BOOK IV

DELIA

March, 1919--January, 1920

XXXIII

The meeting of the House Committee for St. Catherine's Home was

over when Muriel entered the room. Down the dining-room table of

Miller's Rise were scattered notebooks, sheets of blotting-paper, and

occasional inkpots. Mrs. Hammond, in her black and white dress, talked

with animation to the Honble. Mrs. Potter Vallery. When Muriel saw

this, she smiled a little. Nobody noticed the smile but Mr. Vaughan,

and it made him feel vaguely uneasy.

He had not been to Miller's Rise for a long time, not indeed since

the spring of 1916, when he had called to offer his sympathy after

Connie's death. Miller's Rise was not very near to the Vicarage,

and he hated calls, and though Mrs. Hammond was charming up to a

point--rather a low point perhaps--the vicar never felt quite happy

in her old-rose drawing-room. He sat now a little apart from the

assembled ladies, hoping very much that Mrs. Cartwright, or Miss

Rymer, the Matron of St. Simeon's, would not consider it their duty to

approach him sociably. He found that Marshington committees depressed

him because nobody was quite whole-hearted over anything. Even when

the House Committee laid a request for new clothes-horses before the

General Committee, everybody seemed to weigh the question in the

balance against Mrs. Potter Vallery's approval or Mrs. Cartwright's

possible discomfiture. Hedging from self-interest to sentimental

altruism, weighing a hundred side-issues against the case presented,

they gave their opinions from policy rather than conviction. This

distressed the vicar. But he had decided long ago that these

committees were very good for the ladies, and did little harm to the

Rescue Work, and that God frequently pours the waters of His mercy

from imperfect vessels. So, with one eye on the clock, the vicar had

taken the chair at this "extraordinary" but quite usual meeting,

wondering how soon he could escape to his peaceful library and "The

Personnel of the Estate of Clergy during the Lancastrian Experiment."

Whenever particularly bored by the limitations of his parishioners,

he fled to the study of the limitations of his countrymen in former

centuries and found it consoling.

"You're always thinking about the identity of the pseudo-Walsingham or

whether the Confirmatio Cartarum was a propagandist forgery," scolded

Delia, "while all the time souls are being snatched away by the devil

under your very nose."

"My dear," he would assure her mildly, "if I did not sometimes remove

my attention from the short-comings of my neighbours, the first soul

to be so snatched would be my own. Nothing leads so promptly to

damnation as the critical contemplation of other people's souls." And

yet it seemed that here before him was a soul in evident need of some

form of salvation. The vicar felt unhappy.

Muriel Hammond had no business to be cynical. Now, Muriel Hammond,

Muriel Hammond. What had happened to the child?

The vicar cast back his thoughts. "I ought to keep card-index

biographies of my parishioners," he told himself. He could remember so

little about her. A small, very shy school-girl, a quiet little thing

at tennis parties, and--hadn't she once been secretary of the Nursing

Association? Surely those beautifully symmetrical figures still

decorating the books were hers. And then--till about a year ago,

she had been a regular communicant. The vicar was stirred by a

recollection of that small virginal face upraised in an austere

rapture of devotion. Her great shining eyes had looked beyond him, as

though they gazed on holy mysteries.

The eyes that now stared coldly at Mrs. Hammond could certainly

see no holy mysteries. It was doubtful whether they saw even the

common kindnesses and uncertain altruisms that lit occasionally the

drawing-rooms of even Darkest Marshington--another phrase of Delia's.

The vicar studied more closely the neat, indifferent figure. Muriel's

clothes were prettily chosen but negligently worn. Mrs. Hammond,

perhaps, had been responsible for the choice. Muriel's manner combined

the boredom of distaste with the confusion of timidity. The vicar

watched her moving from chair to chair, picking up conversations,

hovering on the edge of confidences, turning away again before contact

was established. He watched her shepherding the committee ladies into

the drawing-room for tea, hearing her half-apologetic invitations, her

laugh abruptly breaking off, her sentences deferentially curtailed.

Her indifference shattered his serene detachment. No girl of her age

ought to look like that. He screwed up his mild short-sighted eyes,

seeing her for the first time not only as a personality but as a

problem.

What had been happening to the girl? Her sister had died; but

mortality was a usual experience, and the vicar had seen no sign of

affection deeper than the unexcited tolerance common to most sisters

in the relationship between Muriel and Connie. A love affair? He had

heard of none, and Muriel seemed to lack that particular intensity

which made of love a devastating experience to women like--well,

Delia. She had not even been away doing war-work, where the realism of

more harsh experience might have cut her off from her old interests.

The dining-room had emptied.

Muriel turned from the door and saw the vicar.

"Aren't you coming into tea, Mr. Vaughan?"

He smiled his shy conciliatory smile. "Has Mrs. Cartwright gone into

the drawing-room?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Muriel--I appeal to you. I want some tea, I would like one of your

mother's scones. Are there scones? Good. But to get them I must face

Mrs. Cartwright, and Mrs. Cartwright wants to tell me for the seventh

time this afternoon that it was false economy to refuse to pay Sister

Lilian's railway fare to Hardrascliffe. Now won't you take pity on me?

Mayn't I be spoiled for once and have my tea in here?"

"Oh, yes, I should think so," said Muriel in the tone of one but

faintly interested in the eccentricities of an old clergyman.

As she left the room, Mr. Vaughan frowned and accused himself with

quite unusual acrimony for having been led aside by the raptures of

constitutional research from the more pressing spiritual needs of his

parishioners.

"Only," he explained to himself, rather as though he were arguing

with Delia, "they probably know so much better than I do the things

belonging to their peace." At the thought of the limitations of his

wisdom he groaned wearily and bowed his head forward into his hands

with a half humorous despair.

Muriel re-entered the dining-room with a tray and tea. He noticed

that she had taken the trouble to arrange a small tray daintily with

a white cloth and a little teapot and a covered dish of toasted

scones. Usually he ate his meals with impatience at the inconvenient

necessity, but this afternoon he had set himself to observe.

"Won't you bring a cup too? Have you had your tea?"

"I--no, really. I shall have mine afterwards in the drawing-room."

"Do have it with me now. There's heaps of tea here. I feel greedy

drinking all alone."

When she left the room to fetch her cup he sadly recognized her

complete indifference, coupled with her recognition of him as a

privileged person. Vividly aware of his unworthiness for privilege,

he awaited her return.

She came in and sat down by the long table to pour out his tea. Her

movements were gentle but hesitating. She held the china cup, the

teapot, the sugar-tongs lightly but never firmly.

"Sugar?"

"Please--four lumps."

"Cream?"

"Please. A lot."

She did not smile and humour him as other girls would smile. Gravely

she dropped four lumps and poured him a generous portion of cream. He

frowned as he stirred the over sweetened tea, and only then remembered

that he really hated sugar.

"Muriel, you don't belong to the St. Catherine's Committee?"

"No, Mr. Vaughan. Will you have a scone?"

"Thank you. Work among girls--you don't find it interesting?"

"Oh, quite. I hadn't particularly thought about it. I don't suppose

that I should be much good."

"Well, it was not so much the girls that I was thinking of. The House

Committee needs somebody to help with the accounts. I remember your

excellent work with the Nursing Association. Mrs. Cartwright is a

conscientious lady but no mathematician. It would be of immense

service both to us and to the home if you would sometimes help her

with the books."

"I'll ask Mother. I dare say I could."

He smiled at her. "I am sure that Mrs. Hammond could not mind. It

depends upon what you would like. I don't want to urge more work upon

you if your time is full."

She shrugged her thin shoulders. "I don't do anything much. I'll ask

Mother----"

A hat-stand would have been more responsive.

He changed the conversation.

"Have you noticed much change in Marshington since the war ended?"

"Change? Here? No, I don't think so. People are still washing dishes

to be dirtied at the next meal, and sitting at the same stools to add

up other people's accounts, and giving tea parties to be envied by

other men's wives."

"That's rather a pessimistic view of it, isn't it?"

"Is it? Yes, perhaps it is. I'm very silly I know." She laughed

nervously. "Of course it's not as bad as that. But sometimes--one

wonders--you know, I don't know how the war could have made a

difference. It was only a grocery shortage here, and an influx of

officers and the arrival of the Graingers."

"Ah, the Graingers. She was a nice woman. A friend of your mother's,

I think."

Again that fleeting, unpleasant smile crossed Muriel's face. "Was

she?" she said. "Oh, I suppose so."

"You know, you're a little hard on Marshington in war-time," he

continued. "Did you never think of Mrs. Pinden carrying on her

husband's business, of Dickie Weathergay, of Bobby Mason, of the women

who sent their children to school, kept their homes together and spent

their spare time doing all that they could at the depot and hospital

although the postman's arrival was an hourly torment and the sight of

every telegraph boy turned them sick? It may have been all rather

small and petty, but it was a multiplication of that spirit that

formed the bulwark of civilization."

