Clare explained volubly. "Oh, I'm frightfully sorry, but, you see, I
had to bring all my things from Germany because I don't know when I'm
going back, and the side-saddle is because Jimmie Powell promised me a
mount when I go to Ireland. And Fritz was a most embarrassing gift
from a student. I was in such a hurry that I couldn't make up my mind
what to do with him, so I brought him all the way through the customs
and everything rolled up in the rugs, with my umbrellas. He hated it,
and I don't really care for him, and if there's a lost dogs' home
here, for goodness' sake let me dispose of him painlessly. Down, my
friend, down!"

"Oh, he's not a bad little tyke," commented Mr. Hammond with the eye
of a connoisseur. "But it's all this other stuff I'm thinking about.
Look here, Miss Duquesne, can you manage to-night with one of these
bag things and have the rest of the caboodle sent up to-morrow? My
man's sick or I'd have him come down for 'em now."

"Of course I'll manage. Only, wait a minute." Clare stood meditating
while the youngest porter wrestled valiantly with the dachshund, and
the others gazed with tolerant amusement at the eccentricities of this
young lady, who at least seemed to be worth a good tip. "Now the point
is," continued Clare, looking as though for enlightenment at the
youngest porter, "my night things are in that bag, but my yellow
dress, which I must wear this evening, is in this trunk."

Muriel was about to say, "Oh, don't trouble about that, because we
don't change at night," when she remembered that while Lord Powell's
niece was staying at Miller's Rise they were to have late dinner.

"I know," cried Clare. "A sudden inspiration. Can you wait just two
minutes? I'll take the dress from the trunk and put it into the case,
and then we'll be all right. Yes, go on holding the dog, please.
Muriel, _chérie_, take my gloves. Mr. Hammond, will you be an angel
and undo these straps for me?"

Muriel gasped horror-stricken. Even Clare could surely not take these
liberties with impunity. But Mr. Hammond seemed to have forgotten
the new mare and to be reconciled to his novel rôle of angel. He
knelt upon the platform, breathing heavily as he tugged at straps,
unfastened locks, and chuckled to himself while Clare dived into a
foam of tissue paper, billowing chiffon and frothing lace.

"There, just hold that a minute." Clare thrust a tray full of gossamer
_lingerie_ into the arms of the eldest porter, while she herself shook
out the cloudy folds of primrose chiffon.

It must have been this that proved too much for the patience of Fritz.
A fur-lined slipper fell from the tray, its fluffiness doubtless
reminiscent of happy days of rabbiting. With a bound he broke from
the hold of the youngest porter. A streak of yellow shot along the
platform. The fur-lined slipper vanished, Mr. Hammond dropped the lid
of the case, and the dachshund, free at last, forgot the tedium of his
late experience.

Clare, regardless of her laden arms, started in pursuit. Muriel
followed. Fritz, evading the ticket collector, dived under the
bookstall, then out again towards the wicket-gate just as a tall,
tweed-clad figure strolled leisurely on to the platform.

"Fritz!" cried Clare. "Catch him, catch him!"

A long arm shot down. A sudden squawk announced the breaking of
Teutonic dreams of liberty, and Clare stood, her arms full of tissue
paper, a filmy nightdress, a single bedroom slipper, face to face with
Godfrey Neale.

Solemnly he held out to her a mangled slipper and an armful of
protesting, elongated dachshund.

"I think that these are yours," he said.

For a moment Muriel saw them stand in silence. Then, simultaneously,
they broke out into uncontrollable laughter.




                                  IX


"Of course, if it had been your dog, Mu, it would have run into the
curate," Connie observed cuttingly.

"But I haven't got a dog," sighed Muriel.

Connie looked at her with pity. Really there were times when she
wondered whether Muriel was quite all there.

Mumps at Heathcroft had conspired with measles in London to throw
Connie once again into Clare's company. School had broken up early,
and Connie arrived at Miller's Rise two days after Clare's spectacular
descent upon her family. She failed to appreciate the honour.

"Never in my life did I see any one make so much fuss of a girl.
You're all daft. Mother's as set up as a pouter pigeon because she's
got Lord Powell's niece staying here, and Mrs. Neale brings Godfrey at
last to call--if you can say that it was a call. I wouldn't stand this
eleventh hour patronage from a duchess, let alone just Mrs. Neale, and
every one knows that she's crazy anyway. And look at Father! The way
he goes on as though he'd never seen a girl before."

"Connie, don't be horrid."

"Horrid yourself. You see if I'm not right. And Mother can't stand her
really, only she won't say anything before she's had a chance to show
her off to the rest of Marshington."

"That isn't true. You're being simply horrid because you think it's
clever, and you're jealous of Clare because Father takes a lot of
notice of her. It's only because she's a visitor. You're always so
unreasonable."

"Wait till she's been in the house a bit longer, and you'll see who's
unreasonable."

Muriel turned away and left Connie to her dark prophecies. There
were times when her younger sister exasperated her by a shrewd
interpretation of their parents' motives which Muriel rejected as both
unpleasant and untrue. Connie had no business to go about saying nasty
things about people, just to pretend that she knew more about Life
than Muriel who was grown up.

That conversation took place the day before Mrs. Hammond opened her
campaign. She was sitting before the dressing-table in her room,
finishing her morning toilet. She knew that in her dressing-jacket,
with her plump arms bare from the elbow, she looked girlish and very
charming. The silver in her hair gleamed like moonlight rather than
Time's theft of colour. She rather liked to see it spread softly
about her shoulders before she coiled it high upon her head.

From the dressing-room she could hear her husband whistling through
his teeth, as a stable boy whistles when he grooms a horse. Through
the open door she could see him standing before his shaving-glass,
brushing vigorously his wiry thatch of hair.

Mrs. Hammond set down her own brush and called softly:

"Arthur!"

The whistling stopped. Mr. Hammond put down his brushes and began to
flex and unflex his arms, then ran his hands down the firm line from
his arm-pits to his thighs.

"Hardly an ounce of spare flesh, by gosh," he remarked irrelevantly.
"Few chaps o' my age could say the same thing. Have you seen Ted
Hobson? great coarse-looking, over-fed fellow, he's grown. Lifts his
elbow a bit too often they say. Nothing like that for----"

"Arthur, you know I think that while Clare is here we ought to give a
dinner-party."

"Of course I don't object to a moderate tipple myself----"

A little pucker of thought appeared on Mrs. Hammond's forehead. "I
was thinking of just a few people, the Marshall Gurneys perhaps, and
Colonel Cartwright, and Mr. Vaughan now that Delia's away. Arthur! Are
you listening?"

"Yes, yes, my dear. Let 'em all come. Have a dozen dinner-parties for
all I care."

"And the Neales, Arthur. I returned her call yesterday, but she was
out with those everlasting dogs."

"Knows a good dog, the old lady. Yes, go ahead. Ask the Neales. Ask
the Prince of Wales. Ask the whole blooming royal family."

"Arthur, I do wish that you would take this seriously. You know
perfectly well that it's as much your duty as mine to do what you can
for the girls."

"Oho! It's the girls, is it? And what do you expect to get for them
out of all this fussification, eh?" He stood in the doorway now
between the two rooms, smiling down at her, his eyes twinkling with
amusement. "Are you going to marry Connie off to the vicar?"

"You needn't pretend to be stupid when you aren't," snapped Mrs.
Hammond. When she saw him in a good temper she could sometimes take a
holiday from her habitual patience.

She began to gather up her rings, and slip them one after the other on
to her white fingers. Here was the diamond half-hoop, her engagement
ring. Arthur had been generous but unoriginal. Here was the emerald
that he had bought during their honeymoon. Here, the ruby set between
two splendid pearls that he had bought her after that affair. She
twisted it round on her finger reflectively. Her gentle face hardened.
From the dressing-room she could hear her husband jingling pencils,
pennies and his watch, as he transferred them from the chest to his
pockets. "Does he still keep her photograph in his watch case?" she
wondered. That would be like Arthur, to repent extravagantly, and then
to keep one little trace of his misdeed to sigh over.

Mrs. Hammond was not a sentimentalist. She clapped the ruby ring down
on top of the emerald and diamond, and smiled faintly without too much
bitterness as she heard the faint whirring sound of Arthur winding up
his watch. It was his inevitable prelude to descent for breakfast.

"You'll order some more Burgundy, Arthur, won't you?"

"Better have a few bottles of fizz up while we're about it, hadn't
we?" Mr. Hammond was dressed and disposed to take the world and the
dinner-party more seriously. Like many middle-aged men he laid aside
maturity with his clothes, and looked like a schoolboy in pyjamas,
feeling like one too.

"Not champagne, I think, Arthur. We don't want to be thought
ostentatious. Things must be right."

Reluctantly he agreed. Though his taste in parties differed from hers,
he had to admit that in these things she was right. Although he
chaffed her, he paid this tribute of acknowledgment to the long years
of patient sowing of the social ground in Marshington until now at
last the Neales were ripe for harvest.

Half amused at the object of her ambition, pleased to allow her to
please herself if that did not interfere with his comfort, proud that
she was successful in the quest that she had undertaken, Arthur
Hammond went downstairs to order some more of the best Burgundy.




                                   X


Dinner was over. It had succeeded so far beyond Mrs. Hammond's wildest
dreams. Mrs. Neale had talked dogs and horses with Mr. Hammond, and
Clare had been effectively subdued between Colonel Cartwright and the
curate. The colonel himself had lent a distinguished air of political
interest to the party, proving that these "confounded Radicals will be
the death of the country, Mrs. Hammond. All this talk of Home Rule and
Insurance and whatnot. What I say is that the people were happy enough
before Lloyd George began to give 'em eightpennyworth of conceit of
themselves." Mrs. Marshall Gurney, whose efforts to disengage Godfrey
Neale's attention from Muriel had been unavailing, had been forced to
console herself with the admirable saddle of mutton and the carnations
from Kingsport, ninepence each. And the _soufflé_ had been a dream,
and Connie looked quite nice in her blue dress, and, best of all,
something had happened to Muriel to startle her out of her usual dumb
nervousness. Godfrey Neale really seemed to be quite taken by her. Why
not? Mrs. Hammond looking down the charmingly appointed table smiled
to herself. Why not, indeed, why not?

Afterwards, when the men reappeared from their cigars and excellent
port, there was music in the drawing-room. As he entered, Godfrey
Neale looked hurriedly round the room for Clare Duquesne. He was
uneasy and puzzled. All through the interminable dinner he had
searched across the barrier of flowers for Clare's charming face, but
the ninepenny carnations had blocked his view. Once he heard her
laugh, full-throated and merry. And all the time Muriel's prim little
voice had told him tale after tale of Clare at school, Clare on the
Continent, Clare galloping wildly along the sands at Hardrascliffe on
a rough hackney, after a mad Saturday outing with a school friend's
brother. Godfrey felt somehow that he would not have liked that
brother, but he listened to the tales, greedy for more. Muriel,
delighted to find in a man such unexpected interest and sympathy,
unlocked to him the doors of her mind, and poured forth all the
wistful hero-worship hitherto suppressed for fear of ridicule.
Godfrey, completely oblivious of her, sunned himself in the wonder of
Clare's swift vitality. Only when Muriel had left the past for the
future did he check her with abrupt, almost discourteous questioning,
afflicted suddenly again with his worst kind of stammering. She had
faltered then, played with her fork, and looked up at him with wide,
wondering eyes. So, for a moment, he had seen, not Clare, but Muriel,
facing her as for the first time and noticing her solemn childish
face, her mobile mouth, and the questioning trustfulness of her slow,
quiet glance.

In a moment she had answered his question, and each lost the sense of
the other in the concentration of their thoughts on Clare.

At first, on looking round the drawing-room, he did not see her;
then she became clear to him, withdrawn from the circle round the
fireplace, sitting with head erect against a heavy background of dark
curtains. The gloom of the unlit window-bay had quenched the glowing
crimson of her dress, but its folds of still brocade flowed round her
like the drapery in a Pre-Renaissance drawing. The dress covered her
arms, but left her shoulders bare, so that her clasped hands lay
together on her lap like a pale flower, and the faint glimmer of her
perfect shoulders moved him to sudden anger against the shadow that
robbed him of the purity of their line.

Why did she wear that queer outrageous dress? Why had she never spoken
to him before dinner, but only smiled demurely as she bowed? What
right had she to come straight from Ostend and Naples to Marshington,
where the girls were all dull and stiff? Besides, she was fast. That
ridiculous exhibition at the station. That was just the sort of thing
that Godfrey hated. And his mother disliked her, though as usual she
said nothing, and--well, altogether Godfrey felt that he had good
reason to be angry with Clare Duquesne.

He pushed his way through the chairs to the window seat, disregarding
Mrs. Hammond's gentle invitation and Phyllis Marshall Gurney's pallid
smile. He sat down on the narrow window seat beside her, making
himself as uncomfortable as possible out of spite against her. There
was a wretched draught.

"Are you going to sing, Miss Duquesne?" he asked.

His usually friendly voice bristled with his grievance.

Clare looked up at him in surprise. "Who told you that I sang?"

"Miss Hammond told me during dinner that you are going to be a
professional singer. Are you?"

Clare laughed, still sitting upright with her hands lying on her
wine-red dress. He could only see the profile of her face.

"That is as may be. It is not so easy as I had thought to become a
great prima donna. They want me to work. I detest working." She
shrugged her bare, smooth shoulders. "Life is too short for spending
its best years in stuffy German parlours singing scales that no one
but an old professor wants to hear." Suddenly she turned upon him her
full loveliness. "Why do you ask?"

"I--I----" Godfrey Neale himself was at a loss for words, feeling
gauche as any country bumpkin.

"Do you disapprove?" Clare continued cheerfully.

"Yes," he said, unreasoningly rude. "I do. Decidedly. You, singing for
the public, for just any ass----"

She opened her dark eyes very wide. "But why not? Not all the public
are asses. Besides, my mother does it. She acts."

"Oh, I did--didn't mean that. I mean, it seems somehow such a waste."

"Waste? _Comme vous êtes drôle! Ils sont tous fous, les anglais_." She
laughed again, teasing him, knowing how much he hated for her to speak
French, partly because it was a foreign language, partly because he
dreaded more than anything in the world that she should make a fool of
him. "Why a waste? Is it not better to sing for the many than for the
few?"

"No, no. It is not." He fumbled indignantly with his ideas, only
knowing that he could not bear the thought of her, standing on show
for any fool to gape at, any ill-bred, foreign fool, greasy Germans,
nincompoop Frenchmen, Italians--ugh!

"How very English you are, Mr. Neale. That proprietary instinct. You
want everything for yourself, land, ladies, music. You would like to
put up a notice on me like you put up on your woods. 'Trespassers will
be prosecuted.'"

"When did you see my woods?"

"Hush, I want to hear Mr. Smallwood sing."

Godfrey could not sing. He disliked fellows who chirruped inanely in
drawing-rooms; but he had to sit there, consoling himself by watching
Clare's intent, uplifted face.

        "O flower of all the world, O flower of all,
           I see thee in my garden and I dare
         To love thee, and though my deserts be small,
           Thou art the only flower I would wear."

"O flower of all the world," thought Godfrey, seeing only Clare's
glowing dress, her hands, her perfect arms.

"I dare to love thee," triumphed Dennis Smallwood's pleasant baritone
voice.

Clare Duquesne was going back to Germany, to flirt with dapper little
German officers. A good thing that she was going. Godfrey knew her
type.

"A rotten song, that, isn't it?" he growled. "Smallwood plays a decent
game of tennis. I wish that he'd stick to it."

"He sings rather well. Ah! _Mon Dieu!_"

"What is it?" Godfrey was all solicitude.

"Nothing. Except that our friend Connie is going to sing, and I--I
have heard her before."

Her whisper soothed the young man's ruffled feelings. He did what all
the evening he had been intending not to do. This connection with the
Hammond _ménage_ had gone far enough. He said:

"Look here, do you ever care to ride, Miss Duquesne?"

"When I have a mount," she answered.

"When the birds go north again!" shrilled Connie.

"I wondered if perhaps, I've got rather a jolly little mare, a perfect
lady's hack. My mother was going to ride her, but she hasn't been
awfully fit, and hasn't been riding much. It would be a perfect
charity if you would be good enough to exercise her. If you could come
up one afternoon."

Clare smiled demurely. "Well, if Mrs. Hammond does not object, we
might all come up one afternoon."

"All?"

"Well, you can hardly expect me to go alone, surely?"

He saw that it was not possible, but a new scheme was at work in his
mind.

"Look here, I'll get the mater to ask up the Hammond girls one
afternoon next week, if you'll sing to us to-night."

Clare frowned. "You see," she confided, "I've received not exactly
orders but intimations that I am to keep in the background to-night.
I'll sing when I go to tea with your mother."

"You'll sing to-night," said Godfrey. He was determined now that she
should do so, not so much because he wanted to hear her, as because he
wanted her to do something just because he willed it. "Just wait until
Connie has sent those birds north again, and then you shall sing."

She shook her head, but as Connie left the piano, Godfrey rose.

"Mrs. Hammond," he said, "we have had a great stroke of luck. I have
persuaded Miss Duquesne to sing."

So Mrs. Hammond had to be delighted, and Clare followed Muriel to the
piano, and whispered to her. Muriel nodded once or twice, a frown of
responsibility upon her face. She was a good accompanist, and had
played for Clare many times at Heathcroft.

Mr. Hammond, leaning back in his chair, winked at Colonel Cartwright.
"Now we shall have a treat," he said.

Muriel began to play. Her soft dress faded into the white walls of the
room. Her hair was a brooding shadow above her earnest face. But about
Clare was nothing pale nor shadowy. Her vivid dress had caught all
light and colour from the room, and held them, glowing with barbaric
splendour. She stood, not stooping over her music like the Marshington
young ladies, but by herself in front of the piano, her head lifted
proudly with the triumphant power of undaunted youth.

The accompaniment paused. The last chord hung for a moment poised
above the waiting stillness. Across the room Clare looked full into
the expectant face of Godfrey Neale.

Then she sang.

She had chosen Mignon's song, and at first she sang plaintively the
cry of the lost maiden. But, at the end of the verse, with the
sweeping melody of the refrain, she released the full power of her
voice.

        "Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin!
         Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn."

Mrs. Hammond pulled herself together. She could not understand German.
Neither, she was thankful to reflect, could Arthur or the girls; but
of one thing she was certain. No one could have sung with such
impassioned appeal a song that was completely proper.

She decided that Clare must sing no more.

Directly the song was over, she rose amid the spontaneous applause
that for once replaced the conventional thanks of Marshington "musical
at homes."

"Thank you so much, Clare, dear. That was very nice. And how clever of
you to remember all that German by heart. You must have worked very
hard. And now, Arthur, did you say that you were going to carry the
colonel and Mr. Neale off to bridge? Mr. Vaughan, you play, don't
you?"

So Godfrey heard Clare sing no more, but at the end of the evening,
when the company met again to say good-bye, she smiled up at him.

"Well," she said, "and when are we coming to tea?"

All the way home in his mother's stuffy little brougham, Godfrey
forgot Clare and talked about the roof to be repaired on the
Thaskholme cottages, and the agent at Mardlehammar; but as he ran up
the shallow steps of the Weare Grange he suddenly saw Clare standing,
the delicate contour of her face outlined against the curtain, her
provocative smile teasing him.

"Damned pretty little minx," he told himself, determined that he would
not be caught so soon. And, as he undressed, the song which he found
himself whistling, with a cheerful disregard for time or tune, was not
Clare's song, but Dennis Smallwood's.

"O flower of all the world, O flower of all."




                                  XI


During the morning, Connie had hoped that it would rain; but wind and
weather never favoured her. She walked mutinously along the muddy
road, splashing in and out of puddles in the vain hope that she might
thus leave her mark upon Clare's polished boots. How exactly like
Clare, to be walking booted and habited along the road to the Weare
Grange to ride with Godfrey Neale, while Connie, who adored horses,
was only going to tea with his mother.

"And she's mad," reflected Connie bitterly.

"It was nice of him to send for the saddle," remarked Clare. "I
thought that I should have to walk there carrying it on my head like
the ladies walk in Palestine."

"What?" said Connie wearily. "Have you been there too?"

Muriel laughed nervously. It was difficult to keep the peace.

"We've never been allowed to ride since Father's accident," she
said. "Years ago he let his favourite horse down on the road from
Kepplethorpe market. It was badly hurt, I think, and he had two ribs
broken. But he was frightfully angry with it for failing him, so he
never said anything to anyone, though he must have been in great
pain. He just walked back to the house and got his gun, and went back
and shot it. He fainted afterwards, and was brought home and was
frightfully ill for ages, and when he got better he sold all his
hunters and wouldn't let any of us ride again. But he loves driving."

"Ah, poor Mr. Hammond," murmured Clare, but without much interest, for
the road had turned, and to the right the hedge was broken by tall
gates of delicately wrought ironwork, as fragile in appearance and
as strong in reality as the barrier that enclosed the Neales from
Marshington. Beyond the gates, half a mile of straight, shining road
led to the grey square house. There was no park, but in the fields
between the house and highway fine elms and chestnuts spread their
naked boughs above the great Weare cattle, grazing with slow serenity
on the vivid grass.

"So this is the Weare Grange," observed Clare. "What a delightful
house! But, _Dieu_, how dull to live here all the year round."

But to Muriel the place was magic. She could not believe that real
people moved behind those solemn windows. The still winter day, the
cold light of the pale sun, the mouldering stonework of the terrace,
were all part of a waking dream. A thrush, starting suddenly from a
wet bough, shook down the rain-drops on to her face. She woke from her
dream. This was the Weare Grange. She and Connie and Clare were going
there to tea. This was the amazing adventure which the gods had
brought her.

She did hope that Connie would behave.

The bell of the Weare Grange was one of the most powerful defences of
that social fortress. It had a round, rusty head, and a long, stringy
neck. Muriel put up her hand (and incidentally her new glove) and
pulled. There was a harsh screeching sound. The neck extended three
good inches from the wall. She let it go. Nothing happened. She pulled
again. No faintest tinkle reached her ears.

"Let me try," said Connie.

"No, no, it may have rung."

They waited on the shallow steps, smudged with bird droppings and the
multitudinous paw-marks of the dogs. Muriel's courage began to trickle
away more rapidly than it had come. No wonder that only the Marshall
Gurneys from all Marshington had dared to call upon the Neales. That
bell was in itself a social snub.

"You're no good. Let me try," urged Connie. She thrust Muriel aside,
pressing her knee against the wall, and tugged at the bell with both
hands. A grinding, screeching sound, followed by a far-off tinkle,
rewarded her just as a cheerful-faced young manservant appeared in
answer to Muriel's second ring.

He took Muriel unprepared.

"Er--er--is Mrs. Neale at home?"

There was a blurred vision of vast hall, a confusion of shy greetings,
the departure of Godfrey and Clare to the stables, and the fortress
was entered.

"Once we really get started it will be easier," Muriel told herself.

It was not so. Mrs. Neale had dragged herself away from her kennels
and rabbit-hutches at her son's request, but even her devotion to him
could not make her genial to the Hammond girls. She disliked the whole
affair, and only the knowledge that she could not stop it had brought
her to face Muriel and Connie, seated in her great eighteenth-century
drawing-room, across the wreckage of her afternoon.

She attacked Muriel first.

"Do you ride too?" she asked.

"No, I'm afraid I don't."

"I often used to meet your father with the Weare Valley hounds."

Muriel nodded dumbly.

There was a pause.

"Your sister ride?"

Connie made no answer. She was looking through the long windows, from
which she could see Clare and Godfrey cantering side by side along the
level green of the wet grass.

Mrs. Neale turned again to Muriel.

"You like dogs?"

"Not very much."

"Cats?" flashed Mrs. Neale.

"Fairly, when they're clean."

A withering glance. "Perhaps you like goldfish?"

"Fairly. Yes. I mean I do rather," confessed the hapless Muriel.

Enchanted castles are apt to conceal an ogress or two. Mrs. Neale felt
disposed to let the Weare Grange live up to its reputation. Between
her abrupt boredom and Muriel's timidity, the afternoon appeared
interminable to Connie. She hated the white and draughty drawing-room.
She hated the small gilt clock ticking in the corner. She hated
the mixture of ceremony and discomfort, of wealth and squalor that
characterized the house shared by Godfrey and his mother. The place
seemed to be getting at her, making her feel vulgar and schoolgirlish.
The thought of Clare and Godfrey riding together in the winter
sunshine maddened her with jealousy.

But it was Muriel who relieved the situation.

After a longer pause than ever, she looked round the room and saw a
single photograph on a table near the fire-place.

"Is that Mr. Neale when he was a little boy?" she asked in desperation.

That was enough for Mrs. Neale. Upon one subject alone could she
be trusted to break her habitual silence, and Muriel's ingenuous
questioning went direct to her heart. From the drawing-room to the
smoking-room, from the smoking-room to the long gallery marched the
procession of three, recapitulating pictorially and photographically
the stupendous progress of Godfrey Neale from the nursery to
Oxford, and from Oxford to the mastership of the Weare Grange and
Mardlehammar. Connie, stumbling behind the other two, tripping over
dogs and carpentering tools, grew full and more full of passionate
resentment. When the riders appeared again by the terrace, so warm,
so happy, so pleased with life and with themselves, Connie, who was
neither warm nor happy, nor pleased, could bear it no longer.

"Well," snapped Mrs. Neale, with her stiff smile that seemed to creak
from lack of use. "Good ride?"

"Ripping. Golden Girl went like a bird, and Miss Duquesne is a real
sp--sportswoman."

Connie pushed her way past Muriel down the terrace steps.

"Mr. Neale, can I try?"

"Oh, Connie," began Muriel's shocked voice.

"Do you ride, Miss Hammond? I'm so sorry. I thought that you didn't. I
would have found you a mount," lied Godfrey.

"I used to ride a lot before Father had his accident and would not let
us any more."

The story was well known in Marshington, where picturesque incidents
were not common. Here was a trouble that Mrs. Neale could understand.

"If she really wants to, let her have a trot down the drive while I
order tea."

"Connie, you can't. You can't really," protested Muriel. To have
stormed successfully the Neale citadel, to have come creditably
through the ordeal of the drawing-room, and then for Connie to behave
like this, was too bad.

But Connie was determined. The dogged look which Mrs. Hammond knew
well upon her husband's face had descended upon Connie.

As for Godfrey, he had no desire to ride with a lumpish schoolgirl
after that wonderful afternoon, and yet even he felt a slight
compunction at the way in which he had used the two Hammond girls. He
knew the glacial atmosphere of his mother's drawing-room.

"But she hasn't a habit or anything," Muriel pleaded.

"That doesn't matter. I have often ridden without," laughed Clare.
"Here, take my whip."

She held Golden Girl for Godfrey, while he went to tie his own horse
to a ring on the terrace wall. She watched him loosen Blue Boy's
girths and tie one end of the reins round the ring.

"Aren't you going to ride?" asked Connie.

But even for his conscience' sake Godfrey would not risk the breaking
of the yellow mare's knees.

"No, I think I shall walk this time."

Connie stood before the mare. Somehow she seemed to have grown
miraculously taller. The saddle upon which her rider must sit was
miles up in the air. The chestnut head tossed restlessly. Even
Clare's caressing fingers could not quell the baleful frenzy of the
rolling eye.

Godfrey returned.

"Now, put your foot on my knee, Miss Hammond, and hold the reins so,
and the saddle here. I shall count one, two, three, up. When I say
up, you must jump. Don't worry about the stirrup. That comes later."

Connie obeyed the directions. Golden Girl seemed to grow before her
like Alice in Wonderland after she had eaten the magic cake. Was it a
cake she ate? Connie could not remember. She could hardly see the sky,
or Clare, or Godfrey. A huge yellow mare blotted out heaven and earth.

"One, two, three, UP!" called Godfrey. "Oh, but you must jump, Miss
Hammond."

"So sorry. I wasn't quite ready," lied Connie. "Will you count again?"

"One, two, three, JUMP!"

Connie jumped. Unluckily the mare jumped also, and Connie landed back
into a puddle sending a shower of water over Godfrey's perfect
breeches.

"Oh, Connie, give it up. Don't make a fool of yourself," whispered
Muriel. Then she remembered her own school-days, and the rock. "Look
how you are splashing poor Mr. Neale."

"That's all right," said Godfrey heroically. After all it was the
Hammond girl who was making a fool of herself, not he. "Now then,
we'll try again."

Connie jumped. A strong hand seemed to lift her up, up into the cold
clear air. She jumped with such a will that she almost seemed to fall
on to the other side of the mare, but not quite. There she was,
mounted at last, while Godfrey Neale placed her muddy boot in the
stirrup, and Clare arranged her short serge skirt.

"Ah, now that is excellent," said Clare. "Hold the reins so, and press
your left knee well against the pommel. Sit square and face the
horse's head."

"You and your horse's head!" laughed Connie. "You talk as though I'd
never been up before."

But for all her defiant gaiety, she felt that indeed she hardly had.
Golden Girl was different from the old, lop-lobbing pony. When she
thrust down her disquieting head, there seemed to be little enough
between Connie and the gravel drive. Still there she was. She looked
patronizingly down at the group below, at Mrs. Neale, grimly amused,
at Clare laughing back at her, at Muriel, white-faced and anxious.

"I'm ready," she said.

They began to walk sedately down the drive. Now that Golden Girl was
actually moving, Connie found it less alarming. Indeed, she told
herself, it was good beyond all dreams of goodness. The great house
gaped at her from a score of long, blank windows. On the steps stood
Clare, now only a spectator in the drama, and by the side of the mare
walked Godfrey Neale, Connie's companion for as long as she could keep
the mare's head turned away from the house down the long drive.

"You all right?" he asked.

"Rather. Don't bother to hold the reins, please. I'm really quite used
to it."

Dubiously he let her go. Just to show her independence, she touched
the mare lightly with her whip. It started.

"Steady, steady, old girl. Ride her on the snaffle, Miss Hammond. Her
mouth's awfully sensitive. She won't stand the curb."

Curbs and snaffles were all the same to Connie. These slippery,
writhing strips of leather slid through her hands as the mare tossed
her head. She struggled to arrange them to her satisfaction. In
another minute Mr. Neale might say, "Don't you think that we had
better turn?" and back they would go to that awful drawing-room and
to Clare's easy triumph.

Connie sat straight, her red, wind-blown head high. The reins slipped
in her left hand, but her right held Clare's riding-crop. She would
show them that even if she could not ride like Clare she too was a
sportswoman.

Again she flicked her whip. The mare broke into an uneasy trot,
shaking Connie up and down in the unfamiliar saddle.

"Hold hard," called Godfrey, stretching out his hand for the slack
rein.

"It's all right. This is splendid," cried Connie and, with set teeth,
gave the mare another cut.

The mare shuddered. For one moment Connie felt the earth rise to meet
her. Then she was suddenly jolted down into the saddle. The shaking
trot gave place to a rhythmical rise and fall, the wind brushed past
her, touching her wide bright eyes, her flying hair, and Connie was
away at full gallop down the drive.

"Stop her," cried Clare, running down the terrace steps. "Stop her,
you idiot. The mare's bolting."

"It's all right. The gate will stop her," Godfrey called. For all his
swiftness he could not reach her now.

"It won't. We left it open. Don't you remember?"

"Oh, damn!" Connie mattered less to Godfrey than the mare, but both
were serious propositions.

He stopped now. Clare, running, was nearly up to him. He faced her on
the drive. There was nobody else in the world then but Clare and
Godfrey, looking for some solution of the problem into each other's
eyes. Muriel, hurrying behind Clare, felt this even then.

Without a word, Clare ran back to Blue Boy.

"Quick. You must catch her before she reaches the road," she said,
tugging at the knotted strap.

"The girth's not fastened," cried Muriel, who knew just enough to see
this.

Godfrey never listened. He was mounted, had turned, and was off along
the drive in pursuit of Connie's flying figure.

The yellow mare was going hard, making for the gate at the south end
of the drive. Godfrey, seeing this, swerved suddenly to the right.

"Where's he going? The gate's not there," cried Muriel, running
blindly along the drive. Clare followed, picking her way delicately
among the chalky puddles. Then she stopped, watching the stooping
figure on the great black horse.

"He's going to take the hedge. And he said that he'd never found a
horse to leap it yet! Bravo, the sportsman!" she breathed. Her eyes
shone. A smile of excitement parted her lips. The dimple flickered
on her cheek.

Muriel gasped. "To jump? With his girth unfastened, and only one
rein?" She nearly sobbed. "He'll never do it."

"He will. He will. Did you ever see such riding?"

Above the blackness of the hedge, against the transparent, water-coloured
shimmer of the sky, the great horse and his rider thrust up suddenly a
black silhouette. They hung for a moment thus, poised between earth
and sky, then disappeared.

"Ah, good," whispered Clare, with a little sigh of pure enjoyment.

"But they'll be killed," moaned Muriel.

"Not they," laughed Clare.

The two girls walked in silence down the drive. By the gate the
hoof-marks swerved to one side, cutting deeply into the turf, as
though Connie had made one desperate effort to pull up. Then they
went on again, along the rough, chalk road.

"They've gone a long way," remarked Clare imperturbably. "Your sister
is having a good run for her money."

"Oh, Clare, don't joke. What if they are killed?"

"Killed? Nonsense. Why, here they are!"

Over the brow of the rising ground they came, Godfrey leading both the
horses, Connie by his side, limping a little, spattered with mud from
head to foot, her hair wild, her cheeks flaming.

"I didn't fall off," she announced jubilantly. "Not until right at the
very end. Oh, it was glorious. I galloped, and Mr. Neale galloped. We
had a race, hadn't we, Mr. Neale? Did you see him jump the hedge? Oh,
Muriel, you do look queer. Your eyes are popping out of your head.
Were you frightened? I wasn't frightened a bit, although we went at
a terrific rate right down the field."

"I was," laughed Godfrey. "I was in a blue funk."

Clare looked at him. "How high is that fence?"

"I don't know. N--nothing much." It confronted them then, laced thick
and high with blackthorn, a nasty obstacle under the best conditions.

"With a loose girth and one rein," half-whispered Clare. "That was
great riding, Mr. Neale."

They walked back to the house together, Connie chattering all the way.
She was upborne upon the wings of triumph. She had conquered her fear,
conquered Muriel's prudishness, and Clare's attractions, and the
indifference of the Weare Grange. She was happy.

Muriel saw her happiness with a sudden heartache, for she saw also
what Connie did not see.

She saw that this adventure was not even their adventure. It was
Clare's and Godfrey's--Clare's because she had taken upon herself the
command of rescue, Godfrey's because her whisper of praise had fallen
upon him like an accolade. Connie had been merely a pretext for
Godfrey to perform deeds of daring before Clare. At tea-time, though
with remorseful attention Godfrey handed to Connie cakes and little
biscuits such as she loved, it was Clare to whom, in the intervals of
his duties as a host, he turned and smiled.




                                  XII


There was an unwritten rule at Miller's Rise that one bathed at night,
not in the morning. Morning baths consumed the washing-up water, and
even if they did not they had not been the custom, and so were not
approved. Muriel, who accepted all domestic theories with reverence,
frowned anxiously as, on her way to her mother's room, she heard
Clare's voice upraised in ablutionary song behind the bathroom door.

Ever since the episode of the ride a week before, Muriel had been
worried by her mother's attitude to Clare.

Mrs. Hammond was polishing her nails when Muriel came in. It was their
custom to hold a little conference in Mrs. Hammond's room before
breakfast if Mr. Hammond had left the house early upon business.

