CONNIE
September, 1915--February, 1916
XXVI
Though there was no wind that evening to disturb them, the chintz
curtains falling before the morning-room window would not hang quite
together. A moth with heavy, powdered wings flopped through the open
space and blundered blindly round the flaming gas-jet.
Muriel rose and drew the curtains for the third time. The garden
outside lay quietly waiting, black shadows outstretched prostrate
before the moonlit elms. No sound of horse hoofs trotting up the road
greeted her straining ears. Only the soft thump of the moth's wings on
the ceiling, and the rustle of her mother's sleeve as she flicked
faster and faster at her tatting broke the perfect stillness.
Would he never come? The 7.40 had arrived, whistling up the valley.
The 8.15 had come and gone. There was still the 9.50.
Muriel returned to her book and glanced mechanically down the page.
Why didn't he wire? He had no imagination of what they must be
feeling.
She read, "Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates
has fallen upon the North of England, but in eighteen hundred
eleven-twelve that affluent rain had not descended: there was no
Pastoral Aid, no Additional Curates Society to stretch out a helping
hand to worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the
wherewithal to pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or
Cambridge."
Muriel was not interested in curates. She let _Shirley_ fall unheeded
on her lap, and sat again listening for the sound of her father's
horse along the road or of Connie's footsteps in the bedroom overhead.
The clock ticked stupidly, marking minutes, half-hours, hours; but at
Miller's Rise endless years had passed since Mr. Hammond drove away
that morning to catch the 10.20 train to Market Burton, and so on to
Thraile. Centuries had passed while Mrs. Hammond sat with her tatting,
staring into the painted glass fire-screen, and Muriel picked up books
and embroidery and the nursing accounts and laid them aside again,
and Connie up in her room, with red eyes and swollen, distorted
face, passed from defiance to despair, and from despair to bitter
comfortless surrender.
The telephone bell suddenly pealed into the silence.
Muriel rose, but Mrs. Hammond waved her aside.
"No, no, I must go. We don't know what--what----"
She rustled from the room, and Muriel heard her quick light step in
the hall and the click of the receiver as she lifted it. Upstairs a
door opened and footsteps crossed the landing hurriedly. Connie too
was listening.
"No, no--Yes. This is Rachel Hammond speaking. Mrs. Waring? Oh, good
evening, Mrs. Waring. No, no. I'm so sorry. Not to-night. Yes. That's
quite true. Connie came home last night for a short leave. What?
No--no. Well"--only Connie and Muriel could detect the strain in that
familiar flutter of laughter--"perhaps we _may_ have some news for you
soon, but I'm saying nothing now. Good night."
The whirring jar of the bell as she rang off snapped the tension of
the house.
Muriel returned to her seat as Mrs. Hammond re-entered the room. Her
quivering lips were almost as white as her drawn cheeks. She groped
her way unsteadily to a chair. After a minute she said:
"That was Mrs. Waring. She wanted us to go and play bridge."
It seemed to Muriel incredible that people like Mrs. Waring and
Mrs. Daunt should still be living in Marshington, playing bridge,
chattering at the War Depot, and discussing the length of autumn
skirts. For Miller's Rise that life had ended centuries ago, cut off
by the startling anguish of Connie's wild confession. The echo of that
storm still seemed to ring in Muriel's ears. Its violence had bruised
and hurt her. She had been deafened by the raging of her father's
voice, by Connie's shrill defiance and gusty tears. She could not bear
to enter the drawing-room now lest she should see again her father
standing by the fireplace, his great neck red and swollen with anger,
his voice hurling at Connie those questions, unbearably coarse and
brutal to Muriel's shrinking mind. She wanted to shut out for ever
the remembrance of Connie's flaming, tear-stained face, and of her
mother's terrible weeping as she lay crushed and broken, beaten out
of her delicate composure into an abandonment that had tortured Muriel
by its blind surrender to astonished pain.
And then slowly, from the terror and confusion, her mother's courage
had risen above her agony. Muriel, watching her now as she sat
fidgeting with the black tatting spindle, could feel again the effort
of that re-assertion, until in the grey dreary hours of early morning,
Mrs. Hammond had risen above her circumstances, quietly dominated the
three of them, and had sent her husband off to Thraile to do the one
thing left to save the Hammonds.
If Mr. Hammond could persuade young Todd to marry Connie immediately,
this month, if Connie could be bundled away again to the isolated
uplands of Thraile, then the tennis club need never know; then Lady
Grainger would still smile graciously upon the Hammonds; then the
Bennet relations, and the flouted malice of the Marshington Chapel
folk need never jeer at Rachel Bennet, who against reason, against
prudence, almost against decency, had married Old Dick Hammond's son.
Why wouldn't he come? Why wouldn't he come? Had the trap broken down?
Had he missed the connection at Hardrascliffe? Supposing--supposing he
had failed? Supposing? You never knew with Father. He had assurance
and courage and cleverness, but still, still--
A door clicked again. Both sat up stiffly, listening. Steps descended
the stairs. The door opened, and Connie entered the room.
"I can't stand it. That room upstairs gives me the horrors. I can't
stand being alone."
She sank into her father's big arm-chair, exhausted by the strain of
the last twenty-four hours. Muriel looked at her, thinking that this
passion-torn creature was a stranger, queer and terrible, belonging
only to the nightmare year since last night when that dark figure had
crept along the drive. Her sister Connie had been gay and reckless,
had loved flamboyant colours, and the harsh merriment of rag-time
tunes. Muriel remembered her at Kingsport dances, flushed and
exultant, with blue ribbon in her bright wild hair.
"I won't do it." Connie's voice, flat and dead, came from between the
hands covering her bowed face. "I won't do it. I hate him. I hate Ben
Todd." She lifted her head with sudden fierce energy. "Mother, let me
go away. By myself. I'll manage. I'll do anything. I'll work my
fingers to the bone. I'll never come near here again. Let Father give
me some money. I can't go through with it."
Mrs. Hammond's trembling fingers set down the foolish white cotton,
the little looped edge of her work.
"Connie," she said quietly, "you know that's impossible. We--your
father and I--are doing the best, the only thing we can for you. You
must help us, we----"
"But if he can't----" In an urgency of appeal Connie lifted her eyes.
"You don't know Mrs. Todd. She'll lie and lie. They'll say--they'll
say I encouraged him. He--Ben-- does what she says. He's always done
what she's said."
Mrs. Hammond opened her eyes and stared unseeing across the room to
her elder daughter. Then she spoke softly, almost as though entranced:
"He can't fail. He can't fail."
"Yes, but I can!" cried Connie, springing to her feet. "I won't go
back there. You don't know what you're sending me to. You don't know.
The Todds were awful, awful. You should have heard them when--when
they thought---- You don't know what it's like up there. The lot of
them. They'll be all against me. They're proud. They're terrible.
There's no bitterness like theirs'll be to me. If you send me there,
I'll never, never have another moment's happiness. They'll watch and
they'll watch. They'll suspect everything I do or say. Oh, they're
hard, and that fearful old cripple--sitting in a corner, watching,
watching---- You'll send me to that, just to save your skins, just to
save your snobbish, rotten little ideas you'll send me to--to----"
Muriel couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear again the clash and jangle
of that terrible violence. "Connie!" she cried. "Connie, don't, it
isn't true. It's for your sake--it--they---- You mustn't say things
like that."
Wide-eyed with astonishment Connie faced her, amazed that Muriel could
so assert her personality.
Then she laughed. "You're backing them up too, are you? Of course.
Your mother's little darling always! But I'll get round Father. I'll
make him understand."
"Connie dear, you must see that for your own sake, and for the sake of
the child, there's no other way. What would you do? You could not earn
your own living alone, much less burdened like that."
"Who's to blame for that?"
"And then--the scandal. Your name . . ."
"I'll run away," sobbed Connie, for the twentieth time. But even then
the shrewd common sense that underlay her recklessness realized the
hopelessness of her position. Without support from her parents or from
Ben, she could not face the world. Beyond her hysteria she foresaw
defeat, yet could not yet acknowledge it. The desire to find an outlet
for her emotion was too strong.
"I'll never face it," she repeated softly. Then, "Why doesn't he
come?"
Far off a train whistled, entering the station.
"That will be the 9.50," said Mrs. Hammond.
Muriel realized then that she did not want her father to come and
tell them. Her mind was chaotic with emotion. She only knew that she
could not bear to face a repetition of last night's scene. Something
whispered in her mind, "Father and Connie enjoy letting themselves
go." If she could have brought herself to desert her mother, she would
have left the room.
A motor-car hummed up the road. A motor-bicycle throbbed noisily. Then
a horse came trotting, clop-clop, clop-clop.
Connie jumped up. "I can't--I can't," she gasped.
Mrs. Hammond rose, and with sudden tenderness went forward. Connie
was, after all, her child. She laid gentle hands on Connie's arm that
grasped the mantelpiece, but the girl pushed her roughly aside.
"Don't touch me. I don't want you!"
Clop-clop. Clop-clop. The horse-hoofs rang clear and hard on the dry
road. With a swish of dead leaves and scattering of pebbles, the cart
turned smartly on to the gravel of the drive. A lantern light moved
beyond the slats of the venetian blind down the side window. The
groom's voice spoke. Mr. Hammond answered.
They heard his footsteps pass the window. They heard him in the hall.
Connie stood quite still as her father came into the room and stopped,
facing her. She did not look up.
"Well," he said heavily, "I've fixed things up. Wedding's on 21st,
Connie."
"No, it's not. I'm not going through with it." She spoke sullenly,
bending towards the fireless grate.
"Ay, but ye will. Young Todd's a fool, but he seemed to be rarely set
up to have you. The missus says she'll treat you well. They weren't
the sort o' folk I'd thought on, Connie. I can't rightly size the
whole business up, for they're decentish people."
"Decent? The old man's a fiend."
"Nay, nay, lass. Thou's not behaved so well thysen' that thou canst
pick and choose. It's not the old man you'll be marrying. I cannot
rightly see how it all came about."
Muriel looked at him. On his face was no longer the dark fury
of resentment, but a rough tenderness, born of compunction and
bewilderment. In his voice lay a new note of pity, almost, it seemed,
of understanding. To Muriel this was the strangest thing in those
strange days; but to Connie looking up from her clasped hands, it
shone like a light through her darkness of rebellion.
"Oh, Dad, you'll help me," she cried, and stumbled forward, blindly
sobbing, into the clumsy shelter of his arms.
XXVII
"Tum! Tum! Ter-um, tum, tum, tum!"
It was all over, then. The smooth bluish page scrawled over with
signatures had completed the deed performed with greater solemnity in
church. That was the wedding march of course, and soon they would
process back down the aisle, following Connie's white fox fur and the
tall shambling figure of the young man. All Marshington would watch
them pass, and Muriel could imagine the things that would be said
afterwards round luncheon tables all over the village.
"What do you think of the new bridegroom, Mrs. Daunt?"
"Hem, not much. A decent young man I dare say. Probably good enough
for Connie Hammond." They would not be merciful, for they had been
cheated out of their champagne reception. "Should ha' thought Hammond
would ha' done things better," Colonel Cartwright would complain, and
ladies who had hoped for an opportunity for new clothes would sniff
surreptitiously over the announcement in the _Kingsport Chronicle_:
"Owing to the severe illness of the bridegroom's father, no reception
will be held, but all friends will be welcome at the church."
It had been a little weak, that, but if Mr. Todd Senior had not been
conveniently indisposed what other excuse could have kept the Todd
family away from Marshington? True, he was no more ill to-day than
he had been for the past ten years or more, but nobody at Holy
Trinity Church was likely to know the High Farm, Thraile, except the
bridegroom, who would keep his own counsel. And the Todd family, as
a visit of Mrs. Hammond to the High Farm had revealed, was quite
impossible.
That visit had almost shaken Mrs. Hammond's confidence, almost, not
quite. After it she had plunged with even greater thoroughness into
the preparations for the wedding. "She must have cared," thought
Muriel to whom the whole business appeared intolerable. She had not
thought that anything Connie might do could have touched herself so
closely. Yet, if Mrs. Hammond cared, she continued to hide her
feelings with superhuman self-control. Of course it would have been
almost impossible to preserve in private that attitude of shamed
reproach while in public she posed as the proud mother, but Muriel was
deeply shocked in some obscure pride of soul when Mrs. Hammond adopted
almost at once her public pose for domestic purposes, and began to
order clothes and household linen with the wholehearted interest that
she usually devoted to such things.
Only Mr. Hammond ever seemed to doubt the wisdom of her policy, but he
too followed where she led him with uneasy meekness, clumsily trying
to comfort her with lace scarves brought from London, and an almost
pathetic consideration of her wishes that drew them closer together
than ever before since their days of love-making by the one passion
that could steady his uncertain nature, or make her forget for a
moment her quiet calculations.
Her mother and father were all right. They had each other. Connie was
all right. She was going to be married. She had new clothes, presents
and attention, all of which, her first rebellion overcome, she
accepted with complacent satisfaction, as though they were her
due. Night after night, Muriel had thought of it, feeling that
sometimes she had been mistaken, that Connie's behaviour had not been
disgraceful, outraging all her sense of delicacy and reserve. Perhaps
to Connie it had been a swift romance, the madness of moonlight on the
darkened moor, the sudden call of youth and brave adventure, then
fleeting fear and hot rebellion to be assuaged by final victory.