"Oh, yes, of course," acquiesced Muriel, but her face seemed to ask

"Is civilization then worth saving?"

"My daughter Delia, you know, was working in the Women's Army at

the end of the war. She said that it was a revelation to her--the

possibility for development among trivial-minded, half-grown,

half-educated girls--a pity that it should have been left to

war-time."

"Yes, wasn't it?"

The vicar could not face it. Conversation with Muriel was like

conversation with a gramophone. There was something almost indecent

in her apathy. She could not even uphold her own opinions.

"I am unhappy about Delia," he continued, experimenting. "She is

working herself to death, living in one of these terrible clubs, and

enjoying a diet almost exclusively composed of boiled eggs and fish

kedgeree, as far as I can discover. She is very thin."

"She never was fat, was she? But I dare say that she will look after

herself all right. She was always very capable."

"Since Martin Elliott's death," remarked the vicar meditatively, "she

seems to have been capable of almost anything but sanity about her

personal surroundings."

A gleam of the faintest interest awoke in Muriel's eyes.

"Poor Delia. Of course. It was terribly bad luck. But then, she has

her work. Women who have their work have an immense thing, even if

they are unfortunate in the people whom they love. It is when you have

nothing, neither work nor love, nor even sorrow, that life becomes

rather intolerable." She laughed again. "That does sound a dismal

picture, doesn't it?"

He looked at her sharply. "Delia saw Godfrey Neale in London--he had

just come back."

Muriel's tea-cup clattered softly in her saucer. The vicar almost

started at his discovery. At last he had probed her terrible

indifference. But even while he was congratulating himself, the light

had died and Muriel's chill, equable little voice continued:

"I am very glad to hear that he has come back safely. Mrs. Neale

worried terribly, and I am sure that Clare must be glad."

"Senora Alvarados was your friend I think?"

"A school-friend, yes."

The door opened and Mrs. Hammond entered.

"Oh, there you are, you two culprits! Really, Mr. Vaughan, I can't

have you stealing my daughter like this, you know! Muriel, dear, there

are thousands of empty cups in the drawing-room. My wrist aches. Do

come and relieve me. Mr. Vaughan, Mrs. Cartwright is asking----"

"Oh, I know, I know," pleaded the vicar. "She has asked several times.

Mrs. Hammond, don't you think that it would be a good idea if Muriel

came to help us with the accounts for the House Committee? You know

how difficult we people who have not mathematical minds all find

them."

Mrs. Hammond raised her pretty eyebrows. "On the House Committee of

St. Catherine's? Muriel? Well--really--I hadn't thought of it. Hardly

the kind of work--I mean--not for a young girl--in contact with the

sort of home like--well, really, what do you think yourself, Mr.

Vaughan?"

"I think that the checking of bills for dust-pans and stair-rods can

hardly be contaminating, even if they are to be used by reformed

prostitutes," remarked the vicar dryly.

"Oh, well--it isn't quite that, you know. It's the idea of it. No

other unmarried girl is on St. Catherine's Committee. It doesn't

somehow seem to me quite the thing. Of course, if Muriel wants to very

much--I never stand in her way over anything--girls do as they like

nowadays, don't they? But I have always tried to keep her away from

all that _sort_ of thing as much as possible."

The vicar was uncertain afterwards whether he had really seen that

expression cross Muriel's face then--that scornful yet submissive

aversion, which lacked spirit even to be violent. He answered bravely:

"I think that Muriel is almost old enough to judge for herself."

"I'm not really keen, if Mother doesn't want me to," said Muriel.

And yet, in the following silence, the vicar could feel the clash and

tension of their personalities as clearly as though swords had

crossed. In the St. Catherine's incident lay some secret significance

for Muriel and her mother. Behind Muriel's untranquil quiet lay a

suppressed resentment, and somewhere, but Heaven knew where, lay the

solution of her problem.

The vicar sighed, shook hands and walked unhappily homeward to write a

long and troubled letter to his daughter.

XXXIV

Muriel had been to tea with Daisy Weathergay. She had nursed the

Weathergay babies (there were now two) and looked at Weathergay

photographs, and endured the reiterated recital of the heroism of

Captain Dickie Weathergay in the Great War. She had been made to

understand, if indeed she had not already understood, that the War

only really affected the lives of those women married or engaged to

soldiers at the Front; and the recollection that she was of those who

had no right to feel anxiety or relief brought sharply home to her the

thought of Godfrey at the Weare Grange.

"They say she's never been up there to stay since he came home," Daisy

remarked with the confident knowledge of the already married. "Of

course I was always sure that it would never come to anything and I

still don't believe he'll marry her. A foreigner----"

"She's not," protested Muriel.

"Oh, well, she's half French or something, isn't she? Anyway, I'm

sure she'd never do for Godfrey. Now poor Phyllis---- Really, it is

terrible, isn't it? Ever since he came home, she's looking so ill and

pale, though I do think that she's a little fool to wear her heart on

her sleeve like that----"

A pleasurable pride lifted for a moment the depression of Muriel's

mood. She at least evidently did not share in the folly of Phyllis

Marshall Gurney, yet as she said good-bye at the garden gate of

Daisy's little villa her depression returned to her again. It

accompanied her on the walk homeward, blinding her to the clear

tracery of budding trees across the sky, to the silver serenity of the

spring evening. She thought, "Connie's baby would have been three

years old now. They might at least have left me the satisfaction of

being an aunt." She thought, "What on earth shall I do when I get

home? Read? All books are the same--about beautiful girls who get

married or married women who fall in love with their husbands. In

books things always happen to people. Why doesn't somebody write a

book about someone to whom nothing ever happens--like me?"

She thought, "If only I'd done what Mr. Vaughan suggested about St.

Catherine's Home, I'd have the accounts to do this evening. Mother

says that Mrs. Cartwright's got the tradesman's bills into an awful

mess. But it's not the sort of thing that young girls do. Oh, no! Men

hate to think of girls being mixed up in that sort of thing! O God, O

God, what am I going to do! How much does Mother know about Eric? How

long can I bear living in the same house as those two, knowing what I

know, guessing what they know, and hearing them lie and lie and lie?

"I must be sensible. What could Mother do about Connie but pretend

that she knows nothing? Did she know about Eric, though, before she

made Connie marry Ben? There was something between them. How much did

she guess? Oh, what is the use of going all over this again? I must

think about something else. If I don't think about something else I

shall go mad. What's the good, what's the good? What else is there to

think about? The tennis club opening? The Nursing Association, the

Marshington people? What shall I do--having nothing to think about,

and nobody's going to marry me, and I'm here always, always? How many

years? Three since I left Thraile? Then I shall probably live another

fifty."

She tried as always, to reason herself back into sanity. "Even if I

can't love Mother any more as I used to; even if I know that she's

calculating and hard and insincere, at least Father needs me. He has

come to like me a little more--to know me." But Muriel knew this to be

at least uncertain. When she opened the door of Miller's Rise, she

felt the atmosphere of the house close in upon her. She heard through

the morning-room door her father's voice, "But, look here, Rachel, for

the Lord's sake!" And her mother's, gently complaining, "Oh, of

course, Arthur, I know. You always thought of the girls before you

thought of me. You always preferred to have Muriel do things for

you----"

"Oh, by gad, this is too bad! Muriel's a good lass enough, but you

know it's nothing to do with that. A husband's and wife's income are

clumped together for taxation, and I'm damned if I'll let this rotten

Government fleece me right and left. Muriel will get it anyway when

we're gone, she might as well have a bit now--I'll tie up the capital

so that no rascal can marry her for her money----"

"Oh, I don't think that you need fear that she'll marry, and it's all

very well putting it down to the income tax, but you know as well as I

do----"

Muriel put down her umbrella with a clatter on the hall table. She

went into the sitting-room to find her father standing in flushed

exasperation near the mantelpiece, her mother sewing with indignant

concentration at the table, and Aunt Beatrice, ignored as completely

as the carpet, crocheting doilies in the window.

Lately Mr. and Mrs. Hammond had argued much more frequently. Again it

had been the Thraile incident that seemed to mark the turning point in

their relations. Mrs. Hammond was blaming her husband for his bequest

to Connie of the ungovernable temperament which had nearly brought

ruin on the Hammond family. She was sore at her one failure, terrified

now of another. Muriel could read in her increasing plaintiveness the

anxiety that racked her, lest her elder daughter also should defeat

her ends. And this continual strain was telling upon Mr. Hammond. He

had married Rachel Bennet largely because she was pretty, clever and a

lady. She brought things off. Arthur Hammond loved people who brought

things off. He liked to pay dearly for good stuff, but he expected it

to be good. Muriel remembered his advice, applied equally to horses

and workmen, and, she supposed, to his wife, "Go for the best i' the

market, pay top price, and let 'em rip." He had gone for the best on

the market. He had given Rachel a free hand, till now she had always

brought things off, but just recently she had begun to doubt her own

capacity to triumph, not so much over circumstance as over other

people's limitations. Connie had jarred her self-confidence, Muriel

was wearing it fine, and Arthur Hammond was becoming bored.

