“So long as we know not what it opens, nothing can be more
beautiful than a key.”
THE short June days soon came to an end, and Muriel found them none too
short, for warmth can only be enjoyed by the luxurious, and her life at
present was anything but that.
If one plunged into the work and life of the people it needed strength
both of will and body to carry one through its disillusions.
There was nothing in the least exciting in the work before her—it was
merely very hard. Occasionally it was true the great opportunity would
arise, as it had done in the case of poor Liz. But next to their
extraordinary infrequency came the swiftness with which all the
greatness evaporated: their very sins were so matter-of-fact, and the
larger elements in life were taken so unpicturesquely that they seemed
shorn of their solemnity, and then strangely robbed of all “the trailing
clouds” of mystery. When a widow spoke of her dead husband as “’E made a
beautiful corpse, ’e did—yer ought to er seen ’im, miss,” the word died
on her lips, and to look at a dead baby as being “one less mouth to
feed,” jarred on all her tender notes of sympathy by the crudity of its
truth.
Muriel wrote to Gladys, who, strange to say, had come to see her alone,
not once but often, that she had never known “death could be vulgar
before;” and, though she felt very worried at the thought of shutting up
the club for three months, she confessed to herself her heart rose at
the thought of the long, easy luxury of house-parties, country days, and
even a glimpse of the sea. People, too, who said a little more—and
meant a little less—she looked forward to meeting with a positive sense
of rest. Clear black and white were rather glaring she thought, and how
life was mellowed by a little mist! Jack Hurstly had never been to see
her. She had heard of him occasionally from Gladys.
Sir Arthur wished her to come at once to Blacklands, a house in a
beautiful vicinity, not too far from the conveniences of life; and
towards the end of July, very tired and fagged, Muriel packed up her
things to go. There were many good-byes to be said, but they were all
over now with the exception of Liz—Liz and the baby. She had not seen
either of them lately. As she knocked at the door she heard the long,
fretful wail of a sick child, and then the ungracious tones of a woman’s
voice.
“Ah, it’s you, is it?” she added shrilly as Muriel entered. “I thought
you had given us the slip. No, I ain’t been comin’ to the club, nor I
don’t mean to—nor Dick neither, we ’ave ’ad enough of it, we ’ave.”
Muriel showed no surprise. She sat down and looked at the poor little
baby tossing disconsolately on its mother’s lap.
“Isn’t he well?” she asked.
“No, ’e ain’t,” said Liz more gently; “’e do take on somethink hawful in
this ’eat. ’E cries all night, and Dick won’t come nigh ’im. I’d a been
a deal better off without ’im, that’s what I’d a been. What’s the use o’
a ’usband who drinks all ’e earns? ’E don’t do _me_ no good, and I don’t
do ’im no good—we’re better apart.” She looked at Muriel viciously in
her increasing anger and fear, turning on the first object she met.
“You’re very tired, Lizzie,” she said gently, “and very hot. Have you
been sitting up all night with baby?”
“I don’t keep no nurse!”
“Poor little thing,” said Muriel, holding out her arms for it; “poor
little dear.”
“’E’ll crease your pretty skirt.” Muriel laughed.
“Now, tell me,” she said, “what do you mean about Dick. Is he really
taking to drink?”
Lizzie forgot her resentment and poured out her troubles, and so again
the woman in Muriel conquered. Yet she knew that there would be no
gratitude for what she did. Lizzie only envied her—“her pretty frock.”
She wrote to her uncle promising to go down the next day. Muriel arrived
at Blacklands to be met by the footman and a carriage. The trappings of
a luxury she had spurned seemed at present very grateful to her. They
belonged, she realized, to a class of things one does not actually need,
and yet seems to miss more than even the necessities. As she drove
comfortably through the village she was possessed by a complete set of
new faculties. All her old fund of light-hearted laughter sprang again
within her; her quick, observant eyes (which she had used more lately to
ignore than to observe) found beauties at every turn. She felt a desire
to sketch two cottages half lost in honeysuckle planted with the most
perfect effect of naturalness under the old tower of the ivy-covered
church. The churchyard seemed the most perfectly restful thing she had
ever seen. She longed to pick the hedge flowers; to let the wind blow
about her hair, with no restraining erection to keep it in place; to
walk barefoot across the cool, green fields; to hunt for birds’ nests in
the wood; to climb the hills at sunset time—in short, a passion of
longing to come near to Nature held her; to forget all the many
inventions of the clever, brutal, unscrupulous mind of man; to be once,
for however little time, one with the world as “God has made it.” She
found herself taking off her gloves, and at that moment the carriage
swept up the drive of a large old house, with an exterior too ancient to
be quarrelled with, and an interior too full of the best of modern
“improvements” to be in the least appropriate.
Gladys was standing on the steps. She held Muriel in her arms. On the
younger girl’s face there was an almost passionate welcome, and she
tried to hide her eagerness in laughter, chatting in graceful snatches
over a thousand little nothings as the two girls went to their rooms.
“Did Muriel know that there was no one there but themselves?—everybody
was coming down to-morrow. Yes, that abominable little flirt, Edith le
Mentier, and her husband with his exquisite stupidity, a cloak which
covered all his other sins—in the eyes of his wife at least. Mary
Huntly, too, not Tom—he couldn’t. These business men really worked; but
Muriel was a business woman, wasn’t she—the dear Muriel.” Muriel
declared she only worked for the sake of enjoying laziness. They went
down to tea. “That doctor, too,” Gladys continued, “with an advanced
sister with red hair, cigarette and a bull-dog—at least I think it’s a
bull-dog.”
“Of course it is,” laughed Muriel. “You must retain something, however
far you advance, and the bull-dog does that for you.”
“The doctor overworked, you know; and the sister’s devoted. Then there’s
Captain Hurstly, of course!”