"Well, dear? You dressed? Are you tired after last night?" Mrs.
Hammond's nails shone like polished pink glass as she held them up to
the light. "Muriel, that wasn't Clare whom I heard just now in the
bathroom, was it? Didn't Annie take her some hot water? Surely you
told her that we----"

"I expect it was because of the dance last night. It was too late to
bath when we came in." Recently, Muriel always seemed to be explaining
Clare's actions to her mother. It was a duty that she hated.

"I think it unnecessary. Clare is evidently a little selfish, or else
inconsiderate. This house is not a hotel."

Wasn't it? For a moment of bitterness, Muriel wondered whether to
Clare it was much more. She crossed to the window, and stood looking
out into the rain-soaked garden.

"Muriel," her mother's voice continued from the dressing-table, "do
you know how long your friend intends to stay?"

"Her father comes to England on the 24th." Muriel knew what would
follow.

"Oh." There was another pause. Muriel could hear the soft brush, brush
of her mother's nail pad. "Well, of course that's all right. We can
manage, I suppose, though of course it comes rather hard on me now
that I am so busy over Christmas and everything. Still, if Clare likes
to take us as she finds us, I dare say that we shall get through.
Still I had thought that perhaps she would have been able to---- Oh,
and that reminds me, about Saturday night, dear, at the Warings'.
There is no need when we go out like that for Clare to push herself
forward in that way. She is only our visitor, after all, and that
time Mrs. Waring particularly wanted to hear how Connie's singing had
improved. There was no _need_ for a stranger to monopolize the whole
programme."

"But they kept asking Clare to sing."

"Naturally, they had to say something out of politeness, but nobody
meant her to go on and on like that. However, I should not have
mentioned even that if it had not been for last night."

Muriel could feel the stiffening of her mother's figure before the
looking-glass. She, too, braced herself for battle.

"I--I don't know what you mean, mother."

"Now you know perfectly well what I mean. Clare is a very nice girl in
a way, and up till now it has been quite a pleasant visit. I have
managed to keep things running smoothly. But I realize that, with her
continental upbringing, she has rather different standards from those
which we think proper in Marshington. How many dances did she have
last night with Godfrey Neale?"

Then Muriel knew that Clare would have to go.

"Oh, five or six perhaps. But----"

Between the mist-shrouded valley and the sodden lawn, Muriel could see
a vision of Clare and Godfrey as they had danced together, of Clare's
laughing face, of her strong young arm pressed firmly against his
black coat, of the swing and balance of their turning figures. She
caught her breath.

"Well," remarked Mrs. Hammond, "that may be all right for Ostend, but
when you consider the position that Godfrey holds in Marshington----"

The dancing figures swayed towards Muriel. So near they came, they
almost warmed her with their glowing happiness. She pressed her small,
cold hands against the window-sill, and gazed out towards the dripping
trees.

"Just come and fasten my dress, dear. No, the bottom hooks first.
Clare's very selfish. She wants everything for herself."

Was she? Was she? Muriel, fastening hooks and eyes at complicated
angles knew that in spite of last night, in spite of everything, she
had a fierce desire for Clare to stay. What if she did dance with
Godfrey Neale? Who else could match her for charm and for daring? Yet,
even while Muriel told herself that this was as it should be, she
remembered the dragging hours of the Kingsport dance, while she sat by
the wall and the couples passed her, the girls' dresses swinging out
against her knees. She remembered how she had tried to compose her
face into an interested yet indifferent smile above her fan, as though
she did this sort of thing because she liked it, not because her
mother's valiant efforts to fill her programme were unavailing.

That fear of being left out was horrible.

"If Clare does go," thought Muriel, "that won't make Godfrey look at
me."

She went downstairs to order breakfast. "If Clare doesn't go, Godfrey
will never look at anyone else." Why care whom Godfrey looked at, whom
he knew? Why did she feel this silent force of her mother's will
coming between her and the most glorious friendship that she could
ever know? Who cared if Clare danced every dance with Godfrey
Neale--not that she would, because she said that he bored her just a
little when he was not riding or dancing or doing something with his
body?

If only all the people whom she loved would care for one another and
not make her feel disloyal because she could not share in their
distastes, how simple life would be!

As she ran downstairs, Muriel heard her mother meet Clare on the
landing.

"Well, Clare, good morning. How are you after last night? Not tired?
That's right. I'm so glad. _So_ nice you looked too!"




                                 XIII


Clare went; the winter dances came, and Muriel's programme still
remained half empty. Connie returned to Heathcroft. Aunt Beatrice came
to stay and went. Muriel continued to be grown up. Her hair sat more
securely on her shoulders now. She grew accustomed to the whiteness of
her neck above an evening frock. She paid calls with her mother; she
dusted the drawing-room. She went to church assiduously, seeking in
the Early Service for an emotional satisfaction that she could find no
other way. She bought and read shilling copies of the classics. She
began to study Astronomy with the help of three second-hand textbooks
and a toy telescope, but here she found herself handicapped by lack of
instruments and tuition. She did the Nursing Club accounts for her
mother, who was at this time much occupied by charitable works.
She took piano lessons with Fräulein Heissler every Wednesday in
Kingsport. The days passed quickly enough, and yet something seemed to
be lacking. Then, in April, came Clare's letter.

    Muriel dear, it may amuse you to hear that I am going to be
    married. His name is Ferdinando Alvarados. He is a Spaniard, but
    he lives mostly in South America, where it is gloriously warm and
    you live on oranges and play the guitar. I am not going to have
    a career, thank Heaven, but I'm going to try being very rich
    instead. Félix and Mamma are disappointed but resigned, and Ferdie
    is the most amusing thing God ever made. I adore him and am very
    happy. Needless to say, he thinks that I am the loveliest thing in
    the world, which just shows his good taste. When are you going to
    get married? How is dear, quaint Marshington? Did I ever write to
    thank you for the good time that you gave me there? I don't
    believe I did. Forgive me. I never was brought up properly, as I
    think that your mother saw. If you ever see Mr. Neale now, tell
    him that I never met a nicer mount than Golden Girl. My cousin's
    gees in Ireland were nothing to her.
                                             Yours to eternity,
                                                                CLARE.

The letter came the day before the Conservative Club Picnic. Politics
in Marshington were of particularly acute interest that year. Mrs.
Marshall Gurney, it is true, held the presidency of the Club for the
third time running, but when Mrs. Hobson was elected treasurer Mrs.
Waring had to replace Mrs. Parker as the secretary.

"Whatever the men may choose to do," said Mrs. Parker, justly
indignant, "I will not countenance the introduction of just anyone
on our committee. Hobson himself may be a very decent man and a
good Conservative. But we never have had a publican's wife on the
committee, and if I can stop it we never will. Even if the Duchess
of Northumbria goes in for indiscriminate toleration, in Annabelle
Marshall Gurney that sort of thing is pure affectation. One might as
well be a Radical, like all the Nonconformist clerks in Marshall
Gurney's office."

So Mrs. Parker left the committee, and Mrs. Waring reigned in her
stead. Mrs. Hammond, who had only recently decided to show an interest
in politics ("The new Conservative candidate was such a nice man"),
after some mental struggle resolved not to follow Mrs. Parker into the
wilderness, although she had once been a useful ally, but declared
herself a supporter of Democracy and Mrs. Marshall Gurney.

It was therefore particularly distressing that the day before the
picnic Mr. Hammond should have announced himself to be unwell, and
have retired to bed.

"Oh, well, dear," Mrs. Hammond told Muriel, "you will just have to go
alone."

"Oh, no, Mother. I should hate to do that. Do let me stay and look
after Father, you know that there's nothing really wants doing. You go
instead."

"It's quite impossible." Mrs. Hammond picked up her husband's
supper-tray. "I like to think that you can enjoy yourself. Go along,
dear, and have a good time. I shall manage."

Muriel knew that her mother had wanted to go. She knew that, as far as
Mr. Hammond was concerned, the maids could have administered to his
wants. But she had slowly come to realize that the passion which had
once led Mrs. Hammond to commit her single social indiscretion could
still draw her aside from that concentration on her position which had
once or twice moved Muriel to vague uneasiness.

She had not wanted to go, and her spring hat had not come yet from
Kingsport, and the morning of the picnic had been strained and
harassed at home because of Father, and Mother's disappointment, and
the rest of it. By the time that she arrived at the yard from whence
the picnic was to start in hired waggonettes she was wishing that she
never need have come.

There stood Mrs. Marshall Gurney with a bunch of primroses on her
sables, and Mrs. Waring, looking elegantly worried as she stooped with
her _lorgnette_ over a bunch of papers, and Mrs. Hobson, fussing
backwards and forwards between the gate and the already laden
waggonettes. Everybody looked terribly smart and confident and self
absorbed. The space between Muriel and the waggonettes was painfully
wide. She wanted to shrink away on to her seat and be forgotten.

"Any room in the last waggonette?" called Mrs. Marshall Gurney.

"Quite full up," returned Mrs. Hobson, with the metallic crispness of
one who may have a Yorkshire accent but knows that she is as good as
many of those who haven't.

"Any room in your carriage, Phyllis?"

But Phyllis Marshall Gurney regretted that she had promised to keep
the only seat available in her carriage for somebody else, and blushed
deeply as she said it. Muriel was almost ready to retire defeated,
when Delia Vaughan called to her from the first carriage. Grateful but
embarrassed, Muriel went forward, and climbed in among the knees and
new tweed skirts of the élite of Marshington. She counted them
surreptitiously, Adelaide Waring and a cousin, Dennis Smallwood, Nancy
Cartwright, Bobby Mason and Delia. A man for every girl except
herself. Wise by experience, she sighed, thinking of the long day
before her. At Heathcroft, if you had no partner, you could at least
walk with the last couple in the crocodile. At Marshington it seemed
that you could only sit and look forlorn among the sandwiches.

The waggonettes waited.

"Are we never going to start?" asked Adelaide.

Mrs. Marshall Gurney and her committee were conferring hurriedly.

"Did anybody see Mr. Neale on the way down?"

Nobody had enjoyed that honour.

"I suppose that he _is_ coming?"

From every waggonette Muriel could feel the tension of anxiety. A
Primrose Picnic without Godfrey Neale would be like lamb without mint
sauce. Phyllis Marshall Gurney's pretty face grew pale beneath her
pink hat.

"Ah, here the conquering hero comes," laughed Nancy, who was still
secure in the pose of _enfant terrible_. "It's more effective to be
late, isn't it?"

Godfrey Neale strolled into the yard. His breeches were beautiful, his
smile the most disarming, his confidence superb. Phyllis Marshall
Gurney gripped more tightly the hand-rail of her waggonette. Delia
Vaughan nodded carelessly. Godfrey made his apology to the waiting
committee, and moved towards the carriages.

Muriel calculated rapidly. If he joined the waggonette in which she
sat he would make the numbers of males and females equal. She held her
breath.

Godfrey hailed Miles Buchanan in the last carriage, exchanged a
greeting with Phyllis Marshall Gurney in the second, and then climbed
up beside Delia Vaughan in the first. The carriages rattled down the
village street into a world glittering and green. In every meadow the
grass stretched upright blades like thirsty tongues to drink from the
dripping trees; but the clouds had broken and blew about a radiant
spring sky like wind-tossed feathers.

"It's going to be fine," observed Adelaide complacently. "I'm glad
that I put on my new light tweeds."

"Stunning," commented Dennis, exhibiting his well-shaped leg. "What
about my own light tweeds?"

Everybody seemed to be in high spirits. After all, the drive would not
be so bad, thought Muriel. She could watch the grey, flat road unwind
like ribbon behind the waggonette. She could see the clay-red furrows
of the ploughed land, and she could hear the cry of sea-birds circling
behind and around the plough. Some magic lingered in the fresh spring
air.

Lunch was pleasant enough too, although she found herself seated on an
unsteady log between Mrs. Hobson and Colonel Cartwright, who had
motored to the woods. He at least was bent upon enjoyment. As an old
campaigner he insisted upon showing every one how to do everything,
from lighting a fire with two matches, to opening ginger-beer bottles
with a walking-stick.

"Dangerous things, picnics," he declared to Muriel, determined to show
her how to be jolly too.

Anxious to learn, she said sedately:

"Why, Colonel?"

He winked at her. "Ah, the spring, and a young man's fancy, happy
hours and woodland bowers, and chaperons asleep under the trees."

"I don't think that that sounds very dangerous," said Muriel politely,
and received a light flutter of laughter from the party as a reward
for her _naïveté_.

But she was soon to learn where for her the danger lay.

After lunch Adelaide's cousin, Mr. Weathergay, said to Nancy:

"There's a jolly old church, I hear, at Ribbleswaite, that seems the
sort of thing one ought to see. Won't you show it to me?"

And Nancy giggled that churches weren't much in her line, but she
wouldn't mind a walk.

Then Miles Buchanan bore off Freda Mason, and her two brothers
wrangled for the right to escort Mrs. Farrell, a charming girl, who
was staying with the Warings. The company scattered into couples and
quartettes. Muriel still sat on her log, playing with a strand of
long coarse grass, and hating picnics.

She saw neither the budding woods nor the delicate cream of primroses
upon the banks. She saw only the ignominy of her own position, and
with averted head she dug her fingers into the soft turf as couple
after couple vanished through the trembling curtain of foliage. She
was glad that her mother was not there to see her shame, and yet this
probably only meant a short respite, because Mrs. Waring was certain
to betray, as she had done before, the curious solitude of Mrs.
Hammond's daughter.

From the other side of the abandoned meal she could hear Delia's
careless voice:

"Well, you can lie and smoke in the sun if you like, Godfrey. The
grass is wet, and you are growing fat from idleness, but I don't care.
I, the only Socialist among you, am going to celebrate Primrose Day
properly and pick primroses. Coming too, Muriel?"

No wonder that Delia was unpopular, monopolizing Godfrey all through
lunch, and then abandoning him to smoke his pipe alone. The sheer
wanton waste of it appalled Muriel. She shook her head.

"No, thank you," she said, shivering a little at her courage. To have
gone with Delia would have been to put an end to her misery, but it
would also have been a confession of defeat.

Delia went, and Muriel was left alone upon her log. Bobby Mason,
defeated by his brother in the contest for Mrs. Farrell, was
pretending to do something scientific to the fire, and Mrs. Marshall
Gurney was directing the repacking of the luncheon baskets. She looked
round the clearing, then beckoned Bobby majestically to her side.

"Go and make yourself agreeable to the Hammond girl, for goodness'
sake," she commanded. "We want to hold a committee meeting here."

Muriel could feel the young man approaching her. She guessed why he
had come. She was half crying with shame and weariness.

"Like to see the jolly old church, Miss Hammond?"

Dumbly she nodded. They too went.

The young birches curtsied round them. A delicate earthy scent of
ferns and leaf mould and wet grass rose to their nostrils. Muriel saw
and felt nothing, but she heard Bobby Mason say:

"Been to Burley Woods before, Miss Hammond?"

"No. Have you?"

"Er--no."

There was a pause.

"Going to play golf this year, Miss Hammond?"

"No. I don't think so. Are you?"

"No--er, in the office you know. Men like myself haven't much time."

"I suppose not."

The silence grew more gloomy.

Muriel rehearsed to herself the coming interview with her mother.

"And what did you do, dear?"

"Oh, I went for a walk to see an old church with Bobby Mason."

"Oh. That was nice, I expect. That boy's coming on, I think. They say
that he's doing very well in his father's office," followed by a swift
look at Muriel's face, and a reflection that the Masons were quite
successful timber merchants even if the boys were reputed to be a
little brainless.

Muriel did so much want to make her mother happy.

The silence oppressed them like a heavy weight. It grew fecund with
other silences. They walked through the springing woods.

It was like that all the afternoon.

Then, when they had returned to the clearing and had finished tea,
Delia returned. Godfrey Neale had gone to find her and they appeared
together. Her eyes shone. Her thin cheeks glowed with colour. An
elfish, secretive smile of happiness quivered on her lips, and her
hands were full of primroses and great sprays of beech leaves.

"Did you have a good time?" asked Phyllis Marshall Gurney wistfully.

Delia nodded. She was standing to eat her tea, for the rest had
finished. A thick slab of cake replaced the primroses, and she and
Godfrey swooped upon the last of the tartlets.

Muriel climbed into the waggonette, and sat still, hating Delia.
Somewhere in the woods that day had lurked happiness and beauty and
gay liberty. Delia, who cared for no one, who was selfish, had been
free to find them. And Godfrey Neale had followed her unsought.

She was talking to him now, softly under cover of the rattling of the
wheels, only Muriel with an effort could hear stray fragments of their
conversation. Delia was scolding him about some girl.

"My dear Godfrey, you are as tenacious of your rights over a practical
stranger as you are over your own tenants. The girl probably forgot
you months ago."

The carriage jolted on. Bobby smoked moodily. His duty for the day had
been done. Adelaide chatted with her cousin. Delia was talking again.
"You think too much of your unconquerable charm. You won't be fit to
speak to until quite three women have refused to marry you."

Godfrey pulled placidly at his pipe. He appeared to enjoy her
lecturing, as people do who prefer to have their personality
criticized rather than ignored.

Muriel thought that she understood. "They're talking about Clare," she
said to herself. "And he doesn't know that she's engaged." She felt
glad that she knew something which neither Delia nor Godfrey knew. She
was no longer powerless, but armed. She could, if she would, make a
difference to the lives of these two Olympians. She, Muriel, could one
day say to Godfrey Neale, "Do you know that my friend, Clare Duquesne,
is going to be married?" He would take notice of her then.

She still felt proud, though chilled and stiff, as she climbed out of
the waggonette, and said good-bye to Mrs. Marshall Gurney.

When Delia Vaughan suggested, "I'm going your way. Shall we walk
together?" she answered with indifference, as though she were
accustomed to such offers.

"Well, and how do you like living at Marshington?" asked Delia as they
left the yard.

"Very much, thank you," she answered primly.

"Good, what do you do with yourself all day?"

"I help my mother. We have been very busy with the Nursing Club
lately. And I sew a good deal. And I study music and astronomy."

"Music and astronomy?" The vicar's daughter looked at her in genuine
surprise. "How delightfully mediæval that sounds! But why astronomy?
You can't study it in Marshington properly, can you? Do you mean it
seriously? Are you going to college or somewhere?"

Muriel shook her head. "Oh, no. I could not go away. My mother and
father need me at home. I just do a little reading on my own."

Delia looked wonderingly at her small, secret face. "Look here," she
began, "you can't go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on
a thing, and it's a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no
use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is
a coward's way of shifting responsibility on to some one else. Reading
at Marshington! It's only a sort of disguise for the futility of life
here. I know. I've tried it."

She was warming up to her favourite topic. Her dark eyes glowed above
the trailing boughs of beech. Muriel, unaccustomed to exhibitions of
strong feeling, looked coldly at her.

"Do you seriously intend to stay here all your life?" asked Delia. "To
wash dishes that the next meal will soil, to arrange flowers that will
wither in a week, to walk in fear and trembling of what Mrs. Marshall
Gurney will say, although you know quite well that she hasn't got the
intelligence to say anything worth saying?"

Intelligence? Muriel remembered how once she had suggested to Aunt
Beatrice that she would like to go to college, and Aunt Beatrice had
replied, "Well, dear, it isn't as if you were as clever as all that,
is it?" And reluctantly Muriel, with the memory of the elusive
mathematics prize before her, had had to admit that she was not as
clever as all that.

"We can't all be clever," she said, without much joy in the thought.

"Clever? who said that we all had to be clever? But we have to have
courage. The whole position of woman is what it is to-day, because so
many of us have followed the line of least resistance, and have sat
down placidly in a little provincial town, waiting to get married. No
wonder that the men have thought that this is all that we are good
for."

Muriel looked at her with grave distaste. She knew what her mother had
to say about the suffragettes.

"Because I happened to be an idealist," remarked Delia, with the
solemnity of twenty-two addressing eighteen, "Marshington could never
forgive me. It could not forgive me for thinking my education
incomplete unless I sought it beyond the councils of Marshington
matrons. I happened to think that service of humanity was sometimes
more important than respectability. I valued truth more highly than
the conventional courtesies of a provincial town, while Marshington
spends half its time in sparing other people's feelings in order that
it may the more effectually ruin their reputations."

Muriel remembered hearing what Delia had said to Mrs. Cartwright over
the Nursing Club accounts. She felt interested but uncomfortable. She
had never been to a college debating society, and was unaccustomed to
hearing what she called rudeness defended on principle. Also, she
distrusted all this talk, feeling that she could be an idealist, too,
without making so much fuss about it.

"But of course," continued Delia, "women in Marshington are not
expected to have Ideals, only sex."

Muriel knit her brows. Sex conveyed to her merely a synonym for
gender, masculine, feminine or neuter. She sought for more familiar
ground.

"I certainly am not going to college, because my mother needs me at
home. I am not unhappy here. Some of us have to stay at home. I have
my duty too," she added stiffly.

Delia looked at her, a queer sidelong glance below her long lashes.
Then she laughed a little. "And I am being properly called to order
for pursuing my selfish ambitions while you are following the path
of virtue?"

They had come to the Vicarage gate, and stood below the budding trees.

"Well, well," smiled Delia, "I hope that you will be happy. I suppose
that it's no good arguing. But for goodness' sake stay with your eyes
open. Remember, there's only one thing that counts for a girl in
Marshington, and that is sex success. Turn and twist how you will, it
comes to that in the end. The whole of this sort of life is arranged
round that one thing. Of course it's an important thing, but it's not
the only one. If that's what you are after, stay by all means, and
play the game. But if you can't play it well, or if you really care
for anything else, clear out, and go before it is too late."

She opened the gate of the Vicarage garden, and stood for a moment
looking down at Muriel.

To her surprise Muriel answered her gravely, with a wistful obstinacy
that stiffened her slim, small figure as though for some great act of
courage.

"It's all right to talk, Miss Vaughan, but we all have to do what we
think right, haven't we? And some of us can't choose. We have to take
life as it comes. I don't see why I shouldn't be doing just as much my
duty here as you where you are." Then, feeling that she was not being
very explicit, she added, "I hope that you will be very happy at
Cambridge."

"Thank you," said Delia with equal gravity. Then quite suddenly she
laughed. "That's the second time you've snubbed me, Muriel, you
strange child. Good-bye. Don't hate me too much."

She held out her hand, then with a flutter of bright green leaves she
had vanished, lithe as a wood nymph, queer, graceful, and confusing.

Muriel walked home, thinking of Clare and Godfrey, Delia and college,
and the meaning of sex-success.

When she arrived home, she found her mother coming from her father's
room with an empty tray. The happy, satisfied expression that her face
wore rarely transfigured her. She looked charming as a girl when she
smiled at her daughter and said: "Well, dear, did you have a good
time?" And Muriel replied, "Yes, thank you, mother. Bobby Mason took
me to see the old church at Ribbleswaite."

That night she stood before her bedroom window and pulled back the
curtains that Mrs. Hammond liked her to keep drawn. ("It looks so bad,
dear, to see an uncurtained bedroom window. Even if people can't see
anything, they always think that they can.") There were no stars in
the deep sky, but from the darkness of the garden rose the thin and
unmistakable breath of the spring. Muriel stood with outstretched arms
holding back the curtains.

Down there in the valley lay the wonderful, perilous, grown-up world,
holding its carnival of adventure and romance.

She pitied Connie, a child who was still at school.

She pitied Delia, who was, after all, still at college, which was only
a kind of glorified school.

She thought of herself, holding the key to Godfrey Neale's happiness
or sorrow, she alone, who knew that Clare was going to be married. She
was sorry for Godfrey, who, she was sure, had fallen in love with
Clare; but the thought of her power was more exciting to her than
pity.

Oh, lovely, rich, full, adventurous life, teeming with experience,
glowing with beauty, hurry, hurry, hurry! Let me come to you and learn
your secret, in your strange carnival of love and tears!

The soft wind fanned her cheeks as though it were the breath of life
itself. She sank upon her knees, holding out her arms to the heavy
darkness of the sky.

Down in the valley, the lights of Marshington winked at her, one by
one.




                                BOOK II

                             MRS. HAMMOND

                    JANUARY, 1914--SEPTEMBER, 1915




                                  XIV


Against the car the wind hurled the challenge of a thousand angry
spears of rain. With blow after blow they assailed the leather hood,
only to break and fall helplessly to the streaming road.

"What a night for a dance," groaned Mrs. Hammond. "If I had known what
it was going to be like, I really shouldn't have come, though I hate
to disappoint you."

But even if she had known, she must still have come, and not only
because she hated to disappoint the girls. For matters at Miller's
Rise were growing desperate. Morning after morning Mrs. Hammond had
come downstairs to find her daughters confronting her like the outward
and visible sign of an inward and spiritual failure, Connie always
bored and restless, Muriel becoming yearly more prim and silent. It
was 1914 already, and nothing done. Adelaide Waring's husband at York
earned £2,000 a year. Nancy Cartwright was now Nancy Buchanan, and
even Daisy Parker, as Daisy Weathergay, lived in a little corner house
along the Avenue, and kept a nice little maid, and paid calls, and
shopped down the village street with one of those painted wicker
baskets on her arm.

Of course there was Dr. McKissack. Surely, surely he must mean
something. If only one were more certain of Connie. If only that queer,
reckless strain in her nature would not make her do unconventional
things that men disliked. She was so like Arthur, and yet in a woman,
somehow, it did not do to be like Arthur. In the darkness of the
car, Mrs. Hammond's face grew weary, thinking of bitter things. Her
troubles were not confined to the spinsterhood of her daughters.

The car lurched and jolted round a corner into the mean street that
crouched before the Kingsport thoroughfares.

"Muriel, I do wish that you would not tread on my shoe," complained
Connie. "You know that they're my best ones. It isn't as if I could
get a new pair any day."

"I'm sorry. I didn't see."

"No. You never do see. Mother, why can't we have an allowance? I'm
sick of this beastly dependence upon Father. It's all to gratify his
vanity. He'll take us in to Kingsport to buy a rotten hat, like when
he bought my velour before Christmas, and I was simply pining for new
furs. It's just to hear us say thank you, and to feel how generous he
is."

"Oh, Connie, I've told you before that I have done my best. Don't let
us start the discussion all over again."

"It's all very well, but if you'd only let me go on that chicken farm
with Hilda there wouldn't have been any need to discuss it."

"And you wouldn't have been going to a dance to-night either. You know
quite well that you would never have made it pay. We don't want to
start all that again, surely."

They were passing through the main streets now, and the lamps looked
through into the warm stuffiness of the car.

"At any rate," said Mrs. Hammond, calling up her courage, "it is going
to be a nice dance." She had said that so many times. "You did say
that the doctor was coming, didn't you, Connie?"

"He said he might." Connie's manner was off-hand, but in the darkness
her face softened, and her brown eyes glowed with expectation.

She didn't care twopence for the little Scotch doctor, she told
herself; but she was sick, sick, sick of Miller's Rise. She was sick
of dressing up her fine young body, which nobody cared to see. She was
sick of living through the long months of the year all on top of
Muriel and her mother, sick of scenes with her father, because he
would neither let her go away nor give her the allowance that she
considered necessary. And she was sick of her mother's fretful hints
and of her father's stupid chaffing. She was weary of cinema romances,
where true love always triumphed. She was weary of Marshington reality
where her school friends and neighbours smirked at her above their
diamond half-hoops, or simpered at her over piles of trousseau
_lingerie_. At twenty-one she had smiled when other girls talked about
proposals; at twenty-two she had blushed and answered irritably; at
twenty-three she had lied shamelessly and shrieked her noisy, jolly
laugh. At twenty-four she would have no further need to lie.

She pushed back a curl of springing hair, and tried to imagine married
life with Hugh McKissack. The wind enfolded the car in the fierce
caress of brushing wings, tumultuous as love, as love, thought Connie.
"Love," she whispered to herself, "Love, love, love," as though by an
incantation she could call it to her.

There was a sentence in _The Romance of Emmeline_ by Sylvia Carlton,
that had sung itself into her seeking mind.

". . . And as he approached her, her heart beat faster. In all that
crowded room they were alone. He only took her hand, but his eyes
caressed her, and youth and spring, sweet with laughter, clamorous
with birdsong, leapt from the loneliness to meet them. Their formal
greeting sang like a passionate poem, and in the shadows of her eyes
he saw the amorous darkness of the perfumed night."

"Hugh McKissack," thought Connie, remembering the way in which his
kind, short-sighted eyes peered through his glasses. Could men ever
make you feel like that? Godfrey Neale, Freddy Mason, Captain
Lancaster whom they had met at Broadstairs. She let a procession of
"possibles" pass through her mind. At least if Hugh loved her he would
take her away. "Let now thy servant depart in peace," thought Connie
foolishly, "according to thy word. For my reproach hath been taken
away from me. . . ." She felt strangely happy and yet urged by a
strong desire to cry.

"Muriel, just see if that window is quite shut. There is such a
draught."

"We're just there," said Muriel, peering through the rain-smeared
glass, and wondering if she would be able to catch Mrs. Cartwright in
the cloak-room to ask about the nursing subscriptions. Muriel's life
had centred largely round the Nursing Club, ever since Mrs. Potter
Vallery had taken up the Fallen Girls' Rescue Work, and Mrs. Hammond
had abandoned the Club for her committee.

"Is there an awning up? I do hope that there is. Where is my bag,
girls?"

The cars crawled forward, spilling their burdens of satin and furs and
gleaming shirt fronts on to the damp red felt below the awning. As the
Hammonds passed, a girl in a rain-soaked hat trimmed with wilting
plumes called from the dingy group watching on the pavement:

"Good evening, Mrs. 'Ammond, 'opes you enjoy yourself!"

"Who was that girl?" asked Muriel, slipping off her cloak.

Her mother frowned. "One of the girls who used to be at St. Catherine's.
They have no business to come and waste their time watching the people
arriving at a dance. We got her into a decent situation too."

Muriel, who liked to see pretty things herself, thought, "Now that is
just the sort of thing that I should have thought that those girls
would have liked to do." For the streets of Kingsport on a winter
evening were curiously devoid of colour, and the procession of pink
and mauve and lemon-coloured cloaks gleamed like the lights from a
revolving lantern down the pavement.

Connie murmured with a hairpin in her mouth, "What awful cheek."
Being unconventional in her own behaviour at times through lack of
self-control, she had little patience for other people who had
suffered from an aggravation of the same offence. Muriel, whose
behaviour was always scrupulously regulated, had more sympathy to
spare for the exceptional. All the same, she did not know very much
about St. Catherine's. Her mother would never let her go near the
Home. It was not nice that unmarried girls should know about these
things. Muriel, whose mind was singularly incurious, accepted without
question the convention that only substantially married women could
safely touch their fallen sisters. Her mother, Muriel heard, was most
zealous in their cause, so firm, so sensible, so economical upon the
House Committee. It had been her work upon that committee that had
brought her to the notice of the Bishop. There was no doubting her
ability. Better leave such work to her, thought Muriel; yet, as she
clasped a bangle over her white glove in the cloak-room, the girl's
eyes haunted her, mocking from the rain. Beyond this room with its
cosy fire, beyond the decorous safety of Miller's Rise, lay a world of
tears and darkness, of sudden joy and hopeless ruin. Muriel shivered,
then followed Connie and her mother from the room. It was, at least,
another world.

In the door-way they met Mrs. Waring, still slim and elegant in pale
grey satin.

"Ah, I'm so glad that you were able to come," she smiled. "And the
girls. How nice; Adelaide has brought a few friends of Sydney's from
York. I must introduce them to you. There's an Eric Fennington and
Tony Barton, such dear boys and devoted to Adelaide. She's so popular
in York, you know. Naughty girl, I tell her that Sydney will be
jealous if she always has a trail of young men following her about.
And then, what will the unmarried girls do if staid matrons like her
monopolize all the men?"

Mrs. Hammond smiled gently. "Ah, well, you know. There are still
just a few men left in Marshington. We are not all as adventurous
as Adelaide, going to York. But then, of course, a different
generation----" She glanced across the room to the goodly paunch and
receding hair of Sydney Rutherford, who was earning £2,000 a year and
who looked every penny of it. Then she broke off. "Oh, there is Mrs.
Potter Vallery. I promised to keep her in countenance as the only
woman here in a last year's dress."

Only since her acquaintance with Mrs. Potter Vallery had Mrs. Hammond
dared to say nasty things to the Marshington ladies. The relief, after
so many years of restraint, was immense. She crossed the room, leaving
Mrs. Cartwright, whom Muriel had just released from contemplation of
the Nursing Club, Class A. Subscribers, to keep Mrs. Waring company
near the door.

"Poor Rachel Hammond is growing quite thin, isn't she?"

"Yes," murmured Mrs. Waring into her fan. "Running after Honourables
is hard work. And then, of course, they say"--Mrs. Waring dropped her
voice--"that Arthur Hammond----" She shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, poor woman! poor woman! I hope it's not true. I dare say that
she feels Marshington relaxing." Mrs. Cartwright's good humour led
her always to attribute human trouble to the defects of impersonal
locality. It saved her from having to blame people. "I'm sure that I
haven't been well all this winter. I did think of going to Buxton in
the spring, but Mrs. Marshall Gurney says that it didn't do her a
scrap of good."

"But I don't think that it was for a change of air so much as a change
of scene that Annabelle went to Buxton."

"Scene?"

"Scene. For Phyllis and for herself. An exclusive view of the Weare
Grange becomes a little tiring after a time. I dare say that Mrs.
Hammond may try for a change soon, but I rather think that she has the
more staying power." Having tried the waiting game herself and
abandoned it, Mrs. Waring felt that she had a right to find amusement
in a contest that had once engaged almost the whole of Marshington,
but which had now, she considered, been reduced to the final round.

Meanwhile, having secured her smile from Mrs. Potter Vallery, Mrs.
Hammond reviewed her daughters' programmes. She had grown accustomed
to these early arrivals, followed by a determined search for partners,
while she shepherded stray young men gently up to her waiting girls.
She did it well, and also contrived to achieve a reputation for
introducing men to other people's daughters; this was one of her more
clever strokes of statesmanship. To-night she felt that her burden
might be easier. For some time things had been working up to a climax.
Well, if Connie went before Muriel, what matter?

"Let me see, Muriel, was it the first waltz or the fifth that you were
going to have with Godfrey Neale? The fifth? That's right. And Connie,
let me see, where was it you said that Dr. McKissack promised to meet
us?"

"He never exactly said," Connie began.

"He's over there, talking to that girl in green. They've just come
in," said Muriel.

"I expect that he's waiting for us; I'll go and tell him that we've
come." As Mrs. Hammond crossed the room, she was thinking, "Dickie
Weathergay proposed to Daisy at the Tennis Dance . . . Hugh McKissack,
Dr. McKissack, my son-in-law. A very old Scotch family. I only hope
that Connie keeps her hair tidy for once. A doctor. A professional
man." But when the tender smile curved her lips as she approached the
young man, it was because she had thought for a moment of her husband.

Dr. McKissack turned with a slight flush to face her greeting. Being
not entirely shameless, the memory of many Sunday night suppers
oppressed him. But he was a Scotchman, and wanted to marry, and had
no private means, and cold saddle of mutton had been welcome.

"Ah, Mrs. Hammond, good, good. And how are ye? Glad you were able to
come." Seeing her pretty, waiting face, he felt more nervous than was
reasonable. But he was a man of courage. Had he not been, he never
could have enjoyed his saddle of mutton. "I want to introduce you to
my fiancée. I think that you know Miss Hemmingway."

Mrs. Hammond, who did not know the daughter of a retired grocer,
bowed. She even continued to smile. "Of course. I am so pleased to
meet you at last. Naturally I remember having seen you at dances and
things for years, haven't I? But we've never really managed to meet."