Without taking off her hat, Muriel sat down by the table, wondering

whether they would tell her about the argument. Whatever it was, it

evidently concerned her closely.

"Muriel, dear, I wish that you would not sit about in your coat and

skirt. You know how it spoils it to sit about in it indoors."

"Oh, all right, Mother." She rose to go.

"Here, M.," her father called her back, "I've got some papers I want

you to sign after supper. Come to my desk in the dining-room."

Muriel guessed what these were. She saw her mother's eyes, hurt and

angry, looking across the table to her. She went slowly from the room

and closed the door.

She had not been in her own bedroom more than five minutes, and was

slowly taking off her silk shirt blouse, when her aunt tapped at the

door and came in.

"Oh, you're changing?"

"Yes," remarked Muriel, lifting a grey velveteen dress from her

wardrobe. "What is it, Auntie?"

"Oh, I don't know, dear. Nothing in particular. Did you hear anything

interesting in the village?"

"Nothing. Does one ever hear anything interesting in Marshington? What

was the trouble downstairs, Auntie?"

"Trouble, dear? What trouble do you mean?"

Muriel picked up her dress and pushed it over her head. When she

emerged from her temporary eclipse she said "Father and Mother."

"Oh--er--nothing, dear."

Muriel fastened an amethyst brooch carefully into her dress. She was

thinking, "I really can't stand this feeling of secret exasperation in

the house. I can't stand not talking to someone." Aloud she asked:

"Auntie, have you noticed--Father and Mother seem to get on each

other's nerves now, like they never used to do?"

"Oh--I shouldn't say that, you know, Muriel."

"Oh, Auntie, you must have noticed it. What was it now about the

income tax?"

"Oh, well, your father wants to invest some money in your name, to

save super tax--just as a business investment, you know, and your

mother----"

"Thinks that she ought to have it?"

"Well, yes, dear. But you know that wouldn't do. As your father

pointed out, it doesn't act somehow if the wife has it."

"Mother doesn't like Father--doing things for me, does she?" Muriel

reflected. "Perhaps you've noticed. She doesn't like my doing things

for him either."

"Well, dear," Aunt Beatrice sat down in Muriel's arm-chair, eager to

clear away doubts and difficulties, her eyes shining with excellent

intentions, "you see, your father and mother have always been so very

_much_ to one another. Far more than most husbands and wives. Your

mother gave up a great deal for your father--my family weren't at all

pleased at a Bennet marrying a Hammond. We held a very good position

in Market Burton, you know. And your mother has been wonderful, she

has never looked back once. But naturally she expects--wants--would

like to have the--the first place in your father's consideration."

"Of course," murmured Muriel, "and she is inclined to fear anything

that might come between them?"

"Oh, yes, dear. Naturally. Though of course this money----"

"Of course--this money. That's hardly the point, I know. Just a

trifle, which of course she will come to see in its true proportion.

The real thing is that she does not like the idea of anyone else

getting the attention which she naturally expects from Father."

She began to arrange the little silver-topped boxes and hairpin tidies

and pincushions upon her dressing-table with light, careful movements,

while her mind worked feverishly.

"Father admires Mother immensely, doesn't he? More than most husbands

about here admire their wives?"

"Yes, yes. I always said so. He thinks her wonderful. You know dear,

of course, when you were younger I should not like to have said

anything; but you must see some things for yourself now--your mother's

influence has been wonderful over your father. She--she's always

so--splendid," Aunt Beatrice returned to the word for lack of better

definition.

Muriel, however, supplied the deficiency. "Yes, she always carries

things off, doesn't she? It would be terrible if for once she did not

carry things off. That's the quality he most admires in her. I'm

afraid," she continued dreamily, "that that's why he's been less--less

_certain_ of her lately, aren't you? Because he isn't certain whether

she's going to carry things off----"

"I don't quite see, dear--well, what?"

"Me, for instance," murmured Muriel. "It would be a terrible thing if

after all she never got me off, wouldn't it? Especially after Connie's

death. You know, it was a pity that I hadn't any brothers. Boys can go

and get married on their own. But when women like you and I, Auntie,

are left unmarried, it is rather a trial for our parents, isn't it?"

"Oh, but, dear, of _course_ you will marry one day. It's early to

talk----"

"Is it? Do you think I shall?" Muriel turned from the dressing-table

and looked at her aunt. "I'm nearly thirty. Nobody has ever proposed

to me yet. Do you think that it's likely?"

"Why, of course, dear. Heaps and heaps of girls marry _long_ after

they are thirty."

"Of course--there's a hope, isn't there, that one's life may not be

utterly wasted--even at the eleventh hour--one might--marry?"

Even Aunt Beatrice could not bear everything. She rose from her chair

and crossed to the window, a timid, inefficient, untidy little figure,

with weak wistful eyes and a stubbornly submissive mouth; but there

was a quiver of animation in her voice that Muriel had never heard

before.

"I hope very sincerely, dear, I always have hoped that you would

marry, both for your own sake and for your mother's. I am very fond of

your mother. I was bitterly sorry about her terrible trouble with dear

Connie, though I dare say that no one but another mother could know

quite what it felt like to lose her child and grandchild together, so

to speak. I should like for her sake to see you married. It would

repay her for many troubles she has known."

Aunt Beatrice looked from Muriel's room to the darkening plain beyond

the garden. Her gentle voice grew sharp with unconscious bitterness.

"But even more for your own sake, dear. You will marry, I am sure.

Marriage is the--the crown and joy of woman's life--what we were born

for--to have a husband and children, and a little home of your own. Of

course there are some of us to whom the Lord has not pleased to give

this. I'm sure I'm not complaining. There may be many compensations,

and of course He knows best. But--it's all right while you're young,

Muriel, and there's always a chance--and when my dear mother was alive

and I had someone to look after I am sure no girl could have been

happier. It's when you grow older and the people who needed you are

dead. And you haven't a home nor anyone who really wants you--and you

hate to stay too long in a house in case someone else should want to

come--and of course it's quite right. Somebody had to look after

Mother. Everybody can't marry. I'm not complaining. I'm sure they're

very kind to me, but I sometimes pray that the good Lord won't make me

wait here very long--that I can die before every one gets tired of me,

and of having me staying round----"

The room was growing dark. Shadows grey and desolate stole from the

long curtains. Only in the small, dim woman's voice lay the intensity

of realization that has passed despair.

"I used to pray every night that I should never come to a time when

nobody wanted me. There's no real need for me in this house. Rachel's

only kind to have me here when there's room. Oh, Muriel, my dear, if

ever a good man offers you the chance of a home, of children, of some

reason for living, don't throw it away, don't, don't."

"I don't suppose that there is any prospect of my doing so," said

Muriel. Part of her wanted to go and put her arms round her aunt and

be gentle to her. The other part was fighting a grim battle to defer

her vision of something that she wanted not to see.

It fought during the whole evening, during supper, during her

signature of unintelligible papers at her father's desk, when he told

her gruffly that she would now have an income of £350 a year minus

income tax, which would return to her in some mysterious way after

negotiations. "I could understand this myself if he would once

explain," she thought. But he did not explain, and she had to return

to the gas-lit drawing-room to face her mother's drawn mouth, her

aunt's timid efforts to keep out of the way, and the aftermath of her

father's temper.

There was nothing to do.

She sat down at the piano and began to play drearily. Her father rose,

looked at her, and a few moments later left the room. They heard his

car humming away down the drive.

Mrs. Hammond glanced up at Aunt Beatrice, then she continued to sew

without further comment.

The silence grew unbearable.

"I suppose--er--Arthur's gone to the club, Rachel?"

"I suppose so. Muriel, pass me my other scissors, please."

Not a word was said about the money.

As soon as she could escape decently, Muriel kissed her aunt and

mother, and went upstairs to bed.

The moon had risen. It threw light panels of grey across the dark

floor of her room. Muriel left her blind undrawn, and went to stand

where that afternoon her aunt had stood, gazing towards the twinkling

lights of Kingsport.

Of course she had known for weeks that this was coming, but she had

tried to shut her eyes against the truth. She could not stay at

Miller's Rise.

Ever since Connie's death she should have known this. Her mother

had failed with Connie, yet she had met bitter failure with such

outstanding social strategy that it had become transformed to

something like a triumph. But it had opened her eyes to the knowledge

that with Muriel she might fail without hope of safety. You can hide

the unhappiness of a marriage, but no one can hide in a provincial

town the glaring failure of no marriage whatsoever, and every one in

Marshington knew that poor Muriel Hammond had not had so much as an

affair.