“Why of course?” said Muriel quietly.
“Oh, well——” Gladys stopped, “don’t you want him?”
“No, my dear, I don’t.”
“Your uncle thought——”
“Oh, when he thinks,” laughed Muriel, lifting her shoulders.
“And there’s a friend of his——”
“My uncle’s?”
“Silly!—Captain Hurstly’s—a Sir Somebody Bruce.”
“Alec?” suggested Muriel, quietly selecting some seed-cake. “I know him
well.”
“Do you?” said Gladys, “I scarcely know him at all. What did you think
of him?” Her little air of indifference was beautiful. Muriel sighed.
“He’s like the rest,” she said wearily. “Splendid, capable,
broad-shouldered and—useless. I think if I were a man like that I
should use my talent as a good shot for personal purposes; it would seem
to me less wasteful.”
“Oh, but, Muriel, we girls we’re none of us any better. You, dearest,
you’re different. And in America I was different too. There’s so little
strain in being happy there—so little waste in pleasure. The rush of
life, its width and lack of limits, is a continual occupation; but here
there are too many women. Some of them must be old maids. It’s like the
game of musical chairs. They none of them, you see, want to be left out,
so they take the first place vacant. They have an eye on their
opportunities; they make efforts to attain, and a masterly mamma backs
them. When you come to think of it—their training, their suppression!
You can’t wonder they take their first opening. But for women to be
hunters—forgive the naked, cruel term, darling—is repulsive. Oh, if I
had a daughter I should drown her, or bring her up to something more
worth living for!”
She walked about the room putting this and that to rights. The housemaid
had done it before her, but the quick, nervous movements delivered her
of the tension she seemed under.
“Something’s very badly wrong,” thought Muriel, and aloud she suggested
the garden.
The birds were making twilight magical on the velvet lawn. They sat
breathing in the soft, rich air, heavy with the scent of summer flowers,
too utterly at peace with Nature and the restful spell she can throw at
moments over the most tortured hearts to do more than hush themselves
into silence.
Muriel was the first to speak. She remembered long afterwards how
startling her voice sounded.
“You have something to ask me?”
“Ah!—no, no.”
“Something to tell me?”
“It’s hard—oh, Muriel, dearest—dearest, it’s hard!” cried Gladys.
“Hard things are sometimes better shared,” said Muriel.
“The hardest and the dearest sometimes can’t be,” Gladys sighed. “What
can I do?” she added miserably. “It’s so old and stale, just the eternal
wrong situations Nature pulls about so, or man gets twisted into! Mary,
my cousin, you know, wants me—wants me to marry. I’m dependent on her,
you see, since father failed in the States. They had me educated in
England, and they ruined that for me—the steady setness that might have
helped me now—by the wildest three years in America. Sixteen!—and
their world without barriers, where everybody wants you to have a good
time! No, I’m not crying—not for that. It lasted three years, and after
the smash they sent me here. Mary doesn’t know what to do with me. I’m
not her sort—I’m always getting into scrapes. I seem to have got into
the nursery again, where there is nothing but corners. I’m in leading
strings to a—maid. There’s only one way out of my nursery, Mary
says—Muriel, it’s open now—but I almost think I’d rather throw myself
out of the window than make use of it.”
Muriel looked at her. “And is there no other door?” she asked gently.
“Ah! not mine—somebody else’s, and—they’ve got the key.”
“Where does it lead to?” Muriel asked.
“I—I don’t know. The most beautiful place in the world, I fancy; but if
it was a wilderness it would be the only way for me!” Timidly Gladys put
out her hands, and Muriel held them, drawing the girl closer to her. She
asked with wonderful mother-eyes the question no words could draw from
her.
“Yes,” she said at last, “people made a mistake when they thought the
world was large. It’s very small—one woman’s heart can hold the whole
of it.”
“Muriel,” the other gasped, “Muriel, do you care for him?”
“For Alec Bruce, dear child? No!” Suddenly her hands grew cold, a fear
seized her, cutting her breath short and making the silence strangely
empty. “You don’t mean him?” she asked very slowly as if she were just
learning to talk. The girl shook her head. “You mean Jack Hurstly?”
pursued Muriel gently inexorable. The girl caught her hands away and
covered her face.
“Oh, Muriel! Muriel!” she sobbed. “I don’t—I don’t care for him.”
“Neither do I,” said Muriel very coldly.
“Don’t you?—don’t you?” the girl exclaimed, her eyes shining like stars
through a cloud. “Then, oh, dearest—my dearest, give me the key!”
Muriel stood quite still smiling. She felt as if she were having a
photograph taken; she must not move; she must try to look
pleasant—that’s what they call it. She was still so long that Gladys
looked up in wonder. The elder girl drew her into her arms.
“It will be sure to come out well,” she murmured. Then aloud: “Little
darling, you have always had the key—mine was only a skeleton one, and,
Gladys, I never could have used it.” The girl clung to her shivering
with joy.
“Then, after all, you do care for him a little?” Muriel said tenderly.
Gladys lifted up her eyes. They seemed much older—they were so happy
and so sure.
“I told you there was only the one way—the one way in all God’s earth
for me. I think I should have thrown myself out of the window if you
hadn’t given me the key!”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Muriel half sobbing.
Gladys smiled. “Dearest, you don’t understand—you see you don’t care
for him as I do!” she said.
“No,” repeated Muriel very slowly and carefully, “I don’t quite
understand—you see I don’t—don’t care for him. Do you know, little
dear, it’s getting rather chilly. Hadn’t we better go in and dress for
dinner?”
“Oh, to think of dinner!” laughed Gladys. “How we do mix things, don’t
we? It’s too terribly material.”
But of the two she had the better appetite. Muriel had never lied
before, and she found it very tiring.