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?"