No, it was quite certain; she would never marry now. Better to face

the fact and deal with it unflinchingly. What then? Could she stay

there at Miller's Rise to "help her mother" indefinitely? She knew

that her mother had never wanted help. Always the hope had been that

she would marry. To this end alone had she been trained and cared for;

and now she sat, meal after meal, between her mother and her father.

She knew that they found her presence secretly humiliating. She was

spoiling the best thing in the lives of both of them.

"I ought to go," thought Muriel. "But where? How?" What in the whole

world was there left for her to do? She had abandoned all hope of a

career to help her mother, and her mother did not need her, and she

was unmarried. "Nobody wants me--I'm like Aunt Beatrice, living in

fear of an unloved old age. I must have some reason for living. I

must, I must. I can't bear to live without. I just can't bear it. Oh,

what am I going to do with myself?"

From the calm valley the mist-veiled fields gleamed silver like still

water. The unanswering moon sailed on across the sky.

She began to walk now up and down the room. She could not bear

herself. She wanted to fling off her body. She wanted to become wildly

hysterical, to sob and scream with a pain of despair that was physical

as well as mental.

"What have I done to bring this on myself?" she asked, she to whom

this terrible burden of negation proved a torture. "I always tried to

do the best that I could see."

The best that she could see. She pressed her hands against her head.

Some fugitive echo of memory lay in the words, sight, sight. "The last

betrayal and the ultimate unworthiness is the defilement of the

vision." That mad fanatic at Thraile, that warped religious maniac,

what right had he, with his crude theories of self-mortification and

God's vengeance, to come before her now with his dark prophecies of

vision? Sight? What sight? Had she not always done the best that she

had seen?

"We can only worship what we see." All very well to talk. She pressed

her hands against her eyes and in the darkness she tried to read again

the visions she had seen.

She saw the God of her early school-days, a benign and patriarchal

creation of her own emotions, bidding her be submissive and content,

and smiling on her with approbation that curiously resembled Mrs.

Hancock's.

She saw Clare; and immediately her desires altered. To be good meant

to be gay, to be loved, to be beautiful, to dance through life right

up to Godfrey's arms.

She shivered. That vision had soon died. Beauty and gay success in

love could not be hers. What vision then? She saw her mother, the

passionate devotee of the great god of People. She saw herself

accepting now new standards. The thing that mattered in Marshington

was neither service nor love but marriage, marriage respectable and

unequivocal, marriage financially sound, eugenically advisable, and

socially correct. She had sought it. Oh, no doubt she had sought it

but never found, for though Godfrey Neale had kissed her he had not

unnaturally forgotten. In the emotional reaction after a crisis of

fear, she had found the only sign of the satisfaction that she had

sought as love.

Then she had gone to Thraile. She saw more clearly now the reeling

nightmare of those days, when she had lost all touch with sane

reality. At Hardrascliffe and at Marshington she could deal with a

given crisis according to known rules, but at Thraile she had been

swept right off her feet, having no standard of her own to hold by.

She had wanted to help Connie and had followed a policy of blind

opportunism, blundering from one notion to another. Connie in trouble

must be married. Connie, when married, must have life made tolerable.

This she had seen, and, seeing thus, had acted. But never once had

Muriel Hammond, Muriel who sought before all things excellence of

conduct, never once had she thought clearly about what it all meant.

She had never once lifted her head higher than Connie's, but had left

to Mr. Todd the task of trying to make clear what her sister and Ben

had done. But when you faced it frankly, you saw that it all came to

this. At Marshington the only thing that mattered was marriage.

Connie, who knew this, who was wild and reckless but who at least was

brave, had ruined her life and Ben's, had saddened Eric's, and had

brought her family to bitter shame. Muriel, with no less intention but

less courage, had sat at home and waited and grown bitter. And now she

was still waiting and her youth was passing by.

And yet, and yet, it had not been her own way to want this only. A

respectable marriage had not always been the one goal of her life. She

had dreamed dreams. She had seen visions, but her visions had faded

before the opinion of others; she had lacked the courage of her

dreams. And now there was left to her nothing but Marshington. She

could not even go away. It had trapped her in the end, for she had

shut her eyes to anything beyond its streets, and was a prisoner now

to her own blindness.

"The only thing that Marshington cares about is sex-success." Delia

Vaughan had said that. Muriel did not believe her. It was true enough,

quite true.

Her hands dropped from her face. She looked as she had looked thirteen

years ago across the moonlit fields to the dark city.

Well, Delia had been proved right at last. What next?

XXXV

"My dear," remarked the vicar, far more gravely than he was accustomed

to remark upon things in this curious, interesting, troublesome, but

not grave world, "you are killing yourself."

Delia lit another cigarette with trembling fingers and swung herself

on to the library table.

"Nothing of the sort," she replied brusquely. "Merely a little run

down by an unvaried diet of quarrelling, press campaigns, acrimonious

public meetings and stale fish. I don't know whether the indigestion

has been due to the debates or the fish. I suspect the former. Most

of my co-habitants at Morrison House seem to survive the fish with

imperturbable appetites. My dearest Father, do not at your eleventh

hour begin to play the heavy parent with me. Always hitherto I've

admired your dignified self-restraint about my eccentricities a good

deal more than I have considered it advisable to state--and now--well,

really, just because I happen to have had two or three bilious

attacks!"

The vicar removed his glasses slowly, leaned back in his chair, and

looked up at his daughter. "It seems to me a little uncharacteristic

of you, my dear, who have always been almost arrogantly neglectful of

your bodily needs, to throw up your work in the middle of what I take

to be a monumental campaign of militant good intentions, and to come

down for a fortnight into the country because you have had three

bilious attacks."

Delia removed her cigarette from her smiling lips and blew out a

squadron of smoke rings that floated in beautiful order along the

firelit air.

"Oh, well," she said, swinging her legs. They were painfully thin

legs, thought the vicar, judging from what he could see of them. Owing

to his daughter's attitude he could see a considerable extent. "I

suppose that I might as well tell you--I've not been particularly well

for some time. I don't know what it is. I suppose that I have been

overdoing things a little."

"Sixteen hours a day?" queried the vicar mildly. "Meetings in Hyde

Park, heart-to-heart talks with bishops, members of parliament, and

prostitutes--really quite alarming articles in the Press, my dear, and

all this office work. Your Twentieth Century Reform League sounds so

terribly--strenuous."

"The twentieth century _is_ strenuous. To tell the truth, there are so

many men and women doing nothing with their leisure that those who

have any sort of responsibility towards society are nearly bound to

overwork. However, Dr. Boden----"

"You went to a doctor then?"

"She's a friend of mine. She works at the crèche and shelter home we

run in Plaistow. She said that I ought to live somewhere--not in a

club--where they'd keep meals and things for me. I ought to diet

or something--you know, on unstale fish and eggs and things. But

you know, Father, it's all absurd. How can I afford a house and

servants--or to live in one of these communal palaces where everything

is just so? She suggested that I should take unto myself a friend and

share a flat with her--someone of a meek and domestic disposition--not

herself. She's married and has four children. But now, father, can you

honestly imagine me living peacefully with another woman, installed _à

deux_ in--say Aberdeen Mansions? Why, the poor creature would have a

fearful time."

"She would. The worst of being a reformer is that you can't stop--even

at your friend's characters, can you?"

Delia rose and pressed out the ashes from her cigarette against the

hearth rail.

"I haven't any friends--of that sort," she said slowly. "You can't

when you're really working hard. I have heaps of colleagues, but"--she

shrugged her shoulders--"you know, since Martin was killed I do find

it so awfully hard to keep my temper with other people. They infuriate

me simply for not being he--because they dare to go on living, being

so much less worthy of life, when he is dead. Of course it's entirely

my own fault, and in my sane moments I realize how impossible I am to

live with. But, however hard I work for some sort of vague idea of a

regenerated society, I always seem to be fighting people instead of

loving them." She laughed, pushing back her smooth black hair with her

tobacco-stained fingers. "I am like one of St. Paul's unfortunates,

who give my body to be burnt, not having charity. So I suppose my

sacrifice is worth nothing."

There was a little catch in her voice. Her face in the firelight was

almost fantastically wan, the face of a fighter prematurely old.

"Really," protested the vicar, "you terrible idealists give more

trouble to law-abiding, peaceful people like myself than all the

sinners God ever put into the world to leaven the lump of good

intentions. Which reminds me--I've got one coming to tea."

"Good heavens! Who? Which? Idealist or sinner?"

"I don't quite know. A problem anyway. I do wish that you young women

would let me alone."

"A young woman? Oh, father dear, _don't_ you think I've had enough

young women? I wanted the cloistered solitude of male society for a

little."

"It's Muriel Hammond. You remember her?"

"Oh, yes. Well, it might have been worse."