Sometimes Muriel had tossed on her bed, feeling the fury of her
outraged virtue; sometimes she found in her own loneliness the greater
shame.
And now it was all over.
The vestry was hot and stuffy. Muriel wished that they need not all
wait so long. Why did the bridegroom hesitate so while signing his
name, Benjamin Durdletree Todd, in weak slanting copper-plate across
the page? Constance Rachel Adeline. Muriel had almost forgotten that
all this was Connie's name, sprawled in her dashing black signature
almost into the columns for Spinster, Age and Parish.
Mrs. Hammond rustled forward in her lilac silk. "Muriel dear, won't
you sign too?"
So Muriel's small, symmetrical signature went below, and the little
crowd rocked and stirred about the vestry table.
"Well, is that all?" laughed Connie.
"Quite all, Mrs. Todd," smiled Mr. Vaughan. "Please let me offer you
every happiness."
But his thin queer face looked troubled as he shook Connie's hand, and
he glanced at the tall sheepish young man with an expression of veiled
bewilderment.
Muriel put down the pen, wondering why the pens in vestries and
offices always disguise one's signature so effectively.
And then she caught sight of the bridegroom again and began another
wonder. That is Connie's husband. That is my brother-in-law. They are
married. They will share the same house, the same room. She will see
him always, at breakfast, at dinner, when they get up in the morning.
His relations are my relations. Connie is going to live at his
father's house. Connie, Connie, who used to play in the day nursery
at weddings, with a lace curtain over her head.
The bride did not wear a veil now, for this quiet war-wedding was far
more chic. Dorothy Daunt and Peggy Mason, who had secured their young
officers, assisted by six bridesmaids and a military escort were made
to feel hopelessly ostentatious by the aristocratic restraint of the
Hammond wedding. So Connie hid her bright hair beneath a large, white
hat, and her white coat frock of soft silky material spoke the last
word in decorous elegance. Her eyes shone with excitement, and she
held her head high with reckless pride.
"She's almost beautiful," thought Muriel, and was dazed by the wonder
of it all. For two days before, Connie had broken down again, and
declared that whatever happened she could not go through with it. Mr.
Hammond had said gruffly, "Look here, Rachel, had we better chuck
it? I'll do something for the kid." But Mrs. Hammond had persisted,
declaring that it was too late to withdraw now, when the wedding had
been arranged, and every one would know. Then finally Connie herself
had saved the situation, by crying out that since they'd pushed her
into it she supposed that she'd go on. But if they knew what Thraile
would be like, they hadn't the feelings of a toad, and for God's sake
they weren't to fuss her any more, for she was fed up with it all.
But, after that, she had recovered her spirits. Even during the awful
hour before the car arrived, she had not faltered in her attention
given to gloves and hat and white _suède_ shoes. And now she looked as
though she had just gained her heart's desire in the rather pale, dark
young man who kept looking sheepishly askance at his newly acquired
father-in-law, as upon one who had bought, at the price of paying off
the Todds' long-standing debts, the honesty of his erring daughter.
They stood waiting for something, the bride, the bridegroom, the
Hammonds, the best man--a vaguely non-committal cousin of the Todds
selected after much diligent searching by Mrs. Hammond, and imposed
upon the now thoroughly intimidated Ben without compunction--Aunt
Rose, Aunt Beatrice and half a dozen Bennet relatives.
"Well, Ben," smiled Mrs. Hammond tremulously, "aren't you going to do
your duty?"
He blushed. He hesitated. Then he turned and kissed Connie with clumsy
awkwardness that knocked her hat aside. While she straightened it, he
kissed Mrs. Hammond, and came in her turn to Muriel. It was as he bent
above her, very lanky and tall and smelling of the earth and leather
and warm black clothes, that suddenly she doubted.
Had they been right to force Connie into this? What had they done?
This terrible young man! But even then it was Connie again who
reassured her.
"Come on, Ben. Stop kissing Muriel. You know she isn't used to it.
Pull up your socks, old man. We've got to face them!" She seized his
arm and started almost at a run down the long aisle. They followed
her, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, Muriel and the strange young man, the trail
of relatives behind.
Tum, tum, terum--tum, tum--tum! triumphed the organ. A sea of bobbing
faces greeted the procession, pallid in the dimness of the church. The
scent from Muriel's bouquet of pink carnations choked her. The organ
shook and quivered in its ecstasy. She saw Connie's white dress gleam
before her. She felt a curious sensation of unreality, as though her
mind were quite detached from her body, and she were looking down upon
Muriel Hammond's saxe blue dress, upon her flower-crowned hat, and the
rocking sea of the congregation. Suppose that this had been her own
wedding--hers and Godfrey's? The young man at her side grew taller;
his pleasantly mediocre profile hardened and straightened into
Godfrey's features as she had last seen them, the straight fine
nose, the splendid sweep of his dark eyebrows, the curve of his
too-handsome, rather obstinate mouth, his firm chin uptilted against
the dark pillar of the aisle.
People were shaking hands at the church door, crowds and crowds of
them. Connie, laughing and blushing, was thanking them for their good
wishes so volubly that nobody noticed the bridegroom's silence. Even
if he had spoken, so many quite eligible young men in Marshington
talked with Yorkshire accents that nobody would notice how common
Ben's voice sounded. Here was Lady Grainger smiling down at them, and
Lady Grainger's kind, guileless face, and her pleasant voice saying,
"Well, Mrs. Todd, when I first made your acquaintance so short a time
ago, I hardly thought that to-day I should come to your wedding." Mrs.
Hammond replied laughingly, "Wasn't she a sight that night? Coming
into the drawing-room all muddy! I was ashamed of her."
Really, thought Muriel, is Mother just being wonderful, or does she
really feel quite happy? But she knew that Mrs. Marshall Gurney's
presence luring Lady Grainger's little speech had helped Mrs. Hammond
over a difficult place.
Little Miss Dale, being as usual unable to make her presence felt at
the centre of interest, pushed her way to Muriel's side.
"A charming wedding," she said tearfully. Nobody knew whether Miss
Dale always wept at weddings out of sympathy for the bride or sorrow
for her single state. But she always went, and she always wept. "I
love a wedding," she continued, "And _how_ sweet Connie looks! and
positively everybody here. The Graingers of course, and I am sure that
Mrs. Neale would have been if it had not been for her sad news."
"Her news? What news?"
"Oh, well." Miss Dale hesitated, darting quick, bird-like glances
at Muriel and the bride. "I wish that I hadn't mentioned it--at a
wedding. We must think of bright things. Happy the bride that the sun
shines on, and of all such good things. The sun _is_ shining. Dear
Connie. A nice young man, I expect. Younger than she is, surely? But
I thought that you would be sure to have heard."
"No. We've been rather absorbed by our own affairs for the last few
weeks, I am afraid." Then, with sharpening anxiety, "Not about--her
son?" She could not say his name.
"Poor Godfrey. Yes, poor Godfrey. We only heard last night over the
telephone. Mrs. Marshall Gurney rang up about the nursing fund, and
then . . ."
The crowd moved forward. In another minute Miss Dale might be swept
away and Muriel would not know. She stretched out her hand and caught
at the little woman's sleeve.
"You said--you were saying--Mrs. Neale had heard . . ." Her heart
cried, "Tell me, tell me," yet she did not want to know.
"Poor Godfrey---- She had a telegram from the War Office---- Reported
wounded and prisoner of war. Of course reports are not always true. As
I said to my sister Maud . . . you know, she was _so_ sorry that she
could not come to-day," and Miss Dale proceeded to describe all that
Muriel had known for weeks past about her sister Maud's sciatica.
But Muriel did not hear. She was picking at the silver paper round her
pink carnations while she fought for self-control. She saw all sorts
of irrelevant, meaningless things, her father's broad, black back,
the frightened pertness of the bow in Miss Dale's hat, Mrs. Marshall
Gurney's flowing scarves and veils. Part of her mind recalled the
stale Marshington joke that Mrs. Marshall Gurney wore as many veils as
a widow because she had forgotten her husband's existence long ago.
The other part remembered as though she herself had seen them, the
horrors that she dreamed of at the front. She saw again pictures drawn
by the too graphic pencil of a war-artist. She saw the wooden face of
an old woman in a lamp-lit shop, who said, "War's bloody hell, ah'm
telling you, bloody hell." She saw Godfrey's splendid body torn and
broken, his handsome face distorted out of its complacency, his
smiling eyes looking straight into despair.
She supposed that she must have followed her sister out into the
sunlit churchyard, where fallen chestnut leaves spread a carpet of
mottled gold and green before the bride. She supposed that people must
have thrown confetti at her, for afterwards she shook it from her hat
and it lay on her bedroom carpet like the fallen petals of pink and
white may. She must have sat through the long luncheon party, and have
helped Connie into her brown travelling dress, and have talked to
Uncle George and Aunt Rose, and the long-legged cousin, Adeline, from
Market Burton, who would stay until the evening train.
Only when she had helped to tidy the abandoned luncheon table, and
helped Annie to pack in their tissue paper the rose bowls and silver
inkstands destined incongruously for the High Farm, Thraile, horror
and desolation overcame her. Perhaps the act of packing away Connie's
presents reminded her of that evening at Scarborough when she had
packed her mother's trunk, and Godfrey found her. Perhaps, all the
time since Miss Dale spoke to her, her imagination had been feeding
upon horrors. But suddenly she put down the painted blotter that she
was holding, and fled from the room. The house was full of borrowed
maids, and aunts and stray acquaintances. She rushed to the only sure
retreat and locked the bathroom door behind her. Flinging herself down
beside the towel rail, she stifled her sobs in the rough softness of
her father's bath towels.
"Oh, Godfrey, Godfrey!" she moaned. "Oh, poor Godfrey. He mustn't be
hurt. He mustn't." Her own body writhed as with acute physical pain.
She could feel the agony of his wounds. They tore her without mercy.
The light of motor lamps in the yard shone through the uncurtained
window on to her small, shaking body and the bowed darkness of her
head. Her lips moved.
"Oh, God, don't take him out of the world, don't let him die. Even if
he has to marry Clare. Make him come back. Come back to me, some day."
She remembered one dreadful night, soon after Martin Elliott's
death, when she had wished Godfrey dead too, in a storm of jealous
bitterness. She felt herself a murderess.
"Don't let him die. Don't let him die!" Her hands tore at the thick
towels. Her imagination, beyond all control, tortured her with his
pain. She had heard tales of prison camps. . . .
"Muriel, Muriel," called her mother's voice. "Where are you, dear?
Come and help me to forward these telegrams to Connie."
With her hand to her mouth, choking the little sobs that broke from
time to time, she stared round the room like a trapped creature. The
wan light from the yard gleamed on the enamel bath, the metal rails,
the polished taps.
"Muriel! Muriel!"
The house claimed her. She was bound to its routine as to a wheel. It
would not stop, wherever Godfrey lay, his broken body nursed by alien
hands.
"Come along, dear."
Slowly, as in a dream, she rose and turned the key.
XXVIII
The wind shrieked through the cutting and dashed itself against the
crawling train. Up and up the steep curve of the gradient panted the
blunt-nosed engine. Pushing forward slowly, it flung two streamers of
fiery smoke out for the swooping hurricane to snatch and tear to
ribbons. From the carriage window Muriel could see blank walls of grey
rank grass, scarred by rough boulders and disfigured here and there by
the blackened skeletons of burnt-out gorse. Once or twice a wheeling
sea-bird with strong, outstretched wings swept across the sky, and
twice since Aunby Station the embankment had dipped, revealing the
huge desolation of the moor beyond. Only once she had seen through a
gash in the hill-side the dark tumbling water of the wintry sea,
whirled into patches of white foam and driven ruthlessly against the
broken cliff.
She consulted again the map on the other side of the railway carriage,
flanked by pictures of Whitby Abbey and Scarshaven shore. She could
trace there the railway straggling up the coast past Scarshaven, Aunby
and Flying-fall, before it branched inland again to Follerwick. Only
one more station separated her from Connie. It was surprising how
little Muriel had thought about her for the past four months. The
news of Godfrey's disaster had wiped her sister as completely from
her mind as a sponge erases writing from a slate, and even the later
information that the disaster was less terrible than she had feared
had not so much recalled the Thraile family to Muriel as it had
recalled Muriel to Marshington. Mrs. Neale had heard of Godfrey. His
wound was a slight one, and the worst consequence of his prison life
seemed to be an exasperating but tolerably safe boredom which at least
might save his life until the end of the war. That was a vast relief.
It had enabled Muriel to face with greater equanimity the post-girl's
rap at the door, and the soft flutter of letters into their wire cage;
but at the time when Muriel heard it she was racked by another anxiety
that engrossed her mind and body. Mrs. Hammond had caught influenza.
She began with it one morning early in November and continued to have
it badly for about six weeks. "She has got thoroughly run down--seems
to have been worrying. You ought to take care of her, you know," said
Dr. Parker; and Muriel, who considered that she had done nothing else
for the past twelve years, thought this a little hard. Nor was Mrs.
Hammond easy to nurse. When Muriel brought her Benger's food, she
wanted Bovril, and when Muriel brought her Bovril, then she didn't
think that she really could eat anything just then. For three
weeks Muriel nursed her night and day, sleeping in her father's
dressing-room, or rather lying there in drowsy apprehension waiting
for her mother's call.