She was even able to search out Mrs. Cartwright, and to remark
casually:

"Seen the latest couple? That Hemmingway girl and Dr. McKissack? He's
just told me that they are engaged."

Mrs. Cartwright nodded comfortably. "Yes, it's been coming on for a
long time, I understand. I'm so glad for her sake, poor girl. People
haven't been very nice to her."

"Well, I had never come across her before, but, considering who
she is, I thought that she seemed quite a nice sort of girl. Most
suitable, I think. I know the doctor a little. Used to entertain him
when he first came here."

"Yes. I know how good you always are to the boys," Mrs. Cartwright
said without irony. Because she had a charitable mind, Mrs. Hammond
found her restful; but when she had left the shelter of her disarming
simplicity, and found herself surrounded again by Warings, Parkers and
their friends, her courage almost failed her. She had needed it so
often lately. The infamy of it! The graceless, wicked ingratitude! All
that cold chicken and salmon, and the saddles of mutton. Besides, she
had liked the little man. She had thought that he liked her. She
could have sworn that he liked her. Connie. Her small, tightly gloved
hands locked round her fan. She felt tired and suddenly old; but there
could be no respite for her. Already the orchestra was groaning and
wailing before the first dance. The girls must have partners. Connie
must be told without being upset. It was difficult to tell with
Connie. She rather liked to make a scene, like Arthur, but without his
faculty for success. Mrs. Hammond drew the soft feathers of her fan
across her aching forehead, and went into the ball-room.

Adelaide Rutherford was leading her young men across the floor. Now if
only Connie were sensible and had a fairly full programme, she might
still carry things off. She certainly looked well to-night, and one of
Adelaide's young men from York, while talking to Gertrude Larkinton,
seemed continually to be watching Connie's gay blue dress. Supposing
that Connie, unconscious of the doctor's perfidy, were keeping dances
for him? She must be told, and told quickly. Muriel, who did not mind,
would do it best, but Muriel was talking to Rosie Harpur. That was one
of Muriel's irritating habits. People might begin to think of them
together, as poor Rosie Harpur and poor Muriel Hammond. Failure is so
contagious.

"Muriel, dear, just a moment."

"Yes, Mother?"

"Is she--do you know whether she has been keeping any dance for Dr.
McKissack?"

"Several, I think."

"You've got to tell her, now, that he's engaged to that Hemmingway
girl." Her voice quivered fiercely. "It's disgraceful. Disgraceful."

Muriel's mouth twisted into a small, cold smile. "It's not the first
time that it's happened. Are you surprised?" Being used to these
reverses, she was hardly interested. The little doctor was just one of
the many men who had come to their house, and gone. Then she saw that
her mother had been surprised. Pity as usual froze her to stiff
shyness, though she wanted then to carry Mrs. Hammond away home
and kiss her better, for she had looked for a moment as small and
defenceless as a hurt child. But Mrs. Hammond was not a hurt child.
She braced herself for battle.

"We must tell Connie." She had seen the young man from York leave
Gertrude Larkinton to ask Adelaide some question, looking all the time
in the direction of Connie's blue dress. If only Connie could have
this little piece of flattery to soothe her directly she had been told
about the doctor, like a chocolate after the dose, it might just save
the situation. Mrs. Hammond hurried to her daughter.

"Connie, you'll never guess." They must take it lightly. "_Such_ a
piece of news, isn't it, Muriel?"

"Oh, I suppose so. Dr. McKissack and that Hemmingway girl are going to
be married," remarked Muriel without enthusiasm.

Adelaide was leading the young man across the room. Connie started and
looked up.

"How did you hear?" she asked quickly.

"He told me now. She's here. In the green dress."

They waited for a time that seemed to be years long, while the first
notes of "The Pink Lady" summoned couples from their seats. Then
Connie's shrill laugh rang out.

"So you've only just heard? You know, he told me days ago."

Adelaide was there with her young man.

"Hullo, Addie, how's the world with you?"

"I am very fit, thanks, and I want to introduce you to Mr. Fennington,
or rather, he wants to be introduced to you. He's been pestering me
all the evening."

Adelaide smiled indulgently. Out of her plenty she could afford to
throw an occasional partner to the Hammond girls.

Mrs. Hammond and Muriel withdrew, well pleased.

"No partner for this one, dear? Oh, well, that's that. I wonder why
she never told us, though? She'll be all right this evening, I think.
That young man meant business. And what about you?"

"Oh, I'm all right. Don't worry about me."

What need to worry about her, about anyone? Muriel sat against the
wall, her brooding eyes fixed on the kaleidoscope of colour before
her. Two years ago, she would have smiled uncomfortably over her fan,
pretending to wait for a non-existent partner. But now she was tired
of pretence. The world was like that. There were always some people
who danced and some who sat by the wall, watching until the candles
guttered in their sockets, until the dancers wearied of encircling
arms, until the bleak, grey light peered through the curtained window.
Muriel was just one of those. That was all.

Connie passed, dancing with the young man from York, her red head
high, her eyes bright. Which was Connie, one of the dancers, or one of
those who watched? It was hard to tell about Connie. Nobody might ask
her to dance, and yet, and yet, Muriel could not somehow picture
Connie sitting by the wall. But to go forward on one's own was
against the rules of the game. And never was game more hedged about
with rules than this which women played for contentment or despair.

These were silly thoughts. Nobody was asking Muriel to be contented or
desperate. She was simply being sentimental because the little Scotch
doctor, who was nothing to the Hammonds, had become engaged. Her next
partner, Mr. Mullvaney from the Bank of England, had come across the
room to claim her.

The dance passed much as other dances. Muriel's partners were
scattered but reliable. Connie seemed to be more than usually happy.
Everywhere that Mrs. Hammond looked, she seemed to see the bright hair
and laughing face of her younger daughter. Then, after supper, the
strange thing happened.

Muriel's waltz with Godfrey Neale had come, the waltz that he
unfailingly offered her. Godfrey liked regularity and tradition. They
had waltzed sedately, and now sat on a plush-covered sofa in the
corridor, silent as usual, for they had little enough to say to one
another. Even the excitement of thinking that she really was dancing
with Godfrey Neale had left Muriel. He had been too long the goal of
Marshington maidenhood.

She wished that the passage were not so draughty, and that she did not
feel so dumb.

Suddenly from behind a screen along the passage, rang out a clear,
shrill laugh. A resounding kiss shattered the silence more boldly than
a cannon shot. There followed the sound of a slap--bare flesh on
flesh. A voice called, broken with laughter, "Oh, you naughty boy!"

Muriel and Godfrey sat up. Such things simply did not happen in
Marshington ball-rooms.

Muriel always remembered the stiffening of Godfrey's figure. He hated
so emphatically all that sort of thing. And yet, she herself shuddered
with fear. For she thought that she had recognized the voice.

In another moment the orchestra would play. The next dance would
begin. Probably the couple might emerge from behind the screen. It
couldn't have been Connie. She was sometimes rather silly, but she
would never do a thing like that. All the same, it was not safe to
wait until she was sure.

Muriel never knew whether she ran away because she did not want
Godfrey Neale to know, or because she did not want to know herself.
She always tried to hide unpleasant truths for as long as possible.

"Isn't there rather a draught here?" she asked. "Shall we be strolling
back?"

They went, and Muriel thrust misgivings from her mind.

As she undressed that night, her mother came to her.

"I think that Connie's all right now, don't you?"

The misgivings returned. Had Connie cared?

"Oh, quite all right, I think, mother."

What business had Muriel with misgivings? Mrs. Hammond was pitifully
tired and needed to be reassured.

"Well, good night, then, dear. We needn't have worried, need we?
Really, I'm very glad that it has turned out like this. He _is_ rather
a commonplace young man."

"Oh, I never thought that there was anything in it."

The memory of Connie's face before she had laughed returned to Muriel.
Yet she could not have cared for him, not Connie, for that little man.

"Well, then, it all went off very nicely."

"Very. Good night."

The door closed. Her mother's soft slippers padded away down the
passage, and Muriel went to bed. But through the early morning
darkness her thoughts strayed in drowsy confusion, and she saw again
the glittering ball-room, and heard that horrible laugh from behind
the screen, and saw, though she had forgotten them during the curious
evening, the mocking eyes of a girl in the rain-dark street.




                                  XV


It had all happened so quickly that Muriel found no time to readjust
her thoughts to the hurried sequence of events, Delia's engagement,
Connie's queerness about it, and the invitation to tea at the
Vicarage.

"Go by all means," Connie had said. It was a wet day, and she could
not even play golf, and nobody had asked her out, and she was bored.
"If you like to be patronized all over about this Twentieth Century
Reform League, or whatever it is that Delia runs, go by all means.
But don't expect me."

"Didn't Mrs. Cartwright say that he was quite a distinguished man?"
Mrs. Hammond murmured dreamily. It was hard that Delia should not
only have defied Marshington, but have defied it with success, moving
steadily from college to a secretaryship in London, and from this to
the organization of the Twentieth Century Reform League. Mrs. Hammond
could not approve of the Reform League, but she had to admit that the
list of Vice-Presidents impressed her. And now, here was this Martin
Elliott added to Delia's triumphal procession through life. She
sighed, aware that she had never thought before of Delia with such
toleration. The girl might be unpleasant, but she was not negligible.
Perhaps Muriel had been wise to maintain with her that queer, half
wistful, half antagonistic friendship.

"His book, _Prosperity and Population_, is supposed to have
revolutionized sociology," said Muriel.

"The warden of a slum settlement," Connie sneered. "She's welcome to
him. Still, it's surprising really that she's caught anything. She
must be over thirty, and that skinny figure of hers and then all those
stories about her being a suffragette, and going to prison. It's just
the kind of thing that all nice men hate."

So Connie, in spite of Mrs. Hammond's protests, had refused Delia's
half-smiling invitation to meet Mr. Elliott at tea at the Vicarage,
and Muriel found herself walking down the road alone. She felt
strangely excited, because of the absurd though insistent feeling that
there existed between her and Delia some tie. It was as though Delia
in her London office, looking up from the work which her brilliant,
courageous mind directed, might think of Muriel in Marshington, living
her drab ineffectual life among tea-parties, and nursing accounts and
faded dreams, and might say to herself, "There, but for the grace of
God, goes Delia Vaughan." Most successful people, thought Muriel
sadly, have a shadow somewhere, a personality sharing their desires,
and even part of their ability, but without just the one quality that
makes success.

"All the same, I was right," she told herself fiercely. "I had to look
after Mother. I had no choice. It was not my fault, but theirs. People
don't choose."

She stopped to unfasten the bars of the big Vicarage gate. It had been
wet all day, and the garden was musical with the manifold noises of
the rain, of the murmuring runnels through the clean washed pebbles of
the drive, of the ceaseless rustle of water in the branches. All the
spring garden sang with youth and promise. The crocus chalices had
overflowed. Here and there the wind had overturned their brimming
cups, showering their burden to the grass below, in a mystical
communion of earth and rain.

Muriel stood by the gate, listening and looking. As though this were
the last hour that she would look on beauty, she opened her heart
eagerly to scent and sound and colour. The deep significance of the
spring oppressed her. Beyond the sodden trees, a firelit window glowed
like a jewel of warm liquid light. Undoubtedly that was where Delia
now sat with her lover.

Muriel had no part in the silent movement of nature's slow regeneration.
Delia, who had striven in the artificial world of books and men and
jangling rules of government, was now to be akin to wind and water,
obedient to an older law than man's. She had won the best from both
worlds, because she had been selfish. Wise, fortunate, beloved Delia!
Was there no justice in life's scheme of things?

Muriel, who had neither success nor love, nor any great emotion, moved
forward slowly, a small grey figure beneath the dripping trees.

Delia opened the door for her.

"Did you get wet? You must be washed away." She was a new creature,
thought Muriel, gentler, saner, with an indefinable bloom of happiness
that lent to her real charm. "If I had known that you were going to
walk, I should have told that idle creature Godfrey Neale to call for
you with his car."

"Father does not like us to use our car when it's wet. I did not know
that Godfrey Neale was coming." She had not met him since that dance
in Kingsport when the girl had laughed. She did not want to meet him
now, when she had intended to forget everything except her sympathy
with Delia's happiness.

They entered the comfortable, book-lined room, splashed with liquid
firelight. The chairs and tables and people seemed to float as in a
fiery sea. She could see nothing clearly until Delia followed her with
a lamp.

"Father, Martin, Miss Hammond. Muriel, this is Martin. Godfrey Neale
you know."

The room seemed to be full of books, tea-cups, and men. Mr. Vaughan
smiled blandly through his spectacles. Godfrey rose and bowed
beautifully. Then Muriel found herself shaking hands with Martin
Elliott.

He was not at all as she had expected him to be, ironic, lean and
scholarly. She stared openly at the short, stocky man, dressed like
the shabbier kind of farmer, and smiling at her from a broad humorous
face. His untidy hair stood up on end, his tie was crooked, giving a
curious effect below his unexpectedly pugnacious mouth and chin, so
that he always looked as though he had just emerged from a street row,
which indeed, more frequently than most people, he had. Altogether
the effect of him was so surprising that Muriel forgot her manners.

He bore her scrutiny for a moment. Then he turned to Delia.

"Delia, she doesn't like me. She doesn't like me a bit."

"I'm not surprised. You look like a perfect hooligan. Have you been
arguing with Father again? Muriel, don't mind them. Clear some books
off that seat and sit down."

"But I do like him," exploded Muriel, not sitting down, because she
found nowhere to sit, except a pile of formidable looking volumes
crowned by an ink-pot.

"Delia, you are a shocking hostess," remarked the vicar mildly,
handing Muriel his own plate and a half-eaten scone with the
well-intentioned vagueness that characterized his dealings with all
such mundane objects as tea-things and collar-studs.

"Sorry, Muriel. It's all right, Father." Delia quietly transferred the
scone to its rightful owner, cleared a seat for Muriel and passed her
a clean plate. "Muriel's used to me. I scandalized her years ago, when
I told her that she was wasted in Marshington, and she came prepared
for an uncomfortable afternoon."

"My dear, how arrogant of you to say such things to Miss Hammond,"
reproved the vicar, stirring his tea absently. "That's so like all
these strenuous young people who call themselves reformers, isn't it,
Neale? They think all activity except their own a waste of time. They
forget that if every one thought as they did, they would be out of
work."

"Think, think!" cried Delia, laughing. "We don't expect them to think
at all. That would be hoping for too much."

"Delia wants to teach people so many things," continued the vicar
calmly. "She is certain that human nature can be rendered perfectible
by parliamentary institutions. I am an old man. And I have written
three standard textbooks upon parliamentary institutions. And I should
hesitate to put into the minds of my parishioners anything but some
simple and final expression of wisdom like the Gospels."

"Of course you are right as far as you go, sir," broke in Martin
Elliott, obviously resuming some hot but interrupted argument. "My
contention was simply that in a district like the Brady Street area in
Bethnal Green people cannot understand the Gospels; and in a case like
that to sell all that you have and give it to the poor simply is
unsound economics. Don't you agree with me, Neale?"

"I'm afraid it's not much in my line." Godfrey was sitting upright in
his chair, glowering a little, as he always did if the conversation
passed beyond his sphere of interest.

"Muriel is the person to argue with on economics--and on morals,"
interposed Delia. "Try her, Martin. She has the mind of a mathematician.
She ought to have been on the staff of the _Statistician_ instead of
giving sewing-classes in Marshington."

Martin Elliott crossed to Muriel's side. "How much am I to take
seriously from that madwoman? Do you really take sewing-classes? I
think that must be rather interesting, because all teaching is rather
fun, I think, don't you? If only one's pupils are kind to one; but
sewing must be more satisfactory than most things, because you can
actually see the work growing under your fingers."

"I know what you mean. But I don't really do much sewing."

"You read then?"

"Not much now. I used to, but the books in the Kingsport libraries are
all so much alike, and one gets out of the way of ordering other
things."

She spoke diffidently. It was incredible that a man should really want
to talk to her about herself. Men talked about motors, or their own
insides, or hunting.

Martin Elliott smiled at her. "Have you found that too? Don't you
think about the books in most circulating libraries that they are
nearly all the wrong way round. Short stories with happy endings and
long stories with sad ones. Quite wrong."

"Why that?"

"Ah, surely the short story should end with tragedy, for only sorrow
swoops upon you with a sudden blow. But happiness is built up from
long years of small delightful things. You can't put them into a short
story."

It was true. Muriel looked across at Delia sitting by the tea-table in
her red dress. She thought, "This is what he means. Years of sitting
by Delia in a firelit room full of books and talking pleasant
nonsense. Friends who know what you mean and speak your own language.
Rain-washed gardens when the birds call. Work that's fine and hard
and reaches somewhere. Marriage, such as theirs will be. Children,
perhaps, and laughter that they share. You can't put all those into
a short story."

She felt cold and dull, shut out from a world of small delightful
things. She made no answer, sitting with her chin on her hand, while
the talk flowed round her, talk of books, and socialism, and plays,
and people that they knew, and what you ought to take on a walking
tour, and whether Sir Rabindranath Tagore should have won the Nobel
prize, and school care committees. (They weren't really any use, Mr.
Vaughan said.) And all the time she felt herself being drawn to Martin
Elliott by surprised delight. She was at home at last, among people
who spoke her own language, even though the things of which they spoke
were strange. She felt as though after many years she had returned to
her own country. But she never spoke.

Then she became aware that her thoughts had slipped away from the
conversation altogether, and that Delia was teasing Godfrey, and that
he was protesting, half uncomfortable, half amused, because he could
never become really angry with the vicar's daughter.

"Now, look here, D--Delia. That's not true."

An impish spirit had seized upon Delia.

"Oh, yes, it is, isn't it, Muriel? Godfrey's never yet proposed to any
girl because he knows that he'd be accepted, and if he had to marry
that would upset his habits. Godfrey dear, you don't realize how much
you hate to be upset."

"You know t--that's untrue."

"No, no, no. You're afraid that you won't be able to afford both a
wife and hunters, and you prefer the hunters. Martin, Godfrey is one
of those people who pretend to cultivate the earth in order that they
may destroy its creatures. He is that odious relic of barbarism, a
sporting farmer."

"I--I'm not a farmer," stammered Godfrey.

It was a shame, thought Muriel. Delia had no right to tease him so.
How he must hate being chaffed in front of her.

"Then if you aren't a farmer, you are simply a social parasite, and
your existence would not be tolerated in any ordinary, sane society.
Oh, I don't mean that you aren't very much tolerated to-day, because
this society is neither ordinary nor sane. But when Martin and I and
the Twentieth Century Reform League have been at work for a score of
years or so, say seventy-five . . ."

She rattled on, foolishly, happily, teasing him with the kindest smile
in the world on her thin face. But Godfrey was not happy. His sense of
humour had become atrophied from want of use. He did not understand
Delia's fooling, and to him the incomprehensible was the unpleasant.
He passed from boredom to indignation, and yet felt too much his old
debt of friendship to show indignation before Delia's lover. He was
not going to have the fellow think him jealous.

Muriel watched him and, as she watched, she too grew indignant with
Delia. It was unlike the vicar's daughter to go so far, but she had
always said that Godfrey needed teasing. All the same, it wasn't fair.
She took him at a disadvantage, and he really hated it. Muriel leaned
forward, quiet but resourceful.

"Delia," she interposed unexpectedly, "I do wish you'd tell me, for we
hear nothing up here, what do they really think in London about the
Irish Question?"

Now Godfrey really did know something about the Irish Question. He had
once been asked to stand as the Conservative member for the Leame
Valley Division, and although he had rejected the offer, as he always
rejected the unknown at this time, yet a faintly political flavour
still clung to his mental palate.

He drew a deep breath, like a diver emerging from the sea, then,
slowly, with solemnity, he began to contradict Delia's picturesque but
unorthodox opinion on the Irish Question.

Not, however, until he was seated again in his small covered car
driving back to the Weare Grange did he recover his usual composure.
Muriel had been tucked in at his side by Delia, to be dropped at the
gates of Miller's Rise. The familiar feel of brakes and wheel, and
the smooth running of the little car, reminded Godfrey that there was
a sane and ordinary world in which to live. He sighed comfortably.

"I don't think that that fellow Elliott has improved Delia much. She
tries to show off a bit, I think."

"Oh, no. It isn't that. She's just happy, and when Delia's happy she
talks nonsense."

"All very well for her to be happy at other people's expense," Godfrey
grumbled. He was enjoying himself now. The car responded to his touch,
and the Hammond girl responded to his mood. The world was all right.

"Oh, I know that she teases. But one doesn't mind, because you know
all the time what a splendid person she is. I do hope that Mr. Elliott
will make her happy. But I think that he will."

Godfrey liked girls who stuck up for one another. She had her wits
about her too, the little mouse of a thing. The Irish Question! He had
given Delia as good as she gave about the Irish Question. Delia was a
clever woman, but when women got on to politics it just showed. Now
Muriel Hammond showed her good sense by keeping quiet when there was a
subject which she did not understand. On the whole, he liked quiet
girls. Besides, there was another reason why he should feel rather
tenderly towards Muriel Hammond.

"You've not been to see us for a long time," he said.

"No. It is a long time," said Muriel dreamily, thinking of Martin
Elliott, and what life might be like, if one could meet such men as
he. "Not since that time Clare stayed with us, and Connie tried to
ride your horse, and it ran away with her."

"No." The car jerked forward under Godfrey's hands. He did remember,
ah, how he remembered, the turn of her head, the laughter in her eyes,
her clear, triumphant voice. "Yes. I remember, of course. Clare
Duquesne." He liked to say her name again. "By Jove, what years ago,
and what kids we were!" He turned the car carefully in to the winding,
elm-shadowed drive of Miller's Rise. "Do you ever hear from her now,
at all?"

"No. I haven't heard for years. She married, you know. A Spaniard.
They went to live in South America. I have not heard since, but I
should think that the life there would suit her. She loved warmth and
sunshine and gaiety. He was rich, I believe, and musical too. I don't
know much more, but I should think that she would be happy. You
somehow can't imagine Clare unhappy."

"No. You can't." He was bringing the car to the circle of gravel
before the door. She could not see his face, but something told her
that he had been profoundly moved. She became immensely sorry for him
and yet glad that he had loved Clare, glad that he had not forgotten.
His faithfulness belonged to her romantic dreams of him, when she had
been a child, and had worshipped with the rest of Marshington. "If by
any chance you should see her again, or be writing," he said very
slowly, trying to control his stammer, "you might remember me to her,
and say that I--I hope that she's very happy."

The car had stopped before the pillars of the porch. Muriel unwrapped
herself from the rugs.

"If I ever am writing, I will," she said. "Thank you for the ride. The
car runs beautifully."

"Yes, she's not a bad old perambulator, is she? Are you keen on cars?
Would you care to come out for a spin in her in better weather?"

"Thank you. I should like it very much."

It was the first time that a man had asked her to come for a ride in
his car. She felt the occasion to be immense.

As they shook hands in the rain, he held her small glove for just the
fraction of an inch longer than was necessary. She forgot to ask if he
would care to come inside.

"Good-bye, and thank you."

"So long, and we must fix up a day for a run, a fine day."

She passed into the house.

"Well, dear," said Mrs. Hammond, "did you have a nice party?"

"Yes."

"You're back early, aren't you? Did I hear a car just now?"

"Yes. Godfrey Neale brought me back."

"Oh." Mrs. Hammond smiled. She was tired, and the day had been
difficult for many reasons. Muriel knew this. She felt the passion of
admiring pity for her mother, which was always her strongest emotion
over any person.

"He has asked me to go for a ride in his new car, some day soon," she
remarked indifferently.

Mrs. Hammond threaded the needle that she was holding.

"Well, dear, that will be nice, won't it?" was all that she said, but
as Muriel turned to leave the room she looked at her, and for a moment
they waited, smiling a little at each other.




                                  XVI


The War came to Marshington with the bewildering irrelevance of all
great catastrophes. It came also at a most upsetting time for Mrs.
Hammond. Really, it was vexatious when everything was just going so
nicely. Connie had settled down with quite good grace to the prospect
of calling upon Mrs. McKissack, _née_ Hemmingway. Two visits to old
school friends at Buxton and Harrogate had sufficed to cure her
wounded vanity. As for Muriel, of course it was too early to say
anything definite, but Mrs. Hammond had confided in poor Beatrice that
really, you know, Godfrey Neale was showing her an uncommon amount of
attention. Ever since April, or was it March? those motor rides, that
party at the Weare Grange, all spoke of possibilities.

"After all, he is really quite young yet, only about thirty. And with
his temperament and his social position he would naturally go slowly.
That was the mistake that Mrs. Marshall Gurney made. She would hurry
him, and he grew frightened. By the way, I hear that she is taking
Phyllis to Germany to learn music or something. Very wise, I think."

Aunt Beatrice nodded, approving Mrs. Marshall Gurney's double wisdom.
Music was a sovereign remedy for broken hearts, and foreign travel
would add distinction to an already pretty and taking girl. Her
absence, however, would leave the field clear for Mrs. Hammond, by a
process of elimination. Well, that did not show that she was stupid,
but only that she knew when she had been fairly beaten. Rachel had
been wonderful again, but then Rachel always was. It was impossible to
believe that in the end she ever could be beaten.

And then the War came, right into the very middle of the tennis
tournament.

Of course, as it happened, the tournament was not going to be quite
such an event as usual, for Godfrey Neale had gone camping with the
Territorials at Kaling Moor, and Connie had sprained her wrist and
could not play. But still it was the Annual Tennis Tournament and that
was no small thing.

The day after it had opened was the 3rd of August, and people began
to feel uneasy. Just as the Hammonds were preparing for supper, Mr.
Hammond rang up from Kingsport to say that he was waiting for the
last train to pick up any more news that might be coming through.
"Particularly trying of him to-night," said his wife, "because I've
got such a nice little duck." After all, every one knew that nothing
really would happen. There had been scares before.

The evening was close and, even up at Miller's Rise, oppressive.

"Wouldn't it be rather nice to walk down to the village after supper
and see if we could buy a paper?"

So, after supper, they went.

Aunt Beatrice said that she never had liked Germans, so stuffy, that
sleeping with the feather beds on top of them, and then the way they
bought all that cooked meat and sausage stuff at shops.

All the way down to the village, she said that she had always known
that the Parkers' German governess had been a spy.

The village street was strangely unfamiliar in the half light of the
summer evening. Unexpected shadows and whisperings moved and rustled
in the quiet air. Little knots of people stood round the open doorways
of shops that should have been shut long ago. Noises, from down the
road, the horn of a motor-car, the call of children at their play,
broke in upon the stillness. With significant reiteration, a dog in a
far-off farm-house barked persistently.

"Go into the Ackroyds', Muriel, and see if you can get an evening
paper. I want to talk to Mrs. Cartwright. There's that bazaar on the
4th."

The paper shop was small and very crowded. It smelt of paraffin from
the swinging lamp above the counter. Muriel watched two great moths
flapping with unbelievable clumsiness against its flyblown globe.

She pushed her way to the counter. The proprietor, a meek little man
with a fierce black moustache, stood shaking his head nervously. "The
ultimatum expires to-night at midnight," he said hoarsely. "That's a
very serious thing. A very serious thing." Then he saw Muriel. "Good
evening, Miss Hammond."

"Have you any papers left?"

"I'm sorry, miss, I'm very sorry. I always like to oblige anyone from
Miller's Rise. You might get one at the station perhaps."

He bobbed with forlorn little curtsies, pulling at his moustache,
apologizing for the inconvenience of a European situation for which
he, as the agent through which Marshington must see the world, felt a
personal responsibility.

"Oh, well." Muriel turned to go.

An old woman in a man's cap, who for some inexplicable reason had
planted herself on a chair by the counter, looked up at her.

"War's bloody hell," she remarked mildly. "Ah'm telling you God's
truth. Two o' my lads went i' South Africa. Bloody hell. That's what
it is."

She rose and hiccoughed unsteadily from the shop, the little crowd
making way for her ungainly figure.

Unaccountably stirred by this brief encounter, Muriel left the shop,
her mind wounded and yet quickened by the old woman's words. It was as
though in her obscenity, she had been a foretaste of something to
come, something sinister and violent.

The village street lay wrapped in the grey twilight of a dream.
Bloody hell. Bloody hell. She saw the hell of a child's picture book,
gleaming with livid flame. The blood smell faintly nauseating, like
a butcher's shop on a hot day. Across the road, Connie and her mother
talked to Mrs. Cartwright. "It's all over the village," Mrs.
Cartwright was saying. "Mr. Marshall Gurney has telegraphed, and
telegraphed, and can't get any answer through. They say that he is
nearly mad with anxiety. If the war is declared against us, they're
sure to be murdered."

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Hammond. "You don't murder people nowadays, even
if there is a war on. The Marshall Gurneys will be all right, though I
always did say that it was a mistake to go off abroad like that. It
doesn't somehow belong to those kind of people."

Muriel looked at the four of them, and at their eager absorbed faces
as they talked about the Marshall Gurneys. Yet somehow she felt as
though her mother were not anxious so much as jealous, jealous because
it was Mrs. Marshall Gurney and not herself who was enjoying the
unique distinction of becoming involved in a European crisis. That
Kaiser, whom every one in England was reviling, might turn Mrs.
Marshall Gurney's failure into victory.




                                 XVII


Mrs. Hammond was right.

The ultimatum expired. Great Britain and Germany assumed a state of
war; and the Marshall Gurneys, miraculously unmurdered, returned to
Marshington in triumph. The news of their escape through Switzerland
outrivalled, at hurried and informal tea-parties, the problem of food
shortage, the departure of the Territorials to join the camp near
Scarborough, and the possibility of a German invasion. It was even
rumoured that Phyllis had received a letter from Godfrey Neale
congratulating her upon their escape, and that she, with the glamour
of adventure like a bloom upon her youth, might yet warm up the tepid
interest that her charms had once inspired.

After a spring and summer of reviving hope, Mrs. Hammond found herself
facing the autumn of 1914 from much the same position as she had faced
it in 1913.

Oh, when one was young and success was one's own to make or lose, then
life was easy! But for a wife and mother whose success depended upon
other people, then came the heart-breaking years. Of course the War
must be over soon, and things would settle down to their normal
condition, but meanwhile it was hard to see Mrs. Marshall Gurney
becoming President of the Belgian Refugee Committee, while Phyllis,
who had nothing like Muriel's ability for handling figures, was made
treasurer of the Junior Red Cross Association, and went daily into
Kingsport in her becoming uniform.

At the end of November they stood in the gloom of the unlit station,
watching the 5th Yorkshire Guards entrain for Aldershot--well, if it
was not Aldershot, it was somewhere in the South and so much nearer
to the German guns. There was no particular reason why the Hammonds
should have gone to see them. They knew no one besides Dickie
Weathergay, Daisy's husband, and the station was cold and draughty.
Mr. Hammond had stayed in late at the Kingsport Club as usual, but
Mrs. Hammond was determinedly patriotic. In spite of discomfort she
stood now with her girls among a crowd of curious, laden figures,
distorted by their burdens out of all semblance to the human form. It
was the world of a dream, when even the corporeal presence of such
everyday people as Dr. and Mrs. Parker and Colonel Cartwright became
part of a dim and dreamlike darkness. The crowd shuffled and jolted,
appearing unexpectedly from the dense shadows into a circle of faint
lamplight that flickered intermittently on bayonets and badges.

Mrs. Hammond was suffering from indigestion, the result of fragmentary
and scrambled meals. The meals at Miller's Rise had not been hurried
because nobody had time to eat them slowly, but because it hardly
seemed to be patriotic in those days to sit down comfortably to enjoy
them. Mrs. Hammond, dreading the secret murmurings about her husband,
dreading the pity which could destroy more effectively than enmity the
position which she had won, determined to kill pity by admiration for
her patriotism. She stood in the darkness, while passing soldiers
lurched into her, and knocked sideways her fur-trimmed toque. This
must all be endured as part of the campaign. She felt her courage,
born from her supreme passion, riding triumphantly above fatigue and
pain.

"It would be nice if there were somewhere to sit down," she murmured,
but without complaint. "Is that Daisy over there?"

Muriel, who had been standing all day in the newly instituted Red
Cross Depot, shifted her weight from one aching foot to the other,
and remarked:

"I'm so sorry. There are no seats," as though it were her fault. She
added, "Yes, that's Daisy, in the blue cloak."

Daisy Weathergay stood just within the circle of lamplight. She was
not travelling South with her husband because her baby was expected in
December, but she had come to the station to say good-bye to him, and
stood beside the 1st class carriage. Her small, flower-like face was
upturned. Her close-fitting hat shaded her eyes, but the light fell on
her soft little nose, and the sensitive outline of the mouth and chin.

"Isn't she splendid?" murmured little Miss Dale, who had burrowed her
way to Muriel's side through the crowd like a small mole. "So brave!
Not a tear! Like all these splendid, heroic women, whom one reads
about in the papers. I never knew what it was to be so proud of my
country before."

The wind uplifted for a moment Daisy's brave, blue cloak. She seemed
to float, borne high upon a wave of heroism. Dickie's red, comely face
leaned towards her from the carriage window.

"A symbol of Womanhood," murmured Miss Dale tearfully.

The whistle blew. A feeble, fragmentary cheer rose from the watchers
on the platform as the train moved slowly, cleaving a line between the
moving faces at the windows, and the crowd that stood below. And still
Daisy waited, her small figure bent sturdily against the wind, looking
at Dickie, while all Marshington looked at her. It was her moment.
Then she was no longer Daisy Weathergay of the neat little house in
the Avenue. She had become a symbol of womanhood, patient and heroic
as the patient heroism of Nature itself.

"And there's dear Phyllis Marshall Gurney," continued Miss Dale. "She
does look nice in her uniform, doesn't she? So splendid of her to have
taken on this work in Kingsport, isn't it? But of course, after her
terrible experiences in Germany----"

The train swept round the corner into the darkness. The tension of the
watching crowd snapped suddenly. Muriel became aware of Connie at her
side. Connie's eyes were fixed in front of her. Her breath came in
low, gasping sobs. Her cheeks had flamed from white to crimson, and
the hand that held her handkerchief was quivering.

"Connie," whispered Muriel. "They are only going to Aldershot."

A sudden suspicion seized her lest Connie's mercurial affection should
have lighted for the moment upon Dickie Weathergay. But Connie laughed
softly.

"Look at the little fool, Daisy! I bet she isn't half enjoying
herself. Knows that she makes a pretty picture and that half
Marshington is watching her. Thinks she's the only girl interested
in this war." Her voice was thick and fierce.

Muriel watched her with wonder. But, then, Connie was always giving
way to unaccountable emotions, and to-night Muriel also felt weary and
sad, because her heart ached where it had no right to ache, for this
was Daisy's war. Daisy to-night was the symbol of those heroic women
who all over Europe were giving their men to die for an ideal, and
suffering a thousandfold all the possibilities of suffering in war.
Muriel, who could dream at night of unimaginable horrors, whose
thoughts followed to Belgium the fleeting whispers of atrocity, who
heard hammering through her tired brain the old woman's words, "War's
bloody hell," Muriel had no right nor claim upon this war. She envied
those wives and sisters with that envy of suffering which can burn
most potently of all.

But if Connie was absorbed by finding relief in her emotions, and
Muriel troubled by physical and mental weariness, Mrs. Hammond was
fully alive to the possibilities of the situation. She, too, as both
her daughters in their different ways had seen it, realized that
Muriel and Connie were out of it in this war. She had seen the
admiring group of friends round Daisy Weathergay, and the becoming
uniform of Phyllis Marshall Gurney, but they summoned her like a call
to arms. She wasted no time on tears nor vague repining. She drew
her fur coat closer round her small, plump figure.