"I'm worried about her, Delia."

"Hum. I gathered from your letter that you were. Light gone out or

something?"

The vicar nodded, his finger-tips pressed together.

"Yes, I suppose that is it--her light has gone out. Why, Delia?

You know that I cannot provide myself as you can in a moment with

biographical information to come to the aid of my psychology. What is

wrong with her?"

"Wrong environment, intellectual idealist of limited capacity, not too

much will-power, immense credulity and ridiculous desire to live up to

other people's ideas of her, stuck in Marshington. Of course she was

bound to find out some time."

"Find out what?"

"That this is the last place on earth for a woman whose mind runs upon

other lines than the smooth road to matrimony, and whose personality

isn't usually attractive. I'm glad she's come to her senses at last."

"She hasn't."

"She's not going to marry Mr. Robert Mason, is she?"

"Not that I know of. But I believe that she'd marry the dustman if he

asked her."

"Good Lord. Bad as that? Poor child. Well, what are we to do. Take her

and shake her?"

"I don't know. I leave her to you, my dear. As I have always said, I

disapprove entirely of your sweeping condemnation of provincial towns.

Your views on matrimony are appalling, especially as----"

"As I was inconsistent over Martin? But, Father dear, haven't I

explained to you a million times that it isn't marriage I object

to--only marriage as an end of life in itself, as the ultimate goal

of the female soul's development----"

The door opened.

Mrs. Raikes, the vicar's housekeeper, looked in.

"Miss 'Ammond, sir."

They rose to welcome Muriel.

She came forward with characteristic timidity and shook hands with

Delia and her father.

"I hope you're better?" she inquired of Delia.

"Better? I'm all right. Never been ill."

"You look very tired," remarked Muriel.

They gave her tea, the vicar absent-mindedly poking the fire with his

boot. Now that he had handed over the problem of Muriel to Delia, he

felt that he had done his duty, and might return to the congenial

contemplation of mediæval taxes.

When tea was over he murmured some vague excuse about preparing a

sermon and vanished hurriedly.

"Doesn't Mr. Vaughan want to prepare his sermons here?" asked Muriel.

"Not he. He hasn't gone to prepare a sermon either. If we went into

the garden we should probably find him wandering up and down among the

daffodils swearing softly over Pollard's _Evolution of Parliament_,

which he calls a brilliant book, but most wrong-headed. Isn't it

extraordinary that historians always seem quite pleased to find each

other brilliant, but simply can't admit that they are anything but

wrong-headed?"

"Do they? I don't know any historians. They don't live in

Marshington--except your father, and of course we don't see much of

him. I'm not surprised. We really aren't a very exciting lot of

people." Again she laughed self-deprecatingly. "You know, you are very

lucky, being so clever and going to Newnham like that. It must be

frightfully nice----"

Delia lit another cigarette thoughtfully. "Smoke? No? You don't, do

you?" Muriel shook her head. "You don't mind if I do, do you? I've got

into rather a bad habit of doing it too much lately. You know, I've

often wondered why you didn't go to college."

"I--oh, I--well, really as a matter of fact I did once think that I

should like to. But I wasn't particularly clever you know."

"The last thing that one requires to make good use of a college

education is brilliance. You want intelligence and industry and a

sound constitution. The brilliant people can manage without it."

"Oh--well, it wasn't only that." Muriel leaned forward with her small

hands stretched towards the fire.

"She doesn't look more than eighteen now," thought Delia. "What a

solemn little child she is."

"You see Mother wasn't frightfully keen on it," explained Muriel

sedately.

"Did you ask?"

"No, not exactly. I sounded Aunt Beatrice, who always knows these

things. She said that they would be awfully disappointed if I wanted

to leave them, and it did not seem worth while to me to make a fuss

and to upset every one because I overestimated my own ability."

"Usefulness seems to me a question of intention rather than ability,"

remarked Delia. "Don't you think that this self-deprecation of yours

was a little like cowardice? You hated an upset, and so you decided

that you lacked ability."

She glanced sideways at Muriel, who still looked primly meek, facing

the liquid flames.

"I wanted to help Mother too," said Muriel, seeking justice.

"Hum. And you thought that by helping your mother you would escape the

responsibility of having to help yourself, didn't you? It was the

difficult choice you couldn't face, not your own inefficiency."

Would Muriel take offence? Delia, well used to the outrage of her

companions, watched the sensitive curve of Muriel's mouth tighten.

Would she be too poor-spirited to make defence? Or too ungenerous to

accept criticism?

For some time she did not speak. Delia was half afraid lest at the

outset she should have wounded her too deeply, have frightened her

away from any possibility of contact. She began to abuse herself

as a tactless fool before Muriel's quiet little voice began again

reflectively:

"I think that you are probably right. I was a coward. I've always been

afraid. Desperately afraid--but not of unpleasantness exactly. I was

afraid quite genuinely of hurting other people, of my own limitations,

of the crash and jar of temperament. I--you won't laugh at me, will

you?--wanted frightfully to be good. I did not realize what life was

like, that nobody has a chance. It's all very well saying that I

should have done this or that. Things happen against our will.

Always being driven and we follow--voices." Her own voice gained

intensity. Bright patches of carmine flared into her pale cheeks.

"They promise us all sorts of things," she said, "happiness, success,

adventure--don't you know? Of course you don't, you're clever. But we

listen, we think that we are moving on towards some strange, rich

carnival, and follow, follow, follow. Then suddenly we find ourselves

left alone in a dull crowded street with no one caring and our lives

unneeded, and all the fine things that we meant to do, like toys that

a child has laid aside."

"My dear"--Delia's voice was softer now--"you are very, very wrong.

You speak as though we had no choice in the matter."

"We haven't," said Muriel stubbornly. "Oh, you're clever and all

that," her manner seemed to say, "but you can't deceive me now a

second time."

"You are quite wrong," Delia answered slowly. "It's all very well

to talk about life this and life that. You can't wriggle out of

responsibility by a metaphor. Your life is your own, Muriel, nobody

can take it from you. You may choose to look after your mother; you

may choose to pursue a so-called career, or you may choose to marry.

You may choose right and you may choose wrong. But the thing that

matters is to take your life into your own hands and live it,

accepting responsibility for failure or success. The really fatal

thing is to let other people make your choices for you, and then to

blame them if your schemes should fail and they despise you for the

failure. What did you mean to do in Marshington?"

"I hardly know. All sorts of silly things--I put fine names on to

all the conventional ways for killing the time between a girl's

school-days and her marriage." Again Muriel laughed. "Oh, I've been a

fine fool, fine. You know what you once said to me--'The only thing

that counts at Marshington is sex-success.' I didn't know then what

you meant, and I hated your criticisms of the sort of life my people

lived. I thought them so disloyal."

"I know. Loyalty plays the devil with people until they see that its

first true demand is honesty."

"If only I'd been like you," continued Muriel. "It's all very well for

you to talk about choices and things, you know. You've really had

everything. The best of both worlds----" She looked up unexpectedly.

"Do you know that there was a time when I could have killed you--just

for jealousy?"

"Really? When?" asked Delia with interest.

"Just after Martin Elliott was killed. You'd had the best of

everything. Love to remember and work to do. Oh, I know you think

you've suffered. Every one says 'Poor Delia!' I could have killed

them. There you were with nothing to reproach yourself for, with no

bitterness of shame, but a mind full of sweet memories. Why, you

don't know what it is--the awfulness of a life where nothing ever

happens; the shame of only feeling half a woman because no man has

loved you; the bitterness of watching other girls complete their

womanhood. And I didn't so much want marriage. I wanted to feel that I

had not lived unloved, that there was nothing in my nature that cut me

off from other women, made me different--Oh, I know that this sounds

very primitive. We are primitive perhaps in Marshington. But what do I

know of the world outside this village? I'm nearly thirty. People tell

me that I look like a child. I feel like a child--beside you, for

instance. But I do know this. That if ever I had a child and it was

born a girl and not beautiful, I believe I'd strangle it rather than

think that it should suffer as I've suffered!"

"Why--Muriel!"

"Oh, yes. Perhaps you're shocked. I know." The fire died from her

voice. She dropped her head on to her small, clasped hands. Very

wearily she spoke, "Oh, well. I suppose it does me good to say what I

think, just once. Anyway what does it matter? I'm twenty-nine and to

all useful intents and purposes my life is as much over as though I

were ninety. I'm stuck here, I shan't marry. I don't know what else to

do. You say that I've never made a choice--through cowardice. I dare

say that you're right. But it's too late to begin now."

"Things are never too late, only more difficult."

"You would say that, now, wouldn't you? I'm sure that you're a

splendid lecturer, Delia. You must be able to tell people an awful lot

of good home-truths. You get so much practice, don't you?"

Delia smiled ruefully. She rose and crossed to the tea-tray and poured

herself out a cup of quite cold tea, allowing Muriel to talk on.