And now she was better, and Christmas was over, and Muriel was being
carried in the train to Thraile. Connie had responded to her offer
without enthusiasm, she thought; but Connie's letters never were
particularly indicative of her feelings. Her handwriting did not adapt
itself to lucid analysis. Yet a secret apprehension drew Muriel from
Marshington into this bleak country where everything was just a little
sinister, and therefore where anything might happen.
The rain rattled now against the window. It flooded out the landscape,
leaving for Muriel's eyes only a blurred line of horizon and for her
ears the howling of the wind. Sound rather than sight gave to Muriel
her first impression of the Follerwick moors.
The train came to a standstill with a grinding scream of brakes.
Muriel pulled her suit-case from the rack, buttoned her fur collar
more tightly, and wrestled with the door. The wind caught it from her
and almost hurled her out on to the platform. She staggered out into
the driving rain. For a moment she stood bewildered, facing a short
stretch of wooden platform, a deserted shelter, and the grim pile of
the moors beyond, hill after hill shouldering up into a melting sky.
The wind flung itself upon her like a fury and almost tore her
suit-case from her hand.
Then, just when she was beginning to wonder whether this could
possibly be a station, Connie bore down upon her; Connie wrapped in a
great man's mackintosh, her dripping arms outstretched, her cheeks wet
and her eyes shining through the rain.
"Oh, here you are! Good old Mu! By Jove, it's good to see you!"
She enfolded Muriel with a damp but unequivocal embrace.
"Oh, Connie," shouted Muriel reproachfully; she had to shout because
of the wind and the rain. "You shouldn't have come. This awful day!"
Connie laughed, and Muriel was glad of her laugh. It seemed to loosen
the tight feeling of doubt and fear that ever since her father's
illness had bound her chest uncomfortably.
"This? Oh, this is nothing! My dear, we didn't know what weather was
at Marshington. That your bag? Come on."
On the road outside the station stood a high-wheeled, springless
vehicle known, possibly on account of its cumbrous heaviness, as a
"light cart." A red-nosed youth in oilskins held the reins of a very
old, yellowish horse that stood dejectedly, its tail between its lean
legs, and its back hunched against the blinding storm.
They climbed into the cart and Muriel wondered how ever Connie could
endure the constant jolting as the wheels jarred over stones, jerked
in and out of ruts, and set the cart rocking like a ship on a rough
sea. Wind and rain prevented any attempt at conversation. Muriel,
sitting sideways behind the driver, could see Connie's profile, her
eyes, swollen with wind or tears, the sullen misery of her mouth. She
turned away, sorely troubled, but there was nothing else to look at.
Grey curtains of rain shut down the travellers. They seemed to be
isolated from all life or colour. Marshington and the warm comfort
of their mother's drawing-room was in a far-off world. It seemed
impossible that the journey would end at another house, where there
would be fires and tea and dry clothes to wear.
The thick black waterproof rug across Muriel's knees grew heavy with
rain. She found that she had been sitting with her hands in a pool of
water. Timidly she shook it off her knee, and watched it run away
through the cracks in the bottom of the cart.
They had been driving for years and years, while Muriel's courage
fluctuated between fear of the unknown and gladness that a change had
come at last into the monotony of life. Slowly the second feeling
conquered the first. This was Thraile. Connie was here and unhappy.
Something had to be done and if possible done by Muriel. She lifted
her chin obstinately, determined that no fear should shake her
purpose, though what she had to do or how to do it were equally
unknown to her. Her imagination already raised her to unfounded
ecstasies, and through the rain her eyes shone as in her mind she
sang Bunyan's hymn:
"Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
Shall daunt his spirit . . .
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
If he do but consent
To be a pilgrim."
The driver unfastened a gate and led the cart along a rough field road
bordered on one side by a broken wall of piled grey stones. At the top
of a steep incline another wall enclosed a narrow strip of mud, and
tangled, stunted bushes known as the garden. Beyond it, facing
westward across the moors, stood the High Farm. Stark bare to all
winds that blew were its grey walls. Five narrow windows above and
four below stared blankly at the winding road, like eyes without
eyebrows. A few farm buildings huddled to the south and crept behind
the shelter of the hill, but the house stood square to the wild wind
and the wild sky and the waiting menace of the moor.
"Is--is this Thraile?" Muriel faltered.
Connie smiled at her, a queer light smile of pride, of fear, of
challenge.
"Yes, this is Thraile all right. The High Farm--Muriel. Muriel--the
High Farm. Now you are properly introduced. And very nice too, I
_don't_ think!"
The wind caught her laugh and snatched it away, as it had caught the
smoke of the ascending engine.
XXIX
Mrs. Todd drew her pie from the oven and sniffed it appreciatively.
Its billowing crust was slowly ripening to the rich gold of maturity.
Its savoury smell satisfied her. She replaced it, shut the oven door
with meticulous care and rose stiffly to her feet, her corsets
creaking as she moved. She began to grumble aloud cheerfully:
"All I can say is--if Miss Muriel can't eat a bit of good pie like
that, she can go without. Good meat houses there is, and bad 'uns
there is, and no one can say that Meggie Todd's near wi' her lads,
nor lasses neither, though I'm fair sick o' these Hammonds. What wi'
Mr. Hammond trampin' round like a mad elephant an' Mrs. H. mewing
round like a sick cat, you might ha' thought Ben had murdered their
lass instead o' marrying her."
She clapped a dish of bacon on to the long table and whisked her oven
cloth on to a nail beside the stove, for she did nothing without
enormous vigour.
"A fat lot o' use it is, me havin' Connie front ways if she's not
going to give a hand wi' t'work, but s'always gadding round after her
fine relations. Ah suppose William 'ud tell me that the wife's kin are
a scourge sent from God for t'original sin o' t'husband," and she
tossed the head that had once been the pertest in Follerwick. But she
was not William, nor did she really dislike Connie as much as her
words implied; but she found in these monologues of indictment an
outlet for the accumulated irritation of reproaches born without
resentment. She contemplated the clean white cloth on the table,
straightened a couple of dishes on the dresser, then flew towards the
yard door and the coal-house, murmuring as a parting message to the
kitchen, "I'm sure the Lord made relations-in-law to square up for
them as can't get married."
She had, indeed, good reason to see in relations-in-law a doubtful
blessing. As Meggie Megson, the bright-eyed daughter of a Follerwick
publican, she had been wooed with greater enthusiasm than discretion
by William Todd of Thraile. A hasty marriage ensured the legitimate
birth of her eldest son, Matthew, but did not quiet the uneasy
conscience of her lover. For a year of bitter recrimination alternating
with reckless passion, he had lived with her as her husband, but
before her second son, Benjamin was born, the Lord took vengeance
upon the wickedness of William. A false step while manœuvring the
thrashing-machine robbed the wild young Todd of his left leg, and so
much injured his spine that he lay now always on a couch in the front
parlour, contemplating the inexorable justice of God and the unending
pageant of the sky from the west window. William Todd did not so much
find religion as religion found him, the sunless, menacing religion of
a tramping preacher, part Calvinist, part Wesleyan; a religion wherein
strange anomalies of predestination strove with a Pauline emphasis
upon justification by faith, without which, in spite of the admonition
of St. James, works were dead. Meggie accepted her husband's religion
as she had accepted his love. Finding herself regarded as an
enticement sent from the devil, she listened with patience to the
outpourings of St. James, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am
tempted of God . . . but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away
by his own lust and enticed. Then the Lust, when it hath conceived,
beareth sin, and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth
death." But she endured with less tranquility the continual assurance
that from her sons, Matthew and Benjamin, such sin and death should
come. Since, however, things were as they were, she proceeded to her
cooking, scrubbing, baking and nursing with undiminished vigour,
comforted, perhaps, by the thought that if her husband despised her
only less than he despised his children at least he could not do
without her.
William's mother unfortunately also tended to regard her son's
accident as something in the nature of divine retribution, not for
compromising a publican's daughter, but for marrying her; and when it
became known that Ben, the weakling, the awkward boy whom every one
conspired to brand as "wanting," had got Connie, the land-girl,
into trouble, then the fierce scene of personal remorse, impotent
bitterness and denunciation had been visited, not so much upon Connie,
as upon Mrs. Meggie, since she was clearly the root of all evil at the
High Farm. Yet, after Connie had returned to the High Farm as Ben's
wife, it was Mrs. Meggie who continued to make her new life bearable.
To tell the truth, Mrs. Meggie was secretly glad that Ben had married
under any circumstances. Between the grim couple of invalids in the
front parlour and the boisterous conviviality of farm workers in the
kitchen, she had been unconsciously numbed with loneliness, and the
prospect of a daughter-in-law pleased her gregarious temperament. Then
too, she was glad that Ben, whom his father and brother despised for
lack of virility, should have been the first to marry after all.
As she bustled from the stone-paved yard this evening, and called up
the long passage, her heart, though she hardly knew it, was softened
to the thought of her Ben's little child.
"Polly, Alice, Gert, come on some of you. Give me a hand wi' t'table,
now."
From the draughty darkness came a gust of song and laughter.
"Who, who, who, who, who were you with last night?
'Twasn't your sister, 'twasn't your ma!
Ah, ah, ah, ah, a--ah, ah! ah!"
The voices rose to a shrill crescendo, accompanied by the screeching
gasps of Bob Wither's concertina, and the tramp of nailed boots on the
floor.
Mrs. Todd opened the door of the back room, releasing a flood of
lamplight and tumultuous clamour.
"Come on, you lazy good-for-nowts. Put down yon thing, for goodness'
sake, Bob. Alice, where's Gert? Feeding pigs this time o' day? What,
how often did I tell you that ye'll never make a farmer by gettin' up
to feed stock ower' nights? Be off now, some on ye, to see if light
cart's come yet. Hurry and get gone, then you'll get back."
They scattered under her genial despotism.
"I'll help, Ma. Where's forks?"
The kitchen rang to the clatter of pots, of tongues and the shouted
refrain of their song, "Who were you with last night?"
Thus Muriel, who had clambered down stiffly from the dog-cart, and
dragged her suit-case along the unlighted corridor, came suddenly upon
a scene of firelit tumult and huge gaiety. Connie pushed open the
kitchen door and marched in. The noise stopped. Every one looked at
the new-comers.
"Well I never! If you're not here already and no one ever heard you!
Connie, did Sam go to loose out for you? So this is Muriel? My, aren't
you wet! You're not as big as your sister, are you? Take after your
mother likely. Here, Mat, where are your manners? Dolly, Alice!"
"Pleased to meet you," said Dolly pertly.
Alice set a saucer cheese-cake on the table, nodded at Muriel, and
took from her pocket a bundle of crochet that never left her. Some
women take to crochet as others do to cigarettes. Alice, flicking at
hers with unsteady fingers, was hiding herself from any possible
embarrassment. Her thin face bent above her work.
"Where's Ben?" asked Connie abruptly.
"Didn't he come to help you down? There now! Well, he must be up in
fold yard. You'd better go and get your wet things off. Go on. Take
her up, Connie. Polly go and help carry Muriel's bag. Connie, get a
dry pair o' stockings on for Heaven's sake. We can't have you catching
cold, at all events." This with an uncontrollable wink at Muriel.
"When did Ben go out?" asked Connie stubbornly, ignoring her
mother-in-law's injunctions.
"I don't know. When did he go, Mat?"
"Half an hour. He went to help Sam." Alice the land girl raised her
face for a minute from her crochet to give her information, then
thrust it down again. It was a thin, freckled face, with long fair
lashes and a sharp up-tilted chin. Muriel found herself standing and
facing Alice, while the rain dripped from her coat on to the white
scoured floor.
"Go along with you now, messing up my floor!" cried Mrs. Todd, and
shooed them vigorously from the kitchen.
"Well," remarked Connie, as they stood together at last in the large
square room to which she had brought Muriel. "And what do you think of
it all?"
Muriel looked round the bare walls, papered with a grotesquely
botanical pattern and texts on strips of cardboard. The wind blew the
texts backwards and forwards against the wall. It drove the lace
window-curtains out into the room, and sent the carpet rippling in
long waves across the floor. Through the window she could see nothing
but a veil of twilight rain.
"How can I say what I think of it till I've seen some more?" she
temporized, pulling off her wet coat and pushing the hair out of her
eyes. "It's all frightfully different from what I expected. The front
of the house is so grim, and yet, when you come to the back and see
all those jolly people---- They seem to enjoy life, Connie. And then
Mrs. Todd. She may be a bit of a Tartar, but I like her eyes. And
then, there's Ben's father, and old Mrs. Todd, aren't there?"
Connie laughed bitterly, "Oh yes. There's my respected father-in-law
_and_ old Mrs. Todd. I wonder if you'll like _her_ eyes?"
"Why not? Oh, Connie, you ought to take your wet things off. Now, at
once."
"I'm all right." Connie pulled off her oilskin and felt the sleeve of
her woollen coat below. "I'm quite dry." But she sat down on the bed
and began to unlace her boots.
"Why shouldn't I like old Mrs. Todd's eyes?" persisted Muriel.
"Oh, she gets on my nerves. She sits in her chair in that awful little
room and looks and looks and looks. She looks right through you,
Muriel. She sees just everything. All the things you ever thought or
did or--anything.