"Poor dears," she sighed appropriately. "Poor dears, this awful war!"
Then, having disposed of her duty as a patriot, she continued,
"Muriel, I've been thinking that since Aunt Rose has been so ill, and
keeps on asking for some of us to go and see her, you and I might both
go for a week to Scarborough before Christmas. What do you think?"

Muriel did not think anything much. Scarborough or Marshington was all
the same to her, in a world where nothing ever happened in peace or
war to draw her closer to the fullness of life which other people
found and which her youth had promised. She stumbled along the sodden
wood steps over the railway lines, having even forgotten that Godfrey
Neale with the 1st Yorkshire Rangers was in camp three miles from
Scarborough.

"Oh, I don't mind," she said, with the indifference that so much
disheartened her poor mother; and splashed on, thinking of the cold,
flat ham sandwiches and sugarless coffee awaiting them in the
dining-room of Miller's Rise.




                                 XVIII


Because Aunt Rose was not yet well, breakfast at 199 The Esplanade,
Scarborough, was postponed until nine o'clock. Uncle George, of
course, kept to his usual punctuality of half-past eight. Muriel at
half-past seven that morning could hear him whistling cheerily as he
trotted along to the bathroom.

She lay between linen sheets that felt chill and smooth. Her hot-water
bottle had grown cold as a dead fish. Drowsily she moved it to the
edge of the bed with her feet. She seemed to have lain like this all
night, waiting for the maid to bring her water, and thinking sleepily
of Godfrey Neale.

It had been such a funny evening. She and her mother and Uncle George
had met him at the Princess Royal Hotel, and had dined together. A
queer self-possession alien to her nature had seized upon Muriel.
She remembered looking at her slim figure in the long glass of the
corridor and thinking that she ought all her life to have worn that
vivid cherry colour instead of blues and greys. It gave her a strange
courage and merriment, so that she had laughed and talked, conscious
of the flame of her bright dress, and feeling like a princess in a
fairy tale suddenly released from her enchantment.

She had seen things about Godfrey too that she had never seen before.
Most dearly she remembered how, when they were sitting in the lounge
after dinner, his lean brown fingers had pressed the charred end of
his cigarette into the saucer of his coffee-cup, and she had thought,
"He is like that. When he has finished with a thing, he crushes it
like that without thinking. He is not cruel, nor ungrateful, only a
little stupid and lacking in imagination." She remembered the stories
that Marshington told of his flirtations with Gladys Seton, and the
Honourable Lucy Leyton, and then Phyllis Marshall Gurney. He had
meant nothing. He simply had never given a thought to what they might
have dreamed to be his meaning. She had felt old and very wise and
disillusioned.

Then the orchestra played, and he had looked up suddenly, twisting his
head and frowning and beating time against the arm of his chair. He
said to Muriel:

"What is this tune? I seem to know it?"

"It's Mignon's song, 'Kennst du das Land.' Have you heard Mignon?"

"No," he said. A shadow of discomfort crossed his face. He struggled
to remember something. Muriel, knowing what he sought, remembered the
day in spring when he had driven her home from the Vicarage. "No. I
can't say I have. Yet I heard that tune . . ."

"At our house," said Muriel. "The first time that you ever came. Had
you forgotten?"

He looked at her then, and seeing that she offered him simple
friendliness he said, speaking deliberately:

"No. I have not forgotten. I think, whatever happens, that I shall
never forget."

And she had nodded, understanding him. And for the first time she had
been aware that some day he might ask her to marry him simply because
she would not ask him to forget.

As they walked home, wrapped in furs, along the Esplanade, Mrs.
Hammond had murmured happily:

"Well, dear, did Godfrey suggest meeting us again?"

"Yes, he wants me to go to the Pictures with him on Monday afternoon.
We could have tea at the new Pavilion place first."

The wind blew from the darkness against them. It lashed Muriel's hair
against her eyes, and rushed against her, as though it were forcing
her back along the road to Godfrey.

Mrs. Hammond seemed to be quite sure now. Muriel lay wondering. Until
that night, she had never believed it to be possible, but now she saw
that it was almost likely, for nobody else would ask from him so
little, and he, she realized it at last, had not been proud but
humble, aware how little there was for him to give. She had never
liked him so well as now when she knew that he had been true to his
idea of Clare. He was conceited. He was sure of himself. He was
terribly limited and arrogant and complacent, but he was wistful,
too, for something quite beyond his comprehension, and just because
of that he might ask Muriel to marry him. There were, of course, other
reasons, and to Godfrey they would be important, for nine-tenths of
him was just the practical country squire, devoted to his estate
and his position. The Hammonds had money. In spite of her father's
recklessness, he was himself too able, and Old Dickie Hammond had been
too cautious, to allow the business once built up to crumble. With the
Hammond money Godfrey could keep hunters. He would not upset Mrs.
Neale, who wanted to have a grandson, and who cared little for the
smart young women from the county families. Arthur Hammond's daughter
would present to her no insurmountable obstacle, because Muriel was
also Rachel Bennet's daughter, and the Bennets had once been as good a
stock as any in the East Riding. Muriel too, was all Bennet and no
Hammond. She was not like Connie, with the coarse strain that gave her
vitality hardly curbed by Bennet gentleness.

If he asked her to marry him, she would, of course, accept. It would
be a splendid triumph, the end of her long years of waiting and
feeling that she was a complete failure. It would be the consummation
of her duty to her mother, of her success as a woman. She would be the
mistress of the Weare Grange, the mother of its heir. She would be
mistress then of Marshington, and of her own rich destiny.

Strange, it seemed to her, that her body lay limp and unresponsive
between the cold sheets, that the word marriage conveyed to her, not a
picture of Godfrey but of the Wears Grange, that she shrank from the
thought of further intimacy with his bodily perfection and his limited
mind. He was nice, far nicer than she had thought. There was even that
little unexpected strain of the romantic in him. She was sure that she
could love him. "I _have_ loved him all my life," said Muriel, and
lay, waiting to feel the glow of love warming her coldness.

"This is not as it should be," she felt. But nothing ever was as it
should be in a world where the best conclusion was a compromise. She
turned her face into the pillow and thought of Martin Elliott, and the
happiness that glowed about Delia's swift mind. "Well, if Godfrey had
been like Martin Elliott," she thought.

Crash!

As though the fury of a thousand thunderbolts had hurled, crashing
against the house, the noise shattered the morning and then ceased.

So swiftly the quietness closed in again, it seemed as though the
sound were but a jagged rent across the silence, letting into the
world for a moment the roaring of the spheres. Yet, though this one
blow crashed and then was still, Muriel felt as though such violence
must last for ever, and silence became the incredible thing.

She lay quite still, her limbs relaxed in the flat darkness of the
bed, her arms lying beside her, heavy with sleep. She did not believe
that the sound had really happened. Her thoughts returned to their
path. If Godfrey had been a man like Martin Elliott, someone in whom
one could seek companionship of mind, with whom one could feel as much
at home as with one's own thoughts . . .

Crash! Crash! Crash!

It really had happened then.

It was not an illusion. She drew one hand across her forehead that
felt damp and cold.

Of course this was what Uncle George had said would happen. The noise
was the noise of guns, big guns firing. This was what the little
pamphlets had told them to prepare for. This was the War. Only it
had no business to happen so early in the morning before they were
properly awake.

Crash! Crash!

Huge sounds, flat and ugly, dropped into the silence of the room.
Slowly she turned and sat up in bed. Her curtains were drawn aside,
but she could see nothing through her window. The panes looked as
though they had been painted grey. Solid and opaque, the fog blotted
out the sea.

It seemed absurd that this blinding, shattering immensity of sound
should yet convey no impression to the eye.

She lay back in bed, her mind completely calm and rather listless, but
she could feel the perspiration from her armpits soaking her nainsook
nightgown. That was curious.

"Muriel! Muriel!"

In an interval of silence her mother's voice called to her. The door
opened. Mrs. Hammond in her dressing-gown of padded lilac silk stood
by the bed.

"Muriel, are you there? Are you all right?"

"Yes. Of course I am all right. What is it?"

She wished that her mother would go away and let her lie there
quietly.

"Get up, get up. Come to my room. You mustn't lie there, facing the
sea." There was a sharp note of anxiety in her mother's voice.

Facing the sea. Why shouldn't she face the sea? Slowly Muriel thrust
her feet out of bed, her toes twitching in the cold air as she felt
for her slippers along the carpet.

"Quick, quick, never mind your slippers. Ah!"

Another sound broke about them, sharper than any before, as though the
whole world had splintered into fragments round them. Muriel still
fumbled below the bed.

"I can't find my slippers," she said stupidly.

"Look!" gasped Mrs. Hammond.

Muriel looked at the window. The shattered edges of the panes still
shivered in their wooden frame. On the floor below broken glass lay
scattered. The noise had become visible at last.

After that, a series of odd and ridiculous things all happened very
quickly. Uncle George appeared in his shirt-sleeves, with one side of
his face lathered for shaving.

"I'm going to the Garbutts'. Their car must take Rose. Get her ready."

Mrs. Hammond and Muriel hurried to Aunt Rose's room. Muriel always
remembered afterwards kneeling by her aunt's bed and drawing cashmere
stockings, two pairs, over those fat legs, where blue veins ran
criss-cross below the tight-stretched skin. It seemed to her a
fantastic sort of nightmare that could bring her to such close
contemplation of her aunt's legs. Then Uncle George returned, and
they all bundled Aunt Rose's shawls downstairs into the car, hoping
that she was still inside them, for they could see nothing of her.

As the door opened, and Muriel saw the blank wall of fog along the
Esplanade, she felt as though she were standing on the world's edge,
staring into the din of chaos. All the time the vast noise pounded on
above them.

Then they were all running, Uncle George, her mother and herself, down
a grey funnel with tall looming sides. They stumbled in a little
tripping run as one runs in a dream. Muriel tried to tell herself,
"This is an immense adventure. The Germans are landing at Cayton Bay
under cover of the fog. Or they are on the foreshore. This noise is a
bombardment from battleships to cover the landing, and we are running
for our lives to Seamer Valley. This grey funnel is a street leading
to Mount Road. I am running for my life and I am not afraid."

The noise crashed above them through the fog, as though a grey curtain
of sound had shut out the light. Little knots of people in peculiar
attire appeared from the grey mists, and blew like wandering smoke
along the alley, only to vanish again into vapour.

"In another moment," Muriel told herself, "we may all be dead." But
she could not make herself feel really interested in anything except
her stockings, which were sliding to her ankles, and felt most
uncomfortable. She would have liked to stop and fasten them, but she
felt that it would somehow not be etiquette, to stop to fasten one's
stockings in the middle of a race for life. "I was not brought up to
adventures," she told herself. "I don't yet know the way to manage
them."

Then her mother stopped. "I--I can't--run--any--more," she panted. Her
small fat figure in its fur coat had been bouncing along in little
hops, like an India-rubber ball. Now she stumbled and clung on to a
railing for support. "You--go--on. I'll come."

"Draw a deep breath, Rachel, and count three," said Uncle George
solemnly. He performed Sandow's exercises every morning before
breakfast and was therefore an athletic authority.

Muriel watched them, while the running figures stumbled past, quiet
beneath a canopy of sound.

"You--go--on," Mrs. Hammond repeated.

"Now, Rachel, go steady. Breathe as I count. One, two."

They were not afraid, any of them. They had a strange, courageous
dignity, these two comical little people, standing beneath the
desolation of deafening clamour and breathing deeply. "Mother,"
thought Muriel, "is thinking of Father." Uncle George was thinking of
Aunt Rose. Muriel was thinking about herself, and the strangeness of
it all, and how she was not afraid. For there was something that made
each one of them feel stronger than the fear of death.

A woman rushing along the pavement with her perambulator pushed it
into Muriel and nearly knocked her over. She sobbed as she ran and
the two babies in the perambulator were crying.

"This is real," said Muriel to herself. "This is a really great
adventure, and none of us know this minute where we shall be to-morrow
and nothing matters like success or failure now, but only courage.
This must be why the soldiers sing when they go to the trenches. It's
all so beautifully simple." She wanted to die then, when life was
simple, rather than face Marshington again and the artificial
complications that entangled her life there.

An elation possessed her. She could have sung and shouted. She
stumbled down the rough road again, holding her mother's arm and
talking to her foolishly about what they would have for breakfast
when they awoke from this strange dream. She remembered saying that
she would have kippers, although she knew that she really hated them
and rarely ate more than toast and marmalade. But then she didn't run
for her life every morning before breakfast. She saw Seamer as some
goal of human endeavour, very far away in the distance. It did not
seem to be an ordinary place at all.

Suddenly from their feet, the Mere stretched, flat and lifeless beyond
tall reeds, clouded like a looking-glass on which somebody has
breathed. The noise grew louder. Somebody called, "Turn to your right.
Your right. They're firing straight in front."

And even then, Muriel was not frightened. They wandered in a vague,
irrelevant place among heaps of garbage, and cabbage stalks, and
teapot lids, and torn magazine covers. Just to their left rose a
little hovel, the crazy sort of shelter that allotment holders erect
to hold their tools. She looked at it, blinking through the mist and
noise, and then, suddenly, it was not there. It just collapsed and
sank quietly down in a little cloud of smoke, hardly denser than the
fog. It seemed appropriate to the absurd nightmare of the whole affair
that a board on a post should grin to them out of the mist, saying,
"Rubbish may be shot here."

"Ha, ha!" laughed Uncle George. "They're shooting rubbish, and no
mistake."

And Mrs. Hammond pushed back her hair feebly with one free hand and
laughed too.

Then they were all leaning over a gate, unable for the moment to run
further. As though for their amusement, a grotesque and unending
procession passed before them on the road to Seamer. There was a small
child, leading a great collie dog that limped forlornly on three legs;
an old man, leading two pretty young girls with greatcoats above their
nightgowns, who giggled and shivered as they ran. There were little
boys pushing wheelbarrows, and waggons holding school children, and
motor-cars, and bicycles, and ladies in fur coats and lacy caps. Then
a girls' school came trotting, two and two, in an orderly procession,
laughing and chattering as they ran. Then more cars and cycles and
donkey carts.

Nothing was quite normal except the girls' school. Every one else was
a little fantastic, a little distorted, like people in a dream.

All the time on the other side of the road, the soldiers were passing
into Scarborough, some marching, some swinging their legs from the
back of motor-lorries, some flashing past on motor-cycles. As they
passed, some of them cheered the procession leaving the town and
called, "Are we downhearted?" And the refugees shouted "No!" And some
cried and sobbed as they ran, and some shouted back and some said
nothing, but plodded on silently looking neither to the left nor
right.

A cheerful, round-faced man in pyjamas and a woman's flannel
dressing-jacket nodded at Uncle George.

"Heard the news?" he shouted. "They've got into the town. That's why
the firing has stopped. Our chaps are giving 'em hell. I'll give 'em
half an hour until the fleet comes up."

Everybody talked to everybody else. And Scarborough was said to be in
flames, and our men were fighting all along the foreshore, where the
little cheap booths stood in summer. While they talked, the mist
seemed to break, and the steep hills of Seamer shouldered up from the
tattered cloaks of fog.

It was just then that a lorry swung by down the road, and stopped for
a moment, blocked by the crowd. The officer in charge stood up to see
what had happened, and Muriel saw, standing very tall and clear
against the hills of Seamer, her lord and master, Godfrey Neale.
He had seen Muriel. Their eyes met, and for a moment they became
conscious of nothing but each other. He smiled at her and stooped down
from the lorry.

"You are all right?"

"Quite. We're going to Seamer. We shall be all right."

She thought that he was going to his death, and then the thought came
to her that she loved him. Here at last she had found all that she had
been seeking. The fullness of life was hers, here on the threshold of
death. She knew that it must always be so; and she lifted her head to
meet love, unafraid.

"Good luck to you!" she called, and smiled to him across the road.

"Good luck!" he said.

The words came back to her, "Good luck have thou with thine honour.
Ride on because of the word of truth of meekness and righteousness,
and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things."

The lorry swept him away along the road.




                                  XIX


It seemed to Muriel just part of the futility of things in general
that there should have been no invasion after all. The supreme
adventure had dwindled into an uncomfortable wandering among
the smells and indecencies of a refuse dump on the outskirts of
Scarborough. There had been no heroism, no glorious simplicity,
nothing but shame and querulous fatigue, and a long walk home.

At three o'clock in the afternoon they stood by the remnants of a
strange meal of cold roast beef, celery and boiled eggs, discussing
ways and means. The afternoon sun glittered on the sea, the cliffs,
the metallic smoothness of the Esplanade. It shone through the windows
at the back of the house on to the piled up kitchen table, and on to
the small black kitten, the one profiteer of the morning's adventure,
who, having disposed of all Uncle George's breakfast haddock, slept
serenely now among its ruins.

It was the only member of the household who was not feeling very cross
and tired.

However, everything had been arranged by Mrs. Hammond. Arthur, to whom
she had telephoned, was to come with a car and fetch her and Aunt Rose
away to Marshington. Muriel was to stay at Scarborough for the night
to finish packing and to look after Uncle George.

That evening Muriel knelt in the littered bedroom before her mother's
trunk. Her head ached, but her heart felt still more cold and heavy.
She wanted terribly to go away at once somewhere where nobody could
ever find her, and cry, and cry, and cry. But there was no time to
cry, for her father had arrived with the car, and Mrs. Hammond was
wrapping Aunt Rose again into her shawls, while Mr. Hammond walked
along the front to see what damage had been done.

Faintly through the house rang an electric bell. The maids had somehow
evaporated into the mist. Muriel went downstairs to answer the bell,
smoothing her hair mechanically as she went.

On the door-step stood Godfrey Neale, in mud-splashed overalls. His
motor-cycle stood out in the road.

"Oh, you are b--back," he said. "I'm on my way to Cayton. I just
looked in to see if you were all right."

He came in and shut the door behind him. The hall was almost dark, but
Muriel did not lead him into the sitting-room. She could see his tall
figure towering above her, but she never moved.

"I saw you this morning," he said.

"Yes."

"What are you going to do?"

"Mother is taking Aunt Rose back to-night to Marshington. I am staying
to pack and to look after Uncle George."

"You don't mind? You won't be nervous?"

"No, I shan't mind."

Her hands hung heavily at her sides. The gloom of the hall oppressed
her. Her head ached dully. There was something that she wanted to
remember, but could not, for her mind was empty of all thought.

"It's quite safe now," he said, as if to reassure her. "Nothing can
happen now. A pity our fellows missed them, though, in the fog."

Dully her mind repeated, "Nothing can happen now." She stood there
waiting.

But for Godfrey, whose reactions came more slowly, the golden hour had
not yet passed. He lingered still beneath the spell of the morning's
high adventure, when Muriel had smiled up at him out of the mist.

"I'm going away," he said. "I've got to report to Aldershot to-morrow.
I don't know when I shall see you again."

"Oh, then I expect that this is good-bye."

She felt that she had known this all along, and that it was good-bye
indeed. Her hour had come and passed her. She did not honour love the
less, but knew herself to be unworthy of it. She stood silently,
waiting for him to leave her, though she felt as though he had left
her long ago. She held out her hand, but in the darkness she failed
to find his. She touched his arm instead, with a touch, light as a
flower. He brushed her hand aside and swept her into his arms.

She lay there, limply, unreasoningly, thinking of nothing but that the
bitterness of parting had passed over her long ago, like the waters of
Mara. His lips brushed the dark smoothness of her hair, the pale oval
of her upturned face, and she did not resist. He had already left her.
This was a dream.

"Muriel, Muriel!" Her mother's voice called from the landing. Here was
something that belonged to her real life, that she could understand.
"Muriel, come and help me to bring your aunt downstairs."

She responded to the claim that she had always known, broke from him
without a word, and ran upstairs.

When she returned, five minutes later, Godfrey had gone.




                                  XX


Muriel opened the front door wearily and glanced at the brass tray on
the hall table. Surely it must come soon, to-day, to-morrow he must
write. He could not just go off like that into the silence of an
unknown world after what had happened.

There were three letters on the tray for her, one from Janet Holmes,
now nursing in Newcastle, one from the vicar's wife at Kepplethorpe
about the egg collection, one from a Nursing Club member.

Muriel hated the letters, hated the brass tray, hated sullenly and
fiercely the weariness of her ankles and her shoulders. She had been
standing nearly all day in the Red Cross Depot, lifting bundles that
were too heavy for her. She leaned forward with her hands on the cool
marble of the hall table, resting for a moment before she climbed the
stairs. The smooth blades of an aspidistra plant confronted her. She
hated aspidistras too.

From the dining-room came the flat reiteration of her mother's voice,
scolding, scolding with gentle but monotonous persistence. Then
followed Connie's shrill defiance, and her father's deep-toned boom.
They were quarrelling again, always quarrelling. Connie was too bad,
always upsetting everybody like this. As though the war in itself were
not enough, lying like a heavy weight upon your heart, day and night,
numbing your feelings to all but the bitter things.

She could not bear it much longer. She would have to go away. Why
should not she become a proper army nurse like Janet? She liked
nursing, that kept her body active and would not let her think. She
loved to look after people. It soothed the soreness of her heart.
Her daily visits to the Depot, her hours of dusting round carefully
disinfected convalescents at the local hospitals were only sops for
the unquiet conscience of Marshington. Marshington wanted to feel
that it was doing its bit, yet desired the merit without too great
discomfort. Muriel was not like that. She had a terror of finding
the War over and herself as usual out of it. She saw a triumphal
procession marching through the city square of Kingsport, with braying
trumpets and flying flags, and herself isolated, sad, standing up a
back street because she had no part in the rejoicing. For those who
were in it, the War brought suffering, and anxiety and blinding
sorrow. But these were glorious. You could make a song of them and
sing it through your tears. For those who were not in the War, it was
a grinding hunger, an agony of isolation; and of these things you
could not make a song. You felt no pride of loss, no glory of
sacrifice. There were only shameful tears to shed, and the long ache
of pain which had no remedy.

Why was her mother so angry now? Her mother had been splendid. Every
one said so. The way in which she had emerged from her terrific
experience at Scarborough, shaken but undaunted, to resume her
patriotic duties here in Marshington, had been quite admirable.
Mrs. Marshall Gurney's escape from Germany paled before her greater
heroism. Mrs. Hammond had been rightly elected President of the Local
War Services Association.

Why didn't Godfrey write?

The dining-room door opened, and Connie flounced out, hurling defiance
over her shoulder as she came.

"Well, I'm jolly well going, so there!"

She banged the door.

"Good Lord, Muriel, how you startled me! What on earth are you doing?"

"I've just come in. I'm going up to change."

"Oh. Then I suppose that you heard."

"No. I didn't hear anything except that you were quarrelling, as
usual."

She was not interested. She climbed the stairs wearily, dragging at
the handrail, wondering why the last five steps were always so much
steeper than the others. Then she told herself that she was only
tired, and that she must pull herself together. A hot bath soothed her
body and mind. She put out her blue poplin dress on to the bed, and a
blue ribbon for her hair. While she was changing, Mrs. Hammond entered
the room.

"I suppose that you've seen Connie. Now, isn't it too bad?"

"I don't know. What is it?"

It appeared to be a great many things. Mrs. Hammond had gone into
Connie's room at midday, and found the bed unmade, and Connie reading
a novel. When she had remonstrated, Connie just threw the counterpane
above the chaos left by last night's slumber. And when Mrs. Hammond
discovered this, and pointed out very seriously what a bad example it
set the maids, Connie had said, "That's all we keep maids here for--to
set them examples. Why should we keep a dog and bark ourselves?
There's no room for three women in a house. You should have let me go
to that chicken farm."

"It's all too bad," sighed her mother. "You don't know how she
hurts me." Mrs. Hammond pushed back her tears with a small lacy
handkerchief. Connie was her favourite daughter. She had tried to do
her best for her. But where Arthur was possible though difficult to
manage, Connie was quite beyond her. "Connie's so inconsiderate. I
don't know what's happened to her lately. I've done my best. I'm sure
that I've done my best for you both. And now she wants to go and work
on the land at some horrid place in the North Riding called Thraile."

"Well, why not?" Muriel clasped her necklace and set straight the
things upon her dressing-table. She wished that this domestic wrangle
had not come just when she was feeling calmer and more sane.

"Connie? On a farm? Well, now, Muriel, you do know her a little. And
in any case, her father won't hear of it. The breeches, Muriel. And
then, it isn't as if there wasn't plenty to do here. I'm sure that I
could do with a little more help."

Muriel was ready to go downstairs. She shivered in the cold room. Her
mother still talked.

"If only she would be reasonable. . . . So naughty to her father."

With Mrs. Hammond's complaints still trickling over her, Muriel went
down to a supper of fish-pie and apple-tart. It somehow failed to
stimulate her. Her father had gone out, as usual. Connie sat glum and
injured, eating incredible quantities of fish-pie, to assert her
independence.

Muriel lay afterwards in an arm-chair in front of the morning-room
fire. There were magazines that Mrs. Hammond had collected for the
Hospital, and Muriel loved magazines. She saw photographs of lovely
ladies in pearls and white veils, "Working for our brave lads,"
"Helping with the wounded," "Among our hospitals." It had become
fashionable for beauty to go meekly dressed, with clasped hands, and
the light directed becomingly upon a grave profile.

"I ought to go to bed," she thought, but it was cold upstairs.

The lovely ladies soothed her. She almost forgot to think about
Godfrey, and how she had let him go. She almost forgot the deathliness
of spirit that her years of failure had left for her, and that had
come between her and Godfrey, so that she could not hold him when he
came. Indeed, she knew that she had lost him long before he came to
her. But until he had kissed her, she had never looked like this into
the future, to see how it held nothing more of life for her.

She lay back luxuriously, warming her toes, and letting the friendly
heat of the fire steal through her body.

"Signora Clare Alvarados," she read, below a full page photograph of a
most lovely lady, "is the daughter of Félix Duquesne, whose delightful
comedies have taken by storm the French-speaking public. Signora
Alvarados has recently returned to London to take part in the
organization of concerts for our brave lads in the hospitals. All
society is speaking of her beautiful soprano voice. It will be
remembered that her husband was killed about a year ago in a tragic
motor accident in Chile."

It was Clare, more radiant than ever, smiling out of the paper at
Muriel with the friendliest of all friendly smiles.




                                  XXI


The concert for the hospital was almost over. Muriel, who had been
selling programmes, leant against the radiator and felt its friendly
warmth comforting her. Across the row of bobbing heads, she could see
Mrs. Neale's gaunt head and her untidy hair. Duty had brought Mrs.
Neale to the concert, and duty was keeping her there until the end,
but the strained lines about her mouth, and the misery in her long
face could hardly be due entirely to Mrs. Purdon's rendering of
"Little grey home in the west."

Something had happened to Godfrey. He was still in London, so it could
not be the worst thing that happened to men during the war. Muriel
hardly thought that it was even a sudden order to the front. She told
herself that it was this, but she knew, just as she knew after the
bombardment was over, that she had lost Godfrey now a second time.

She wished that the concert was over. She was so tired of everything
that happened. Connie, working among the mud and turnips of the
sheep-fold at Thraile, was immensely to be envied. How like her to win
her domestic battles, when Muriel always lost hers! Since Connie had
gone, Muriel was more securely tied to Miller's Rise than ever.

Against the other radiators, and by the two curtained doorways, the
other girl programme-sellers talked, as they waited, to officers from
the Wearminster camp. It was the same everywhere. At the Pictures, on
motor-cycles, at the garrison sports, here at the concert; everywhere
life was regulated upon the partner system. Since their visit to
Scarborough, Mrs. Hammond had taken fewer pains to provide Muriel with
a man to save her face, because she too was expecting Godfrey Neale
to write. She did not know what had happened in the hall at 199 The
Esplanade. She did not know that Muriel had made herself cheap and
then just let him go.

A scattered fusillade of clapping followed the stately exodus of Mrs.
Purdon from the platform. One far more vigorous heralded the entrance
of Queenie Saunders, a florist's daughter from Kingsport. Queenie was
an L.R.A.M. and really she played the piano quite well, thought
Muriel. Also her silk-clad ankles below her short skirt were
pronounced fetching by Captain Galtry.

"Fetching. I should call her very fetching," he remarked to Mrs.
Waring with the air of a connoisseur.

"Fetching?" echoed that lady archly. "What does she fetch?"

Muriel turned away. That precisely was what she wanted to know more
than anything else in the world. She lost the end of the concert in a
bitter reverie.

Mrs. Neale stood beside her.

"Ah, good evening, Muriel."

"Good evening."

They made way for the crowd brushing past, and Muriel was conscious
then that Mrs. Neale approved of her.

"It's a long time since I saw you."

"Yes." She would speak naturally. "The last time was when Godfrey
brought me over to tea, when we met out walking."

"Yes." Mrs. Neale now was silent.

Muriel thought, "I believe that she would have been glad if he had
wanted to marry me." She felt grateful to Godfrey's mother.

"Have you had any news of Godfrey lately?" she asked, feeling that it
was perhaps the bravest thing that she had ever done.

"Yes. I suppose that you would call it news."

Muriel knew then what was coming. She knew too that she herself must
say it.

"Is he engaged to Clare yet?"

Mrs. Neale turned upon her. "You knew?"

"Clare was my friend," said Muriel.

"She wrote to you?"

Muriel shook her head.

"I have not heard from her since she wrote to tell me of her
engagement to Signor Alvarados."

"Then how did you know? Godfrey wrote?" Mrs. Neale's dark eyes flashed
an accusation at her, as though she said, "You little fool, why
couldn't you hold him? You had your chance, and you would have been
inoffensive. If he had married you, he would still have been mine. You
could never have stolen him from me, and now he has gone. You little
fool."

"I knew that he was in love with her. I knew that she had returned to
England. He loved her from the time that he first met her. And he has
been accustomed to get what he wants."

"That was a boy and girl affair. And, then, she's so unsuitable. A
girl like that would never settle down to the country. She'll paint
the drawing-room yellow with black stripes and fill the house with
Italian tenors and try to be Bohemian. Godfrey would hate it."

"Godfrey wanted to marry her. She--she'll find him a change from the
men whom she has met lately." The thought came to her, "Who is
Godfrey, that here we all are with our lives centred in his?" She
thought of him as she knew him to be, a little stupid, kindly and sure
of himself. Only in loving Clare had he ever been brushed by the wings
of divinity, and Clare was the one person whom he could encounter who
valued her own personality before she thought of his. "When it comes
to it, Clare will be more selfish than Godfrey," she thought, and yet
knew that for his sake she was glad that they had met again. For
herself, she only knew that life had conquered her. She could not look
into Mrs. Neale's sad, ugly face.

"I'm sorry," she said, shuffling her foot along the floor. "Men do as
they like. That's where they're different. We just wait to see what
they will do. It's not our fault. Things happen to us, or they don't.
We stretch out our hands and grasp nothing."

Godfrey's mother turned on her again.

"Stuff and nonsense. A clever woman can do as she likes. I was eight
years older than Godfrey's father, and I have never been a beauty, but
I married him and I bore him a son, and I've kept Godfrey's confidence
till now. I let him do as he pleases, because I want my son to be his
own master. I did as I pleased when I was young. He must face his
fences and take his tosses himself. He's been his own master since his
father was killed, but he is that because I please that he shall be."

"Some people never do as they please. They are bound by a sort of
burden that they call duty."

"Duty? I've no patience with this pother about duty. I suppose that
some people would say that it's my duty to keep Godfrey from making a
fool of himself now. I shan't. Life's too short. I've no patience with
this talk about souls."

Nobody, reflected Muriel, had been talking about souls, but Mrs. Neale
was like that, frequently breaking through the barrier of speech
and alluding to the hidden thought that lay beyond. That was why
Marshington privately thought her a little mad.

"My Sealyham bitch pupped in the drawing-room on Tuesday afternoon.
I've lost my parlourmaid in consequence."

"Really? Oh, aren't maids impossible these days?" broke in the soft
voice of Mrs. Hammond. She had drifted gently up to Mrs. Neale, after
having just given Mrs. Waring to understand that the present mistress
of the Weare Grange was talking to her successor.

Her mother would have to know about Godfrey, thought Muriel. This was
going to be the part that hurt her most of all. She remembered the
incident of Connie and Dr. McKissack. Better use the same treatment
here, and have it over quickly.

"Mother," she said brightly, "have you heard Mrs. Neale's splendid
news? Godfrey's engaged to Clare, Clare Alvarados, Clare Duquesne, you
know. They met again in London."

Only for the flicker of an eyelid, did Mrs. Hammond hesitate.

"Really?" she said. "How splendid, dear! I am glad, Mrs. Neale; such a
nice, bright girl. Do you know, I always had a feeling that something
like that might happen there. I've always had a warm place in my heart
for Clare."

She did it so well that Muriel herself hardly knew how much was true.
Perhaps more than she thought, for her mother had already seen a
way to transform her defeat to victory. As Muriel bent over the
treasurer's table five minutes later, counting the money from the
programmes, she heard her mother say to Mrs. Marshall Gurney:

"Yes, you know, she was Muriel's great friend. We are so delighted.
Right from the first. . . . I take quite a credit to myself for the
match . . . Lord Powell's niece, you know, so suitable. And so nice
for Muriel if she comes to live at the Weare Grange."




                                 XXII


"The strain of this terrible time," remarked Mrs. Hammond, "is almost
too much. We must have a little recreation sometimes to take our mind
off--all the horrors." Her small hand fluttered vaguely, brushing
aside the horrors like a swarm of flies.

On the table before her the cards made bright little flower-beds on a
green baize lawn. She touched their shining smoothness delicately,
reassuring herself that her room was all right, and her guests, and
the tall vases filled with daffodils and expensive branches of white
lilac. Empires might crash and gay youth march to dark destruction,
but the ace of trumps was still the ace of trumps, and Mrs. Hammond
had taken her place in Marshington.

"Hearts," announced Mrs. Parker. "Connie home on leave, I see."

"Two diamonds. Yes. She's home for ten days. So nice to have her
back," murmured Mrs. Hammond, hoping that Mrs. Parker had not seen the
vision of Connie in her breeches. "The girls have gone to Kingsport to
the Pictures."

"She looks well."

"Yes. The country life suits her splendidly. She always was fond of
animals and things. Oh, what a _nasty_ hand you have given me, Mrs.
Cartwright! I'd never have let you be dummy if I'd known. Of course
the work is hard, but so many girls are working so hard now. The
Setons of Edenthorpe, both Gladys and Hilda, you know, are helping
on the stud farm at Darlidd."

The Setons, thought Mrs. Hammond, gave a flavour of respectability to
Connie's doubtful profession. Again, since Connie had gone, she had
been forced to build a victory on the foundations of defeat. It was
lonely, tiring work, though the bright room helped a little, and the
flowering chintzes, and the sight of Mrs. Parker's sensible face
across the table. But all the time, at the back of her mind, a memory
haunted her of Mrs. Neale's gaunt face, and of Muriel saying, "Have
you heard the news?"

"So nice," she murmured above her cards, "to know that at last Connie
has quite found her vocation."

She smiled gently, as she gathered up the odd trick with the gesture
of innocent surprise that explained why Marshington never realized
that Mrs. Hammond always won her games.

Mrs. Parker raised her bushy eyebrows.

"Vocation? Girls have no business with vocations. Their vocation is to
get married, as I told Daisy when she wanted to study art. Art! Have
you seen the great child lately?"