"Do you know," said Muriel with mild surprise, "I never could stand up

on a public platform, but I do believe that if I could I should be

able to tell your audiences things you never could?"

"Of course. I'm sure of it."

"You know," she paused, as though she were thinking of some quite new

thing, "you don't know half the time what you are talking about."

Up shot Delia's eyebrows. "I might have expected this," she told

herself gleefully. "I might have known that when Muriel really did

begin to talk we should hear some surprising things." Aloud she said,

"Go on."

"You rail against faults like mental slackness, and sloppiness and

being content with other people's standards. But you don't know what

they mean. You're clear-sighted. I don't believe that's nearly so much

a merit as a gift. How can you know what blindness is when you can

see? But I know what it's like. I know what fear and stupidity and

muddle-headedness can feel like. Because I did not recognize them till

it was too late does not take away from me now the right to see them

in other people--But I can't. What's the good here? Only--I wish--I

wish that if you see anyone else in the same sort of muddle as I was

in--ten years ago--you'd--you'd really make it clear to them."

"I blame myself--I blame myself," said Delia. "I should have made

things clear."

"Oh, no. You mustn't think that. Why, you were the one person who ever

lifted a hand to undeceive me. It was my fault. I was too arrogantly

sure of my own righteousness to listen. I was too much set on living

up to other people's expectations of me. You--you always----" She

swallowed heavily, but went on. "Do you know, you've always meant a

lot to me--I think--I think I used to sort of idealize you--as the

person I might have been if I had not been such a fool."

"Me, Muriel?"

"Yes--er--it was impertinent, wasn't it?" Again she laughed, and

rising hurriedly began to draw her gloves on, blushing and shy.

"Good-bye, it has been most awfully good of you to talk to me like

this. I--I shan't forget it. Please will you say good-bye to Mr.

Vaughan for me?"

Delia turned from the tea-tray.

"Where are you going?"

"Going? Back--home--to Miller's Rise," said Muriel with surprise.

"Oh, no, you're not," commanded Delia. "Sit down a minute."

"But I'm keeping you--I----"

"No, I'm going to keep you. Please sit down."

Meekly, Muriel sat down and waited. She had to wait for a long time.

Delia folded a derelict slice of brown bread and butter and began to

cut it into neat, rectangular disks upon her plate. When she did

speak, her question was quite unexpected.

"Have you a great deal of patience, Muriel?"

"Patience? Me? I--I haven't much idea."

"No--no. N--o." Delia's fingers tapped at the round brass tea-tray.

"No, you wouldn't know. Really it seems incredible that--however--you're

keen on accounts and things, aren't you?"

"Yes--I--suppose I am. I'm not much----"

"Good at them, though? Of course not. Nobody is without a proper

training. However, if I remember the Nursing Association you have

quite a genius for method. Do you like house-keeping?"

"That depends. At home it's such a routine now. I often used to think

it would be lovely to have a little house all of one's own--only again

the necessity of sharing it with a husband was an obstacle."

"I see."

"But I must really go. You'll be getting tired of talking about

me----"

"Oh, no, I shan't. For Heaven's sake sit down and do be a bit more

interested in yourself. You'll have to hear a lot of home-truths

before I've finished with you. By the way, I'm ill."

"Ill? Oh, I was afraid----"

"Not very ill. But I shall be, unless I change my way of living. I

ought to move into a flat, where I can have special meals and a more

or less selected diet. I have enough money for the diet, but not for

a whole servant to cook it, nor a whole flat to keep her in, and I

certainly haven't time to cook my meals myself. What would you

suggest?"

"Why? I should suggest that you should get some one to share a flat

and do the housekeeping."

"Yes, of course. That would seem to be the obvious thing if it were

not for one difficulty. I am an impossible person to live with. Look

at me. I live largely on platforms and in publicity, which is always

uncomfortable for one's friends. I suffer abominably from indigestion

and consequently my friends suffer from my temper. I insult bishops

and civil servants from platforms for the good of their souls. I'm

running one of the most provocative and militant societies in England.

I'm pursued by anonymous letters, threatened libel actions, and

clergymen with outraged susceptibilities--and I mind it all damnably.

I'm not a scrap heroic. I quail before every adverse criticism; I'm

hag-ridden at night by memories of things that I might have done, and

haunted all day by a sense of furious impotence. I'm never in the same

mood for two minutes running, and all my moods are irritating. Worst

of all, when my own affairs go wrong, I always blame the first person

who happens to be near, and, try as I will, I can't reform myself. You

see, I have no right to ask anyone to live with me."

Muriel was silent for a long time. Then she said:

"You may be partly right, but I think you exaggerate. The girl

who came to live with you might be happier in some circumstances,

but those might be beyond her power, and at least she'd have the

satisfaction of knowing that she was living with someone who needed

her. If you are unpleasant to your immediate neighbours sometimes,"

recollections of early chapters in Delia's career lit the ghost of a

smile in Muriel's eyes, "at least you try to be of some use to the

world at large. One may be alarmed by you, but one can't despise you.

It's living with people whom you suspect are using you for ends that

you yourself despise that kills you. It's having nothing to do, not

having too much, which is intolerable. I should go ahead and ask

anyone whom you can think of. Let them refuse if they will. But do see

that you get a good cook."

"Muriel," laughed Delia, "do you know that you are quite a lamb?"

Muriel stared at her as though she had gone mad.

"It's all right," Delia reassured her. "I'm not going to tax your

charity."

"How? What do you mean?"

"By asking you to come and share my flat and work during the day in

the office of the Twentieth Century Reform League."

Into Muriel's face the quick light leapt and died.

"No, no, of course not. I'm much too stupid. But I hope you'll find

someone nice."

"You--you can't _want_ to come--if I did ask you?"

"You mustn't ask me. I'd get on your nerves."

"But you can't _want_ to come?" repeated Delia incredulously.

"More than anything I can think of at the moment," said Muriel.

"But you can't think what it's like. It's quite impossible."

Muriel stood looking at her. Then suddenly she sat down at the table

facing Delia.

"I want to get away from Marshington," she said. "I've wanted to for

months--for years I think. I didn't know how--I'm no good at acting

for myself. I thought that there was nowhere else for me to go. I

thought that the only means of escape for me was marriage. But if you

want me, if you'll help me," her urgent, hurrying voice was not unlike

her mother's now, but there was in it a note of appeal that puzzled

Delia, "If you'll only help me to get away. You said that I never made

a choice. I didn't only because it seemed to be no use. It's no good

choosing a thing that you can't do. But if you'll give me work, show

me some way of being useful----"

"But supposing you get tired of it? Or supposing I do? Supposing that

you get on my nerves? I shall not scruple to let you know, and there's

even the conceivable possibility that I might not live very long. They

say I must be careful. I can't be. I shall be impossible to live with

and possibly worst of all from your point of view, you may find

yourself totally unsuited for the kind of life."

"Well, I could always go again."

"And come back here? Muriel, would you? I'm terrified of taking you

out of the one environment you know into one equally impossible for

you, and leaving you neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring."

"But I don't know this environment and it doesn't know me. I'm living

like--like a person that I'm not. Oh, you don't know it all, I can't

explain, I never can, but I've seen things that happen out of this

environment. I've seen cruelties and ruin and wretchedness that even

you don't dream about, and if you don't help me to get away, I've got

nobody, I've been--nearly mad sometimes--just trapped, feeling there's

no escape from Marshington--Please, Delia, oh, I do so--need you."

Delia took out her handkerchief, rolled it into a ball, opened it out

and looked at Muriel.

"You need my need for you more than you need me, I suppose really,"

she said. "Well--we must think it over, but I warn you you'll be

exchanging the evils that you know for an infinitely worse evil that

you don't know----"

"I don't care----"

The door opened and the vicar wandered in.

"Delia, Delia, have you seen my glasses?"

"Oh, Father, come in, do. We want you," said Delia quickly. "I'm in

such a mess."

XXXVI

Mrs. Hammond's elder daughter left Marshington with far less ceremony

than had attended Connie's departure. When it actually came to the

point of telling her mother that she was going to London, Muriel was

astounded at the ease with which she gained permission. Mrs. Hammond

of course, would not find it at all pleasant living alone without her

only daughter. Aunt Beatrice might be persuaded to stay, but nobody

would consider that quite the same thing. And then, what would people

_say?_ People, who saw that Muriel was leaving her mother, and with

Delia Vaughan of all people, and for the Twentieth Century Reform

League of all terribly "modern" and uncomfortable organizations.

"Naturally, you would not be expected to consider me, dear, I

suppose," Mrs. Hammond had said, "but when you think what the Reform

League is and how immensely people criticize it--I've heard that the

new branch started in Kingsport has already upset the vicar of St.

Simeon's, because several of the girls from his Bible-class have

joined the club and are talking about politics and their votes and

things--so very unwise, when most of them ought to go into service.