"They say she's got the 'sight'--you know, second sight. I think
she's just uncanny. And she's so frightfully old, you know. Not like
a person at all--like a tree, all twisted. And then she's always
nibbling things, little bits of biscuit and soft sweets and things.
Like a mouse. And then her bright eyes. Ugh!"
"But then, do you see her much?"
"No, thanks! I keep out of her way. But she sees me. She never misses
anything. Oh, dear me, no! and she knows all about--all about Ben and
me. It's awful, Mu. Sometimes I think I'll have to kill her or run
away or something."
"How do you mean? She knows all about Ben and you? Every one here
does, don't they?" said Muriel slowly. She had understood from Mr.
and Mrs. Hammond that the Todds had accepted Connie's position as
regrettable but without alternative.
"Oh, yes, in a way they know. The girls don't exactly, but they
suspect. Mu, it's awful. We used to have such jolly times, singing in
the back room and going off to concerts at Follerwick camp, and all
that. Now it's awful. I'm out of it all. They hardly talk to me, and
we all used to laugh at Ben, and they don't know what to make of it.
And old Mrs. Todd hates me, and the old man's mad. He's got religious
mania or something and he's quite potty. Mrs. Meggie's all right, but
nobody cares much what she says except Ben, and he's still more scared
of his father." Connie's bootlaces dropped from her hands and she sat
forward, huddled on the edge of the bed, staring at her sister.
"I don't see that they have any right to hate you," cried Muriel
hotly. "After all--it was their precious son--who----"
Connie's blue, miserable eyes darted a quick glance at her sister's
face, then dropped again to her boots.
"Oh, yes, I know, but you could hardly expect them to remember that."
She kicked off her boots and sat with her feet in their black woollen
stockings swinging from the bed.
"Every one hates me," she said miserably. "Mr. Todd thinks I'm a
judgment from hell fire or something, because he was a bit wild when
he was young. And Alice--well, to tell the truth, I think that Alice
was in love with Ben and she'll get her knife into me whenever she
can. She's as jealous as anything. And Mrs. Todd's a bit queer because
she's so fond of Ben and is afraid I shan't make him happy. She knows
I'm going to get him away from this place too as soon as the war's
over and we can get a farm. Oh, it's no picnic I can tell you."
Muriel was apparently engaged upon fastening the front of her
velveteen dress. Really she was thinking about Connie. "I mustn't be
sentimental. Connie evidently pities herself quite enough. She's not
really displeased because Alice is jealous. And Mrs. Todd is kind, I'm
sure. Mother said I hadn't to let her harrow my feelings. Connie
always did make the most of her own sufferings." She fastened a press
hook below the brown fur edging of her dress and asked quite casually:
"But Ben, of course he stands up for you?"
"Oh, Ben would be all right. But he's frightened of his father, and
Alice worries him, and it's rotten living on here in this house. You
never get away from them all for a minute, and tea's the worst. They
all sit there round that big table and they eat and eat. And I've got
to sit there and feel that they're looking at me and thinking things,
an' nudging each other if I've got a headache. And then they all go
giggling and carrying on in the back room and I've got to sit about
with Mrs. Meggie. And I can't go into the farm because it's such hard
work, and it's such beastly weather. And you never see anyone. Oh, I'm
so bored and bored and bored!"
"It'll be better when the baby's come. You'll have lots to do then."
"I don't know. Sometimes I just get scared. I wish I was going home to
have it. It's awful here. Ben gets fed up with me because I'm not so
jolly as I used to be. He doesn't say anything, but I know. Why didn't
he come and meet us to-night, I'd like to know? Oh, they just treat
me here as if I was dirt. They think it's an honour for me to have
married into their beastly family. The Todds! who live in the kitchen,
and Mrs. Meggie was a barmaid, and--well, look at this room! You see
what they're like."
"I don't. I haven't seen them all yet. I haven't even seen Mr. Todd."
"Oh, he's mad. He's gone quite potty. He reads the Bible all day and
talks like a lunatic. Ben says he's not so frightfully poor really.
They've done badly since his accident and all that, but he's got a lot
of land. There's a little farm over at Fallowdale that's let out to
tenants. If he'd let Ben and me go there----"
She leant forward, biting her nails, a singularly unattractive figure
in her sagging skirt and the old crimson jersey that she had worn at
Marshington. Muriel deliberately went to her case and drew out a clean
handkerchief from her lavender-scented satchel. Part of her mind was
conscious of a satisfactory contrast between her own trim orderliness
and Connie's abandoned self-commiseration. Part of her thoughts were
dazed with a sad wonder. Was this the ennobling power of suffering and
tragedy, this nauseating muddle of petty resentment and self-pity?
Wasn't it really rather a waste of time and energy to try to help
people as impossible as Connie?
She stood with her face towards the window, a pucker of thought
between her brows.
Suddenly from the bed came a little cry. "Oh, Mu, Mu! I am so awfully
glad you've come. I know you'll help me. You will help me, won't you?
I've been so beastly miserable!"
Muriel capitulated.
Her position in this household might be most unpleasant, and Connie
might not be an easy person, but at least she had appealed to Muriel.
Somebody wanted her. Somebody needed her.
She returned to the bed and opened her arms wide. Tear-stained but
comforted, Connie tumbled in. They sat there until Mrs. Todd called up
the stairs:
"Come along, girls. Tea's ready."
"Oh, Connie," cried Muriel, "and I've never let you tidy!"
"Oh, Lord, and there's such a song and dance if we're late. For
goodness' sake go down and say I'm coming."
Go down? All alone! into that formidable crowd of quite strange
people? Muriel hesitated. Then the courage of her new resolve returned
to her.
"Oh, well, I suppose I shall have to do harder things than this if I'm
really going to help Connie," she reflected.
With her head high and her eyes shining she felt her way down the
uneven stairs.
The battle of Thraile had begun.
XXX
It was not going to be easy, but then Muriel was not quite sure that
she wanted ease. She found herself at last comforted by a situation
that demanded from her action, prompt action. That was what she found
so terribly difficult, the action on her own initiative. Thraile was
alarmingly different from Marshington, where nearly all judgments
could be obtained ready-made from social conventions or from Mrs.
Hammond. At Thraile nobody seemed to care what she did except Connie,
and Connie as a councillor was worse than useless, for between moods
of sullen silence, boisterous humour and hysterical despair she had
lost even her very moderate supply of common sense.
For a fortnight Muriel stayed on at Thraile, watching and talking and
thinking, thinking, thinking. She had tramped over the dark moor
before the house; she had wandered down the farm that fell away behind
it, acre after acre of drab stubble and harsh grass land, to the
swirling waters of the Fallow. But whether she trod the sheep-tracks
girdled with frost, or sat in the stuffy parlour listening to the
endless tale of Connie's woe, the same conviction urged her.
She would have to speak to William Todd.
Last night she had written to her mother:
You see, the position here for Connie really is intolerable. Mr.
Todd, the cripple, really rules this house. He loves Matthew; but
because he considers him to have been "born in sin" he doesn't
think it right to love him, and makes up for it by hating Ben, who
has always been rather weak and sickly. Or else he just pretends
to hate him, and really loves them both. I cannot say, for he is a
queer man. Every one is terrified of him, though the girls think
that he's quite mad. Anyway the point is that Ben and Connie are
unhappy here and ought to get away. The farm girls suspect things
and make jokes about Connie. Mr. Todd and Matthew both bully Ben.
Ben and Connie are never alone together for a minute except at
night. They are getting frightfully self-conscious and always
under a sort of restraint which must be bad for them. Mr. Todd has
a little farm at Fallowdale, quite a nice little house, which he
was going to give to the first son that married. Now he says that
Ben can't be trusted away from him at Thraile. I am sure that if
Ben and Connie could get away together, they would be happy. Ben
really seems to be very fond of her. I am going to speak to Mr.
Todd myself, but, if he won't listen, I do wish that you or Father
could do something. And couldn't we take Connie into a nursing
home for when the baby comes? It's not that they are unkind to her
here, and they make her as comfortable as they can, and she need
do no housework unless she likes. It's only that they ought not to
be here with all these people.
I am so sorry about your cold and father's indigestion, and I
quite understand how busy you are about the luncheon party. I
would come home and help you with it, but I really don't feel that
I can leave here just yet, please, if you can do without me. If
Mrs. Cartwright worries you about the Jumble Sale again, do tell
her that Mr. Vaughan specially told me that we could not have
the Parish Room until February 14th because of the Red Cross
Exhibition. It is very nice of you to say you miss me, and you do
understand why I'm staying on, don't you?
Please give my love to Father.
Your loving daughter,
MURIEL.
P.S.--Can't you get Aunt Beatrice for the luncheon?
She simply could not help writing her letter. It was the nearest
approach that she could make to asking for the advice that she so
sorely needed. It brought her into touch with homely and familiar
things before she plunged irrevocably into the deep waters of her
own decision.
She had sat wrapped up in her thick grey cloth coat in the bare
chilliness of her bedroom, reading and re-reading the neat, small
handwriting that always looked as though it might be going to say
something interesting and that never did. She felt about it as
soldiers feel about letters written on the eve of an advance. From a
strange place she stretched out her hands to grasp, perhaps for the
last time, at the safety of the known world.
But she had not posted the letter. Re-read in the cold light of early
morning criticism, she had decided that it promised more than her
feeble courage might perform. A scrupulous mental honesty had made her
recognize her weakness long ago. "I am going to speak to Mr. Todd,"
she wrote, but nobody should read the words till she had spoken.
All the same, the last letter from Mrs. Hammond, one of a resigned but
plaintive series, had to be answered. That was just as well, for it
set a limit at last to Muriel's procrastination. The postman came to
Thraile at six o'clock, leaving the letters and taking away with him
any written by the household. If Muriel could only end that awful
interview before six, she still might post her letter to her mother.
On paper it had seemed so simple; but then on paper and to Mrs.
Hammond it would have been impossible to do justice to the atmosphere
of Thraile. Those were two terrible people, sitting in the small front
parlour; the old lady mumbling and rustling from the arm-chair by the
fire, whose bright unseeing eyes could yet see everything; the cripple
lying stretched before the window, his fiery spirit slowly burning
through his mutilated body, until it seemed that it must quite consume
all that was mortal and regain the liberty it proudly craved.
It was all very well pretending that she did not mind. For nearly an
hour that afternoon, Muriel had walked along the steep moor road with
Connie, listening to the angry emphasis of her reiterated words. To
comfort her, Muriel had said, "All right, I'll speak to him." She did
not add that for nights now she had dreamed of the approaching
interview, had seen herself standing in the bright stuffiness of
that over-heated room, confronting the fierce relentlessness of
those piercing eyes, feeling her own gentleness driven away in
blind surrender out into the whirling darkness of the passage. And
supposing that she made things worse? Supposing that he resented her
interference? That he himself had been thinking of sending Ben to
Fallowdale, but perversely changed his mind at Muriel's blundering
suggestion?
Standing in the corridor she pressed her thin hands against her
face. As though she could feel through the door the repulsion
of his violence, she shrank against the wall. His fierce tongue
probed her softness; his strength had outraged her submission; his
independence, exaggerated almost to insanity, bruised and bewildered
her well-tutored mind. "He's mad. He's mad," she thought. "Better not
go at all than break down in the middle."
From inside the parlour the cuckoo-clock piped suddenly five hollow
notes. "Five o'clock. If I mean to post that letter I must go in
now--now."
She went forward and tapped at the door.
She had been in before several times with Mrs. Todd, but always had
retreated as soon as courtesy made possible. Never before had she been
in alone.
The room now seemed to float in liquid firelight. Upborne upon the
flickering flood she could see here a jar of delicate gilt and
ivory beneath a fiery glass bubble; there the corner of a polished
picture-frame; a wool worked footstool, the basket of sewing that Mrs.
Meggie had left on the table. Slowly the quivering movement steadied
before her eyes, and from the dancing shadows the solid bulk of old
Mrs. Todd's chair rose like an island, and there by the window she saw
William Todd.
He lay as usual gazing out across the moor, his hawk-like profile
outlined against the melting silver of the wintry sun that flowed
between dark banks of hill and sky. All the Todds had sharp features
and noses hooked almost to a deformity, but sickness had emaciated a
naturally lean face, until William Todd was terrible enough to see.
Muriel closed the door very quietly, and went across to the couch in
the window. Even when she stood beside him, he did not seem to see
her, but lay as still as the furniture or the dark moor. The room was
silent. Only the light flames rustled like the restless wings of a
bird imprisoned in the hearth and the old woman nibbled and mumbled in
her sleep. Far, far away from Marshington was this firelit parlour.
Muriel spoke timidly.
"Please, Mr. Todd, can I speak to you a minute?"
"Evidently. You see that. Ah cannot get away."
A certain broadening of the vowels betrayed William Todd's county, but
he spoke with a readiness unusual among the tongue-tied farmers of the
Riding, and possessed a command of language won from long reading of
the Bible, dog-eared theological tracts, and a surprising quantity of
the more easily acquired English classics.
"I wanted to talk to you about Connie," Muriel continued. "You know
that when--when she had--to--to----"
"To marry my son to save her own name from the disgrace that justly
followed her own action. Well?"
This was not a promising beginning, but at least it seemed to Muriel,
that, considering his own record, he was being a little unfair.