Mrs. Cartwright made the appropriate observations upon the charm of
Mrs. Parker's grandchild, and then asked her hostess, "You mentioned
the Seton girls just now. Wasn't it Gladys that Godfrey Neale used to
flirt with so?"

"Gladys? Well, people talked of course, but we knew that there was
nothing in it. All the time since he met her at our house when she was
almost a schoolgirl he has been in love with Clare Duquesne. He and
Muriel are such good friends, you know. He used to confide everything
in her."

If only Muriel would give her a little help! The girl had been so
secretive and queer lately. Mrs. Hammond knew that she used to adore
her. But she had been so silly, always so cold and stand-offish even
with Godfrey. She never gave him half a chance.

"No trumps," she declared vigorously, and settled down to enjoy a
sporting hand.

But she was to be allowed no peace.

"Have you met Lady Grainger yet?" asked Mrs. Parker.

"Er--no, not yet. Dummy's lead, I think."

"Of course they are bound to be rather exclusive. People in their
position. I naturally had to call, because my husband is to be her
doctor. Lady Grainger is quite charming."

Mrs. Hammond rearranged her cards, stately queens, complacent kings,
cherubic knaves. The hearts were chubby and gracious, but pointed
too, like herself, the diamonds slim and elegant, like Mrs. Waring.
If only people could be arranged as easily as cards! Here was a shy
spade queen, and here the king of hearts, magnificently stiff and
spectacular. Put them together, Muriel and Godfrey. Here was Connie, a
jolly little diamond queen. One could couple her with this club knave,
and so be spared from the menace of any failure there. And Arthur, he
was this diamond king, blandly helpless, staring at her face upwards
from the cloth. She could lead off with him, seeing that she held the
ace in her own hand (she would always do that, she thought) and then
gather him, safely, safely, into the pile of tricks before her. There
need be no more nights of waiting, no heart-breaking humiliation when
she held her head high before Marshington, knowing that Arthur down at
the Kingsport Arms was making love to the fat barmaid. Of course he
was drunk. He had once told her that no husband of hers would make
love to another woman while in his sober senses. But since he had
taken to playing billiards with that Ted Hobson, there were too many
occasions upon which his sober senses forsook him. Ah, if only she
could gather him safely in among the decent people. If only, for
instance, a man like Colonel Grainger, horsy, genial, yet to be
trusted, so they said, would take him up! Arthur responded so to his
environment.

"I have done my best. I have done my best," she told herself. But she
knew that there were new heights to scale. Besides, now, the stakes
were doubled. She felt that Arthur's future depended upon her success
with the Graingers. If the new Commandant at Kepplethorpe Camp opened
the doors of his Mess to Arthur, then Mrs. Hammond might sleep at
nights again. Besides, in spite of everything, she loved him.

She marked her score in firm old-fashioned figures, beautifully
formed. It was from her that Muriel had inherited her pretty writing.
Her jewelled fingers hovered above the tablet. She knew what she must
do. As though she had hitherto been too much absorbed in the game to
mention it, she said, "I haven't called on Lady Grainger yet, but Mrs.
Neale has promised to take me up with her one day."

As she shuffled the cards, the rings on her white fingers twinkled
above the green baize table, but though she drew satisfaction from her
lovely, polished nails, she sighed a little.




                                 XXIII


Meanwhile Muriel and Connie sat luxuriously on the two-shilling red
plush seats at the Palace Picture Theatre in Kingsport. Muriel had
paid for the tickets and for the blue paper bag of chocolates on
Connie's knee. This was to be Connie's evening out, because Thraile
was a remote place, dull and far away from cinemas or railway
stations. Even if you have found your vocation, reflected Muriel, it
must be queer to live eight miles from a railway station.

That was a rhyme. Station, vocation. "Dear Connie has found her
vocation, eight miles from a railway station." "Dear Muriel has found
her vocation in no particular occupation." So nice, you know. That was
the kind of thing that Mrs. Hammond was always saying.

Well, perhaps it was true, regarding Connie at any rate. Somehow the
calves and sheep-folds described in her uncommunicative letters had
smoothed the lines of discontent from her full lips, had deepened the
glow of her rich hair, and lit in her eyes a light of happiness.
Connie talked so much that she never explained anything, but all day
long her jolly laugh filled the house. When she was silent, Muriel
could hear its echo. Yet it was difficult to believe, although Mrs.
Hammond said that it was so, although her common sense told her that
it must be so, that these changes were only due to sheep and calves.

The film which Connie had chosen to see was called, "The World Heart
of Woman, a Story of Deep Human Interest, of the Triumph of the Mating
Instinct. For Adults Only." According to the Cinema authorities there
was only one thing in which adults took any interest. But Muriel found
that this bored her rather terribly.

She turned from the triumph of the "Mating Instinct" on the screen to
its manifestation among the audience. She could watch that little girl
nestling cosily against the soldier's tunic just in front of her. She
could watch the couple on her right, while they groped for each
other's hands before the warm darkness shut them in together. She
watched the couple on the screen, grimacing through a thousand
flickering emotions, until they faded into each other's arms and out
of the picture, to the long drawn wail of violins from the Ladies'
Orchestra. Why did everything always conspire to mock and hurt her?
To show her how she sat alone, shut out from the complete and happy
world?

The man on the screen wore his hat like Godfrey's, a little to one
side; but he lacked Godfrey's solemnly unconscious realization of his
own importance. There was a moment during the picture when he stooped
above the heroine and brushed with his lips her hair, her forehead,
her upturned face. The heroine appeared to respond in the correct and
satisfactory manner. Why could some women do these things, and others
simply throw away their chances? Muriel hated this competent cinema
heroine.

"I wish that they'd put on Charlie Chaplin, or some one really funny,"
she said crossly. "I'm so sick of all this sentiment."

She disliked the couple in front of her so much that she wanted to
hurt them. Their smug, self-satisfied faces munched chocolates so
stupidly. The girl lifted her lashes just as Clare lifted hers,
heavily as though they were weighted.

"I adore Angela Tharrap, don't you?" mumbled Connie, her mouth full of
chocolate cream. "I saw her once at the camp cinema at Hurlescar. They
get some jolly good films there. This was called 'Midnight Passion,'
and was simply great."

"I thought that she was much too fat for the part and was rather
vulgar," said Muriel.

"Oh, Mu, she's ripping. And the fellows at Hurlescar all go crazy over
her. Have another choc? You're so terrified of anything with a bit of
go in it. You ought to let yourself go a bit more. Be jollier. I wish
that you could meet Poppy Saddler, one of the girls at Thraile. Now
she _is_ a sharp little customer, vulgar as you make 'em, but clever.
By Jove, she can beat Violet Lorraine on her own ground any day. We
have some ripping sing-songs after work."

Muriel did not reflect that the life at Thraile sounded less desolate
than they had all imagined. She was thinking, "Let myself go?" and
feeling again the gloom of the passage closing round her, and the
numbness of her will as she lay in Godfrey's arms, and the shock as
her mother's voice dropped into the emptiness of her mind. She had
broken away because she always had run when her mother called; but
Godfrey would never understand.

The thought that she too had known romance came to her from the
scented darkness of the cinema. For the first time she felt pride in
the episode at Scarborough. She began to hug the thought that, if
they all knew what had happened to her then, they would feel greater
interest in her. "I am like Mariana in the Moated Grange. I am like
Elaine the Lily Maid of Astolot. I loved him, and he left me. He would
have loved me if Clare had not come." She told herself that Clare had
wooed him away; Clare, La Belle Dame sans Merci, the enchantress
who had cast a spell upon his heart long, long ago, so that when she
called him he must go to her, though it were half across the world.
And he had followed, lured by her strange wild beauty, and she would
lead him through perils and dark places, hungry and thirsty for her
presence. But now and then in the hot evenings, he would remember a
grey northern town, and the crashing tumult of those nightmare guns,
and the face of a girl who smiled at him below the lifting fog. Surely
he would remember her as a cool, gracious presence. Perhaps, even,
long afterwards, when Clare had wearied of him and left him sad and
old and disillusioned, he would return to where Muriel awaited him,
faithful and tender still across the years.

The Ladies' Orchestra played slowly, the long notes dropping one after
the other into the close atmosphere.

        "The winter has gone and the spring is here,
                              The spring is here."

They played Solveig's song, and Muriel followed to herself the wistful
words, building a charmingly sentimental dream out of her relationship
to Godfrey.

When the Pictures were over, she walked with Connie to the station.

"Jolly good?" said Connie.

"Not bad at all. I liked the funny one at the end," replied Muriel,
still in her softened mood.

But they missed the 9.45 train, and had to wait for the 10.20, and
Muriel, as she walked up and down the platform, began to remember that
all this was nonsense, that Godfrey Neale had never thought about her
any more than he thought of Phyllis Marshall Gurney or Gladys Seton,
that every man kissed a girl these days before he went off to the
front, and that she really had not even loved him, and never would
be loved, and that the world was a grey place where nothing ever
happened.

The station seemed to be perfectly enormous and nearly empty, except
for some porters playing about with milk cans that they clashed
together like giant cymbals. The London train slid silently along the
platform, its doors falling open and the passengers tumbling untidily
out on to the platform.

"Why," said Connie, "isn't that Delia?"

Turning, Muriel found her hurrying along the platform, a suit-case in
her hand.

"Good evening, is the 10.20 still running? Good. I did not want to
spend a night in the hotel. Hullo, Connie. You having a holiday? How
goes the land work?" As usual, Delia went straight to her point.

"Great, thanks; I'm chief shepherd, head cook and bottle washer to the
pet lambs." Incredible good humour! Muriel, accustomed to Connie's
sulky antagonism to the vicar's daughter watched them with amazement.
Connie continued, "And how are you getting on? Got leave?"

"Yes, ten days. I've come home to be married." Delia's fine lips
twisted comically. "A fearful indiscretion, but Martin bought a
special licence, and Father insisted on doing the thing himself. We
had not intended to ask the blessing of the Church upon the union of
two sceptics, but it appears that Father hardly thinks a registry
office legal."

The solemn round face of the illuminated clock stared down at them.
Muriel expected Connie to say something nasty, but she disappointed
her. With a shock, Muriel realized that she was disappointed, that she
would have taken satisfaction in her sister's sarcasms, though she
herself felt incapable of showing the unaccountable resentment that
she felt against Delia's drooping slenderness, and the ironic delicacy
of her pale face.

"'The Triumph of the Mating Instinct,'" whispered a horrid little
voice in Muriel's mind. "She's just like all of them, fearfully proud
of herself."

Connie merely said:

"Oh, how exciting. Which day? When are you expecting Mr. Elliott?
Shall we be allowed to the wedding? What are you going to wear?"

It was all very curious, and not a bit like Connie.

As they jolted back to Marshington in the hot, stuffy train, Muriel
looked at Connie and Delia sitting opposite her, side by side. And on
Delia's thin brown face, and on Connie's plump jolly one, brooded the
same expression of serene expectancy.

It was very curious indeed.




                                 XXIV


Muriel could not forget that expression upon Delia's face. It haunted
her throughout a restless, interminable night. It rose with her next
morning and stared at her across the breakfast table. All the way down
to the hospital she repeated, "Martin Elliott's coming home to-morrow
to marry Delia." Somehow she felt that if it had been anybody else but
Delia she would not have cared.

At the hospital she was cross and intolerable. She snubbed poor
Rosie Harpur, who gushed to her about the beauty of Delia's face now
that she was happy. When she stood behind the screen, dusting the
mantelpiece in the hall outside the nurse's room, she heard their
voices as they drank their eleven o'clock cup of tea.

"My dear, don't speak to Hammond unless you want your head snapped
off."

"What's come over her these days? She used to be so meek and mild and
now she's like a hedgehog--all claws where she isn't prickly." That
was Nina Farrell, whom Muriel had liked.

"Sour grapes, I should think. Sick that her little friend, Delia,
has got off at last, and they say that Connie's clicked with a
young farmer up in the North Riding. Muriel's just getting to be a
thorough-going cross old maid."

"Oh, no, she's not," protested Rosie Harpur, in her thick, rather
foolish voice. "She's all right. She told me this morning that she
does not want to get married, she doesn't approve of it or something.
She's frightfully clever really, full of ideas and things."

Muriel flicked her duster above charts and inkpots, and then fled. She
knew now what they thought of her, a thorough-going old maid, mean and
spiteful. She saw herself with the eyes of those young girls beyond
the door. She contrasted their gay, ruthless youth with her bitter
maturity. She saw the ten wasted years that lay behind her, and her
barren future. She saw herself, grown sour with disappointment,
grudging to Delia her happiness, to Connie her liberty, fretting
herself over tasks that others might have performed as well, and
having to learn generosity from women whom she despised, like Rosie
Harpur.

She did not go to the Nurses' Room for her tea. She loitered instead
about the wards and passages. The hospital was as usual over-staffed,
and there was little enough to do. She walked the mile and a half
home, hating herself with a fierce and bitter hatred.

Yet where had she gone wrong? What had she done? All her life she had
tried to do the right thing. It was not her fault that things had gone
wrong. She had wanted to be clever, but had sacrificed her intellect
to her mother's need. She had meant to be like Delia and had grown
like Rosie Harpur, because her duty had lain at home. She could have
made Godfrey propose to her, but her fatal diffidence betrayed her.
She could not stir herself to effort for her own sake. She had let him
go.

And Delia was to be married to-morrow.

She endured the evening, though at supper she was curt and silent,
hardly speaking to Connie, who had returned in high spirits from
playing tennis with the Masons. Deliberately she seemed to wound
herself by her resentment, forcing her lips to ungraciousness and her
eyes to cold distaste, because she was conscious of having behaved
badly, yet felt too weary of spirit to make amends.

Later, when Connie settled down to play rag-time, she could bear it no
longer. She took her hat and walked out by herself along the road to
Wearminster. She did not care in which direction the road lay, so long
as she could walk away from herself and her own wretchedness. Her feet
were tired, and her back ached, but the more her physical weariness
oppressed her, the more she forced herself to go forward.

A dull sea of mist covered the valley, and the road stretched before
her into a grey twilight.

Martin Elliott was coming back to Marshington to-morrow. On Friday he
would marry Delia. Nobody would ever want to marry Muriel, and Godfrey
was engaged to Clare.

She thrust her head forward, and walked into the mist, blind with
pain. She never saw Delia until she was right upon her. They stood on
a slight rise of the ground, where the tattered foam of mist curled
round the hedge, like waves of a soundless sea, then fell away into
the low lying fields. Delia had been walking towards Marshington, and
the two women met face to face.

Afterwards Muriel remembered that, clear beyond the haze, three bright
stars shone above the sycamore tree. She looked at the stars, because
she could not bear to see Delia's face.

"What has happened?" asked Muriel, with a small hushed gesture.

Delia's voice came out of the mist, flat and dead:

"Martin was killed yesterday. Knocked down by a motor-lorry in Amiens
station. Just the sort of idiotic thing that he would let happen to
him."

A light breeze crept up the valley and shook the branches of the
sycamore tree. It lifted a lock of dark hair and blew it against
Delia's eyes. Delia never stirred nor spoke. She and Muriel stood
quite still, with the knowledge of this thing between them.

"If he had been killed in action," Muriel said at last.

"He had no business to go and die now," stormed Delia. "He hated the
war. He hated its barbarous futility and cheap sentiment. He only
wanted to finish his great book. There were a thousand things for him
to do. He had a great desire to live."

"You must finish the things for him."

"Don't be a fool. It was his work. He wanted to do it. If he had been
a cripple, he could have borne it. If he had been blinded, he would
have triumphed over it. There was no handicap that he could not have
conquered. But now, now, he has no chance to fight."

She struck her hands together, in her urgency of pain. Then abruptly
she said, "Good night," and swung off down the road. Her tall,
bare-headed figure was engulfed in the soft grey distance.

Muriel did not go on, and would not follow her. She sat down on a heap
of broken flints beside the road, feeling as though a storm had swept
past her, with the force of Delia's angry grief.

Her lips moved, "Poor Delia, poor Delia," but there was no pity in
her heart. She thought of Martin Elliott as she had seen him that
afternoon at the Vicarage. She remembered his words, "Only sorrow
comes upon us with a sudden blow, but happiness is built from long
years of small pleasant things. You can't put that into a short
story."

Where was Delia going, raging with her grief and anger through the
mist? What should she do? She would walk away into the night with her
sorrow, but she would return to face what life might bring her. And
she would find that there were still amusing and exciting things,
interesting friends, companionable talk, a little fame perhaps, and
the consciousness of good work done. She would not forget, but her
busy mind would have no time to linger with grief, and when she
remembered it would not be with bitterness. She would still keep her
love letters to read over, and her fresh unspoilt memories of happy
hours. She had been lifted above envy or reproach. Sorrow such as
hers would give her pride to bear it, and everybody would honour her
dignity of loss. The dead, reflected Muriel, at least are always
loyal.

"But I--but I," she moaned, "have been cheated even of my memories.
There is no past hour on which I can think with pride. Delia thinks
herself sad because she was once loved. But I would give all that I
possess to share her tears if I could have her memories. I--I am
hungry for her pain."

Then like a storm her tears swept down upon her.




                                  XXV


The spring passed; the summer came, and in September Mrs. Hammond gave
her dinner-party. It was no formal party, and therein lay the proof of
that lady's genius.

The Graingers had been satiated with Marshington hospitality. Their
simple souls had quailed before champagne suppers with the Marshall
Gurneys, and exclusive little dinners with Mrs. Waring. But these
Hammonds seemed to be natural, homely people. Where other ladies
talked of the County and politics and the vulgarity of their
neighbours, Mrs. Hammond gossiped gently about servants and the price
of butter. She seemed generous too, and spoke kindly of the queer,
absent-minded vicar, attributing much of his parochial deficiencies to
the shock of that terrible tragedy in the spring when his would-be
son-in-law was killed. The old man had cared so much more than his
daughter. So Lady Grainger came to think of Mrs. Hammond as a nice
woman.

Meanwhile, Miller's Rise had been thrown open to the young officers of
the camp. Sunday after Sunday they came to play on the tennis-courts,
to strum rag-time on the drawing-room piano, and to consume quantities
of cigarettes. Two pleasant but foreseen results rewarded Mrs.
Hammond. The first was that Mr. Hammond became interested in the young
men, and liked to talk aeroplanes with Bobby Collins, and machine guns
with Captain Lowcroft, and horses with young Staines. The boys found
him to be a jolly good sort, and missed him when he was not there. All
of which was excellent for him.

Secondly, the fame of Miller's Rise reached the ears of Colonel
and Lady Grainger, and since they took a real interest in their
subalterns, and since the tone of Marshington society had distressed
them, they became immensely grateful to the Hammonds. So it happened
that one evening in September Colonel Grainger met Mrs. Hammond at
Kingsport Station, and stopped to thank her for her kindness to the
boys.

"I wish that Maude and I were young enough to be included in your
invitation," he added wistfully.

"Well, if you promise not to spoil their fun, as a great favour, I'll
give you a pass!" laughed Mrs. Hammond. "As a great favour."

The only thing that spoiled it was that Mrs. Marshall Gurney could not
hear.

On this Thursday evening, the colonel and his wife had joined the
party. Till now, it had been uproariously successful. The colonel sat
pulling at his moustache and smiling quietly, and Lady Grainger's kind
little round face beamed all over with pleasure, and Mr. Hammond was
on his very best behaviour. He had told her only his most presentable
stories, and treated her with the exaggerated gallantry that he
sometimes thought fit to show to his wife's friends, and which Lady
Grainger found to be "so quaint and old-fashioned and nice."

As for the boys, they needed no entertainment. They were eating
dessert now, and Bobby Collins with an intent, serious face, bent
over the orange skin that he was carving.

"What is it, Mr. Collins?" asked Muriel. She rather liked these boys,
who treated her like a pleasant kind of aunt, and whom even Mrs.
Hammond never regarded in the light of anything more intimate than a
stepping-stone to the Graingers.

"Pig," replied Bobby comprehensively.

"I beg your pardon?" Young Smithson raised his head from Muriel's
other side. "Kindly repeat that word."

"Pig," repeated Bobby obligingly, and continued to play with his
knife.

"Do I understand," shouted Smithson in mock wrath, "that this epithet
is intended as an insult to that charming lady?"

"Understand what you like. Aha! I've done it," cried Bobby in triumph.

Smithson rose with dignity and bowed to his hostess. "Pardon me, Mrs.
Hammond," he declared with dignity. "But words have just now been said
in this room which no gentleman could pass. An insult has been offered
to your charming daughter. Ahem! Mr. Collins, in the name of Miss
Hammond, I demand satisfaction."

The table was in an uproar. Muriel, blushing but amused, looked along
a line of laughing faces to her mother.

"A duel, a duel!" shouted Captain Lowcroft. "Pistols for two and
coffee for one on the Hangman's Heath in the morning."

Bobby Collins, very round and solemn, arose and faced Smithson across
Muriel's dark head.

"A plague upon your mornings, sir. I will fight now, with oranges,
upon the lawn. And it shall be to the death."

"Outside with you then, for goodness' sake," cried Mrs. Hammond.
"Remember my china!"

They trooped outside together.

The September night was warm and still. A great harvest moon hung low
above the elm trees. The windows, carefully curtained by order of the
government, left the house mute and dark, but white moonlight lay
along the level lawn, and moonlight touched the laughing, running
figures.

There was madness in the air. Even Muriel, as she stood on the steps
with Lady Grainger and her mother, felt the excitement, and laughed
with them. She watched the figures on the lawn, moving out of the
black shadows of the elm trees into the white field of moonlight. She
watched young Staines and Captain Lowcroft separate the antagonists,
measure sedately the paces between them, and supply them with their
ammunition. Quick words of command rang out. A handkerchief fluttered
down, silver-white in the moonlight. The fruit flew, the oranges
glittering like golden metal.

"Your oranges," murmured Lady Grainger. "They are very naughty boys."

"Not at all," sighed Mrs. Hammond. "This is so good for them, a little
innocent fooling. The oranges will be all the sweeter." She waved a
pathetic little hand. "You see, I had no son to give."

"You have at least a very nice daughter."

"Two. My baby, Connie, is working on the land."

There came a burst of shouting from the combatants on the lawn.

"A hit! A hit! A palpable hit. (Whatever that means. I seem to have
heard it somewhere.) Miss Hammond, your insulter is wounded."

With a groan Bobby Collins flung himself upon the lawn.

"Come and render first aid."

Muriel ran down.

Always afterwards she remembered kneeling there with her delicate
dress carefully tucked up, binding a silk scarf round an imaginary
wound in Bobby's shoulder. She remembered the sticky feeling of his
tunic where an over-ripe orange had burst, and the sound of mad-cap
laughter and those gay young voices. Then something made her look up,
and beyond the drive, in the shadow of the elm trees, she saw a figure
moving. Somebody was walking slowly and furtively, stealing from the
darkness of one tree to another, a figure bowed and drooping, as
though in pain or weariness. Almost it seemed to be familiar. Muriel
thought of Delia, who had walked off through the mists four months
ago; but it was not tall enough for Delia.

"It'll be somebody coming to see one of the maids," she told herself,
and rose to her feet, for Bobby Collins was being lifted from the
ground by three of his friends, and the procession moved towards the
house.

Mrs. Hammond opened the front door to receive them. A flood of golden
light poured out on to the steps, the drive, the disordered returning
figures. Colonel Grainger bore a dish piled high with yellow oranges.
Bobby was carried shoulder high by the laughing boys.

"The children. The absurd children," laughed Mrs. Hammond. "Come in.
The Zeppelins will catch us if we leave our lights showing, and Arthur
is a special constable."

As she watched the colonel tossing oranges to her husband, her face
was happier than Muriel had known it for many years.

"Are they all in? Shut the door," said Mrs. Hammond.

Muriel turned to obey.

Out in the garden the watcher from the shadows had crossed the lawn.
Somebody stood in the moonlight on the edge of the drive. The face was
hidden, but again a curious familiarity in the attitude stopped the
beating of Muriel's heart for a moment.

"I'm seeing things," she told herself. "That can't be Connie, for
she's at Thraile. Somebody has come from the road to see whatever we
were doing. We are being mad enough to bring anyone in."

She drew the heavy curtains across the hall door.

They flocked into the drawing-room for music, such music as had become
part of the Miller's Rise programme. Mrs. Hammond and Lady Grainger
sat in the big armchairs, and Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hammond looked
as though they had smoked cigars together all their lives.

The boys grouped themselves around and on the piano at which Muriel
sat, accompanying indefatigably.

"Prithee pretty maiden, will you marry me?" sang Bobby Collins, still
bandaged and orange-smeared.

"Hey, but he's doleful, willow, willow, waly," shouted the chorus
cheerfully.

Annie came into the drawing-room, her face stiff with importance, and
crossed to Mrs. Hammond. Muriel saw her mother leave the room.

"The coffee's overboiled again," she thought, and yet for some reason,
she felt stupidly uneasy. She could not put out of her head the
thought of that watching figure on the lawn.

Mrs. Hammond did not return. The singers laid aside Gilbert and
Sullivan, and took up the Globe Song Book.

        "There is a tavern in the town, in the town,
         And there my true love sits him down, sits him down,
         And takes his cask of wine across his knee
         And never, never thinks of me, thinks of me!"

"We want a drummer," declared Bobby.

"The gong. Where's the gong? Miss Hammond, may we get the gong? We
can't live without a drum."

"Of course you can have it. Mr. Collins, go and fetch it from the
hall."

Bobby went, leaving the door ajar. They watched for their drummer,
Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hammond in high good humour, humming the
refrain,

        "Fare thee well for I must leave thee,"

From the hall came a sharp exclamation and the sound of a scuffle.

Then Bobby questioned sharply and a voice, Connie's voice unmistakably,
was raised in protest.

They all turned towards the door.

Then Bobby returned. In one hand he carried the large brass gong and
its padded stick; the other hand was firmly grasped round Connie's
wrist.

"See what I've found," he cried triumphantly. "Not only a drum, but a
drummer! Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce to you Miss
Constance Hammond, youngest daughter of our respected host and
hostess, just this moment returned on unexpected leave from her
strenuous duties upon a farm in the North Riding, where she has been
carrying on the splendid work of feeding our nation in its hour of
peril."

They rose, they shouted, they went forward to drag Connie, blushing
and protesting, into the room.

"Three cheers for Miss Constance Hammond! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!
Three cheers for the land girls in khaki! Cheers for the girls who
grow the spuds to beat the U Boats!"

The room rang with their cheering. Colonel Grainger stepped forward
and introduced himself, shaking both Connie's red, trembling hands,
and telling her how good her mother had been to his boys. Muriel,
mystified, profoundly stirred by some strange premonition, stood
silent while Connie shook hands with the colonel and kissed her
father. Then she asked:

"Have you seen Mother?"

"Yes," said Connie, and no more, for Bobby made all the necessary
explanations with delighted volubility.

"She was sneaking away upstairs because she didn't want to see us
before she'd made herself look beautiful. She came from Market Burton
on the 9.50 unexpectedly to give her family a surprise. _I_ think that
it was to see how they behaved while she was away. Aha, Miss Hammond,
but now we've caught you, we'll keep you. You are conscripted as our
drummer."

Muriel, from the piano, said:

"Connie, this is nice. How long have you?"

Then for the first time she saw Connie clearly through a crowd of
chaffing, chattering boys. Connie's cheeks were flushed. She held her
wild head high and recklessly, but her eyes were fierce with the
desperation of a trapped animal.

"I don't know for certain," she said, in her high, shrill voice. "It
depends on how you treat me." Then quickly she turned to the men.
"What were you singing? Come on. Don't stop. Where's my drum?" She
sprang on to the back of the sofa, and Bobby held the gong before her.
"Go on. Play up, Muriel!"

With a sense of impending doom, totally unreasonable, Muriel struck
the keys with stiff, frightened fingers. The voices shouted again,
madly joyous, punctuated by Connie's crashings on the gong.

        "He left me for a damsel dark, damsel dark,
         And every night they used to spark, used to spark,
         And now my love, without a thought of me
         Takes that dark damsel on his knee, on his knee."

Crash-crash-crash, went the gong. The room rocked to the stamp of feet
and the roar of voices, while high above them, from where she stood on
the sofa end, smashing at the swinging gong, shrilled Connie's wild,
mad gaiety.

So Mrs. Hammond, returning to the drawing-room, found them and stood
spellbound, like a frozen figure in the doorway. Lady Grainger saw her
and smiled, beckoning. Muriel, between the gusts of laughter, heard
their voices.

"They kept you a long time," murmured Lady Grainger. "I hope that it
was nothing bothering. You--you'll excuse me saying so, you look a
little tired. I hope that our rowdy boys are not too much for you."

"Oh, no. Not at all. I like it."

        "I'll hang my harp on a weeping willow tree,
         And may the world go well with thee, well with thee."

chanted the chorus.

"Chorus again," called Connie. "I'm bandmaster to-night."

        "Fare thee well for I must leave thee,
         Do not let the parting grieve thee . . ."

As the refrain died down to the reverberations of the gong, Muriel
heard Lady Grainger say:

"If only more girls were brought up like yours, with such a healthy,
homely influence, an atmosphere, I'm sure that you'll understand me,
dear Mrs. Hammond. It does help the boys so."

Then her mother answered in that soft hurrying voice that was so much
her own:

"It's very kind of you to say so. I don't know, I'm sure. Of course
I've always tried to--to give them a high ideal of--of home life
and--and so on."

She faltered, and Muriel, looking over her shoulder, saw her mouth set
to a despairing smile, and her tongue pass over her dry lips.

"I--we try to, you know," repeated Mrs. Hammond, as though she were
saying a lesson.

Connie, from the sofa head, turned round and looked at her mother.
Muriel felt the tension in the room to be unendurable. Somehow they
were torturing that gentle little lady on the sofa. The evening became
abominable to her. The laughter, the rollicking songs broke round
her like a nightmare sea. Her hands slid from the keyboard and she
clenched them on her knee.

"Oh, come along, Muriel," called Connie. "Are you tired? Then let me
come."

Muriel was pushed aside from the stool, and Connie swung herself
into her place. Connie's red, work-soiled fingers rattled over the
keyboard.

"What shall we have now?" Her jangling discords changed to the
clashing refrain of an old song.

        "I went down south to see my Sal,
           Singing Polly Wolly Doodle all the day."

The party was jollier than ever.

At last they began to go. There was a scramble for coats and scarves
and leather gauntlets. Then the lamps of the motor-cycles would not
light. Captain Lowcroft's little car refused to start. The colonel
stood on the door-step and smiled down on them benignly.

"I can't tell you how grateful we are, Mrs. Hammond. This is just the
sort of thing to keep the boys out of mischief, what? Your husband has
promised to come and look over our horses one day. I hope that we
shall see you both up at the Mess one of these days."

The boys shouted. Somebody began to sing, "For He's a jolly good
fellow." Muriel went back to the drawing-room. Her mother still stood
on the steps. Mr. Hammond had gone to lock up the garage.

Connie stood in her tweed coat and skirt still by the fire-place,
kicking a mouldering log with her mud-splashed boot. Her face was
turned aside from Muriel, but her whole figure drooped with weariness.

"Connie, has something happened?"

"You'd better ask Mother," replied Connie's muffled voice.

Muriel looked round at the desolation of the disordered room, the
cigarette ash spilled upon the carpet, the scattered sheets of music,
the cushions overturned. Outside she could hear the hum of the motor,
the call of last farewells, and her mother's answering "So glad that
you were able to come."

Connie lifted her head to listen, and Muriel saw then that she had
been crying.

"Oh, Connie," she began.

Mrs. Hammond came into the room and shut the door behind her.

Connie stood looking at her. "A top-hole evening, Mother, was it? So
glad that they were able to come."

Then the storm broke.

"Connie, in Heaven's name, what induced you to come in?"

"Come in? I didn't come in. Do you think that I wanted to come and
entertain your jolly friends? I was going upstairs when that young
idiot found me. Then I had to come. But at least I played up. You must
own that. I saved your party for you."

"Oh, yes. You played up." Mrs. Hammond came forward and sat down,
crouching over the dying fire, a tired old woman.

"Well," demanded Connie, "now that I am here, what are you going to do
with me?"

"We must tell your father," said Mrs. Hammond. "We shall have to tell
your father." She spoke as though in this telling lay some unendurable
agony. Her voice was bitter with defeat. "Yes," she repeated softly.
"We must tell him."

"Oh, tell as many people as you like. Tell Muriel. Tell her now.
She'll have to know some time. I'd lie willingly, only I can't. I
can't think of a good enough story. You've always been so much better
at that sort of thing than the rest of us."

Mrs. Hammond did not speak, but sat, crouching forward, sliding a
pearl and ruby ring up and down her finger.

"Why don't you tell her?" jeered Connie. "You do so hate doing
anything disagreeable, don't you? Very well, then I will. Muriel, you
may be interested to hear that I have left Thraile because I have been
dismissed. And I have been dismissed because I am going to have a
baby, and the baby's father is Mr. Ben Todd, and I do not happen to be
Mrs. Todd. And the worthy Ben's respectable parents seem to object to
my staying in the house. Well? . . . DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!" Her
voice rose to a scream.

Muriel felt her way to a chair and sat down.

"Well?" persisted Connie. "Well?"

"Oh, Connie, I'm awfully sorry. I----"

"Are you? Do you hear that, Mother? Muriel's awfully sorry. It's more
than Mother is. Mother's awfully angry, because I let Bobby Collins
drag me in to the party, which I couldn't help. And she's angry
because I'm going to make this family not respectable, but she isn't
sorry."

"That's not true, Connie," came the stifled voice from the sofa.

"She's always brought us up to have such high ideals, you see," Connie
continued, in her high, hard tone, ignoring her mother's protest. "She
liked us to have a good influence over the young men, so that Lady
Grainger would be awfully grateful to her, didn't you, Mother? And you
wouldn't let us work or go away, or have any other interests, because
you were afraid of our spoiling a chance of a good marriage. And if we
didn't get partners at dances we were beastly failures. And if our
friends attracted more attention than we did they were sent away. And
it was all because of our healthy homely influence, wasn't it, Mother?
And now that one of us has taken the only means she saw to fulfil your
wishes and get married, and it hasn't come oft, you're very angry,
aren't you, but you aren't sorry, and if I'd been successful, you
wouldn't have been angry, would you, Mother?"

As though Connie would strike her, Mrs. Hammond held up her hand
against her face. Her small figure rocked backwards and forwards on
the sofa in comfortless distress.

"If I'd been like Muriel," cried Connie, "I'd have sat at home perhaps
and waited for things to happen. But I wasn't like that. I wasn't made
to spend my life sewing for the G.F.S. If you wanted your daughters to
be perfect ladies, why did you marry Father? You knew what he was
like!"

"Connie! Be quiet. You shan't speak like that. Oh, what shall I do?
The shame, the shame! Connie. Don't take it like this. I didn't
know . . . I couldn't . . ."

As though it had been broken, the delicate mask of prettiness fell
from her. Uncaring for the crushed silk of her new grey dinner frock,
she flung herself forward among the cushions of the sofa, utterly
defeated.

Muriel sat as though frozen, helplessly watching.

The front door shut with a clang. There was the sound of a key being
turned. A bolt was shot. Mr. Hammond's voice hummed cheerfully:

        "And now my love without a thought of me
         Takes that dark damsel on his knee."

"There he is," choked Connie. Hysteria was sweeping down upon her.
She began to laugh, very softly.

"I can't, I can't," said Mrs. Hammond.

The door opened.

"Hullo, hullo, hullo, not to bed yet? Why, hullo, what's wrong?"

The room was perfectly quiet. Through the open window from the moonlit
garden came the dreary call of an owl. Far off in the valley a train
whistled, leaving Marshington station.