The crèches and things may be a good thing, but I do think . . ."

Nevertheless, she had let Muriel go, publishing over the bridge table

the news of her conversion to modernity.

"What I think," she had informed Mrs. Marshall Gurney, with a delicacy

in refraining from comparisons that could not fail to point more

strikingly at Phyllis, "is that it's so very _wrong_ of mothers, in

these days, to stand between their daughters and progress. The girls

nowadays are doing such splendid work. Of course it needs a certain

amount of brains, but Muriel always was so excellent with figures. I

understand that Lady Ballimore-Fenton--the President of the League,

you know--is a simply charming woman. Muriel will find it most

interesting."

Muriel found it interesting, but the interest hardly surprised her so

much as the difficulty, and this Delia had in no way exaggerated.

Muriel arrived at King's Cross with her ham sandwiches still untasted,

her mind confused, and a terrified determination to be successful. She

had half hoped that she would find Delia waiting for her at the

station, and a flat waiting for her ready warmed and furnished in some

convenient part of London. She found instead a gloomy, indifferent

terminus, a rattling taxi, and the comfortless austerity of Morrison

House, the interior of which reminded her more nearly of the Kingsport

Baths than anywhere else. The small guest-room into which she was

shown by a slatternly maid had been christened "The Morgue" and lived

up to its name.

She heard that Delia was ill in bed, and went along the passage to her

room. She found her propped up by pillows dictating letters to an

obviously intimidated but competent secretary.

"Oh, Muriel--wait a minute. Yes, yes, Miss Beach? Where were we? 'The

demonstration proposed to take place on July 15th in the Kingsway Hall

will be postponed in order that an answer from the Home Secretary may

first be received. As the deputation has been fixed for July 30th, we

hope to hold the Kingsway Hall meeting on August 1st, which will just

avoid Bank Holiday. I hope that the altered date will not affect your

kind promise to speak for us--Yours truly . . .' That's all, I think.

Well, Muriel? Arrived? Found a flat for us yet? I've got an internal

chill or something and can't get up, as you see."

Muriel, who had caught the early train, forgotten to eat her lunch,

and found her own way to Morrison House with much fear but with

considerable self-congratulation, felt that this was a cold reception.

"You'll have to do it yourself," continued Delia. "Get a furnished

one. I'll give you the addresses of some agents in Bloomsbury. Miss

Beach, have you a directory there? You might go round this afternoon,

Muriel. The sooner the better."

But, after Miss Beach had left the room, she had turned to Muriel with

her rare swift smile.

"My dear child, you are in for a dreadful time. I've got my hands full

of work. I'm feeling perfectly rotten--which means bad tempered and

you'll have to do everything yourself. Can you face it?"

"Do you want me?"

Delia glanced comically round the room. A cup half full of boiled milk

that stood on a pile of papers on the dressing-table had grown cold;

the washstand paraphernalia had been swept aside to make room for a

typewriter; ink pads, stamps, directories and ledgers strewed the

chairs and floor; and in the middle of the litter Delia lay on the

disordered bed with a coat buttoned over her blue striped pyjamas.

"Now, doesn't it rather look as though I wanted you?" she said.

That was enough for Muriel.

House agents scared her, but furniture shops offered her unalloyed

delight. Her instincts of economy refused to allow her to take

a furnished flat. She braved motor-buses and tubes, she faced

landladies, caretakers and decorators. When Delia, nearly convalescent

but still shockingly unfit for work, departed northwards on a speaking

tour, Muriel worked almost day and night to prepare a home for them

both. She spent part of her own dress allowance on blue curtains and

hand-painted lamp-shades and the most luxurious of soft arm-chairs for

Delia's weary body. Here at last Delia, who had missed the softer

things of life, should find a home.

On the afternoon of her expected return, Muriel could hardly keep

still. Twenty times she went to the window, twenty times she looked

back with satisfaction on the restful charm of the sitting-room. Roses

in rough blue vases; dark bookshelves ranged against the plain buff

walls, space, space everywhere and a complete absence of irritating

decoration--surely the room meant the materialization of her dreams?

"She must like it, she must like it," she told herself, and for the

first time in her life was confident that she had done well.

The electric bell pierced the silence with deafening shrillness. She

ran to the door. Delia's figure stood in the passage. Delia, tall,

dynamic, ruthless, swept in.

"Muriel, oh, thank goodness you're here! What did you do with Hansard

for May 21st last year? That wretched Cutherlick man has threatened to

denounce me for misstatements in my Lincoln speech. We shall have a

libel action some time. I've got to fly down to South Cross by the

5.40 if I can catch it to answer him to-night at this meeting."

"What meeting? What speech? Oh, Delia, you can't; you're worn out. You

must----"

But Delia brushed past her into the lovely little room. She never saw

the blue vases nor the lamp-shade nor the cushions. She was down on

her knees flinging books from the shelves on to the beautiful new

carpet.

"Where in the name of fortune did you put the Hansards? I'll never

catch that train. Why couldn't you put the things where I'd find them?

Have you a kettle boiling? Can't I have some tea before I go?"

But, when Delia had found the Hansards and the notes of her Lincoln

speech and had telephoned to Lady Ballimore-Fenton, no time was left

to drink the tea that Muriel had prepared. She rushed away to catch

her train, leaving the overturned dispatch case on the floor, the

bookshelves in a chaos and her bedroom littered with the disorder of

her haste.

It was then that Muriel realized the disadvantages of trying to please

people possessed by an idea. For nearly two hours alone in the flat,

she forced back a desire to run away--could she face this continual

possibility of Delia's displeasure? Could she continue to please

somebody who never acknowledged her efforts?

"I'm being just as unselfish as she is," Muriel told herself

indignantly. "This is my flat as much as hers. I've spent far more

money on it. I've had all the trouble of making it nice. She ought

just to have _said_--it doesn't take a minute to say 'how pretty.'"

But Muriel's resentment passed when Delia, almost blind with fatigue,

stumbled into the flat just after midnight.

"It's all right," she said, and that was all. But she allowed Muriel

to take her hot tweed coat, to pull the hair-pins out of her heavy

hair, to bring her soup in a blue and yellow bowl, and a fish

_soufflé_ made as only Rachel Hammond's daughter could have made it.

For half an hour she accepted passively. She ate, drank, and allowed

Muriel to prop the cushions behind her in the new arm-chair and put

the bowl of yellow roses on the table by her elbow and light her

cigarette. Then she lay back, smiled, and looked round the room.

"Well, Muriel," she said, "I always knew that you had discrimination,

but this amounts to genius. One day your husband will be grateful to

me for giving you a little training in the wifely habit."

"But I'm not going to marry," protested Muriel.

Delia flicked the ash off her cigarette. "You must learn never to

argue with tired people," she said sternly, then smiled and fell fast

asleep there in the big arm-chair without even waiting to be taken to

her pretty bedroom.

After Delia's return, Muriel's life in London fell into its new

routine. She spent her mornings in the office of the Twentieth Century

Reform League, entering figures in big ledgers and reviving her

acquaintance with double entry and other mysterious systems. She found

that her old love of figures returned to her. Method was pure joy. She

reduced to order the chaos of the office slowly and peacefully, taking

each day a new section at which to work.

She organized the little household in 53a Maple Street, keeping a

stern eye on the "daily help," the housekeeping books and Delia's

appetite. She filled her days entirely with small trifles, seeing at

first no farther than her ledgers and Delia's hollow cheeks, which

surely began to fill out a little under her vigorous treatment of

stout and milk and new-laid eggs. Yet somehow she did not feel

completely safe. Such obvious things as there were to do she did and

did quite competently, but always she felt that one day some problem

would present itself or some crisis arise and that she would be lost

again.

Delia seemed to be both pleased and fattened by her ministrations, but

that did not make her entirely contented with Muriel's companionship.

One night she came in irritated and disturbed. A newspaper article had

questioned her sincerity. She pretended to ignore such criticisms, and

could not. They rankled while she laughed at them. She stalked up and

down the flat, hurt and sore, and uncertain what to do.

"I'm awfully sorry. I wish I could _do_ something," sighed Muriel

helplessly for the fifth time.

"Do. Do? Oh, you never do anything except the things I tell you.

You're always wringing your hands and looking sorry, but I always have

to think of the things to _do_."

This statement Muriel felt to be true rather than kind, but she

accepted it with chastened fortitude.

Between alternating doubt and happiness, Muriel worked throughout the

summer and the autumn. There were weeks when she was oppressed by fear

and wretchedness. Her life counted for so little. She was not really

helping Delia much. Each week brought tenderly reproachful letters

from her mother. They stirred Muriel to vague disquiet. All this sort

of work was well enough--this Reform League, for instance. No doubt it

was a good thing that a great society run by women should try to draw

all classes into social service, by clubs and settlements in every

town where mill girls might meet with daughters of barristers or

squires to discuss crèches and canteens and recreation rooms, or to

carry out political propaganda for the purposes of forcing through

social legislation. Still, was it quite the thing for which she had

been born, or was she only trying to cover the shame of her retreat?

