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.