The four in the room stayed quite still.

"Now then, Connie," asked Mr. Hammond, grown suddenly serious, "what's
the meaning of all this?"




                               BOOK III

                                CONNIE

                    September, 1915--February, 1916




                                 XXVI


Though there was no wind that evening to disturb them, the chintz
curtains falling before the morning-room window would not hang quite
together. A moth with heavy, powdered wings flopped through the open
space and blundered blindly round the flaming gas-jet.

Muriel rose and drew the curtains for the third time. The garden
outside lay quietly waiting, black shadows outstretched prostrate
before the moonlit elms. No sound of horse hoofs trotting up the road
greeted her straining ears. Only the soft thump of the moth's wings on
the ceiling, and the rustle of her mother's sleeve as she flicked
faster and faster at her tatting broke the perfect stillness.

Would he never come? The 7.40 had arrived, whistling up the valley.
The 8.15 had come and gone. There was still the 9.50.

Muriel returned to her book and glanced mechanically down the page.
Why didn't he wire? He had no imagination of what they must be
feeling.

She read, "Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates
has fallen upon the North of England, but in eighteen hundred
eleven-twelve that affluent rain had not descended: there was no
Pastoral Aid, no Additional Curates Society to stretch out a helping
hand to worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the
wherewithal to pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or
Cambridge."

Muriel was not interested in curates. She let _Shirley_ fall unheeded
on her lap, and sat again listening for the sound of her father's
horse along the road or of Connie's footsteps in the bedroom overhead.

The clock ticked stupidly, marking minutes, half-hours, hours; but at
Miller's Rise endless years had passed since Mr. Hammond drove away
that morning to catch the 10.20 train to Market Burton, and so on to
Thraile. Centuries had passed while Mrs. Hammond sat with her tatting,
staring into the painted glass fire-screen, and Muriel picked up books
and embroidery and the nursing accounts and laid them aside again,
and Connie up in her room, with red eyes and swollen, distorted
face, passed from defiance to despair, and from despair to bitter
comfortless surrender.

The telephone bell suddenly pealed into the silence.

Muriel rose, but Mrs. Hammond waved her aside.

"No, no, I must go. We don't know what--what----"

She rustled from the room, and Muriel heard her quick light step in
the hall and the click of the receiver as she lifted it. Upstairs a
door opened and footsteps crossed the landing hurriedly. Connie too
was listening.

"No, no--Yes. This is Rachel Hammond speaking. Mrs. Waring? Oh, good
evening, Mrs. Waring. No, no. I'm so sorry. Not to-night. Yes. That's
quite true. Connie came home last night for a short leave. What?
No--no. Well"--only Connie and Muriel could detect the strain in that
familiar flutter of laughter--"perhaps we _may_ have some news for you
soon, but I'm saying nothing now. Good night."

The whirring jar of the bell as she rang off snapped the tension of
the house.

Muriel returned to her seat as Mrs. Hammond re-entered the room. Her
quivering lips were almost as white as her drawn cheeks. She groped
her way unsteadily to a chair. After a minute she said:

"That was Mrs. Waring. She wanted us to go and play bridge."

It seemed to Muriel incredible that people like Mrs. Waring and
Mrs. Daunt should still be living in Marshington, playing bridge,
chattering at the War Depot, and discussing the length of autumn
skirts. For Miller's Rise that life had ended centuries ago, cut off
by the startling anguish of Connie's wild confession. The echo of that
storm still seemed to ring in Muriel's ears. Its violence had bruised
and hurt her. She had been deafened by the raging of her father's
voice, by Connie's shrill defiance and gusty tears. She could not bear
to enter the drawing-room now lest she should see again her father
standing by the fireplace, his great neck red and swollen with anger,
his voice hurling at Connie those questions, unbearably coarse and
brutal to Muriel's shrinking mind. She wanted to shut out for ever
the remembrance of Connie's flaming, tear-stained face, and of her
mother's terrible weeping as she lay crushed and broken, beaten out
of her delicate composure into an abandonment that had tortured Muriel
by its blind surrender to astonished pain.

And then slowly, from the terror and confusion, her mother's courage
had risen above her agony. Muriel, watching her now as she sat
fidgeting with the black tatting spindle, could feel again the effort
of that re-assertion, until in the grey dreary hours of early morning,
Mrs. Hammond had risen above her circumstances, quietly dominated the
three of them, and had sent her husband off to Thraile to do the one
thing left to save the Hammonds.

If Mr. Hammond could persuade young Todd to marry Connie immediately,
this month, if Connie could be bundled away again to the isolated
uplands of Thraile, then the tennis club need never know; then Lady
Grainger would still smile graciously upon the Hammonds; then the
Bennet relations, and the flouted malice of the Marshington Chapel
folk need never jeer at Rachel Bennet, who against reason, against
prudence, almost against decency, had married Old Dick Hammond's son.

Why wouldn't he come? Why wouldn't he come? Had the trap broken down?
Had he missed the connection at Hardrascliffe? Supposing--supposing he
had failed? Supposing? You never knew with Father. He had assurance
and courage and cleverness, but still, still--

A door clicked again. Both sat up stiffly, listening. Steps descended
the stairs. The door opened, and Connie entered the room.

"I can't stand it. That room upstairs gives me the horrors. I can't
stand being alone."

She sank into her father's big arm-chair, exhausted by the strain of
the last twenty-four hours. Muriel looked at her, thinking that this
passion-torn creature was a stranger, queer and terrible, belonging
only to the nightmare year since last night when that dark figure had
crept along the drive. Her sister Connie had been gay and reckless,
had loved flamboyant colours, and the harsh merriment of rag-time
tunes. Muriel remembered her at Kingsport dances, flushed and
exultant, with blue ribbon in her bright wild hair.

"I won't do it." Connie's voice, flat and dead, came from between the
hands covering her bowed face. "I won't do it. I hate him. I hate Ben
Todd." She lifted her head with sudden fierce energy. "Mother, let me
go away. By myself. I'll manage. I'll do anything. I'll work my
fingers to the bone. I'll never come near here again. Let Father give
me some money. I can't go through with it."

Mrs. Hammond's trembling fingers set down the foolish white cotton,
the little looped edge of her work.

"Connie," she said quietly, "you know that's impossible. We--your
father and I--are doing the best, the only thing we can for you. You
must help us, we----"

"But if he can't----" In an urgency of appeal Connie lifted her eyes.
"You don't know Mrs. Todd. She'll lie and lie. They'll say--they'll
say I encouraged him. He--Ben-- does what she says. He's always done
what she's said."

Mrs. Hammond opened her eyes and stared unseeing across the room to
her elder daughter. Then she spoke softly, almost as though entranced:

"He can't fail. He can't fail."

"Yes, but I can!" cried Connie, springing to her feet. "I won't go
back there. You don't know what you're sending me to. You don't know.
The Todds were awful, awful. You should have heard them when--when
they thought---- You don't know what it's like up there. The lot of
them. They'll be all against me. They're proud. They're terrible.
There's no bitterness like theirs'll be to me. If you send me there,
I'll never, never have another moment's happiness. They'll watch and
they'll watch. They'll suspect everything I do or say. Oh, they're
hard, and that fearful old cripple--sitting in a corner, watching,
watching---- You'll send me to that, just to save your skins, just to
save your snobbish, rotten little ideas you'll send me to--to----"

Muriel couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear again the clash and jangle
of that terrible violence. "Connie!" she cried. "Connie, don't, it
isn't true. It's for your sake--it--they---- You mustn't say things
like that."

Wide-eyed with astonishment Connie faced her, amazed that Muriel could
so assert her personality.

Then she laughed. "You're backing them up too, are you? Of course.
Your mother's little darling always! But I'll get round Father. I'll
make him understand."

"Connie dear, you must see that for your own sake, and for the sake of
the child, there's no other way. What would you do? You could not earn
your own living alone, much less burdened like that."

"Who's to blame for that?"

"And then--the scandal. Your name . . ."

"I'll run away," sobbed Connie, for the twentieth time. But even then
the shrewd common sense that underlay her recklessness realized the
hopelessness of her position. Without support from her parents or from
Ben, she could not face the world. Beyond her hysteria she foresaw
defeat, yet could not yet acknowledge it. The desire to find an outlet
for her emotion was too strong.

"I'll never face it," she repeated softly. Then, "Why doesn't he
come?"

Far off a train whistled, entering the station.

"That will be the 9.50," said Mrs. Hammond.

Muriel realized then that she did not want her father to come and
tell them. Her mind was chaotic with emotion. She only knew that she
could not bear to face a repetition of last night's scene. Something
whispered in her mind, "Father and Connie enjoy letting themselves
go." If she could have brought herself to desert her mother, she would
have left the room.

A motor-car hummed up the road. A motor-bicycle throbbed noisily. Then
a horse came trotting, clop-clop, clop-clop.

Connie jumped up. "I can't--I can't," she gasped.

Mrs. Hammond rose, and with sudden tenderness went forward. Connie
was, after all, her child. She laid gentle hands on Connie's arm that
grasped the mantelpiece, but the girl pushed her roughly aside.

"Don't touch me. I don't want you!"

Clop-clop. Clop-clop. The horse-hoofs rang clear and hard on the dry
road. With a swish of dead leaves and scattering of pebbles, the cart
turned smartly on to the gravel of the drive. A lantern light moved
beyond the slats of the venetian blind down the side window. The
groom's voice spoke. Mr. Hammond answered.

They heard his footsteps pass the window. They heard him in the hall.

Connie stood quite still as her father came into the room and stopped,
facing her. She did not look up.

"Well," he said heavily, "I've fixed things up. Wedding's on 21st,
Connie."

"No, it's not. I'm not going through with it." She spoke sullenly,
bending towards the fireless grate.

"Ay, but ye will. Young Todd's a fool, but he seemed to be rarely set
up to have you. The missus says she'll treat you well. They weren't
the sort o' folk I'd thought on, Connie. I can't rightly size the
whole business up, for they're decentish people."

"Decent? The old man's a fiend."

"Nay, nay, lass. Thou's not behaved so well thysen' that thou canst
pick and choose. It's not the old man you'll be marrying. I cannot
rightly see how it all came about."

Muriel looked at him. On his face was no longer the dark fury
of resentment, but a rough tenderness, born of compunction and
bewilderment. In his voice lay a new note of pity, almost, it seemed,
of understanding. To Muriel this was the strangest thing in those
strange days; but to Connie looking up from her clasped hands, it
shone like a light through her darkness of rebellion.

"Oh, Dad, you'll help me," she cried, and stumbled forward, blindly
sobbing, into the clumsy shelter of his arms.




                                 XXVII


"Tum! Tum! Ter-um, tum, tum, tum!"

It was all over, then. The smooth bluish page scrawled over with
signatures had completed the deed performed with greater solemnity in
church. That was the wedding march of course, and soon they would
process back down the aisle, following Connie's white fox fur and the
tall shambling figure of the young man. All Marshington would watch
them pass, and Muriel could imagine the things that would be said
afterwards round luncheon tables all over the village.

"What do you think of the new bridegroom, Mrs. Daunt?"

"Hem, not much. A decent young man I dare say. Probably good enough
for Connie Hammond." They would not be merciful, for they had been
cheated out of their champagne reception. "Should ha' thought Hammond
would ha' done things better," Colonel Cartwright would complain, and
ladies who had hoped for an opportunity for new clothes would sniff
surreptitiously over the announcement in the _Kingsport Chronicle_:
"Owing to the severe illness of the bridegroom's father, no reception
will be held, but all friends will be welcome at the church."

It had been a little weak, that, but if Mr. Todd Senior had not been
conveniently indisposed what other excuse could have kept the Todd
family away from Marshington? True, he was no more ill to-day than
he had been for the past ten years or more, but nobody at Holy
Trinity Church was likely to know the High Farm, Thraile, except the
bridegroom, who would keep his own counsel. And the Todd family, as
a visit of Mrs. Hammond to the High Farm had revealed, was quite
impossible.

That visit had almost shaken Mrs. Hammond's confidence, almost, not
quite. After it she had plunged with even greater thoroughness into
the preparations for the wedding. "She must have cared," thought
Muriel to whom the whole business appeared intolerable. She had not
thought that anything Connie might do could have touched herself so
closely. Yet, if Mrs. Hammond cared, she continued to hide her
feelings with superhuman self-control. Of course it would have been
almost impossible to preserve in private that attitude of shamed
reproach while in public she posed as the proud mother, but Muriel was
deeply shocked in some obscure pride of soul when Mrs. Hammond adopted
almost at once her public pose for domestic purposes, and began to
order clothes and household linen with the wholehearted interest that
she usually devoted to such things.

Only Mr. Hammond ever seemed to doubt the wisdom of her policy, but he
too followed where she led him with uneasy meekness, clumsily trying
to comfort her with lace scarves brought from London, and an almost
pathetic consideration of her wishes that drew them closer together
than ever before since their days of love-making by the one passion
that could steady his uncertain nature, or make her forget for a
moment her quiet calculations.

Her mother and father were all right. They had each other. Connie was
all right. She was going to be married. She had new clothes, presents
and attention, all of which, her first rebellion overcome, she
accepted with complacent satisfaction, as though they were her
due. Night after night, Muriel had thought of it, feeling that
sometimes she had been mistaken, that Connie's behaviour had not been
disgraceful, outraging all her sense of delicacy and reserve. Perhaps
to Connie it had been a swift romance, the madness of moonlight on the
darkened moor, the sudden call of youth and brave adventure, then
fleeting fear and hot rebellion to be assuaged by final victory.
Sometimes Muriel had tossed on her bed, feeling the fury of her
outraged virtue; sometimes she found in her own loneliness the greater
shame.

And now it was all over.

The vestry was hot and stuffy. Muriel wished that they need not all
wait so long. Why did the bridegroom hesitate so while signing his
name, Benjamin Durdletree Todd, in weak slanting copper-plate across
the page? Constance Rachel Adeline. Muriel had almost forgotten that
all this was Connie's name, sprawled in her dashing black signature
almost into the columns for Spinster, Age and Parish.

Mrs. Hammond rustled forward in her lilac silk. "Muriel dear, won't
you sign too?"

So Muriel's small, symmetrical signature went below, and the little
crowd rocked and stirred about the vestry table.

"Well, is that all?" laughed Connie.

"Quite all, Mrs. Todd," smiled Mr. Vaughan. "Please let me offer you
every happiness."

But his thin queer face looked troubled as he shook Connie's hand, and
he glanced at the tall sheepish young man with an expression of veiled
bewilderment.

Muriel put down the pen, wondering why the pens in vestries and
offices always disguise one's signature so effectively.

And then she caught sight of the bridegroom again and began another
wonder. That is Connie's husband. That is my brother-in-law. They are
married. They will share the same house, the same room. She will see
him always, at breakfast, at dinner, when they get up in the morning.
His relations are my relations. Connie is going to live at his
father's house. Connie, Connie, who used to play in the day nursery
at weddings, with a lace curtain over her head.

The bride did not wear a veil now, for this quiet war-wedding was far
more chic. Dorothy Daunt and Peggy Mason, who had secured their young
officers, assisted by six bridesmaids and a military escort were made
to feel hopelessly ostentatious by the aristocratic restraint of the
Hammond wedding. So Connie hid her bright hair beneath a large, white
hat, and her white coat frock of soft silky material spoke the last
word in decorous elegance. Her eyes shone with excitement, and she
held her head high with reckless pride.

"She's almost beautiful," thought Muriel, and was dazed by the wonder
of it all. For two days before, Connie had broken down again, and
declared that whatever happened she could not go through with it. Mr.
Hammond had said gruffly, "Look here, Rachel, had we better chuck
it? I'll do something for the kid." But Mrs. Hammond had persisted,
declaring that it was too late to withdraw now, when the wedding had
been arranged, and every one would know. Then finally Connie herself
had saved the situation, by crying out that since they'd pushed her
into it she supposed that she'd go on. But if they knew what Thraile
would be like, they hadn't the feelings of a toad, and for God's sake
they weren't to fuss her any more, for she was fed up with it all.

But, after that, she had recovered her spirits. Even during the awful
hour before the car arrived, she had not faltered in her attention
given to gloves and hat and white _suède_ shoes. And now she looked as
though she had just gained her heart's desire in the rather pale, dark
young man who kept looking sheepishly askance at his newly acquired
father-in-law, as upon one who had bought, at the price of paying off
the Todds' long-standing debts, the honesty of his erring daughter.

They stood waiting for something, the bride, the bridegroom, the
Hammonds, the best man--a vaguely non-committal cousin of the Todds
selected after much diligent searching by Mrs. Hammond, and imposed
upon the now thoroughly intimidated Ben without compunction--Aunt
Rose, Aunt Beatrice and half a dozen Bennet relatives.

"Well, Ben," smiled Mrs. Hammond tremulously, "aren't you going to do
your duty?"

He blushed. He hesitated. Then he turned and kissed Connie with clumsy
awkwardness that knocked her hat aside. While she straightened it, he
kissed Mrs. Hammond, and came in her turn to Muriel. It was as he bent
above her, very lanky and tall and smelling of the earth and leather
and warm black clothes, that suddenly she doubted.

Had they been right to force Connie into this? What had they done?
This terrible young man! But even then it was Connie again who
reassured her.

"Come on, Ben. Stop kissing Muriel. You know she isn't used to it.
Pull up your socks, old man. We've got to face them!" She seized his
arm and started almost at a run down the long aisle. They followed
her, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, Muriel and the strange young man, the trail
of relatives behind.

Tum, tum, terum--tum, tum--tum! triumphed the organ. A sea of bobbing
faces greeted the procession, pallid in the dimness of the church. The
scent from Muriel's bouquet of pink carnations choked her. The organ
shook and quivered in its ecstasy. She saw Connie's white dress gleam
before her. She felt a curious sensation of unreality, as though her
mind were quite detached from her body, and she were looking down upon
Muriel Hammond's saxe blue dress, upon her flower-crowned hat, and the
rocking sea of the congregation. Suppose that this had been her own
wedding--hers and Godfrey's? The young man at her side grew taller;
his pleasantly mediocre profile hardened and straightened into
Godfrey's features as she had last seen them, the straight fine
nose, the splendid sweep of his dark eyebrows, the curve of his
too-handsome, rather obstinate mouth, his firm chin uptilted against
the dark pillar of the aisle.

People were shaking hands at the church door, crowds and crowds of
them. Connie, laughing and blushing, was thanking them for their good
wishes so volubly that nobody noticed the bridegroom's silence. Even
if he had spoken, so many quite eligible young men in Marshington
talked with Yorkshire accents that nobody would notice how common
Ben's voice sounded. Here was Lady Grainger smiling down at them, and
Lady Grainger's kind, guileless face, and her pleasant voice saying,
"Well, Mrs. Todd, when I first made your acquaintance so short a time
ago, I hardly thought that to-day I should come to your wedding." Mrs.
Hammond replied laughingly, "Wasn't she a sight that night? Coming
into the drawing-room all muddy! I was ashamed of her."

Really, thought Muriel, is Mother just being wonderful, or does she
really feel quite happy? But she knew that Mrs. Marshall Gurney's
presence luring Lady Grainger's little speech had helped Mrs. Hammond
over a difficult place.

Little Miss Dale, being as usual unable to make her presence felt at
the centre of interest, pushed her way to Muriel's side.

"A charming wedding," she said tearfully. Nobody knew whether Miss
Dale always wept at weddings out of sympathy for the bride or sorrow
for her single state. But she always went, and she always wept. "I
love a wedding," she continued, "And _how_ sweet Connie looks! and
positively everybody here. The Graingers of course, and I am sure that
Mrs. Neale would have been if it had not been for her sad news."

"Her news? What news?"

"Oh, well." Miss Dale hesitated, darting quick, bird-like glances
at Muriel and the bride. "I wish that I hadn't mentioned it--at a
wedding. We must think of bright things. Happy the bride that the sun
shines on, and of all such good things. The sun _is_ shining. Dear
Connie. A nice young man, I expect. Younger than she is, surely? But
I thought that you would be sure to have heard."

"No. We've been rather absorbed by our own affairs for the last few
weeks, I am afraid." Then, with sharpening anxiety, "Not about--her
son?" She could not say his name.

"Poor Godfrey. Yes, poor Godfrey. We only heard last night over the
telephone. Mrs. Marshall Gurney rang up about the nursing fund, and
then . . ."

The crowd moved forward. In another minute Miss Dale might be swept
away and Muriel would not know. She stretched out her hand and caught
at the little woman's sleeve.

"You said--you were saying--Mrs. Neale had heard . . ." Her heart
cried, "Tell me, tell me," yet she did not want to know.

"Poor Godfrey---- She had a telegram from the War Office---- Reported
wounded and prisoner of war. Of course reports are not always true. As
I said to my sister Maud . . . you know, she was _so_ sorry that she
could not come to-day," and Miss Dale proceeded to describe all that
Muriel had known for weeks past about her sister Maud's sciatica.

But Muriel did not hear. She was picking at the silver paper round her
pink carnations while she fought for self-control. She saw all sorts
of irrelevant, meaningless things, her father's broad, black back,
the frightened pertness of the bow in Miss Dale's hat, Mrs. Marshall
Gurney's flowing scarves and veils. Part of her mind recalled the
stale Marshington joke that Mrs. Marshall Gurney wore as many veils as
a widow because she had forgotten her husband's existence long ago.
The other part remembered as though she herself had seen them, the
horrors that she dreamed of at the front. She saw again pictures drawn
by the too graphic pencil of a war-artist. She saw the wooden face of
an old woman in a lamp-lit shop, who said, "War's bloody hell, ah'm
telling you, bloody hell." She saw Godfrey's splendid body torn and
broken, his handsome face distorted out of its complacency, his
smiling eyes looking straight into despair.

She supposed that she must have followed her sister out into the
sunlit churchyard, where fallen chestnut leaves spread a carpet of
mottled gold and green before the bride. She supposed that people must
have thrown confetti at her, for afterwards she shook it from her hat
and it lay on her bedroom carpet like the fallen petals of pink and
white may. She must have sat through the long luncheon party, and have
helped Connie into her brown travelling dress, and have talked to
Uncle George and Aunt Rose, and the long-legged cousin, Adeline, from
Market Burton, who would stay until the evening train.

Only when she had helped to tidy the abandoned luncheon table, and
helped Annie to pack in their tissue paper the rose bowls and silver
inkstands destined incongruously for the High Farm, Thraile, horror
and desolation overcame her. Perhaps the act of packing away Connie's
presents reminded her of that evening at Scarborough when she had
packed her mother's trunk, and Godfrey found her. Perhaps, all the
time since Miss Dale spoke to her, her imagination had been feeding
upon horrors. But suddenly she put down the painted blotter that she
was holding, and fled from the room. The house was full of borrowed
maids, and aunts and stray acquaintances. She rushed to the only sure
retreat and locked the bathroom door behind her. Flinging herself down
beside the towel rail, she stifled her sobs in the rough softness of
her father's bath towels.

"Oh, Godfrey, Godfrey!" she moaned. "Oh, poor Godfrey. He mustn't be
hurt. He mustn't." Her own body writhed as with acute physical pain.
She could feel the agony of his wounds. They tore her without mercy.

The light of motor lamps in the yard shone through the uncurtained
window on to her small, shaking body and the bowed darkness of her
head. Her lips moved.

"Oh, God, don't take him out of the world, don't let him die. Even if
he has to marry Clare. Make him come back. Come back to me, some day."
She remembered one dreadful night, soon after Martin Elliott's
death, when she had wished Godfrey dead too, in a storm of jealous
bitterness. She felt herself a murderess.

"Don't let him die. Don't let him die!" Her hands tore at the thick
towels. Her imagination, beyond all control, tortured her with his
pain. She had heard tales of prison camps. . . .

"Muriel, Muriel," called her mother's voice. "Where are you, dear?
Come and help me to forward these telegrams to Connie."

With her hand to her mouth, choking the little sobs that broke from
time to time, she stared round the room like a trapped creature. The
wan light from the yard gleamed on the enamel bath, the metal rails,
the polished taps.

"Muriel! Muriel!"

The house claimed her. She was bound to its routine as to a wheel. It
would not stop, wherever Godfrey lay, his broken body nursed by alien
hands.

"Come along, dear."

Slowly, as in a dream, she rose and turned the key.




                                XXVIII


The wind shrieked through the cutting and dashed itself against the
crawling train. Up and up the steep curve of the gradient panted the
blunt-nosed engine. Pushing forward slowly, it flung two streamers of
fiery smoke out for the swooping hurricane to snatch and tear to
ribbons. From the carriage window Muriel could see blank walls of grey
rank grass, scarred by rough boulders and disfigured here and there by
the blackened skeletons of burnt-out gorse. Once or twice a wheeling
sea-bird with strong, outstretched wings swept across the sky, and
twice since Aunby Station the embankment had dipped, revealing the
huge desolation of the moor beyond. Only once she had seen through a
gash in the hill-side the dark tumbling water of the wintry sea,
whirled into patches of white foam and driven ruthlessly against the
broken cliff.

She consulted again the map on the other side of the railway carriage,
flanked by pictures of Whitby Abbey and Scarshaven shore. She could
trace there the railway straggling up the coast past Scarshaven, Aunby
and Flying-fall, before it branched inland again to Follerwick. Only
one more station separated her from Connie. It was surprising how
little Muriel had thought about her for the past four months. The
news of Godfrey's disaster had wiped her sister as completely from
her mind as a sponge erases writing from a slate, and even the later
information that the disaster was less terrible than she had feared
had not so much recalled the Thraile family to Muriel as it had
recalled Muriel to Marshington. Mrs. Neale had heard of Godfrey. His
wound was a slight one, and the worst consequence of his prison life
seemed to be an exasperating but tolerably safe boredom which at least
might save his life until the end of the war. That was a vast relief.
It had enabled Muriel to face with greater equanimity the post-girl's
rap at the door, and the soft flutter of letters into their wire cage;
but at the time when Muriel heard it she was racked by another anxiety
that engrossed her mind and body. Mrs. Hammond had caught influenza.
She began with it one morning early in November and continued to have
it badly for about six weeks. "She has got thoroughly run down--seems
to have been worrying. You ought to take care of her, you know," said
Dr. Parker; and Muriel, who considered that she had done nothing else
for the past twelve years, thought this a little hard. Nor was Mrs.
Hammond easy to nurse. When Muriel brought her Benger's food, she
wanted Bovril, and when Muriel brought her Bovril, then she didn't
think that she really could eat anything just then. For three
weeks Muriel nursed her night and day, sleeping in her father's
dressing-room, or rather lying there in drowsy apprehension waiting
for her mother's call.

And now she was better, and Christmas was over, and Muriel was being
carried in the train to Thraile. Connie had responded to her offer
without enthusiasm, she thought; but Connie's letters never were
particularly indicative of her feelings. Her handwriting did not adapt
itself to lucid analysis. Yet a secret apprehension drew Muriel from
Marshington into this bleak country where everything was just a little
sinister, and therefore where anything might happen.

The rain rattled now against the window. It flooded out the landscape,
leaving for Muriel's eyes only a blurred line of horizon and for her
ears the howling of the wind. Sound rather than sight gave to Muriel
her first impression of the Follerwick moors.

The train came to a standstill with a grinding scream of brakes.
Muriel pulled her suit-case from the rack, buttoned her fur collar
more tightly, and wrestled with the door. The wind caught it from her
and almost hurled her out on to the platform. She staggered out into
the driving rain. For a moment she stood bewildered, facing a short
stretch of wooden platform, a deserted shelter, and the grim pile of
the moors beyond, hill after hill shouldering up into a melting sky.

The wind flung itself upon her like a fury and almost tore her
suit-case from her hand.

Then, just when she was beginning to wonder whether this could
possibly be a station, Connie bore down upon her; Connie wrapped in a
great man's mackintosh, her dripping arms outstretched, her cheeks wet
and her eyes shining through the rain.

"Oh, here you are! Good old Mu! By Jove, it's good to see you!"

She enfolded Muriel with a damp but unequivocal embrace.

"Oh, Connie," shouted Muriel reproachfully; she had to shout because
of the wind and the rain. "You shouldn't have come. This awful day!"

Connie laughed, and Muriel was glad of her laugh. It seemed to loosen
the tight feeling of doubt and fear that ever since her father's
illness had bound her chest uncomfortably.

"This? Oh, this is nothing! My dear, we didn't know what weather was
at Marshington. That your bag? Come on."

On the road outside the station stood a high-wheeled, springless
vehicle known, possibly on account of its cumbrous heaviness, as a
"light cart." A red-nosed youth in oilskins held the reins of a very
old, yellowish horse that stood dejectedly, its tail between its lean
legs, and its back hunched against the blinding storm.

They climbed into the cart and Muriel wondered how ever Connie could
endure the constant jolting as the wheels jarred over stones, jerked
in and out of ruts, and set the cart rocking like a ship on a rough
sea. Wind and rain prevented any attempt at conversation. Muriel,
sitting sideways behind the driver, could see Connie's profile, her
eyes, swollen with wind or tears, the sullen misery of her mouth. She
turned away, sorely troubled, but there was nothing else to look at.
Grey curtains of rain shut down the travellers. They seemed to be
isolated from all life or colour. Marshington and the warm comfort
of their mother's drawing-room was in a far-off world. It seemed
impossible that the journey would end at another house, where there
would be fires and tea and dry clothes to wear.

The thick black waterproof rug across Muriel's knees grew heavy with
rain. She found that she had been sitting with her hands in a pool of
water. Timidly she shook it off her knee, and watched it run away
through the cracks in the bottom of the cart.

They had been driving for years and years, while Muriel's courage
fluctuated between fear of the unknown and gladness that a change had
come at last into the monotony of life. Slowly the second feeling
conquered the first. This was Thraile. Connie was here and unhappy.
Something had to be done and if possible done by Muriel. She lifted
her chin obstinately, determined that no fear should shake her
purpose, though what she had to do or how to do it were equally
unknown to her. Her imagination already raised her to unfounded
ecstasies, and through the rain her eyes shone as in her mind she
sang Bunyan's hymn:

        "Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
         Shall daunt his spirit . . .
         There's no discouragement
         Shall make him once relent
         If he do but consent
               To be a pilgrim."

The driver unfastened a gate and led the cart along a rough field road
bordered on one side by a broken wall of piled grey stones. At the top
of a steep incline another wall enclosed a narrow strip of mud, and
tangled, stunted bushes known as the garden. Beyond it, facing
westward across the moors, stood the High Farm. Stark bare to all
winds that blew were its grey walls. Five narrow windows above and
four below stared blankly at the winding road, like eyes without
eyebrows. A few farm buildings huddled to the south and crept behind
the shelter of the hill, but the house stood square to the wild wind
and the wild sky and the waiting menace of the moor.

"Is--is this Thraile?" Muriel faltered.

Connie smiled at her, a queer light smile of pride, of fear, of
challenge.

"Yes, this is Thraile all right. The High Farm--Muriel. Muriel--the
High Farm. Now you are properly introduced. And very nice too, I
_don't_ think!"

The wind caught her laugh and snatched it away, as it had caught the
smoke of the ascending engine.




                                 XXIX


Mrs. Todd drew her pie from the oven and sniffed it appreciatively.
Its billowing crust was slowly ripening to the rich gold of maturity.
Its savoury smell satisfied her. She replaced it, shut the oven door
with meticulous care and rose stiffly to her feet, her corsets
creaking as she moved. She began to grumble aloud cheerfully:

"All I can say is--if Miss Muriel can't eat a bit of good pie like
that, she can go without. Good meat houses there is, and bad 'uns
there is, and no one can say that Meggie Todd's near wi' her lads,
nor lasses neither, though I'm fair sick o' these Hammonds. What wi'
Mr. Hammond trampin' round like a mad elephant an' Mrs. H. mewing
round like a sick cat, you might ha' thought Ben had murdered their
lass instead o' marrying her."

She clapped a dish of bacon on to the long table and whisked her oven
cloth on to a nail beside the stove, for she did nothing without
enormous vigour.

"A fat lot o' use it is, me havin' Connie front ways if she's not
going to give a hand wi' t'work, but s'always gadding round after her
fine relations. Ah suppose William 'ud tell me that the wife's kin are
a scourge sent from God for t'original sin o' t'husband," and she
tossed the head that had once been the pertest in Follerwick. But she
was not William, nor did she really dislike Connie as much as her
words implied; but she found in these monologues of indictment an
outlet for the accumulated irritation of reproaches born without
resentment. She contemplated the clean white cloth on the table,
straightened a couple of dishes on the dresser, then flew towards the
yard door and the coal-house, murmuring as a parting message to the
kitchen, "I'm sure the Lord made relations-in-law to square up for
them as can't get married."

She had, indeed, good reason to see in relations-in-law a doubtful
blessing. As Meggie Megson, the bright-eyed daughter of a Follerwick
publican, she had been wooed with greater enthusiasm than discretion
by William Todd of Thraile. A hasty marriage ensured the legitimate
birth of her eldest son, Matthew, but did not quiet the uneasy
conscience of her lover. For a year of bitter recrimination alternating
with reckless passion, he had lived with her as her husband, but
before her second son, Benjamin was born, the Lord took vengeance
upon the wickedness of William. A false step while manœuvring the
thrashing-machine robbed the wild young Todd of his left leg, and so
much injured his spine that he lay now always on a couch in the front
parlour, contemplating the inexorable justice of God and the unending
pageant of the sky from the west window. William Todd did not so much
find religion as religion found him, the sunless, menacing religion of
a tramping preacher, part Calvinist, part Wesleyan; a religion wherein
strange anomalies of predestination strove with a Pauline emphasis
upon justification by faith, without which, in spite of the admonition
of St. James, works were dead. Meggie accepted her husband's religion
as she had accepted his love. Finding herself regarded as an
enticement sent from the devil, she listened with patience to the
outpourings of St. James, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am
tempted of God . . . but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away
by his own lust and enticed. Then the Lust, when it hath conceived,
beareth sin, and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth
death." But she endured with less tranquility the continual assurance
that from her sons, Matthew and Benjamin, such sin and death should
come. Since, however, things were as they were, she proceeded to her
cooking, scrubbing, baking and nursing with undiminished vigour,
comforted, perhaps, by the thought that if her husband despised her
only less than he despised his children at least he could not do
without her.

William's mother unfortunately also tended to regard her son's
accident as something in the nature of divine retribution, not for
compromising a publican's daughter, but for marrying her; and when it
became known that Ben, the weakling, the awkward boy whom every one
conspired to brand as "wanting," had got Connie, the land-girl,
into trouble, then the fierce scene of personal remorse, impotent
bitterness and denunciation had been visited, not so much upon Connie,
as upon Mrs. Meggie, since she was clearly the root of all evil at the
High Farm. Yet, after Connie had returned to the High Farm as Ben's
wife, it was Mrs. Meggie who continued to make her new life bearable.
To tell the truth, Mrs. Meggie was secretly glad that Ben had married
under any circumstances. Between the grim couple of invalids in the
front parlour and the boisterous conviviality of farm workers in the
kitchen, she had been unconsciously numbed with loneliness, and the
prospect of a daughter-in-law pleased her gregarious temperament. Then
too, she was glad that Ben, whom his father and brother despised for
lack of virility, should have been the first to marry after all.

As she bustled from the stone-paved yard this evening, and called up
the long passage, her heart, though she hardly knew it, was softened
to the thought of her Ben's little child.

"Polly, Alice, Gert, come on some of you. Give me a hand wi' t'table,
now."

From the draughty darkness came a gust of song and laughter.