"Well," she said, more hotly than she had intended. "I don't see
myself that it was such an awful thing to do. After all, many people
don't even marry."
"Because the many have sinned, does that excuse the guilt of one? I
think not."
This was dangerous ground. Muriel shifted her position. It was too
late now for retreat. She spoke hastily.
"I didn't come to talk to you about whether Connie sinned or not. I
don't pretend to judge such things. What I do feel is that somebody
ought to tell you that living on here is being frightfully bad for
them. They're never really alone together for a minute. Every one whom
they see and every one where they go reminds them of what they once
did. People laugh and sneer--and--oh, it's terrible. You can't see it
of course, or you'd have known, I'm sure, how impossible it is."
"Please go on. This is no doubt very interesting."
"It isn't interesting, Mr. Todd, really. It's horrible. Oh, do let
them go away. Please let them go. You've got a farm at Fallowdale,
haven't you?"
No answer came to her from the shadows. Fearfully she continued:
"Well, why don't you let Ben farm it? Let them go off and live
together, make a fresh start all on their own. I'm sure they could be
happy. Connie loves farming, and they'd have the baby. Oh, I know
you'd find they'd be far happier. Just those two, where they could
forget what a bad start they'd made. It's cruel, it's just cruel to
make that one mistake an ever-living shame to them because other
people smile and sneer and insinuate, people who are probably every
bit as bad but just more careful. How can they be happy like this?"
She stopped, amazed by her own temerity. Beyond the moor the last
silver gleam of sunlight lay like an outstretched sword between the
dark embrace of hill and sky. William Todd lay watching it for a long
time before he moved. Then he said slowly:
"You seem to set great store by happiness."
She was surprised. Eagerly she tried to see his face through the
growing shadows as she said:
"I do, I do. Surely it's the right of people to be happy!"
"Really? To think o' that now! Are you happy?"
"I?" Three months ago she had told herself that she was the most
miserable of frustrated women, but to a stranger she would have
laughed nervously and answered, "I'm all right." Somehow at Thraile
and to this madman, one spoke the truth if possible. She answered
thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. No, I don't think I'm happy. I've never
really had any of the things I wanted most. I've never done anything
I meant to do. I'm a failure, I suppose. Nobody needs me . . ."
"Well?" He cut short the flow of self-revelation, so alien to Muriel's
usual habit. "And do you think that I am happy? or Meggie, my wife? or
my mother there? Do you think that God Himself is happy? What then do
you expect for your sister and my son, eh?"
She could answer this, but her speech came stumblingly.
"But if we see any way to make people happy. . . . They have a right
to all possible happiness. Now if Ben and Connie could go to your farm
at Fallowdale, they might forget--everything, and just be--happy."
"You think that they have a right now to be happy, having sinned. I
tell you, young woman, that I too sinned when I was young, and walked
wildly before the Lord after the lusts o' my own flesh. And I too
thought to cover the wickedness o' my ways from the sight o' men by
asking the Lord's blessing on a union made in hell. But the Lord is
righteous and in Him is no shadow of turning. He laid upon me the
blessing of this judgment. I had desired with the desire of the flesh
for my own lusts, and with the desire of the world for my ambitions.
The Lord took away from me the means of all fulfilment. He laid His
hand upon me, and I lie here while others reap what I have sown. I lie
here while my own sons bring forth the fruits of destruction. The Lord
is just. He gave, and He hath taken away. Blessed be His name."
"I know you've suffered," she cried softly, "but, because you are
unhappy, do you think that you have the right to make them suffer?
After all, it's a tremendous responsibility to undertake the Lord's
judgments without His wisdom. I thought that you were keeping
Fallowdale from Ben because you couldn't afford to let him have a
separate farm, or because you were afraid he couldn't manage it;
but if it's just because you think he ought to suffer as you
suffered. . . ."
"Did I speak o' suffering for myself? You seem to have a queer notion
of the ways o' things. Do you think that I could make your sister
happy if I wanted to, or Ben the godly man I would ha' had him be?
From their own hearts and deeds comes their own misery."
"Yes, but really, Mr. Todd," persisted Muriel desperately. "Really and
truly living here makes it all worse. It's estranging them."
"Their shame estranges them."
"It's making Connie bitter. She's getting to despise Ben because the
girls laugh at him."
"That is part of their punishment."
"It's not. It's not. Why should they be punished? And why should you
do it?" She drew a deep breath and felt as though all winter's storms
passed over her as she said, "It's like a sort of pride to you. You
think that because the Lord punished you in a special way you sinned
some great, particular sin. I don't believe that it was a great sin
and probably your accident was nothing but an accident, and you've
been brooding and brooding until you think that you had a dispensation
of providence specially made for you, so now you are going to make one
for somebody else. I hate your religion or whatever you call it if it
gives you the right to make other people miserable!" She broke off,
suddenly appalled at her own arrogance. This was what people did if
they spoke out of character. They always went too far. Oh, it was this
queer, terrible place that made every one behave unlike themselves! If
Connie had never come to Thraile, nothing would ever have happened,
she was certain.
She stood in the dark room, waiting for him to destroy her.
She had to wait for a long time.
The clock ticked. The fire rustled. From the old woman's chair broke
little snatching sounds of difficult breath. Her asthma was troubling
her in her sleep.
At last Muriel heard the slow voice of William Todd. Again his
gentleness amazed her.
"I rec'lect when I was a lad that I thought I knew pretty well
everything worth knowing. My father went t'chapel and my mother went
to church, and I'd have naught to do with either. So you hate my
religion, eh? Now, I wonder if ye know at all what my religion is?
Mebbe ye think ah've just got a kind o' spite against my son and your
sister and ah justify it by the cloak of righteous disapproval, eh?
That ah've just lain here fashing myself over my own soul and
forgetting the right sense o' the great wisdom o' the children of
this world. Is that it?"
She did not answer because she could not. She had said more than
enough. Her mind was a dry husk, empty, blown before the wind of his
strange spirit.
"Ye'd better sit down. Ah've had to listen to you say your piece. Now
mebbe ye'll listen to me for a bit. You took it upon yourself to hate
my religion. Ah misdoubt if you know what you're talking about." He
paused, as though he sought a difficult word. "There is only one thing
that matters, and that is the vision of the spirit. Men are poor
things at best, but there's one power that dignifies them, and that's
the sight o' something greater than this world. Folk nowadays are apt
to call it truth or Science or whatnot. I call that glory God. We are
born in sin and reared in wantonness, and there are those of us to
whom no light is shown. We worship false gods most of our time. Our
bodies and our pride and the opinion of our fellow men; but to the
Elect there comes a day when they see, though through a glass darkly,
the shadow o' that light."
"Well?" murmured Muriel.
"The Lord has said, 'Thou shalt have none other god but me,' but we
can only worship what we know, and to all men the light is not
vouchsafed, so that they worship false gods thinking them to be the
true. Ah'm telling you, though ye'll forget it, and mebbe ye'll never
understand, that the most precious gift to man is just this vision of
his God. And once he has seen, then he must never rest. I remember
when I was farmin' how always the moors were pressing on these lands.
They never sleep, if we do. Ye may build your walls high, an' weed and
dig, but slowly by night creep up the gorse an' heather, an' who's to
say 'an enemy hath done this'? 'Tis the same wi' vision. Once ye have
seen, there's never sittin' down and waiting for the Lord to come to
you again. All foolishness an' rioting, all chambering an' wantonness
comes in between a man and his own sight. Purity is a matter o' the
spirit you may say, and what is a man's body that he be so mindful of
it? In the body we live, and from the body we die, and a man can give
his body mastery over his immortal soul; but the things o' the body
come like wind and weather between a man and his clear spirit. For it
is hard enough for any man to see the light, and harder yet to keep it
burning clear. And if your light be darkness, then is man robbed of
God. The last betrayal and the ultimate unworthiness is the defilement
of the vision."
He paused, it seemed to be for a long time. Then he said: "I cannot
let it be as though my son had never sinned. Wouldn't it be far easier
for me to say, 'It doesn't matter. It was a little thing'? To say as
you say, 'Well, he married her,' as if it made amends to God to hide
your own wrong from the eyes o' men? I let him marry her, because it
did no good to keep them from each other, and he would. But if my own
son will use his own body as an instrument of pleasure, and thinks
that as long as he gives his name to the child he does no ill, I'll
not be still. If all this happiness you prate of were but the
gratification o' their lusts ah'd say no more. But till he's shamed
to his soul at what he's done, ah will not let him go."
"Oh, but he is ashamed!" she cried, striking her hands together with
the force of her sudden sight. "They are ashamed, but of the wrong
thing. They're ashamed not because they did wrong, but because they
were found out. They must go away from this place to forget that.
Please let them go. You'll see. Talk to Connie if you like. She does
not understand you. Only let them go. If not----"
"Well?"
"I'll have--I'll have--I'll make my father come again and force them
from you."
The man on the couch laughed at her. "Do ye think your father could do
ought about it? While I mean Ben to stay here, here he'll stay. He
married Connie because ah gave him leave. The boy's no man yet, and
he's been living in sin. It must be as the Lord wills, I only wait
upon His guidance."
His voice became suddenly flat with weariness.
"Go now and ask my wife to come to me."
She felt her way to the door and knew that she was defeated. She had
done nothing, less than nothing. What could she do against the fires
that consumed that fierce, relentless cripple? He puzzled her. He
puzzled her. Her father had found him shrewd and grasping, well able
to strike a good bargain. Her mother had found him strange but
interesting, a self-educated man of unusual refinement for his
environment. And she--surely he was sincere? He _felt_ sincere. Yet,
what was one to do for Connie?
She groped her way towards the kitchen door that thrust a bar of light
across the blackness of the passage.
The postman leant against the table, a slab of saucer-custard in his
hand, a mug of tea beside him. She remembered now her letter to her
mother. What use was there to send it? They would never understand.
She delivered her message to Mrs. Todd, and received in return a
letter addressed to
"Miss Constance Hammond,
Miller's Rise,
Marshington,"
readdressed to The High Farm, Thraile. The envelope was crushed and
dirty, and bore the foreign service stamp. She carried it to the room
where Connie lay upon her bed, reading a novel.
"Letters?" she asked sleepily.
"One--forwarded from Marshington. That's all." Muriel retreated to her
own room, sick and weary with defeat. She had done nothing, nothing.
She had helped neither Connie nor herself. She felt that she hated
William Todd.
XXXI
Connie did not come downstairs at tea-time.
"She'll be tidying herself after lying down," said Muriel.
"She'll be crying over a letter from an old sweetheart," laughed
Dolly.
Matthew winked at his brother. "There, Ben, lad, off ye go and see
what's up wi' your wife. You'll have t'keep an eye on her letters now.
Connie always was one for the lads. No followers!"
"Shame on you, Mat. Give over now," soothed Mrs. Meggie, pouring out
the tea from a great brown pot. "You'll be bringing home a wife
yourself one of these days, and then you'll laugh with the other side
of your face. Well, Muriel, since you're the greatest stranger, bacon,
cake or ham?"
Muriel gazed at the characteristic profusion. She was thinking of
William Todd and the terrifying strangeness of the front parlour.
"Ham, please--a very little," she said.
"Muriel's lost her appetite because she hasn't had a letter too,"
jeered Dolly.
Alice said nothing. She lifted her heavy-lidded eyes to Ben's red face
and sat watching him. Ben bent his head above his cup, drinking great
gulps of tea.
"I found an old ewe on her back i' forty acre," he remarked to change
the subject.
"Not one o' the cross-breds?" asked Mat with interest.
"Or was it our old friend Agatha?" interposed Gertie.
"Agatha? Who was Agatha?" asked Muriel. Her head ached and she
wondered why Connie did not come downstairs, but she knew that
tea-time at Thraile was a convivial meal and that "moping" was against
the rules.
Dolly explained to her with avidity. "Last spring at Follerwick Camp
an old bird called Agatha Anderson brought a concert affair down to
give improving music to the fellows. You never saw such an old geezer!
She had sort of woolly white curls round a long solemn face, just like
a sheep. Well, one night Connie was coming back from Follerwick and
right halfway across the moors she heard a sheep bleating, for all the
world just like old Agatha. It had got strayed and hurt its leg, and
was sort of huddled on a bank like the old platform. So she got up and
brought it along with her and we called it Agatha."
"Brought it home? All by herself? Wasn't it heavy?" asked Muriel
without interest. Surely Connie had had time now to do her hair.
Wasn't she feeling well? Muriel knew how much she hated those Thraile
meals. Perhaps at the last moment she had taken fright.
Polly was giggling. "By herself? I ask you? Our Con walk home from
Follerwick by herself? Not 'arf! Ben, you were with her, weren't you,
when she found Agatha?"
"No, I wasn't," said Ben stiffly.
"Oh, well then--it was one of the other fellows. Bill or Tubby or----"
"Wasn't it Eric Fennington?" asked Alice very quietly. She picked up
her cup and drank, her light eyes never leaving Ben's flushed face.
Eric Fennington? To Muriel the name was not quite unfamiliar. "Who was
Eric Fennington?" she asked, but without much interest, because she
felt as though the powers of darkness were behind her locked away in
the front parlour, and she was afraid.
"Eric Fennington," explained Dolly volubly, "was one of the lads all
right. You bet he was! He was one of the officers at Follerwick Camp,
two pips up, and a great flame of Connie's. I thought you'd know him.
She said she met him at Kingsport, knew him well at home. My word, he
was a knut! D'you remember when he hired a car and took us to the
Movies at Scarshaven, Alice? And that time he put the alarm clock in
the Major's box and it went off during the third act of 'Romance' with
an awful row--just when that curate was beginning to carry on!"
"Old Eric's married, isn't he?" asked Matthew heavily.
"Married or engaged or something. It was you who saw that bit in the
paper, wasn't it, Alice? Anyway he's in Mespot."
"Just as well, Ben, eh?" laughed Matthew. Ben rose, his mouth still
full of pie. "Where you going, lad?"
"Up t'see why Connie don't come down," interposed Mrs. Meggie. "That's
a good fellow."
Muriel watched him shamble from the room, an uncouth figure, part
boy, part man. This overgrown weakling whom Connie had married,
how had he done it? What had induced Connie to--to--Muriel wondered
for the hundredth time how it had come about. Had she been sorry
for him? Surely he cared for her. There was in his manner a hint of
wistfulness, of manhood undeveloped. Had the craving for self-assertion
forced him to madness, aping the passion of a man without a man's
self-mastery? Connie had said that he had over-mastered her. It was
difficult, watching him now retreat before his family's rough humour,
to imagine him mastering anyone, even himself.
He did not return soon. Muriel sat through the long meal uneasily.
What was happening upstairs? Had William Todd, as a result of her
interview, sent for Connie, and was he convicting her again of sin?
Poor Connie! Finally, when tea was cleared, Muriel climbed to Connie's
room. The staircase was dark. Only a glimmer of starlight from the
narrow window guided her. She paused outside her sister's door and
called. No answer came. She opened the door. No light came from the
room. She was about to go downstairs again, when the shadow by the
bedside quivered suddenly. She stared into the darkness.
"Connie!" she said softly. "Connie, what are you doing there? Where's
Ben?"
"Is that you, Muriel?" The voice made her start violently. "It's not
Connie. It's me--Ben. Come in and shut t'door."
"Ben! What's the matter? Where's Connie?" A shrill little quiver of
fear crept to her voice. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"
"Aw--come in and shut the door," he repeated. His voice terrified her.
It was as though a dead man spoke. "Connie isn't here. She's gone."
"Gone? Gone where? I don't understand."
"She's gone to do herself in."
"Ben, what do you mean?" Oh, if only there was a light! The darkness
pressed in suddenly upon her face and choked her.
"She's gone to do 'erself in. And I don't care. I wouldn't ha' stopped
her anyway. She'd gone before I came upstairs. I expect she's gone
down to the Fallow. She once said she would."
"Do you mean," said Muriel quietly, "that you think she's gone to--to
kill herself? Oh, but what nonsense, Ben. Why should she? What
nonsense! How dare you talk such wicked nonsense!" She stretched out
her hand for the brass bed-post and stood there clinging to its solid
comfort. "It's nonsense, nonsense. Connie--kill herself? Now--when
I've just made things----"
"It's not nonsense," Ben said heavily. "I'll show you a letter."
"Letter? Letter? Did Connie write a---- Oh, for goodness' sake get a
light and don't talk in riddles."
The bed creaked. Somewhere from the darkness moved a blacker darkness
yet. She heard Ben's laboured breathing.
"Oh, be quick! Be quick!"
If they stood in the dark another minute she would scream.
Ben stumbled across the room. She heard him fumbling on the mantelpiece.
Something fell against the fender with a light, splintering crash.
"I can't find matches," growled Ben.
"Oh, you idiot!" It was incredible that two people in such dire
consternation should be tortured because they couldn't find the
matches. It made her terribly angry, with a cold fury that she had
not known before.
Ben was cursing softly in the darkness.
"I'll go and get some----" said Muriel.
She stumbled frantically along the passage. From the room shared by
the land-girls came a flood of light, flowing out across the passage.
Alice was sitting beside the lamp, darning a stocking.
Muriel looked at her with wonder. People were still darning stockings
then? What a funny way Alice's hair grew back from her ears, with
little silvery tufts along her neck. You could see them in the
lamplight quite distinctly. What had she come for? Oh, the matches.
"Please, Alice, have you any matches?"
Alice looked up. "My! What a start you gave me! Matches? No. I had to
borrow Mrs. Todd's! Why don't you get Connie's? She bags all my
matches."
On then to her own room she must go. Hours, interminable hours
stretched between her and the horrible nightmare of Ben's voice. Her
own matches lay on the candlestick by her bed where she had left them.
She lit the candle with shaking fingers, then ran again down the long
corridor. The draught plucked at her candle flame; it fluttered
ruddily within the pink screen of her hand.
She came back to Connie's room.
"Ben! Ben! Where are you?"
She set the candle down by the disordered bed. The little flame shook
itself, quivered and then stood gallantly upright, showing the
flower-decked walls, the coarse white counterpane, all heaped and
crumpled, and Ben's white face--blank and passive, staring at her from
beside the mantelpiece.
"Where's that letter?" asked Muriel.
As though in a trance he came forward and handed her a sheet of flimsy
paper, pencil written. She glanced at it.
"This isn't from Connie! What do you mean? Where's Connie? What have
you done with her?"
"Read yon," said Ben.
After one glance at his set face, she read:
Dear old girl,
There ain't no flies round Christmas time in Blighty, but there's
jolly well nothing else in this old hole. It's as hot as--well
any place we specially used to think of as being hot. I say,
Kiddo, who's been having you on that I'm engaged? Your stately
letter--written by the way some time in August--has been chasing
me across the desert sands and under the deodar and all the rest
of it until it knocked the portals of my heart (Good that? What?)
about--well may be--two months ago. Who sprung that yarn on to you
about Cissie Bradfield? It's old Ernest, my brother, she collared.
They were married last July. I can't think how you made the
mistake because Alice knows Cissie and knew all about it. If you'd
asked her she could have told you. We have the same initials of
course. Honest, Kiddo, I'm no hand at letter writing and time
dashes by here, but you're barking up the wrong tree this time.
You must know that you are the only girl in the world as far as I
am concerned. Rumour hath it that in another two months we may get
leave and then what about another room at Scarshaven Hotel and you
"on a visit to your friends at Buxton," eh? I'm not the marrying
sort you know, but sometimes I think that when this war's over,
I'd like to settle down. How would the idea of being Mrs. E. F.
seem to you, old girl? Not much in your line, what?
Anyway don't forget me,
Yours to a cinder,
ERIC.
She read twice through this strange production, straining her eyes to
decipher the crude, boyish writing. Then she looked at Ben. "I don't
understand, what does it mean?" she said.
"Don't you? Don't you? Ay, but you do. You Hammonds, you're all alike,
you, you----"
She gazed at him with open-eyed amazement. The boy whom she had
thought of as a poor thing became instead a sneering raging fury.
Completely beyond self-control, he turned upon her.
"You and your snivelling mother, coming down and weeping piety and her
daughter's honour; and your bullying rip of a father, damn him! I bet
you're all the same. You know jolly well what this all means. 'What
about another room at the Scarshaven Hotel,' eh? And then she comes
whining and sobbing to me and saying I must marry her because I've
ruined her life! She and her honour. How do I know how many more Erics
she's fooled on with? Blast her! Curse her!"
His weak face was distorted by rage. The candlelight danced on the red
rims of his swollen eyes and on his trembling hand upraised as if he
would strike Muriel.
She still sat on the edge of the bed, quite quietly. Her mind refused
to register any thought but the name of her sister, Connie, Connie,
repeated again and again without significance.
Ben dropped his hand. "She taunted me. She said I was no man. She
pretended that she knew nowt o' this sort o' thing. She told me that
she'd carried on with other fellows, just a bit, just playing like.
And there was I, cursing myself because I'd done it. Calling myself a
black sinner when I had no call to marry her, not even a farm o' my
own yet, and all the time she was just laughing at me, fooling me. And
I've been feeling myself under a heavy burden o' sin, with my guilt
an' hers upon me, an' not daring to go round to chapel, and feeling
the hand o' the Lord upraised against me. She led me on. She led me
on. Let her drown now. Let her drown. I reckon she'll not swim long i'
Fallow, and her burden o' guilt will weigh her down."
Muriel stared at him. "Ben. You've lost your head. It mayn't mean all
that. She's your wife."
"She betrayed me. She betrayed me." He dropped his face into his hands
and sat with quivering shoulders on the bed by Muriel's side. "She's
shamed me. And I meant to prove myself a man." He began to sob, bitter
grinding sobs that tore him with grief for his shamed manhood. "Ah
never had a wife. Ah never had one. She fooled me. Ah've been fooled
all my life. Ah've been fooled by God an' fooled by her. There's no
faith left."
"Ben. Pull yourself together. You've got no right to accuse her till
you know. When did she go? Are you sure she left the house? Which way
would she take?"
He raised his haggard face and jeered at her. "Go an' find her. You're
scared o' the dark, aren't you? Go an' find her corpse knocking about
i' Fallow like an old sow drowned last Martinmas. Go on. Get out o'
way." His voice rose to the shrill note of hysteria. "Get out o' here!
This is my room. What are you doing in my room--you----"
He called her a name that she had never heard before. She turned to
run, and saw him towering above her, fantastic in the candlelight. As
she ran, she heard his voice behind her, calling, "Run, Muriel! Run!
It's nice and cold in t'river."
The echo of his laughter drove her down the passage.
Outside the kitchen door she paused. The firelight, the call of
cheerful voices beckoned her. From the back room came the shouted
chorus of a song.
"If you were the only girl in the world
And I were the only boy."
The desire to tell some one, to find a sane and comforting adviser in
this world gone mad, urged her almost irresistibly. She would go and
tell Mrs. Todd. She would tell Mat. They would help her to look for
Connie.
"Nothing else would matter in this world to-day,
We would go on loving in the same old way."
She laid her hand upon the latch of the door.
If she told, they would all follow her. They would all know what had
happened to Connie. They would all know what Connie had done.
She had to tell. She could not bear alone this dreadful burden of
responsibility.
If she went now either she would find Connie, reason with her and
bring her back, or else it would be too late for any one to help
Connie, too late for any army of lanterns, swinging down the hill,
to pierce those dark waters of the Fallow.
"There would be such wonderful things to do
I would say such wonderful things to you!"
A chair shrieked against the paved floor. Somebody was going to leave
the room. If she told now, it would be a betrayal. She must go alone.
With a little choking cry she turned and fled.
The bolts were stiff and heavy, but when she had dragged them aside
the wind tore at the door and hurled it open. The frail strength of
her shoulder could not push it back. She let it swing.
Along the flagged yard, down the two steps and into the strip of
narrow garden Muriel ran. Oh, but she must hurry, hurry, hurry, or it
would be too late. The garden path was steep and slippery. A thaw had
set in, and the ground under her thin shoes was wet and yielding. Once
she leapt aside as a white cat darted out at her from the potatoes.
Once her serge skirt caught on a stunted gooseberry bush.
Out through the wicket gate and on to the field road ran Muriel. The
first field was a grass pasture; she remembered that. It led straight
down, with the bottom gate a little to the right. If only she had
stopped to find a lantern! It was quite dark now. The stars were
veiled by tattered shreds of cloud. She could not see the road before
her feet, but only feel the short, uneven turf, and the steady sloping
of the long hill. If she faced down hill she would find the way.
The high heel of her shoe caught in a rut, and she fell headlong, her
cheek against the chill, wet turf. Even as she lay there for a second,
dazed and breathless, something moved from the shadows at her side,
and with a little shriek of horror she remembered that in this field
wandered the cows and horses.
She sprang up, never heeding the pain of her wrenched ankle or the mud
clinging to her skirt. Every breeze that touched her hot cheeks was
now the fiery breath of bulls; every clump of furze the dark form of
a furious stallion. Blindly sobbing she ran, while the strong wind
seized her and blew her kindly down the shadowed hill.
Almost before she hoped for it she found the wall. But the gate? The
gate. Standing to regain her bearings, she heard the dull thud of feet
tramping behind her down the hill.
The wind whistling on her neck came like the breath from a bull's
nostrils. Clutching at the rough stones, bruising her knees and her
thin elbows, she scrambled up the wall.
By this time she did not know whether she was running to save her own
life or her sister's. The black arms of the trees swept over her,
their wild heads tossing, tangling the vagrant stars. Their branches
creaked; their twisted fingers snatched at her, caught at her hair and
scratched her face, only to swing back again with mocking lightness.
The trees terrified her. At any minute they must come down upon her.
She heard the sharp splintering of the wood; the rush of branches like
a mighty sea; the vast arms that embraced her, dragging her down, down
as they fell faster, faster and the great weight overwhelmed her.
There she would lie crushed and bleeding on the hill-side, and Connie
would lie deep below the swirling waters of the Fallow.
She dared not risk the trees. She scurried towards the centre of the
field, stumbling blindly among the turnips. Twice she struck her foot
against them, falling and recovering herself.
Her breath came now in painful sobs. Across her chest lay a sharp bar
of iron that hurt her as she breathed. The wind through her silk
blouse whipped her shoulders.
Oh, she would never find her way. Why hadn't she brought a lantern?