        "Who, who, who, who, who were you with last night?
         'Twasn't your sister, 'twasn't your ma!
         Ah, ah, ah, ah, a--ah, ah! ah!"

The voices rose to a shrill crescendo, accompanied by the screeching
gasps of Bob Wither's concertina, and the tramp of nailed boots on the
floor.

Mrs. Todd opened the door of the back room, releasing a flood of
lamplight and tumultuous clamour.

"Come on, you lazy good-for-nowts. Put down yon thing, for goodness'
sake, Bob. Alice, where's Gert? Feeding pigs this time o' day? What,
how often did I tell you that ye'll never make a farmer by gettin' up
to feed stock ower' nights? Be off now, some on ye, to see if light
cart's come yet. Hurry and get gone, then you'll get back."

They scattered under her genial despotism.

"I'll help, Ma. Where's forks?"

The kitchen rang to the clatter of pots, of tongues and the shouted
refrain of their song, "Who were you with last night?"

Thus Muriel, who had clambered down stiffly from the dog-cart, and
dragged her suit-case along the unlighted corridor, came suddenly upon
a scene of firelit tumult and huge gaiety. Connie pushed open the
kitchen door and marched in. The noise stopped. Every one looked at
the new-comers.

"Well I never! If you're not here already and no one ever heard you!
Connie, did Sam go to loose out for you? So this is Muriel? My, aren't
you wet! You're not as big as your sister, are you? Take after your
mother likely. Here, Mat, where are your manners? Dolly, Alice!"

"Pleased to meet you," said Dolly pertly.

Alice set a saucer cheese-cake on the table, nodded at Muriel, and
took from her pocket a bundle of crochet that never left her. Some
women take to crochet as others do to cigarettes. Alice, flicking at
hers with unsteady fingers, was hiding herself from any possible
embarrassment. Her thin face bent above her work.

"Where's Ben?" asked Connie abruptly.

"Didn't he come to help you down? There now! Well, he must be up in
fold yard. You'd better go and get your wet things off. Go on. Take
her up, Connie. Polly go and help carry Muriel's bag. Connie, get a
dry pair o' stockings on for Heaven's sake. We can't have you catching
cold, at all events." This with an uncontrollable wink at Muriel.

"When did Ben go out?" asked Connie stubbornly, ignoring her
mother-in-law's injunctions.

"I don't know. When did he go, Mat?"

"Half an hour. He went to help Sam." Alice the land girl raised her
face for a minute from her crochet to give her information, then
thrust it down again. It was a thin, freckled face, with long fair
lashes and a sharp up-tilted chin. Muriel found herself standing and
facing Alice, while the rain dripped from her coat on to the white
scoured floor.

"Go along with you now, messing up my floor!" cried Mrs. Todd, and
shooed them vigorously from the kitchen.

"Well," remarked Connie, as they stood together at last in the large
square room to which she had brought Muriel. "And what do you think of
it all?"

Muriel looked round the bare walls, papered with a grotesquely
botanical pattern and texts on strips of cardboard. The wind blew the
texts backwards and forwards against the wall. It drove the lace
window-curtains out into the room, and sent the carpet rippling in
long waves across the floor. Through the window she could see nothing
but a veil of twilight rain.

"How can I say what I think of it till I've seen some more?" she
temporized, pulling off her wet coat and pushing the hair out of her
eyes. "It's all frightfully different from what I expected. The front
of the house is so grim, and yet, when you come to the back and see
all those jolly people---- They seem to enjoy life, Connie. And then
Mrs. Todd. She may be a bit of a Tartar, but I like her eyes. And
then, there's Ben's father, and old Mrs. Todd, aren't there?"

Connie laughed bitterly, "Oh yes. There's my respected father-in-law
_and_ old Mrs. Todd. I wonder if you'll like _her_ eyes?"

"Why not? Oh, Connie, you ought to take your wet things off. Now, at
once."

"I'm all right." Connie pulled off her oilskin and felt the sleeve of
her woollen coat below. "I'm quite dry." But she sat down on the bed
and began to unlace her boots.

"Why shouldn't I like old Mrs. Todd's eyes?" persisted Muriel.

"Oh, she gets on my nerves. She sits in her chair in that awful little
room and looks and looks and looks. She looks right through you,
Muriel. She sees just everything. All the things you ever thought or
did or--anything.

"They say she's got the 'sight'--you know, second sight. I think
she's just uncanny. And she's so frightfully old, you know. Not like
a person at all--like a tree, all twisted. And then she's always
nibbling things, little bits of biscuit and soft sweets and things.
Like a mouse. And then her bright eyes. Ugh!"

"But then, do you see her much?"

"No, thanks! I keep out of her way. But she sees me. She never misses
anything. Oh, dear me, no! and she knows all about--all about Ben and
me. It's awful, Mu. Sometimes I think I'll have to kill her or run
away or something."

"How do you mean? She knows all about Ben and you? Every one here
does, don't they?" said Muriel slowly. She had understood from Mr.
and Mrs. Hammond that the Todds had accepted Connie's position as
regrettable but without alternative.

"Oh, yes, in a way they know. The girls don't exactly, but they
suspect. Mu, it's awful. We used to have such jolly times, singing in
the back room and going off to concerts at Follerwick camp, and all
that. Now it's awful. I'm out of it all. They hardly talk to me, and
we all used to laugh at Ben, and they don't know what to make of it.
And old Mrs. Todd hates me, and the old man's mad. He's got religious
mania or something and he's quite potty. Mrs. Meggie's all right, but
nobody cares much what she says except Ben, and he's still more scared
of his father." Connie's bootlaces dropped from her hands and she sat
forward, huddled on the edge of the bed, staring at her sister.

"I don't see that they have any right to hate you," cried Muriel
hotly. "After all--it was their precious son--who----"

Connie's blue, miserable eyes darted a quick glance at her sister's
face, then dropped again to her boots.

"Oh, yes, I know, but you could hardly expect them to remember that."

She kicked off her boots and sat with her feet in their black woollen
stockings swinging from the bed.

"Every one hates me," she said miserably. "Mr. Todd thinks I'm a
judgment from hell fire or something, because he was a bit wild when
he was young. And Alice--well, to tell the truth, I think that Alice
was in love with Ben and she'll get her knife into me whenever she
can. She's as jealous as anything. And Mrs. Todd's a bit queer because
she's so fond of Ben and is afraid I shan't make him happy. She knows
I'm going to get him away from this place too as soon as the war's
over and we can get a farm. Oh, it's no picnic I can tell you."

Muriel was apparently engaged upon fastening the front of her
velveteen dress. Really she was thinking about Connie. "I mustn't be
sentimental. Connie evidently pities herself quite enough. She's not
really displeased because Alice is jealous. And Mrs. Todd is kind, I'm
sure. Mother said I hadn't to let her harrow my feelings. Connie
always did make the most of her own sufferings." She fastened a press
hook below the brown fur edging of her dress and asked quite casually:

"But Ben, of course he stands up for you?"

"Oh, Ben would be all right. But he's frightened of his father, and
Alice worries him, and it's rotten living on here in this house. You
never get away from them all for a minute, and tea's the worst. They
all sit there round that big table and they eat and eat. And I've got
to sit there and feel that they're looking at me and thinking things,
an' nudging each other if I've got a headache. And then they all go
giggling and carrying on in the back room and I've got to sit about
with Mrs. Meggie. And I can't go into the farm because it's such hard
work, and it's such beastly weather. And you never see anyone. Oh, I'm
so bored and bored and bored!"

"It'll be better when the baby's come. You'll have lots to do then."

"I don't know. Sometimes I just get scared. I wish I was going home to
have it. It's awful here. Ben gets fed up with me because I'm not so
jolly as I used to be. He doesn't say anything, but I know. Why didn't
he come and meet us to-night, I'd like to know? Oh, they just treat
me here as if I was dirt. They think it's an honour for me to have
married into their beastly family. The Todds! who live in the kitchen,
and Mrs. Meggie was a barmaid, and--well, look at this room! You see
what they're like."

"I don't. I haven't seen them all yet. I haven't even seen Mr. Todd."

"Oh, he's mad. He's gone quite potty. He reads the Bible all day and
talks like a lunatic. Ben says he's not so frightfully poor really.
They've done badly since his accident and all that, but he's got a lot
of land. There's a little farm over at Fallowdale that's let out to
tenants. If he'd let Ben and me go there----"

She leant forward, biting her nails, a singularly unattractive figure
in her sagging skirt and the old crimson jersey that she had worn at
Marshington. Muriel deliberately went to her case and drew out a clean
handkerchief from her lavender-scented satchel. Part of her mind was
conscious of a satisfactory contrast between her own trim orderliness
and Connie's abandoned self-commiseration. Part of her thoughts were
dazed with a sad wonder. Was this the ennobling power of suffering and
tragedy, this nauseating muddle of petty resentment and self-pity?
Wasn't it really rather a waste of time and energy to try to help
people as impossible as Connie?

She stood with her face towards the window, a pucker of thought
between her brows.

Suddenly from the bed came a little cry. "Oh, Mu, Mu! I am so awfully
glad you've come. I know you'll help me. You will help me, won't you?
I've been so beastly miserable!"

Muriel capitulated.

Her position in this household might be most unpleasant, and Connie
might not be an easy person, but at least she had appealed to Muriel.
Somebody wanted her. Somebody needed her.

She returned to the bed and opened her arms wide. Tear-stained but
comforted, Connie tumbled in. They sat there until Mrs. Todd called up
the stairs:

"Come along, girls. Tea's ready."

"Oh, Connie," cried Muriel, "and I've never let you tidy!"

"Oh, Lord, and there's such a song and dance if we're late. For
goodness' sake go down and say I'm coming."

Go down? All alone! into that formidable crowd of quite strange
people? Muriel hesitated. Then the courage of her new resolve returned
to her.

"Oh, well, I suppose I shall have to do harder things than this if I'm
really going to help Connie," she reflected.

With her head high and her eyes shining she felt her way down the
uneven stairs.

The battle of Thraile had begun.




                                  XXX


It was not going to be easy, but then Muriel was not quite sure that
she wanted ease. She found herself at last comforted by a situation
that demanded from her action, prompt action. That was what she found
so terribly difficult, the action on her own initiative. Thraile was
alarmingly different from Marshington, where nearly all judgments
could be obtained ready-made from social conventions or from Mrs.
Hammond. At Thraile nobody seemed to care what she did except Connie,
and Connie as a councillor was worse than useless, for between moods
of sullen silence, boisterous humour and hysterical despair she had
lost even her very moderate supply of common sense.

For a fortnight Muriel stayed on at Thraile, watching and talking and
thinking, thinking, thinking. She had tramped over the dark moor
before the house; she had wandered down the farm that fell away behind
it, acre after acre of drab stubble and harsh grass land, to the
swirling waters of the Fallow. But whether she trod the sheep-tracks
girdled with frost, or sat in the stuffy parlour listening to the
endless tale of Connie's woe, the same conviction urged her.

She would have to speak to William Todd.

Last night she had written to her mother:

    You see, the position here for Connie really is intolerable. Mr.
    Todd, the cripple, really rules this house. He loves Matthew; but
    because he considers him to have been "born in sin" he doesn't
    think it right to love him, and makes up for it by hating Ben, who
    has always been rather weak and sickly. Or else he just pretends
    to hate him, and really loves them both. I cannot say, for he is a
    queer man. Every one is terrified of him, though the girls think
    that he's quite mad. Anyway the point is that Ben and Connie are
    unhappy here and ought to get away. The farm girls suspect things
    and make jokes about Connie. Mr. Todd and Matthew both bully Ben.
    Ben and Connie are never alone together for a minute except at
    night. They are getting frightfully self-conscious and always
    under a sort of restraint which must be bad for them. Mr. Todd has
    a little farm at Fallowdale, quite a nice little house, which he
    was going to give to the first son that married. Now he says that
    Ben can't be trusted away from him at Thraile. I am sure that if
    Ben and Connie could get away together, they would be happy. Ben
    really seems to be very fond of her. I am going to speak to Mr.
    Todd myself, but, if he won't listen, I do wish that you or Father
    could do something. And couldn't we take Connie into a nursing
    home for when the baby comes? It's not that they are unkind to her
    here, and they make her as comfortable as they can, and she need
    do no housework unless she likes. It's only that they ought not to
    be here with all these people.

    I am so sorry about your cold and father's indigestion, and I
    quite understand how busy you are about the luncheon party. I
    would come home and help you with it, but I really don't feel that
    I can leave here just yet, please, if you can do without me. If
    Mrs. Cartwright worries you about the Jumble Sale again, do tell
    her that Mr. Vaughan specially told me that we could not have
    the Parish Room until February 14th because of the Red Cross
    Exhibition. It is very nice of you to say you miss me, and you do
    understand why I'm staying on, don't you?

    Please give my love to Father.
                                             Your loving daughter,
                                                               MURIEL.

    P.S.--Can't you get Aunt Beatrice for the luncheon?

She simply could not help writing her letter. It was the nearest
approach that she could make to asking for the advice that she so
sorely needed. It brought her into touch with homely and familiar
things before she plunged irrevocably into the deep waters of her
own decision.

She had sat wrapped up in her thick grey cloth coat in the bare
chilliness of her bedroom, reading and re-reading the neat, small
handwriting that always looked as though it might be going to say
something interesting and that never did. She felt about it as
soldiers feel about letters written on the eve of an advance. From a
strange place she stretched out her hands to grasp, perhaps for the
last time, at the safety of the known world.

But she had not posted the letter. Re-read in the cold light of early
morning criticism, she had decided that it promised more than her
feeble courage might perform. A scrupulous mental honesty had made her
recognize her weakness long ago. "I am going to speak to Mr. Todd,"
she wrote, but nobody should read the words till she had spoken.

All the same, the last letter from Mrs. Hammond, one of a resigned but
plaintive series, had to be answered. That was just as well, for it
set a limit at last to Muriel's procrastination. The postman came to
Thraile at six o'clock, leaving the letters and taking away with him
any written by the household. If Muriel could only end that awful
interview before six, she still might post her letter to her mother.

On paper it had seemed so simple; but then on paper and to Mrs.
Hammond it would have been impossible to do justice to the atmosphere
of Thraile. Those were two terrible people, sitting in the small front
parlour; the old lady mumbling and rustling from the arm-chair by the
fire, whose bright unseeing eyes could yet see everything; the cripple
lying stretched before the window, his fiery spirit slowly burning
through his mutilated body, until it seemed that it must quite consume
all that was mortal and regain the liberty it proudly craved.

It was all very well pretending that she did not mind. For nearly an
hour that afternoon, Muriel had walked along the steep moor road with
Connie, listening to the angry emphasis of her reiterated words. To
comfort her, Muriel had said, "All right, I'll speak to him." She did
not add that for nights now she had dreamed of the approaching
interview, had seen herself standing in the bright stuffiness of
that over-heated room, confronting the fierce relentlessness of
those piercing eyes, feeling her own gentleness driven away in
blind surrender out into the whirling darkness of the passage. And
supposing that she made things worse? Supposing that he resented her
interference? That he himself had been thinking of sending Ben to
Fallowdale, but perversely changed his mind at Muriel's blundering
suggestion?

Standing in the corridor she pressed her thin hands against her
face. As though she could feel through the door the repulsion
of his violence, she shrank against the wall. His fierce tongue
probed her softness; his strength had outraged her submission; his
independence, exaggerated almost to insanity, bruised and bewildered
her well-tutored mind. "He's mad. He's mad," she thought. "Better not
go at all than break down in the middle."

From inside the parlour the cuckoo-clock piped suddenly five hollow
notes. "Five o'clock. If I mean to post that letter I must go in
now--now."

She went forward and tapped at the door.

She had been in before several times with Mrs. Todd, but always had
retreated as soon as courtesy made possible. Never before had she been
in alone.

The room now seemed to float in liquid firelight. Upborne upon the
flickering flood she could see here a jar of delicate gilt and
ivory beneath a fiery glass bubble; there the corner of a polished
picture-frame; a wool worked footstool, the basket of sewing that Mrs.
Meggie had left on the table. Slowly the quivering movement steadied
before her eyes, and from the dancing shadows the solid bulk of old
Mrs. Todd's chair rose like an island, and there by the window she saw
William Todd.

He lay as usual gazing out across the moor, his hawk-like profile
outlined against the melting silver of the wintry sun that flowed
between dark banks of hill and sky. All the Todds had sharp features
and noses hooked almost to a deformity, but sickness had emaciated a
naturally lean face, until William Todd was terrible enough to see.

Muriel closed the door very quietly, and went across to the couch in
the window. Even when she stood beside him, he did not seem to see
her, but lay as still as the furniture or the dark moor. The room was
silent. Only the light flames rustled like the restless wings of a
bird imprisoned in the hearth and the old woman nibbled and mumbled in
her sleep. Far, far away from Marshington was this firelit parlour.
Muriel spoke timidly.

"Please, Mr. Todd, can I speak to you a minute?"

"Evidently. You see that. Ah cannot get away."

A certain broadening of the vowels betrayed William Todd's county, but
he spoke with a readiness unusual among the tongue-tied farmers of the
Riding, and possessed a command of language won from long reading of
the Bible, dog-eared theological tracts, and a surprising quantity of
the more easily acquired English classics.

"I wanted to talk to you about Connie," Muriel continued. "You know
that when--when she had--to--to----"

"To marry my son to save her own name from the disgrace that justly
followed her own action. Well?"

This was not a promising beginning, but at least it seemed to Muriel,
that, considering his own record, he was being a little unfair.

"Well," she said, more hotly than she had intended. "I don't see
myself that it was such an awful thing to do. After all, many people
don't even marry."

"Because the many have sinned, does that excuse the guilt of one? I
think not."

This was dangerous ground. Muriel shifted her position. It was too
late now for retreat. She spoke hastily.

"I didn't come to talk to you about whether Connie sinned or not. I
don't pretend to judge such things. What I do feel is that somebody
ought to tell you that living on here is being frightfully bad for
them. They're never really alone together for a minute. Every one whom
they see and every one where they go reminds them of what they once
did. People laugh and sneer--and--oh, it's terrible. You can't see it
of course, or you'd have known, I'm sure, how impossible it is."

"Please go on. This is no doubt very interesting."

"It isn't interesting, Mr. Todd, really. It's horrible. Oh, do let
them go away. Please let them go. You've got a farm at Fallowdale,
haven't you?"

No answer came to her from the shadows. Fearfully she continued:

"Well, why don't you let Ben farm it? Let them go off and live
together, make a fresh start all on their own. I'm sure they could be
happy. Connie loves farming, and they'd have the baby. Oh, I know
you'd find they'd be far happier. Just those two, where they could
forget what a bad start they'd made. It's cruel, it's just cruel to
make that one mistake an ever-living shame to them because other
people smile and sneer and insinuate, people who are probably every
bit as bad but just more careful. How can they be happy like this?"

She stopped, amazed by her own temerity. Beyond the moor the last
silver gleam of sunlight lay like an outstretched sword between the
dark embrace of hill and sky. William Todd lay watching it for a long
time before he moved. Then he said slowly:

"You seem to set great store by happiness."

She was surprised. Eagerly she tried to see his face through the
growing shadows as she said:

"I do, I do. Surely it's the right of people to be happy!"

"Really? To think o' that now! Are you happy?"

"I?" Three months ago she had told herself that she was the most
miserable of frustrated women, but to a stranger she would have
laughed nervously and answered, "I'm all right." Somehow at Thraile
and to this madman, one spoke the truth if possible. She answered
thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. No, I don't think I'm happy. I've never
really had any of the things I wanted most. I've never done anything
I meant to do. I'm a failure, I suppose. Nobody needs me . . ."

"Well?" He cut short the flow of self-revelation, so alien to Muriel's
usual habit. "And do you think that I am happy? or Meggie, my wife? or
my mother there? Do you think that God Himself is happy? What then do
you expect for your sister and my son, eh?"

She could answer this, but her speech came stumblingly.

"But if we see any way to make people happy. . . . They have a right
to all possible happiness. Now if Ben and Connie could go to your farm
at Fallowdale, they might forget--everything, and just be--happy."

"You think that they have a right now to be happy, having sinned. I
tell you, young woman, that I too sinned when I was young, and walked
wildly before the Lord after the lusts o' my own flesh. And I too
thought to cover the wickedness o' my ways from the sight o' men by
asking the Lord's blessing on a union made in hell. But the Lord is
righteous and in Him is no shadow of turning. He laid upon me the
blessing of this judgment. I had desired with the desire of the flesh
for my own lusts, and with the desire of the world for my ambitions.
The Lord took away from me the means of all fulfilment. He laid His
hand upon me, and I lie here while others reap what I have sown. I lie
here while my own sons bring forth the fruits of destruction. The Lord
is just. He gave, and He hath taken away. Blessed be His name."

"I know you've suffered," she cried softly, "but, because you are
unhappy, do you think that you have the right to make them suffer?
After all, it's a tremendous responsibility to undertake the Lord's
judgments without His wisdom. I thought that you were keeping
Fallowdale from Ben because you couldn't afford to let him have a
separate farm, or because you were afraid he couldn't manage it;
but if it's just because you think he ought to suffer as you
suffered. . . ."

"Did I speak o' suffering for myself? You seem to have a queer notion
of the ways o' things. Do you think that I could make your sister
happy if I wanted to, or Ben the godly man I would ha' had him be?
From their own hearts and deeds comes their own misery."

"Yes, but really, Mr. Todd," persisted Muriel desperately. "Really and
truly living here makes it all worse. It's estranging them."

"Their shame estranges them."

"It's making Connie bitter. She's getting to despise Ben because the
girls laugh at him."

"That is part of their punishment."

"It's not. It's not. Why should they be punished? And why should you
do it?" She drew a deep breath and felt as though all winter's storms
passed over her as she said, "It's like a sort of pride to you. You
think that because the Lord punished you in a special way you sinned
some great, particular sin. I don't believe that it was a great sin
and probably your accident was nothing but an accident, and you've
been brooding and brooding until you think that you had a dispensation
of providence specially made for you, so now you are going to make one
for somebody else. I hate your religion or whatever you call it if it
gives you the right to make other people miserable!" She broke off,
suddenly appalled at her own arrogance. This was what people did if
they spoke out of character. They always went too far. Oh, it was this
queer, terrible place that made every one behave unlike themselves! If
Connie had never come to Thraile, nothing would ever have happened,
she was certain.

She stood in the dark room, waiting for him to destroy her.

She had to wait for a long time.

The clock ticked. The fire rustled. From the old woman's chair broke
little snatching sounds of difficult breath. Her asthma was troubling
her in her sleep.

At last Muriel heard the slow voice of William Todd. Again his
gentleness amazed her.

"I rec'lect when I was a lad that I thought I knew pretty well
everything worth knowing. My father went t'chapel and my mother went
to church, and I'd have naught to do with either. So you hate my
religion, eh? Now, I wonder if ye know at all what my religion is?
Mebbe ye think ah've just got a kind o' spite against my son and your
sister and ah justify it by the cloak of righteous disapproval, eh?
That ah've just lain here fashing myself over my own soul and
forgetting the right sense o' the great wisdom o' the children of
this world. Is that it?"

She did not answer because she could not. She had said more than
enough. Her mind was a dry husk, empty, blown before the wind of his
strange spirit.

"Ye'd better sit down. Ah've had to listen to you say your piece. Now
mebbe ye'll listen to me for a bit. You took it upon yourself to hate
my religion. Ah misdoubt if you know what you're talking about." He
paused, as though he sought a difficult word. "There is only one thing
that matters, and that is the vision of the spirit. Men are poor
things at best, but there's one power that dignifies them, and that's
the sight o' something greater than this world. Folk nowadays are apt
to call it truth or Science or whatnot. I call that glory God. We are
born in sin and reared in wantonness, and there are those of us to
whom no light is shown. We worship false gods most of our time. Our
bodies and our pride and the opinion of our fellow men; but to the
Elect there comes a day when they see, though through a glass darkly,
the shadow o' that light."

"Well?" murmured Muriel.

"The Lord has said, 'Thou shalt have none other god but me,' but we
can only worship what we know, and to all men the light is not
vouchsafed, so that they worship false gods thinking them to be the
true. Ah'm telling you, though ye'll forget it, and mebbe ye'll never
understand, that the most precious gift to man is just this vision of
his God. And once he has seen, then he must never rest. I remember
when I was farmin' how always the moors were pressing on these lands.
They never sleep, if we do. Ye may build your walls high, an' weed and
dig, but slowly by night creep up the gorse an' heather, an' who's to
say 'an enemy hath done this'? 'Tis the same wi' vision. Once ye have
seen, there's never sittin' down and waiting for the Lord to come to
you again. All foolishness an' rioting, all chambering an' wantonness
comes in between a man and his own sight. Purity is a matter o' the
spirit you may say, and what is a man's body that he be so mindful of
it? In the body we live, and from the body we die, and a man can give
his body mastery over his immortal soul; but the things o' the body
come like wind and weather between a man and his clear spirit. For it
is hard enough for any man to see the light, and harder yet to keep it
burning clear. And if your light be darkness, then is man robbed of
God. The last betrayal and the ultimate unworthiness is the defilement
of the vision."

He paused, it seemed to be for a long time. Then he said: "I cannot
let it be as though my son had never sinned. Wouldn't it be far easier
for me to say, 'It doesn't matter. It was a little thing'? To say as
you say, 'Well, he married her,' as if it made amends to God to hide
your own wrong from the eyes o' men? I let him marry her, because it
did no good to keep them from each other, and he would. But if my own
son will use his own body as an instrument of pleasure, and thinks
that as long as he gives his name to the child he does no ill, I'll
not be still. If all this happiness you prate of were but the
gratification o' their lusts ah'd say no more. But till he's shamed
to his soul at what he's done, ah will not let him go."

"Oh, but he is ashamed!" she cried, striking her hands together with
the force of her sudden sight. "They are ashamed, but of the wrong
thing. They're ashamed not because they did wrong, but because they
were found out. They must go away from this place to forget that.
Please let them go. You'll see. Talk to Connie if you like. She does
not understand you. Only let them go. If not----"

"Well?"

"I'll have--I'll have--I'll make my father come again and force them
from you."

The man on the couch laughed at her. "Do ye think your father could do
ought about it? While I mean Ben to stay here, here he'll stay. He
married Connie because ah gave him leave. The boy's no man yet, and
he's been living in sin. It must be as the Lord wills, I only wait
upon His guidance."

His voice became suddenly flat with weariness.

"Go now and ask my wife to come to me."

She felt her way to the door and knew that she was defeated. She had
done nothing, less than nothing. What could she do against the fires
that consumed that fierce, relentless cripple? He puzzled her. He
puzzled her. Her father had found him shrewd and grasping, well able
to strike a good bargain. Her mother had found him strange but
interesting, a self-educated man of unusual refinement for his
environment. And she--surely he was sincere? He _felt_ sincere. Yet,
what was one to do for Connie?

She groped her way towards the kitchen door that thrust a bar of light
across the blackness of the passage.

The postman leant against the table, a slab of saucer-custard in his
hand, a mug of tea beside him. She remembered now her letter to her
mother. What use was there to send it? They would never understand.
She delivered her message to Mrs. Todd, and received in return a
letter addressed to
         "Miss Constance Hammond,
                   Miller's Rise,
                             Marshington,"
readdressed to The High Farm, Thraile. The envelope was crushed and
dirty, and bore the foreign service stamp. She carried it to the room
where Connie lay upon her bed, reading a novel.

"Letters?" she asked sleepily.

"One--forwarded from Marshington. That's all." Muriel retreated to her
own room, sick and weary with defeat. She had done nothing, nothing.
She had helped neither Connie nor herself. She felt that she hated
William Todd.




                                 XXXI


Connie did not come downstairs at tea-time.

"She'll be tidying herself after lying down," said Muriel.

"She'll be crying over a letter from an old sweetheart," laughed
Dolly.

Matthew winked at his brother. "There, Ben, lad, off ye go and see
what's up wi' your wife. You'll have t'keep an eye on her letters now.
Connie always was one for the lads. No followers!"

"Shame on you, Mat. Give over now," soothed Mrs. Meggie, pouring out
the tea from a great brown pot. "You'll be bringing home a wife
yourself one of these days, and then you'll laugh with the other side
of your face. Well, Muriel, since you're the greatest stranger, bacon,
cake or ham?"

Muriel gazed at the characteristic profusion. She was thinking of
William Todd and the terrifying strangeness of the front parlour.

"Ham, please--a very little," she said.

"Muriel's lost her appetite because she hasn't had a letter too,"
jeered Dolly.

Alice said nothing. She lifted her heavy-lidded eyes to Ben's red face
and sat watching him. Ben bent his head above his cup, drinking great
gulps of tea.

"I found an old ewe on her back i' forty acre," he remarked to change
the subject.

"Not one o' the cross-breds?" asked Mat with interest.

"Or was it our old friend Agatha?" interposed Gertie.

"Agatha? Who was Agatha?" asked Muriel. Her head ached and she
wondered why Connie did not come downstairs, but she knew that
tea-time at Thraile was a convivial meal and that "moping" was against
the rules.

Dolly explained to her with avidity. "Last spring at Follerwick Camp
an old bird called Agatha Anderson brought a concert affair down to
give improving music to the fellows. You never saw such an old geezer!
She had sort of woolly white curls round a long solemn face, just like
a sheep. Well, one night Connie was coming back from Follerwick and
right halfway across the moors she heard a sheep bleating, for all the
world just like old Agatha. It had got strayed and hurt its leg, and
was sort of huddled on a bank like the old platform. So she got up and
brought it along with her and we called it Agatha."

"Brought it home? All by herself? Wasn't it heavy?" asked Muriel
without interest. Surely Connie had had time now to do her hair.
Wasn't she feeling well? Muriel knew how much she hated those Thraile
meals. Perhaps at the last moment she had taken fright.

Polly was giggling. "By herself? I ask you? Our Con walk home from
Follerwick by herself? Not 'arf! Ben, you were with her, weren't you,
when she found Agatha?"

"No, I wasn't," said Ben stiffly.

"Oh, well then--it was one of the other fellows. Bill or Tubby or----"

"Wasn't it Eric Fennington?" asked Alice very quietly. She picked up
her cup and drank, her light eyes never leaving Ben's flushed face.

Eric Fennington? To Muriel the name was not quite unfamiliar. "Who was
Eric Fennington?" she asked, but without much interest, because she
felt as though the powers of darkness were behind her locked away in
the front parlour, and she was afraid.

"Eric Fennington," explained Dolly volubly, "was one of the lads all
right. You bet he was! He was one of the officers at Follerwick Camp,
two pips up, and a great flame of Connie's. I thought you'd know him.
She said she met him at Kingsport, knew him well at home. My word, he
was a knut! D'you remember when he hired a car and took us to the
Movies at Scarshaven, Alice? And that time he put the alarm clock in
the Major's box and it went off during the third act of 'Romance' with
an awful row--just when that curate was beginning to carry on!"

"Old Eric's married, isn't he?" asked Matthew heavily.

"Married or engaged or something. It was you who saw that bit in the
paper, wasn't it, Alice? Anyway he's in Mespot."

"Just as well, Ben, eh?" laughed Matthew. Ben rose, his mouth still
full of pie. "Where you going, lad?"

"Up t'see why Connie don't come down," interposed Mrs. Meggie. "That's
a good fellow."

Muriel watched him shamble from the room, an uncouth figure, part
boy, part man. This overgrown weakling whom Connie had married,
how had he done it? What had induced Connie to--to--Muriel wondered
for the hundredth time how it had come about. Had she been sorry
for him? Surely he cared for her. There was in his manner a hint of
wistfulness, of manhood undeveloped. Had the craving for self-assertion
forced him to madness, aping the passion of a man without a man's
self-mastery? Connie had said that he had over-mastered her. It was
difficult, watching him now retreat before his family's rough humour,
to imagine him mastering anyone, even himself.

He did not return soon. Muriel sat through the long meal uneasily.
What was happening upstairs? Had William Todd, as a result of her
interview, sent for Connie, and was he convicting her again of sin?
Poor Connie! Finally, when tea was cleared, Muriel climbed to Connie's
room. The staircase was dark. Only a glimmer of starlight from the
narrow window guided her. She paused outside her sister's door and
called. No answer came. She opened the door. No light came from the
room. She was about to go downstairs again, when the shadow by the
bedside quivered suddenly. She stared into the darkness.

"Connie!" she said softly. "Connie, what are you doing there? Where's
Ben?"

"Is that you, Muriel?" The voice made her start violently. "It's not
Connie. It's me--Ben. Come in and shut t'door."

"Ben! What's the matter? Where's Connie?" A shrill little quiver of
fear crept to her voice. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"

"Aw--come in and shut the door," he repeated. His voice terrified her.
It was as though a dead man spoke. "Connie isn't here. She's gone."

"Gone? Gone where? I don't understand."

"She's gone to do herself in."

"Ben, what do you mean?" Oh, if only there was a light! The darkness
pressed in suddenly upon her face and choked her.

"She's gone to do 'erself in. And I don't care. I wouldn't ha' stopped
her anyway. She'd gone before I came upstairs. I expect she's gone
down to the Fallow. She once said she would."

"Do you mean," said Muriel quietly, "that you think she's gone to--to
kill herself? Oh, but what nonsense, Ben. Why should she? What
nonsense! How dare you talk such wicked nonsense!" She stretched out
her hand for the brass bed-post and stood there clinging to its solid
comfort. "It's nonsense, nonsense. Connie--kill herself? Now--when
I've just made things----"

"It's not nonsense," Ben said heavily. "I'll show you a letter."

"Letter? Letter? Did Connie write a---- Oh, for goodness' sake get a
light and don't talk in riddles."

The bed creaked. Somewhere from the darkness moved a blacker darkness
yet. She heard Ben's laboured breathing.

"Oh, be quick! Be quick!"

If they stood in the dark another minute she would scream.

Ben stumbled across the room. She heard him fumbling on the mantelpiece.
Something fell against the fender with a light, splintering crash.

"I can't find matches," growled Ben.

"Oh, you idiot!" It was incredible that two people in such dire
consternation should be tortured because they couldn't find the
matches. It made her terribly angry, with a cold fury that she had
not known before.

Ben was cursing softly in the darkness.

"I'll go and get some----" said Muriel.

She stumbled frantically along the passage. From the room shared by
the land-girls came a flood of light, flowing out across the passage.
Alice was sitting beside the lamp, darning a stocking.

Muriel looked at her with wonder. People were still darning stockings
then? What a funny way Alice's hair grew back from her ears, with
little silvery tufts along her neck. You could see them in the
lamplight quite distinctly. What had she come for? Oh, the matches.

"Please, Alice, have you any matches?"

Alice looked up. "My! What a start you gave me! Matches? No. I had to
borrow Mrs. Todd's! Why don't you get Connie's? She bags all my
matches."

On then to her own room she must go. Hours, interminable hours
stretched between her and the horrible nightmare of Ben's voice. Her
own matches lay on the candlestick by her bed where she had left them.
She lit the candle with shaking fingers, then ran again down the long
corridor. The draught plucked at her candle flame; it fluttered
ruddily within the pink screen of her hand.

She came back to Connie's room.

"Ben! Ben! Where are you?"

She set the candle down by the disordered bed. The little flame shook
itself, quivered and then stood gallantly upright, showing the
flower-decked walls, the coarse white counterpane, all heaped and
crumpled, and Ben's white face--blank and passive, staring at her from
beside the mantelpiece.

"Where's that letter?" asked Muriel.

As though in a trance he came forward and handed her a sheet of flimsy
paper, pencil written. She glanced at it.

"This isn't from Connie! What do you mean? Where's Connie? What have
you done with her?"