Why hadn't she told the others? What madness sent her alone, running
wildly down these dreadful fields? And when she reached the river, if
Connie were not there, what could she do!
A rope, stretched straight across her way, nearly flung her down
again. Panting, she felt along it. A rough net--a net. Her mind,
unaccustomed to the ways of farming, refused to register its use. She
forced it down with both her hands and stepped across it.
As she paused, it seemed as though again she heard those footsteps
following; but perhaps they only were the beats of her own heart. She
started forward.
A worse nightmare than ever laid hold upon her. She was surrounded by
a moving horror. Soft formless things pushed up against her knees, her
waist. Each way she stumbled, they bore down upon her. The starlight
showed her just a dim, pale sea heaving waist-high all round her,
before the wild clouds swept across the one patch of clear sky and
left her blind with panic and the dark.
She could bear no more. Perils of darkness, perils of tempest, perils
of bulls and wild living things she had withstood. Even the peril of
Ben's frenzied face and uplifted hand had not appalled her. But this
heaving horror engulfed her. She must fall.
She put out one hand and touched rough, soft wool; a familiar cry rang
out beside her, "Baa-a-ah!" another followed. Echo followed echo
across the sheepfold. She turned and pushed her way out from among the
clustering flock, regaining the assurance of the road. The trees might
swoop above her. Her feet might slip beneath her, but the road was
sure. On and on she ran, though now she knew no longer the object of
her running. Through one gate, then another, then another, and the
woods closed down upon her. The path grew steeper. A light rain blew
in her face like wave-flung spray. She did not notice it. The bushes
caught at her. The branches tore her hair. Then, suddenly, quite close
beside her, she heard the rushing of the river.
She remembered why she had come, and stood quite still to listen.
"Connie!" she shouted. "Connie! Connie! Connie!"
Parallel with the river ran a narrow path. It wound up Fallowdale for
several miles until it crossed the Pilgrim's Bridge at Barwood. Up
this path Muriel ran, the tangled woods on her left hand, the river on
her right. Without a gleam the water swirled beside her, now dashing
angrily against the stones, now sliding deep and dark between the
banks.
"Connie! Connie! Connie!" called Muriel. The wind snatched at her
futile little voice. The river drowned it. The high trees mocked her,
clashing their long arms together.
"Connie! Connie!" she sobbed. The pain in her bruised ankle throbbed
unceasingly. Her hands were torn. Her knees hurt. She felt forlorn and
utterly defeated.
"Connie! Connie!"
Along the path before her, something moved.
"Connie!"
The figure stopped. It hesitated, then started forward. A twig snapped
in the darkness. Then, though the river ran silently here the noise of
it rose like a flood, thundering in her ears.
"Connie, darling! Stop! I want to tell you something."
She dared not run too quickly. A false step, and she might feel those
ice-cold waters close above her head. If she delayed, though, she
might hear the splash of Connie's final plunge.
"Oh, Connie, please don't go so fast. I can't keep up. Please stop."
In the dark, Connie turned to face her.
"Muriel--what do you want? Why have you come?" With a sudden sharp
anguish, "Have you got my letter?"
"Your letter? Your letter? No. Ben's got your letter."
"Ben? Of course he has! Of course. Oh, isn't that like you, Muriel!
You come down here to me, but you let Ben have the letter! I might
have known. Here I've been telling myself that perhaps you'd find it
and not say anything and just come down here, and now--I might have
known!"
"But Ben found it first. What could I do?"
"Of course he did. He would. Oh, now for Heaven's sake go home. I'm
sick of you. Can't you leave me alone just for a minute? What do you
want? Why did you follow me? Go back. Go back, I tell you."
"No, no. I can't leave you here. You mustn't--you--you'll make
yourself ill."
"Ill? Shall I?"
Muriel dared not move. If she advanced one step she feared lest
Connie, mad with recklessness, should plunge into that dreadful river.
And if Connie did jump in, what could she do? Connie was heavy. The
river was so deep, and Muriel could not swim. She became dazed with
panic.
"Connie, dear. Connie, come home. It's terrible for you out here in
the dark. Come back with me. It's all right. I won't leave you."
"If you come a step nearer," cried Connie's furious voice, "I shall
jump straight into the river. So there!"
Suddenly the absurdity of the situation struck Muriel. Here she
was. Here was Connie. If Connie chose to drown herself, Muriel was
completely powerless to stop her, because she was so small and Connie
so much stronger.
At the realization of her impotence, Muriel's self-control gave way.
She flung up her head and laughed, peal after peal of helpless
laughter.
It was the last sound that Connie had expected.
"What's the matter? Are you mad? That's right then, laugh away! I
suppose that you think it's funny that I should have made a mess of my
whole life. I can be in hell if I like, and all that you can do is to
stand there and laugh. I suppose that you read Eric's letter and saw
that he--that he would have married me--Eric. Eric."
Muriel stopped laughing and came forward, laying her small hand on her
sister's arm. Connie seemed to be unaware that anyone was touching
her.
"Oh, it's damned funny, isn't it? I wonder that I don't laugh myself.
You never thought at Marshington that your respected sister was
anyone's mistress, did you? Only once, I tell you. I thought that he
would marry me. I'd heard they would. I was fed up, and at least it
was worth trying. It was that little fiend Alice who ruined me. Of
course she liked him, but she kidded us that it was Ben she cared
about. Ben. Ben! Come to think about it, we might ha' known that she
was fooling us. Who'd care for Ben, with his great gawky body, Ben the
big soft idiot! I ask you! That's my husband, Muriel. Good joke, isn't
it? I swore to love, honour and obey that thing, because Alice told me
Eric had married Cissie Bradfield and showed me a newspaper cutting,
and I was green enough to believe her. Oh, she was clever. My God, she
was clever. I'd just been home on leave, you know, that time we met
Delia on Kingsport Station. I was happy then. I thought he cared. Then
I came back here and Alice told me--showed me the cutting. He was just
going to Mespot too. I wrote. He never answered." She stopped,
choking.
"Never mind that now, Connie, dear," Muriel said timidly. "Come back
with me. You'll get so wet."
Connie shook off her hand and went on speaking. It was as though,
having decided to tell the truth at last, she could not stop.
"If I'd been cheap with one, I'd be cheap with all. There'd be no end
to my cheapness. If Eric had had me and didn't want me, then Ben, who
wanted me, should have me. Oh, I was wild, I didn't care. I didn't
care what happened. Muriel, you don't know. You'd never been like
that, stuck there in Marshington, longing to get away, every one round
you getting married. It wasn't as if I hadn't tried other things. I
wanted to chicken farm; I wanted to go away and do just anything. But
Mother wouldn't let me. It was just men, men, men, and make a good
match."
She shivered violently. The rain was now sweeping in great gusts along
the valley. It splashed from the bare branches on to their heads.
Slowly they began to walk along the path.
"Well--I didn't make a good match. Look at Godfrey Neale. When I was a
kid I used to think him wonderful. Then Hugh McKissack. Mother made me
think I liked him and that he would marry me. Look how he fooled us
both. Then Eric came----"
Connie's voice mingled with the rushing of the river and the rustling
rain among the trees. She lifted her head and spoke into the darkness,
taking no heed of Muriel.
"He wasn't much of a fellow perhaps, in lots of ways, but he was a
jolly sight better than lots of the men we used to meet. And I wanted
so much to be married. He said his father wouldn't let him marry till
he'd become a proper chartered accountant. He was still articled or
something when I met him that night at the Kingsport dance. Hugh
McKissack had just turned me down. Oh, I was desperate. I flirted with
him. He said I was a sport. We--we got on. Oh, you won't understand.
When I went to stay with Betty Taylor at York, I met him again. I went
there so that I could meet him. Chase him? Who'd taught me to chase
men? Of course I did. Don't all women? Hadn't mother? Then he said I
didn't care for him. I wasn't going to show him at first, so he said
'Prove it.' I--you don't know. I thought he'd slip away just like the
rest of them. I said I'd prove it. We went away to Scarshaven together
for three days, before I went to Buxton to the Marshalls. You thought
I was there, and nobody found out. I thought he'd marry me. If
anything went wrong, he said he'd see me through. There was a time,
just once, on Scarshaven station when he came to meet me, I thought I
couldn't do it. Then he smiled. Oh, you--you--you don't know what it's
like to love a man! I couldn't turn him down."
She stopped and clung to Muriel, who could only hold her tightly,
murmuring silly words of comfort, neither shocked nor grieved, but
gently pitiful. "Poor Connie. Oh, poor Connie!"
"Then the war came. He was sent up to Follerwick. I stuck it at home
for a bit. I tried once to get through to see him, but I couldn't
arrange it easily. I saw that if I stayed at home I never should get
away without being found out. Then he told me about Thraile. The Todds
were advertising for land-girls. I'd always liked outdoor things, and
I was mad to come. You know the row we had at home. Then Mother heard
that the Setons were doing land-work. How I blessed those girls. So
she gave me her blessing too and off I went. Oh, but I was happy.
You don't know. I'd never been happy like that before. He was at
Follerwick and I at Thraile. We used to go for concerts and things,
and I'd meet him and go off for long walks on the moors. We didn't do
anything that you'd call bad. Somehow when it was so easy, we did not
want to in the same way. We were like kids. We'd race up and down hill
hand in hand. He'd come and sit sometimes on the old sheep trough when
I was cleaning turnips and we'd talk. It was all as easy as the beasts
and flowers and things. I dun'no. We were just great pals. We didn't
talk of marriage or anything. That didn't matter. Then I came on
leave." Her voice hardened. "When I got back that Alice told me he'd
had to go off suddenly to Aldershot. He didn't write--or, if he did,
she got hold of the letters. Possibly he didn't write. He wasn't the
pen-scratching kind. Then the news of his wedding came, and the
newspaper cutting.
"Oh, I think I went mad. I do really. You see--I'd been fooled so
often. I wanted to hurt every one, myself most of all. And Ben was
always hanging round. I hadn't noticed him while Eric was there. But
after--after I heard about Cissie I used to tease Ben, just to spite
him and myself. I said he wasn't a man. I--Oh, I led him on. He was
such a great, green, religious baby, terrified of his father. Then I
made him--do it."
Her hands clutched at her sister's arm. Her dragging step moved
onward, and her toneless voice talked on and on, taking a bitter
satisfaction in the telling.
"When I found out that I was going to have a baby, I was scared. I
told you that they turned me out. They didn't. I ran away. Father
found that out after he came down to Thraile that day. Really, he was
awfully decent to me. He seemed to understand. But at first the Todds
were awful. That terrible old man. Only Ben was decent. I believe he
was fond of me. Funny, wasn't it? He thought he'd sinned black sin for
me, and made me sin, and he must make it up to me. And then, while I
was waiting for the wedding, that was a queer time. I used to pretend
that it was Eric I was going to marry. Honest I did. I quite enjoyed
it. Even when we got here, married, it might not have been so bad. Do
you know," she said reflectively, "I believe that if I'd never known
Eric I'd have been content with Ben. He's a dud of course, but he'd do
anything for me. It's nice to have someone who'd sell their souls for
you, until they think they've sold it. That was just it. Old William
Todd would never let Ben alone. He was always on at him. If we could
have gone away together. . . . Well, I used to think we would go and
get a farm and settle down. I like children too. Then--to-day." It was
Connie's turn to laugh now.
"I say, if there's a God, mustn't he have a jolly time laughing over
the things that come too late? Here's a priceless joke now--me married
to Ben, and a kid coming, and Eric ready to marry me when he comes
home. Ben's child! Ben's child! And it might have been Eric's!" The
laughter turned again to choking sobs. Breaking suddenly from Muriel's
arms, Connie collapsed on the bank and crouched there, crying softly.
"I meant to kill myself. I knew I might funk it though. I always do. I
put that letter where Ben would see it and know what had happened. So
I could never go back to him. I thought I'd settle it for good and
all. And I'd hurt Ben too. He'd been so stupid. The more beastly I was
to him, the more patient he was with me. Rather like you, Muriel. Oh,
you patient people! I bet you're responsible for half the suicides
that happen. He was so proud to think I'd marry him too! He--me!"
Muriel knelt beside her on the wet stones. "Get up, Connie. You'll be
ill. Get up. It's so wet."
That was all she could say, silly futile things.
"Ill? Oh, Muriel, you are a fool. Don't you see, I can't go back? I
can't go anywhere. Oh, my God, I haven't got the pluck to kill myself,
and there's nowhere in the world for me to live! You're a beauty, you
are. You always turn up when it's too late to help. What shall I do? I
don't want to die."
"We'll go away together. Listen. Listen. I'll make Father let us have
some money. He's fond of you. If Ben turns you out, he'll pay. I can
get work now in war-time too. We'll both go away. We'll--Oh, what's
that?"
A light, swinging between the trees, gleamed suddenly round the angle
of the rocks. A yellow splash of lantern light moved along the path.
Through the rain came the sound of running footsteps.
"Who's that? Who's that?"
Her voice was sharp with fear.
"Is that Muriel?"
Connie's hand gripped her like a vice. Connie screamed in sudden
terror.
"Muriel, it's Ben. Don't let him hurt me! Don't!"
Muriel stood up. "Ben, what do you want?"
The lantern swayed and stopped. In that moment Muriel thought that Ben
had come to kill his wife.
"Is Connie there?"
"Yes." Connie's voice was calm now.
"Ben, you shan't hurt her," cried Muriel.
"I shan't hurt her." She could hear that he too was now calm. The
voice that spoke from the darkness was a man's voice. "Connie, I want
to ask you something."
"Well?" Still she was defiant. "What do you want?"
"When did you last see--yon--yon fellow?"
"Eric Fennington?"
"Ay."
"In the summer. Before I went on leave, but----"
"I thowt so. You fooled me properly, didn't you?"
"But----" Connie rose slowly to her feet. She stood now facing her
husband. He raised the lantern and flashed it full upon her. "Ben,"
she said.
"Have ye anything to say? Ye laughed an' mocked at me. Ye treated me
like a boy without pride, or honour. Then, when yon fellow let ye
down, you found that I was man enough to give his child my name." He
spoke now without bitterness. His steady, even voice was strange to
them. They stood before him, afraid of his new dignity. Then Connie
said:
"Ben, that's not true."
"Eh?"
"I--I saw Eric in the summer, but it was--in March when we--when we
went together. The only time, I swear."
"And when is the child coming?"
"April."
"Is yon true, Muriel?"
"Yes."
"How many lovers did yer have before this--officer fellow?"
"Eric, only Eric."
"Is yon true, Muriel?"
"Yes, Ben, I am sure of it."
They waited, while in the darkness Ben received back his lost honour.
When he spoke again it was with a shy confidence.
"Oh, well, I reckon ye'd better come home out o' t'wet, Connie. I
wanted ye to kill yourself at first, and then I thought mebbe I'd
better let you speak for yourself first. But if yon's false, what
you've told me----"
"It's not."
He sighed wearily. "Oh, well, best come home, Connie."
"Do--do the others know?"
"Nay. An' they won't. This is our affair. T'letter's in my pocket.
I'll burn it an' fake some tale. Coom on, Connie. I----" He had
forgotten Muriel. They were alone together in a world new made.
"I want my child," said Ben.
They turned; he put his hand on her arm, and they went up the path
together.
Muriel stood alone beside the river; then she too moved forward,
following the lantern's light.
XXXII
The situation having been lifted again out of Muriel's hands, she did
not for some time contest the way in which it was being handled. For
the space of one evening, Ben seemed to have attained to manhood. So
much the better for Ben. So much the better for Connie. So much the
worse perhaps for Muriel, who was again left with no one in life
having great need of her. Directly Connie was better, Muriel meant to
go home. For Connie, not unnaturally, was ill. The evening's escapade
had resulted in a severe chill, caught, she explained, because while
going for a walk to cure her headache, she had fallen and wrenched her
ankle, and lain in the rain until Ben and Muriel found her.
Well, she would soon be better. It never occurred to Muriel to protest
against the standard of Thraile nursing. She followed Mrs. Todd about
the chill, dark bedroom, acquiescing in suggested remedies. After all,
what else could one do in someone else's house? It was nobody's fault
that the fire in Connie's bedroom smoked, or that Dr. Merryweather was
old-fashioned. Besides, she herself had a sore throat, and a bruised
knee, and a weary battered spirit. Events must take their course. The
whole household being incalculable and detached from sane life as she
knew it, Muriel could not bring herself to think it real at all. She
brushed her own torn skirt and Connie's, and carried trays upstairs
for Mrs. Todd, who, with three invalids and the large family to
manage, still remained imperturbably cheerful. Then, somehow, quite
without Muriel realizing their importance, several things happened
very quickly; the doctor's second visit; Ben driving off into the rain
to Follerwick; her mother's arrival by the evening train.
Muriel stood in the room once shared by Alice, Gert and Polly,
fingering silver jars upon the roughly stained dressing-table, and
wondering how her mother always contrived to carry an atmosphere of
Marshington drawing-rooms into the most incongruous surroundings.
"I can't understand it. I can't understand it," repeated Mrs. Hammond,
methodically unwrapping her slippers from her linen shoe bags. "You
say that she went out in the rain . . ."
"It wasn't raining when she _went_ out," explained Muriel for the
second time. "It began to rain later--after she had fallen."
"I can't help thinking, dear, that there was some grave irresponsibility.
Knowing how careless she is, you never ought to have let her go out
alone. It never should have happened--and then--since, Muriel, why
didn't you see that a second opinion was called in?"
"We didn't think that she was so ill.--Dr. Merryweather----"
"Oh, Dr. Merryweather! A North Riding country practitioner--really,
Muriel. But of course, dear, you never had any initiative, had you?
Well, it may be all right now."
With gentle efficiency, Mrs. Hammond took control of the situation.
Never had her conduct been more completely admirable. She had
found her younger daughter seriously ill with pneumonia, her elder
daughter in a strange condition of nervous paralysis, an impossibly
inconvenient house, and a family complicated by the most uncomfortable
relationships. Almost at once she made her influence felt. Muriel
found herself shrinking into the shadows. She never remembered
afterwards how she passed her time in that house grown hushed with
concentrated anxiety. Once she remembered meeting Ben upon the
landing. His face was drawn and grey. She remembered his long feet
in their drab worsted stockings and the silly appeal in his light
grey-blue eyes.
"Muriel," he had said in a hoarse whisper, "she ain't going to die, is
she?"
"No, of course she isn't," Muriel answered irritably. How could she
die, now that everything had just been put right? Of course she wasn't
going to die!
He twisted the smooth knob at the top of the staircase. "She mustn't
die," he whispered again. "I couldn't stand that, I tell you I
couldn't." He cast a sidelong glance down stairs towards the passage
where the door of the front parlour stood open. "Father says that
it'll be the judgment of God upon our wickedness if she does die."
"What does he know about it? She won't die."
"I can't bear it," he repeated, his mouth agape, his eyes that nature
had intended to be meek and kind staring ahead with a sad, unnatural
concentration. "I couldn't abide to think of her dying in her sin."
"You don't think that at all. She's not in sin--any more than I am.
You're talking nonsense. She's going to get well. And in April
your baby will be born. And Mr. Todd will let you both go off to
Fallowdale." She nodded at him reassuringly, as one nods to a child,
and then went upon her quiet, mouse-like duties.
Three more days passed. A nurse had come from Hardrascliffe. Mrs.
Hammond sat up half the night, and Muriel the other half. Mrs. Hammond
wore a white apron over her pretty dresses. Her cool fingers had been
denuded of their rings, but their little pink nails shone like jewels.
The farm girls all had lost their heads and hearts to her. They
wondered how on earth a dowdy little thing like Muriel, and a big
jolly girl like Connie, could have had such a duck of a mother. Mrs.
Todd treated her with cheerful and unimpressionable independence.
Muriel followed her submissively, like a scolded child, knowing
herself to be in disgrace, and yet never hearing a word of the
reproach that she knew her mother felt.
Connie, she found inarticulate and pathetic, only occasionally cross
and difficult. Most of the time she seemed to be uncannily obedient.
Once in the early morning, when Muriel was so sleepy that she had to
hold her head right forward, so that it would not fall back against
her chair, Connie's queer, grating whisper roused her.
"Mu----"
"Yes."
"It would be a queer thing if I was to die after all--wouldn't it?"
"Don't be silly. You aren't going to die."
"I don't want to. I want to have the baby. I'd like to have a house
of my own, and a little Ford car, so that Ben and I could run in to
Hardrascliffe for week-ends."
"Of course you will."
"Don't let me die, Mu."
"There's no question of your dying."
But she did not get better quickly. One night her temperature raced
up, and she began to talk dangerous nonsense about Eric, while Muriel
endeavoured to keep her mother from the room, and Mrs. Hammond, with
heroic fortitude, stayed in and quietly controlled the situation. Then
there was a miserable early morning when the oxygen cylinders did not
arrive from Hardrascliffe; and, when the light crept through the
curtains, Muriel stood in dry-eyed wonder while Ben buried his
head in Connie's counterpane and wept loudly with an illogical
wholeheartedness.
It was most terrible to see men cry. Muriel wondered whether her
father would cry when he came. Anything might happen in a world where
Connie had been allowed to die. A sense of baffled impotence seized
Muriel. Connie had been preserved so miraculously through two
crises--God could not really have let her die.
She wandered round the silent house, very weary but yet more bored,
wishing that she could even join the nurse's secret ministration up
in Connie's bedroom, rather than have this desolating feeling of no
purpose. Then Mrs. Todd, with practical kindness, set her to wash up
breakfast plates, with a significant nod to Gertie--"Muriel is going
to be taken bad next if we don't look out." And afterwards Mrs.
Hammond, with a dignity of self-control that astonished every one but
Muriel, called her upstairs and gave her letters to write, and began
to discuss details of the funeral.
Mr. Hammond was in London. He could not reach Thraile until Tuesday
morning, even by travelling all night. Mrs. Hammond therefore had to
make her own arrangements--the funeral to be at Follerwick, the
letters to all relations, the notices to the Yorkshire papers.
"Have you been to see Mr. Todd, since----?" asked Mrs. Hammond,
delicately pressing down the flap of an envelope.
"No, Mother, why?"
"Well, dear. I do think that one of us ought to go to him. Just
to show that we--that, well, I do think that we ought. And I
don't feel----" Bravely she pushed aside her tears with a small
handkerchief.
Muriel walked slowly down the stairs. The little parlour was flooded
with afternoon sunlight. Through the uncurtained window, Muriel could
see the moors frozen to hard, black beauty, cold as stone beneath the
cold, clear light.
William Todd was lying by the window. Ben, a forlorn and uncouth
figure in his ill-fitting black clothes, sat on the chair beside him,
his large red hands upon his knee.
Muriel came into the room quietly and shut the door. She wished that
she knew what was the right thing to say.
"I am very sorry, Mr. Todd," she said at last, feeling that somehow it
was what he should have said to her.
"You are sorry. Your sister is dead. My son tells me that she did not
die unrepentant. I am glad. It is a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God. When men shall say Peace, and all things are
safe, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as sorrow came
upon a woman travailing with child, and they shall not escape."
"No," answered Muriel, "I suppose not." But she thought all this to be
irrelevant. She felt sorry for Ben, who sat there with bent, dumb
bewilderment, but she did not know what to say. She wanted to tell him
that she was sorry that the baby for whose sake he had forgiven Connie
had never been born. She only said: "Ben has been splendid, Mr. Todd,
all through her illness. I am sure that you will understand far more
than I---- Do be--please be--nice to him."
The cripple's bright eyes seemed to pierce her brain.
"Shall not the Lord deal justly with his own? You tried to save your
sister from the punishment of man; but a greater than man had judged
before you. But, thank God, her death has not been quite unfruitful.
My son, my son has even seen the error of his ways."
William Todd turned his face to the young man. A queer twisted
tenderness broke for a minute the clear lines of his face. Then it
hardened again. His son sat without movement, his eyes upon the
carpet.
"Ay. That's so," he murmured dully.
The old lady by the fire nodded and smiled at Muriel, nibbling a pink
sweet. She was happy because she had outlived her grandson's wife.
Ben followed Muriel from the room.
"How much does your father know?" asked Muriel.
"Nay. I don't know. He's said nowt but what he knew before. But he is
right. The destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall
be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed. It was
for the ungodliness o' my soul, he says, the Lord took my wife and my
child."
He raised his head with a smile of ghastly pride, as though consoled
by the Lord's impressive punishment of his offence.
"Ben!" cried Muriel, no longer sorry. "You don't really think like
that. You can't think like that." Connie and miserable sinners
simply could not live together in the same thought. Connie was a
person, intensely alive, wilful and foolish, made for enjoyment
and companionship. She was not an instrument of God sent for the
punishment of any man's misdeeds.
Ben stared at her foolishly. Then without a word he passed her by and
stumbled up the stairs.
Next morning Mr. Hammond came. He saw Muriel in the hall.
"Where's Rachel?" he asked.
"Upstairs, Father. I'll show you."
He followed her, stepping softly up the winding stair. Mrs. Hammond
stood in the doorway. On her face was an expression of relief,
anxiety, tenderness. Now that he had come, she wanted nothing more.
Muriel watched her father enfold her mother in his great arms. She,
the imperturbable, the gently adamant, gave herself up to his rough
mastery, and found rest there. Neither of them noticed Muriel.
"There, there, little woman," he said softly, stroking her bowed
silver head with his large hand. "It's all right. It's all right. Poor
Connie. You did your best. You did everything, little woman, I know.
You've been wonderful."
She let him treat her like a child. Before him alone she lost her
perfect self-command. Muriel saw this with the jealous perception of
the onlooker. "They don't want me," she told herself, and went
downstairs.
On the morning of the funeral came the wreaths, piles and piles of
them, colder than the snow now white along the moorland. Their sickly
smell filled the stone house. "It is the smell of death," thought
Muriel.
The land-girls stole about, red-eyed, admiring, with _crêpe_ bands
round the arms of their tunics.
Dolly lifted a card.
"Oh, come and look at this," she whispered to Gert. "With deepest
sympathy from Colonel and Lady Grainger."
Mrs. Hammond, black-veiled and pathetic, entered the hall. They all
fell back respectfully. She leaned above the lilies, touching their
waxen trumpets with a gentle finger. She also lifted the card.
"Oh, Muriel, how kind of them!" she cried softly. "How very, very
kind."
But Muriel went away and cried bitterly because Connie was dead, and
now she had not even a sister left who needed her.