"Read yon," said Ben.

After one glance at his set face, she read:

    Dear old girl,

    There ain't no flies round Christmas time in Blighty, but there's
    jolly well nothing else in this old hole. It's as hot as--well
    any place we specially used to think of as being hot. I say,
    Kiddo, who's been having you on that I'm engaged? Your stately
    letter--written by the way some time in August--has been chasing
    me across the desert sands and under the deodar and all the rest
    of it until it knocked the portals of my heart (Good that? What?)
    about--well may be--two months ago. Who sprung that yarn on to you
    about Cissie Bradfield? It's old Ernest, my brother, she collared.
    They were married last July. I can't think how you made the
    mistake because Alice knows Cissie and knew all about it. If you'd
    asked her she could have told you. We have the same initials of
    course. Honest, Kiddo, I'm no hand at letter writing and time
    dashes by here, but you're barking up the wrong tree this time.
    You must know that you are the only girl in the world as far as I
    am concerned. Rumour hath it that in another two months we may get
    leave and then what about another room at Scarshaven Hotel and you
    "on a visit to your friends at Buxton," eh? I'm not the marrying
    sort you know, but sometimes I think that when this war's over,
    I'd like to settle down. How would the idea of being Mrs. E. F.
    seem to you, old girl? Not much in your line, what?
                                   Anyway don't forget me,
                                             Yours to a cinder,
                                                                 ERIC.

She read twice through this strange production, straining her eyes to
decipher the crude, boyish writing. Then she looked at Ben. "I don't
understand, what does it mean?" she said.

"Don't you? Don't you? Ay, but you do. You Hammonds, you're all alike,
you, you----"

She gazed at him with open-eyed amazement. The boy whom she had
thought of as a poor thing became instead a sneering raging fury.
Completely beyond self-control, he turned upon her.

"You and your snivelling mother, coming down and weeping piety and her
daughter's honour; and your bullying rip of a father, damn him! I bet
you're all the same. You know jolly well what this all means. 'What
about another room at the Scarshaven Hotel,' eh? And then she comes
whining and sobbing to me and saying I must marry her because I've
ruined her life! She and her honour. How do I know how many more Erics
she's fooled on with? Blast her! Curse her!"

His weak face was distorted by rage. The candlelight danced on the red
rims of his swollen eyes and on his trembling hand upraised as if he
would strike Muriel.

She still sat on the edge of the bed, quite quietly. Her mind refused
to register any thought but the name of her sister, Connie, Connie,
repeated again and again without significance.

Ben dropped his hand. "She taunted me. She said I was no man. She
pretended that she knew nowt o' this sort o' thing. She told me that
she'd carried on with other fellows, just a bit, just playing like.
And there was I, cursing myself because I'd done it. Calling myself a
black sinner when I had no call to marry her, not even a farm o' my
own yet, and all the time she was just laughing at me, fooling me. And
I've been feeling myself under a heavy burden o' sin, with my guilt
an' hers upon me, an' not daring to go round to chapel, and feeling
the hand o' the Lord upraised against me. She led me on. She led me
on. Let her drown now. Let her drown. I reckon she'll not swim long i'
Fallow, and her burden o' guilt will weigh her down."

Muriel stared at him. "Ben. You've lost your head. It mayn't mean all
that. She's your wife."

"She betrayed me. She betrayed me." He dropped his face into his hands
and sat with quivering shoulders on the bed by Muriel's side. "She's
shamed me. And I meant to prove myself a man." He began to sob, bitter
grinding sobs that tore him with grief for his shamed manhood. "Ah
never had a wife. Ah never had one. She fooled me. Ah've been fooled
all my life. Ah've been fooled by God an' fooled by her. There's no
faith left."

"Ben. Pull yourself together. You've got no right to accuse her till
you know. When did she go? Are you sure she left the house? Which way
would she take?"

He raised his haggard face and jeered at her. "Go an' find her. You're
scared o' the dark, aren't you? Go an' find her corpse knocking about
i' Fallow like an old sow drowned last Martinmas. Go on. Get out o'
way." His voice rose to the shrill note of hysteria. "Get out o' here!
This is my room. What are you doing in my room--you----"

He called her a name that she had never heard before. She turned to
run, and saw him towering above her, fantastic in the candlelight. As
she ran, she heard his voice behind her, calling, "Run, Muriel! Run!
It's nice and cold in t'river."

The echo of his laughter drove her down the passage.

Outside the kitchen door she paused. The firelight, the call of
cheerful voices beckoned her. From the back room came the shouted
chorus of a song.

        "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."

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 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.




                                 XXXII


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 she _went_ out," 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, with _crêpe_ bands
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.




                                BOOK IV

                                 DELIA

                      March, 1919--January, 1920




                                XXXIII


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 that _sort_ of 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.




                                 XXXIV


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 very
_much_ to 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--less
_certain_ of 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, of _course_ you 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 marry _long_ after
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.

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?




                                 XXXV


"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 century _is_ strenuous. 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, installed _à
deux_ in--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't_ you 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's _Evolution 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't _want_ to come--if I did ask you?"

"You mustn't ask me. I'd get on your nerves."

"But you can't _want_ to 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."




                                 XXXVI


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 people
_say?_ 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 very _wrong_ of 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 have _said_--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 fish
_soufflé_ made 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 could _do_ something," 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 to _do_."

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 rather _likes_ a
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 of _faute 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.




                                XXXVII


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 grey _suède_ shoes. 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 her _début_ at
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.




                                BOOK V

                                MURIEL

                             August, 1920




                                XXXVIII


Marshington was triumphant. The garden fête for the British Legion to
be held in the park of the Weare Grange meant far more than a local
entertainment. It meant the final abandonment of six years' gloom and
difficulty. The war and all the inconvenience of war-time was past.
The months following the armistice, months of intoxicating rapture,
disorganization, irritating delays, and disillusionment, had gone.
August, 1920, marked a turning in the ways.

Indeed, its triumph was not merely negative. It marked the promise of
good things to come as well as the forgotten dream of dark things
past. Marshington boomed. The new motor-bus service in and out of
Kingsport, the projected town hall, the recently opened golf course,
were signs of prosperity not lightly to be dismissed. There were,
of course, disadvantages. Trade was bad, but undoubtedly it would
improve. Unemployment was disquieting, but always this happened after
any war. The British Legion, linking up village with village and class
with class in memory of a glorious army, was not this a noble thing?
And surely the symbolism of this fête to-day, Godfrey Neale opening
the ceremony, Major Godfrey Neale, once prisoner of war, now squire of
Weare and Marshington and lord of the Mardlehammar property, stooping
to comradeship with the men who had once fought with him--surely this
was a hopeful sign! And he looked so charming too! No wonder Phyllis
Marshall Gurney, pretty and soft and pale in her rose-coloured crêpe
de Chine, looked wistfully up at him as before the opening he talked
with his mother on the smooth, grass terrace. No wonder that little
Miss Dale, radiant in sprigged muslin (pre-war but renovated) should
whisper buoyantly to Mr. Potts, the curate, "Isn't he like the Prince
of Wales?"

And then the day, too, after that terrible July with its incessant
rain, the day was perfect. Little feathery clouds floated along the
sky. The spacious lawns of the Weare Grange lay green as emeralds.
The stonework on the terraces foamed over with crimson ramblers. The
flagged paths lay like white ribbons between herbaceous borders
flaming with phlox and sunflowers and campanula. The beeches spread
above a company as gay and flowerlike as the crowded borders. Mrs.
Marshall Gurney in lilac charmeuse, Mrs. Cartwright in a saxe blue
foulard, Mrs. Parker, manly and imposing in a black suit with a white
pin stripe, and her flowerlike daughter--how on earth had Daisy
Weathergay happened?--delicate as a fairy in pale blue, darting in
constant pursuit of a small, charming child, all white frills and pink
ribbons, who strayed like a wind-blown flower from laughing group to
group on the wide lawn.

Every one, positively every one, was there. The Avenue, in ready-made
crêpe de Chine, and ditto suits; the village, in cotton voile and
muslin and reachmedowns; the Houses, resplendent in charmeuse and
foulard and, even occasionally, in morning coats.

But, of all the people there, the happiest, the most radiant, was
probably Mrs. Hammond. She sat below the terrace against a background
of gay flowers. Her dress of grey georgette, delicately and demurely
coquettish, made her seem more than ever a small and dove-like nun,
except for the bright cerise sunshade that had somehow found its way
into her little hand. Not far from her stood her husband, hands in
pockets, great head thrown back, talking to Colonel Grainger. The
Graingers had come over for the ceremony and were staying at the Weare
Grange. But they had promised to dine that evening with the Hammonds,
and it was at Colonel Grainger's jokes that Arthur Hammond's laugh
rang out. But even that had not filled quite the brimming cup of
Rachel Hammond's triumph. There, under the trees beside the shallow
steps, stood Muriel, her daughter, talking to Godfrey Neale. Every one
saw them, and every one could not fail to recognize the significance
of their conversation.

Three nights ago, Muriel had come home for her summer holidays.
Immediately, Mrs. Hammond's quick, motherly eye had seen the change in
her. Quiet she was still and always would be, but her quietness no
longer expressed discomfort but composure. Her manner had changed. She
was more sure of herself. She expressed her opinions with an assurance
that amazed her mother. And people seemed to be interested in her.
The Honble. Mrs. Potter Vallery had seen her photograph twice in the
papers. Mrs. Hobson, the vulgar, detestable Mrs. Hobson, on tour on a
woman's political delegacy (her fare paid out of Marshington funds, so
like her to get a nice trip for nothing!) had actually seen Muriel on
the platform during an important conference. She did not speak of
course, but sat, taking notes or something, and had been seen
afterwards speaking to Lady Cooper and Lady Ballimore-Fenton. Then,
look at the way she dressed now! That charming mauve frock had amazed
Mrs. Hammond, and the deeper mauve hat, charming, charming, and the
bunch of violets tucked into her waist. Why, she was quite delightful!
Everybody noticed it. Tears had come uncomfortably near Mrs. Hammond's
eyes as one lady after another had murmured: "So nice to see dear
Muriel again. So well she's looking! And that charming frock! How
nice to be able to buy one's clothes in town--or does she go to
Paris?" Even Mrs. Harpur's aggrieved: "I suppose that Muriel won't
have time to come and see us now? She's much too grand," had been
nectar and ambrosia to Muriel's mother.

And then, but nobody except Mrs. Hammond knew this, had come
the glorious realization of Godfrey Neale; quite by chance she
learned that he had taken to Muriel his trouble over Clare's broken
engagement. "By mutual agreement" it was understood, that most
unnatural union had been dissolved. "Of course, we really knew all the
time," Mrs. Hammond had announced. "Muriel, being such a friend of
Clare's--a boy and girl affair--quite, quite unsuitable." But she did
no more than smile significantly when people said: "Muriel saw quite
a lot of him in London, didn't she?" "Of Godfrey?--oh well, of
course---- Now, Mrs. Thorrald, I can't have you thinking things--really
nothing in it." But she knew that her tell-tale blush left little
doubts in Mrs. Thorrald's mind.

For herself, what need had she to doubt? Indeed, looking back over the
past thirty years, how could it have been otherwise? One by one, other
women had given way--except Mrs. Marshall Gurney, and her resistance
was quite unintentional. By a process of elimination Godfrey and
Muriel had been left together. The affair with Clare had of course
been inevitable. Godfrey had to sow his devotional wild oats; but with
Clare vanished, no other obstacle could stand between them.

Rachel Hammond was justified at last. At least she had paid heavily.
Nobody, nobody would know the price. Her marriage to Arthur had been
her one act of spontaneous folly. Every other step of the way had been
calculated. Well, it had been worth it. The first few fearful years,
when she had braved the outraged feelings of the Nonconformist friends
of her husband's family; the careful tact of years of social climbing
as one by one the houses of the respected and unquestioned had
capitulated; the choice of the girls' school; her battle to keep them
both at home; the fears, by day and night, lest one single venture
should miscarry; the episode of Connie.

Her small kid gloves clenched round the slender stem of her sunshade.
Her face, looking downward to the sunlit flags, became grey and
haggard.

At last she knew that she had acted wisely on the terrible night when
Connie told her about Eric, when Connie had implored that she might
not marry Ben, that she might take her child and live alone with it,
anywhere rather than tie herself to the man who was not Eric, do
anything rather than become Ben's wife with that deception; then
Mrs. Hammond had faltered. Could she go on, could she defend her
reputation, and that of Muriel and of her husband, at the price of
Connie? But Connie's scruples had been madness. To tell Ben would
almost certainly have stopped the marriage. To allow her daughter to
bear the child of a rough farmer and to face her shame would have
been folly, absurd and fruitless. She had been right in her superior
wisdom; right, although that deadening stupor of blind acquiescence
had descended upon Connie; right, although when she sat by Connie's
bedside and guessed, though she had never dared even to hint at her
fears, that Connie's death had been avoidable; right, although even
now at night terrors would assail her, and she would remember the
passion of entreaty in her daughter's face.

But she had been right, for not one shadow of misgiving had touched
Marshington, and now, in the awakening interest of Godfrey Neale, she
would reap her reward.

Her old fears fell from her. As the sunlight poured upon her arms, her
shoulders, her uplifted face, so a great peace descended on her soul.
Triumphantly she rose, and moved across the lower terrace to the
couple below the trees.

Muriel greeted her with the new assurance that so well became her.

"Mother, Godfrey says that he and Mrs. Neale want us to go up to
dinner to-morrow night. We haven't anything on, have we?"

Mrs. Hammond smiled. "Well, really, won't you be tired of us?"

And she was sure, quite sure, that Godfrey smiled down at Muriel as he
said:

"No, r--rather not."

"You've got a lovely day for your fête?"

"Yes, splendid."

"Are you nervous about the opening?"

"Beastly." He laughed. And then to Muriel he said: "You swear that you
won't tease me if I break down or something?"

"Of course I won't. I'd never dare to do it myself. I'm sure you'll do
it well."

"Look here"--with a sudden inspiration--"do come on to the top terrace
and back me up." With a concession to decorum, he added, "Both of
you."

Mrs. Hammond's eyes flashed. For a moment she hesitated. Here,
unequivocal and public, would lie the announcement of her triumph.
Godfrey, of course, did not think what he was asking. He was too
lordly to see how significant his actions were to Marshington. If
anything should happen, if at the last moment her plans should all
miscalculate---- A cold terror seized her. The rose-pink frock of
Phyllis Marshall Gurney floated towards them down the terrace. No, no,
it was impossible, for here was Muriel and here Godfrey. To refuse now
might offend him. She had been bold before.

"Well, if you like," she said, and, lordly as he, never hinted that
she could have no right there.

So when the opening ceremony was announced, Marshington saw assembled
on the terrace, together with officials of the British Legion and the
Graingers and the Neales, the small but conquering figures of the
Hammond ladies, mother and daughter, applauding Godfrey Neale.

Like wild-fire the rumour ran round Marshington that Godfrey Neale at
last had come to his senses, and that a Marshington girl would become
lady of the Weare Grange. Even Mrs. Neale's gaunt, sallow face bent
above Muriel with a gracious smile as she said: "Nice of you to come
and back the boy up. He's a bit nervous about speaking."

"It g--gives me very great pleasure," said Godfrey Neale, standing
upon the rose-covered terrace, his face turned above the throng below
him towards Marshington, "to be here again, among my own people. I
shan't say much. I'm no great hand at speaking, and anyway the place
to speak is hardly mine on this occasion. It was the fellows who
fought all through the war, and not us who just sat and ate our heads
off with the B--Boches"; laughter and applause and cries of "No, no!"
"Good old Neale" interrupted him. "I mean----" he stammered, he lost
the place in his carefully thought-out speech, prepared for him
partly, it must be confessed, by Miss Hammond of the Twentieth Century
Reform League. Then his own charming smile broke out. He looked down
at the people. "Here, I can't talk, we're all friends together, this
fête's open. Let's get on with it."

They clapped, they cheered, but always through their cheering they
seemed to look beyond Godfrey to Muriel, as though they included her
also in their approval. And Mrs. Marshall Gurney, with dignified
resignation, clapped her white gloves, and Phyllis, rising gallantly
above spite and jealousy, looked straight up into his dear, forbidden
face, and clapped him too. And Godfrey, who liked Phyllis Marshall
Gurney, and thought her a pretty kid, and wondered why on earth she'd
never married, and liked the way that her chin uplifted when she
smiled, looked back at her, and their eyes met, and she faced with
courage the happiness that she might have known.

The crowd scattered. There were coco-nut shies in the park, and tea on
the top terrace, and stalls in the rose garden, and a bran-tub and
fortune-telling and a concert. The British Legion band blared suddenly
into brave music, and the group on the upper terrace prepared itself
to be gracious to less-favoured groups. Finally Mrs. Hammond found
herself drinking tea beside Lady Grainger, while Muriel handed cakes
to Mrs. Neale.

"How well she fits in to this charming atmosphere," reflected her
proud mother. "That little air of quiet dignity--Mrs. Neale of the
Weare Grange. 'Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Hammond request the pleasure of
Mrs. and Miss Marshall Gurney's company at the marriage of their
daughter, Muriel, with Mr. Godfrey Reginald Mardle Neale at Holy
Trinity Church, Marshington, and afterwards at Miller's Rise.'" They
would have a real reception this time.




                                 XXXIX


Godfrey and Muriel walked below the heavy elm trees. This part of
the garden was deserted, but from far off, through the enshrouding
greenery, came vagrant echoes of tunes played by the band. So thick
was the cool, deep gloom of the great trees, that only here and there
a golden point of sunlight fell on the shadowed path, and lay
quivering as the dark leaves stirred.

They did not speak. A rabbit scuttled across the drive, bobbing
suddenly below the tangled bramble sprays. Above in the elms a dove
cooed sleepily, with all the warmth of drowsy summer in its call. The
path was smooth, with small rounded pebbles sunk into the moss, and on
each side the deep, dark grasses tangled round tall spears of willow
herb, of sombre undergrowth, of hedges foaming cream with old man's
beard.

At a turn of the avenue they came to a space where the trees to their
right were cut away.

"I want you to see this," said Godfrey.

Beyond the low hedge, beyond two fields of the wide grassland where
Connie had once ridden, stretched the long terraces of the Weare
Grange. The house itself crowned them, grey and beautiful, looking
down upon the coloured throng of people in the garden. Blue, white and
pink, like shifting, wind-blown petals, the dresses of Marshington
girls moved on the green. Clearer along the breeze came fitful gusts
of music. Hidden by half a mile of winding avenue, the two looked back
together on it now.

"It's singularly beautiful," said Muriel quietly.

"You t--think so? I'm glad. You don't think it's all rot?"

"What is rot?"

"Liking the old place and all that."

She shook her head. "Of course I don't. Who could? I think that it is
a beautiful place. You're a lucky man in many ways, Godfrey. You have
power and privilege and a tremendous influence." She looked as though
she would have said more, then stopped and just stood, gazing towards
the house.

"I suppose I have," he said. "I don't know that I'd thought about it
quite like that. It gets into your blood though, doesn't it? By Jove,
you know--the shooting down here is worth living for. Now do you see
those bullocks there, in the far pasture? They're Jerseys--I'm
breeding them as an experiment. M--Maddock, my agent, says they're
the best of anything he's seen of the sort."

"Does he?"

"And you know, we're starting the Witchgate hounds again this autumn?
I've been fixing it up with young Seton and Colonel Macallister.
Seton'll be Master I think--in place of his brother. Rotten luck young
Seton being killed. No son either. Do you know, Muriel, there were
times during the war when I used to get the idea that I might never
come back to it, and I used to lie awake at night and sweat with
fear?"

"I do believe it."

"It gets you, you know. It gets you. There's not an acre that I don't
know in Weare or Mardlehammar. Jolly good lot of tenants too. Have you
ever met Willis of Ringpool Farm?--that's on the Mardlehammar land.
Fine chap Willis, and brainy, too. You'd like him."

Again they were silent, watching the little Jersey cows in the far
pasture, golden, like browsing flowers under the warm sunlight.

"You know," he went on, "you were right that evening in London. By
Jove, you were. Clare could never have understood this. You've got to
have a wife that understands. I was pretty well knocked down then, but
I'm glad now."

He paused as though thinking this over.

"I'm glad it happened," he repeated solemnly, "the whole thing I mean.
I wouldn't want not to have known her--except for one thing."

"What's that?" asked Muriel.

She turned to look at him, and below the broad brim of her charming
hat her face was grave and sweet.

"Look here, Muriel, if I wanted a girl to marry me, would she mind
that I had given Clare something--something I'll never have to give
again?"

"Most girls wouldn't," Muriel said solemnly. "Very few women marry
the man whom they first loved. Very few men marry the girl who first
attracted them. When they do, those marriages don't seem to be the
happiest."

He sighed with a great relief. "You really think so?"

"Yes."

Again they paused. So quietly they stood that a squirrel rattled
nimbly down the tree beside them and flashed across the path. Then
Godfrey spoke again, stammering badly, but smiling down at Muriel:

"Muriel, with everything that I didn't give to Clare, I love you. Will
you marry me?"

She did not speak.

"I know," he went on, "that you know all about me. I've told you about
Clare. But I shan't love her again. Anyway she's going to marry that
fellow from Austria. That's all quite over. And I believe that all
the time, if I hadn't been a fool, I should have wanted you. You
understand me better than anyone, and I don't believe that you're the
kind of girl who'd want a fellow so much to love her that way--you're
too sensible."

Still she did not speak, but smoothed with her soft fingers a broad
leaf of the climbing hop plant that spread twisting green tendrils
across the hedge before them.

"Don't hurry," he said magnanimously, "take your time and think it
over. I'd be good to you. I swear I'd be good to you--little Muriel."

His voice was assured, but it was very kind. His clear blue eyes were
honest. More handsome than ever was his lean brown face bent above
her.

"I don't think that you dislike me--somehow. Couldn't you find it
possible to care?"

She lifted her candid eyes to his. "Once I thought that I loved you
very much, Godfrey. When I was a little girl, before I ever went to
school, I once danced with you at a party. I was very shy, and rather
left out of things, and you only were kind to me. I think I fell in
love with you then. You seemed to me the true ideal of manhood."

"Did I?" His blue eyes softened tenderly.

"And afterwards, when I lived in Marshington, we played together at
the tennis club the very first time I played."

"Did we really?"

She nodded. "That was Delia's doing. She wasn't thinking about you or
me, but only about getting her own back on some other people. You were
the king, the wonderful one. I hardly dared to play with you. I was a
funny child in those days. I thought a lot of queer mistaken things. I
made a sort of hero of you, Godfrey."

"You silly child," he said, but she could see how much his pride was
loving it.

"I came home from school meaning to do such a lot of things. Every one
was wonderful. The world was full, brimming with adventure. I meant to
be so good."

He nodded. "I'll swear you did."

He would have caught at her small ungloved hands, but she put them
behind her back and stood looking up at him, like a child saying its
lesson.

"My head was full of dreams about love and service. I wanted to be
wise and unselfish and to serve God. I gave up the idea of going to
college or anywhere to train for working in the world outside, because
I thought that Mother needed me."

He nodded, a little puzzled that she should consider this long
preamble necessary; but liking her more and more for her solemnity. It
seemed to him very sweet that she should tell him all her girlish
hopes.

"I threw myself into the life of Marshington, meaning to give to it
and to get from it only the best. I wanted to give it all of me, my
intelligence, and my love, and my desire to serve. I began to go to
parties and picnics and the tennis club. But, do you know, the things
here weren't quite what I had expected? People did not seem to want me
frightfully; I wasn't pretty--I was rather shy. I didn't understand
the teasing and the jokes and the way that the other girls behaved.
People began to avoid me. I remember a picnic once, when I walked for
all the afternoon with Bobby Mason, because I was so terrified of
being left behind"--she swallowed hard, but went on steadily--"without
a man to walk with. I had not been at home for more than a year when I
found that only one thing mattered here in Marshington for a girl, and
that was to get married."

He was frowning a little now. Those things perhaps were true, but
somehow he did not like his future wife to say them. She, however,
continued to disregard his feelings.

"It took me about six years to discover that I was not the sort of
girl whom men wanted to marry. Other girls found partners at dances
easily. I sat against the wall, shivering lest every one should see
that I was a wallflower, feeling terribly ashamed because to fail in
this way was to fail everywhere. I used to think of life as a dance,
where the girls had to wait for men to ask them, and if nobody
came--they still must wait, smiling and hoping and pretending not to
mind. One by one the things that I cared for fell away. Music,
mathematics, beautiful things to look at--none of these mattered.
They were only quite irrelevant details, because at Marshington there
was only one thing that mattered and I had not got it."

He was about to protest, but she silenced him:

"No, no. It's no use saying that it wasn't so. Try to cast your mind
back. Can't you remember 'poor Muriel Hammond'--she and Rosie
Harpur--the 'heavy' people at the dances whom the nicer men would try
to be polite to? Why, you used to be kind to me yourself. You always
came and asked me for a waltz when we went to the same dance. I used
to stand and watch your programme pencil breathlessly. Would you give
me one dance, or two? You never thought that it mattered as much as
that, did you, Godfrey?"

He shook his head.

"It mattered everything. Or rather I thought it did. Do you remember
the day of the bombardment of Scarborough? And after the bombardment,
in my aunt's house?"

Her face was flooded now with glowing colour, but she spoke on, in her
small even voice:

"You kissed me. Perhaps you had forgotten. These things pass easily,
don't they? When a man kisses a plain girl. It was kind of you. I
expect that you thought I should be pleased and flattered." She
paused. "I was pleased."

He made a gesture of protest.

Far away down the park a little burst of cheering rose into the
silence and died down. They were beginning the sports that were to be
the final entertainment of the fête.

"I was pleased," said Muriel. "I thought of nothing else by day or
night. You had kissed me. You, who were the ideal, the prince, of all
that Marshington thought splendid. I thought at first, daringly, that
it might mean that you could come to care for me, to marry me, to take
away from me the reproach of failure. I knew about Clare of course,
but I thought her married, and that you had decided that she was quite
impossible. I used to grow sick, waiting for the posts. I would lie
awake half the night, thinking that a letter might come in the
morning. And half the day I would have a pain here, in my side, with
the feeling that a letter might come by the afternoon's post. You
never wrote. I heard that Clare had come to England. Then, one night
at a concert, your mother told me that you were engaged."

"I didn't know," he cried, really remorseful.

"Of course you did not know. I remember that. But, oh, I knew. I don't
know what became of me. I think that I fell into a sort of stupor,
thinking of all that I had thrown away to follow this, and in the end
to fail."

Her voice died away. The aching pain of those past days had left her,
but it was not easy to recall them now.

"There's something else," she almost whispered. "Something that I
can't tell you much about because it's not my story. I was made to
see--the Marshington way--carried to its logical conclusion. Girls do
not always wait to be asked. Instinct, you see, is on the side of the
tradition. In every woman there must be so much nature--of her
womanhood. Take from her all other outlet for vitality; strip her of
her other interests, and in some cases the instinct, reinforced by
social influence, breaks down her control. I had to stand by helpless
and watch--somebody else--come to complete ruin. And just because I
had believed what people once had told me, because I had accepted
Marshington standards without question, I found myself quite powerless
to help. Indeed, I even made things worse, far worse. I think that I
went almost mad then. My mind had a kind of shock---- You see, there
was nothing left. Even mother--belonged to the things that had failed
me. Nothing had happened. People, knowing my life, would have said
that I had never known great sorrow. There was just nothing.

"If it hadn't been for Delia, I should have died--not with my body,
but my mind. She could not give me back the things that I had lost.
She took me away instead. She let me see, not that the thing that I
had sought was not worth seeking, but simply that there were other
things in life. To fail just in this one thing was not failure. A
perfect marriage is a splendid thing, but that does not mean that the
second best thing is an imperfect marriage."

"I know," he said. "I know. Look here, I'm sorry, Muriel. I'd no idea
what a rotten time you'd had. But now, forget it. We'll make our
marriage perfect."

"Dear Godfrey," said Muriel, "if you'd asked me to marry you any time
during the past twelve years until last winter, I would have married
you, without hesitation. And we should both have made a great
mistake."

"No, no," he said, "not we."

"Oh, yes, we should. That time you came to me in London--I'd never
seen you before--only a sort of legend of my dreams. You're a dear,
Godfrey. I like you immensely. And you'll make some wife very happy
yet--but not me----"

"But why on earth?"

"Because--of--every reason. It's too late."

"Do you care for someone else?" he asked sharply.

"No. Not that way. Please, I want you to understand." She smiled
suddenly. "This isn't a devastating experience, you know. You like me,
but not more than you could like lots of women."

"That's not true."

"Oh, yes, it is. You'd like to marry what you think is me--what I was,
but that's not what I am. I'm only sparing you the pain of discovering
too late that I'm an uncomfortable person to have married. To begin
with, Godfrey dear, I can't stand Marshington. The Weare Grange is a
heavenly place, and Delia tells me that there are prospects of
regeneration for Marshington. She believes that the Twentieth Century
Reform League is going to remedy its faults. I don't know. It may do.
But not for me. It's cost me too much. I'm too near the shadow of its
influence. I should slip back to it."

"But why----?"

"Why shouldn't it? Because I'm--myself, that's all. I found that
out in London. I've actually got tastes and inclinations and a
personality. And they're all things that you would disapprove of
immensely. Oh, yes, you would. You want a good wife, Godfrey, someone
who'd be the hostess of shooting-parties, who'd listen to your hunting
stories, and who'd be interested in your tenants. You'd want somebody
who would be satisfied by your possessions and by your prestige, and
whose goal in life would be to make you comfortable. Clare wouldn't
have done that. In one way, it's a pity you didn't marry her. You'd
have been miserable, and she'd have broken away, but it might have
been better for you. As it is--it's too late, Godfrey. Some day
perhaps, I may marry, but it won't be you. I once was in love with
you, but I don't love you. Your interests are not my interests--we
haven't a taste in common.

"I'm going back to London. I'll go to-morrow. I'm learning there a lot
of things and it hasn't done with me yet. Delia mayn't want me always.
Probably she's going to America soon anyway. It isn't that. I've got
an idea--I don't know how to express it--that I think I've always
had in my head somewhere. An idea of service--not just vague and
sentimental, but translated into quite practical things. Maybe I'll do
nothing with it, but I do know this, that if I married you I'd have to
give up every new thing that has made me a person."

"You wouldn't."

"Oh, yes, I would. Can't you just picture us, Godfrey? You, the
typical country squire. I, the epitome of all Marshington virtues."

He frowned at her. He was a little sad, a little hurt, a little
disappointed. She knew that he was not heart-broken.

"I can't be a good wife until I've learnt to be a person," said
Muriel, "and perhaps in the end I'll never be a wife at all. That's
very possible. But it doesn't matter. The thing that matters is to
take your life into your hands and live it, following the highest
vision as you see it. If I married you, I'd simply be following the
expedient promptings of my mother and my upbringing. Do you see?"

"I don't see. It's all that London nonsense. It's Delia. It's----"

"No it isn't. It's Muriel--at last. You see, when she's really there,
you don't much like her. Godfrey dear, how could we live together?
We'd quarrel from the first."

"You said that you might marry--one day----"

"Who knows? But it won't be you. Why, you'll be married long before."

A little breeze blew along the avenue. Muriel shivered.

"I think we'd better go. I've talked too long. There's nothing else to
say. Don't be more angry with me than you can help. We've both been
honest with each other."

"Yes---- We've been honest."

He liked that. She felt his eyes straying again towards the open
vista, to the fields where now long shadows stretched across the
gilded grass, to the crowded terraces, to the grey house. He would
find comfort there for whatever soreness she had left with him.

"I'll go," she said. "And--very good luck to you, Godfrey."

Shyly she held out her hand.

He frowned. For a moment his wounded pride withheld him, but she
looked so very small and powerless before his height, his strength,
and his position. His smile came suddenly and he took her hand.

"By Jove," he said, "I'm only just beginning to realize what I've
missed."

He stood, holding her small hand, under the arching elms.

"You won't remember long. And, when you do, you'll be glad that I did
not marry you."

He shook his head. She broke from him and walked quickly away along
the drive. Chequered sunlight and shadow fell on her small, upright
figure. She moved steadily forward, not looking back at him. As he
watched her go, an expression of tenderness, compassion and regret
crossed his face. He sighed a little. Perhaps she was right. A wife
with ideas? How queer women were! It always seemed as though he, who
knew himself to be sought after, only wanted what he could never gain.
He felt older and a little weary. Certainly it would be good to go
where he was wanted, to have his vanity soothed by a simple, loving
woman who would accept him as he was.

Queer little thing, Muriel. If he had known what she was like, would
he have spoken? After all, perhaps it had been an escape.

With a sigh he turned again towards the house. Far away, on the high
terrace, fluttered the rose-pink dress of Phyllis Marshall Gurney.




                                THE END




                          BY THE SAME AUTHOR

                             ANDERBY WOLD

                        Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

A Yorkshire novel of great power written by a well-known Yorkshire
lady who is well versed in the idiosyncrasy of the rural inhabitants
of that delightful country.

_Morning Post._--"An excellent story. . . . These Yorkshire folk are
drawn with skill, each having individuality. Miss Holtby gives plenty
of evidence in her first novel that she has the gift of narrative."

_Guardian._--"This vivid and powerful story of rural life in Yorkshire
is certainly one of the best 'first novels' which we have read for a
considerable time."

_Truth._--"A new writing, who gets her effects by handling simpler
material with the power that comes of genuine insight and sincerity.
For a first novel 'Anderby Wold' is a notable achievement."

_Time and Tide._--"'Anderby Wold' is apparently a first novel. If that
be so, one can congratulate Miss Holtby on a degree of mastery over
her material, and a knowledge of how to present it, that are rare even
in the hands of much more practised writers."

_Times Literary Supplement._--"Interesting in many ways."

_Westminster Gazette._--"All North Country folk will enjoy this
well-written story."

_Gentlewoman._--"A remarkably fine piece of work. . . . A story of
great truth and unflagging interest."

_Manchester Guardian._--"An extremely interesting first novel. The
whole book shows a careful workmanship rare in a first novel."

            JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD., VIGO ST., W. 1




                              NEW FICTION

THE COMING OF AMOS. By WILLIAM J. LOCKE. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

THE GARDEN OF FOLLY. By STEPHEN LEACOCK. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

YOUTH WINS. By MURIEL HINE. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

THE MAN IN THE BROWN SUIT. By AGATHA CHRISTIE. 7s. 6d. net.

A new, full-length, mystery story by the author of "The Mysterious
Affair at Styles."

THE SECRET OF GREYLANDS. By ANNIE HAYNES. Author of "The Bungalow
Mystery," etc. 7s. 6d. net.

This author is rapidly making a name for herself as a writer of
clever and ingenious detective mysteries.

SHERIFF'S DEPUTY: A Romance of the Mob Days. By G. V. MCFADDEN. Author
of "The Honest Lawyer," etc. 7s. 6d. net.

Another of Miss McFadden's romances with an early nineteenth-century
setting.

VAGABOND LOVE. By JESSIE CHAMPION. Author of "Jimmy's Wife," "Ella
Keeps House," etc. 7s. 6d. net.

Another bright and witty novel from the pen of a popular and
established novelist.

CUP OF SILENCE: A Romance of the South Downs. By ARTHUR J. REES.
Author of "Island of Destiny," etc. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.

Another first-rate mystery from the author of "The Hampstead Mystery."

            JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD., VIGO ST., W. 1




                         TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE


Obvious printing errors have been silently corrected throughout.
Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors have been preserved.