Delia would talk for hours of this dream of service; of an army

without distinction of class or age moving forward towards the

betterment of England. "Political knowledge, education in citizenship,

co-operation, sympathy, no one class needs these things," she used to

say. "We shall never see any improvement while the rich and the

well-educated think that they can help the poor exclusively. The rich

and educated need the experience of the poor. The poor need contact

with culture and with leisure. We all need the organization of our

capacity for citizenship. The realization of the corporate Will."

Muriel sat and listened, thinking hard. Sometimes her own life seemed

to her a very little thing, of bitterness born from brooding over

folly, of petty disappointments magnified to tragedy, of imagination

run riot. "But Connie?" she would say. "You can't argue away Connie's

ruined life. Even if I have simply been foolish and mistaken, what was

it that forced Connie to seek escape in such wild recklessness? There

must be other people like her; what can we do?"

She was beginning to find a new foundation for her thoughts. Her

concentration upon the intensely personal problem vanished.

She used to talk to Delia, in her soft, serious voice, feeling her way

towards her new ideas.

"I can't help thinking that Lady Ballimore-Fenton rather _likes_ a

fight for the sake of a fight," she reflected. "Surely it doesn't do

any good to pretend that all the people who don't quite agree with her

are scoundrels. She knows it isn't true."

And Delia would smile and shrug her shoulders. "I believe that you

think that we're a poor lot, Muriel."

"I don't. I'm awfully happy here. Only it does sometimes seem very

difficult for people to be really interested in questions like housing

or illegitimacy and to keep their sense of proportion. So often things

are wrong just because nobody quite knows how to put them right. And

gentleness is a great power and a great beauty."

Delia smiled her twisted smile. "You put all your platform pearls into

your private conversation, Muriel. I wonder? I wonder how much you

really care for all this. After all, you are right in one sense. We

are all rather apt to lose our sense of proportion. But, because we

deal with people in their social capacity, it doesn't mean that we

disregard their private selves. We are all of us partly workers for

some movement and partly men and women. It's a queer thing, this sex

business. You go along quite happily disregarding it for years, then

suddenly something comes along that rouses the sleeping thing--and

away we go, over the windmills." She caught her breath.

"Martin?" whispered Muriel.

"I suppose so. We've all got a--Martin. That was physical as well as

mental suffering. That was why it was so damnable. My mind misses him

still--will always, I suppose. My body--well, thank God, who made a

singularly imperfect world in order that men might work off their

superfluous energies in order to straighten it!"

"But, Delia," cried Muriel, "you don't only do this work in order to

forget--as a sort of _faute de mieux_?"

"No, no." Delia sat down in the arm-chair, her chin on her hand. "No.

Two-thirds of me are wholly engrossed in it, and those two-thirds are

of the more enduring part of me. You too. You won't always be content

to stay with me. You've got the domestic instinct too, which I

haven't. And you're not really absorbed heart and mind in the work. It

interests you now--but--I wonder. One day some one will call to you,

and back you'll go to Marshington."

"No. Not to Marshington. Never. Besides, nobody will call."

"Won't they? Won't they? You can't get out of it like that. Wait a

little."

Muriel waited.

XXXVII

Muriel sat by the fire at 53a Maple Street knitting a jumper for

Delia. The flames glowed on the silk between her fingers, until the

sheen of it gleamed like molten copper. The supper table was laid for

two. Blue and yellow pottery, a vase filled with tawny chrysanthemums,

and Muriel's workbag of bright-coloured silk hanging from the chair,

gave to the room an intimate charm.

Muriel herself was pleasant enough to look upon. Her thin cheeks still

were pale, her features insignificant; but instead of diffidence and

dissatisfaction her face now wore a look of quiet waiting, of humour

nun-like and demure, of a composure that would quicken to keen

sympathy. Her parted hair was brushed sedately from her small, serious

face; her blue dress of soft woollen stuff was finished daintily by

collars and cuffs of finest cream material, the firelight sparkled on

the coquettish buckles of her really pretty grey _suède_ shoes. Muriel

Hammond of Miller's Rise had vanished; Miss Hammond of 53a Maple

Street was a very different person.

When the bell rang sharply, she put aside her knitting, glanced round

the room, and went to the front door. Callers were always coming to

the flat at all hours. At first they had come intent upon finding Miss

Vaughan and laying their troubles before the redoubtable champion of

social reform. Latterly many had been quite content to find Miss

Hammond, no longer a nonentity, but a grave little lieutenant, who

listened to their protests or pleadings or denunciations with serious

attention, and upon whose undemonstrative consideration they relied.

Muriel did not know this. She still held herself to be very stupid,

and dreaded committing the final error of judgment which should cut

her off from Delia's tolerance for ever. Even now as she went to the

door, she was reckoning rapidly the many people who might even at this

hour be coming to lay their recriminations or requests before the

organizing secretary of the Reform League. She opened the door and

looked into the gloom of the passage.

"G--good evening," remarked a voice, incredibly familiar, yet

unexpected. "Is Miss Vaughan in?"

She opened the door wider and the light from the electric lamp fell

upon Godfrey Neale's tall figure. He was staring past her to the

sitting-room, not recognizing to whom he spoke.

Godfrey. Godfrey. For a moment Muriel was dumb. A thousand doubts and

fears and memories rushed to her mind. An emotion that she hardly

recognized clutched at her throat. Tenderness, consternation and

regret all smote her. She shrank back into the shadows of the little

hall.

She could not face him. Godfrey, who had been wounded and a prisoner;

Godfrey, who must have suffered agonies unthinkable; Godfrey, for whom

she had endured such suffering--it was impossible that she should

speak to him unmoved. She was caught in a trap, whence she could not

escape. She forced herself to answer:

"Miss Vaughan is out."

He recognized her voice. "Muriel Hammond? By all that's wonderful?

W--what are you doing here?"

If only his voice had not faltered with that familiar heart-rending

little stammer. If only his face, smiling down upon her, had not

recalled the moment when he smiled down from the motor-lorry, riding

towards the peril of a bombarded city; if only the lean hand that he

thrust forward had not reminded her of his hand outstretched in

congratulation after the tennis set, when she had made her _début_ at

the Recreation Club; if he had been quite different, she might have

borne it. But his familiarity stunned her. His nearness raised a

thousand instincts and emotions that she had thought to be long dead

and decently interred.

She gave him her cold hand quietly.

"Won't you ask me to come in?" he asked. "Or shall I be in the way?"

Without a word she went before him into the sitting-room, and stood,

dumb and unnerved, beside the supper table. His quick glance seemed to

take in everything, each charming detail of the long, low room, the

firelight leaping on the plain blue carpet, the piano, the books, the

flower-decked table.

"You were just g--going to have your dinner?" he asked.

He seemed to be taller than ever, and his brown face was thin. Those

were the only differences. His nose still hooked very slightly over

the small winged moustache. The brows over his kind, honest eyes were

still dark and smooth and level. He still had the same regal aspect of

bearing himself as though the whole world knew that he was Godfrey

Neale of the Weare Grange, confident, dominating and victorious. No,

that was wrong. The victory had somehow failed him. Something had

subtly changed his self-confidence, his air of conquest, and with the

loss of confidence some slight charm failed.

"I had thought that Delia would catch the 5 train. That means that she

would have been home for supper. But she must have missed it by now,"

she said in a low voice.

"When will she be back?"

"I'm afraid not until late now--about eleven. It means that she will

stay for dinner at the place in Sussex where she's speaking."

"Are--are you staying here, then?"

"I live here. Didn't you know?"

He shook his head. "Stupid of me. I hadn't realized. I've not seen

Delia for ages. Only once since I left Germany, and then she was in

such a hurry I hardly grasped anything but her new address. I never

thought that she would be out."

It was like him to forget that people had other interests beside those

concerning him.

"I'm sorry she's out. Won't you sit down?"

She prayed that he might go. She dared not trust her composure for

much longer. She looked blindly round the room for help. If only he

would go! His nearness hurt and bruised her. If only Delia were here,

so that she were not left alone, trapped in the flat, bound to her

task of hospitality by her recollection of his friendship for the

vicar's daughter.

"Thanks, very much," said Godfrey. "If I may really--a--look here--are

you doing anything to-night?"

"I? No--not exactly." She spoke before she thought.

"Then won't you come out and have some dinner with me? I'm up in town

alone, missed the 5.30 train for Kingsport. It's rotten spending the

evening alone at an hotel. You'd be doing a work of Christian charity

to come."

"I suppose Clare's out of town," thought Muriel. She said: "I really

don't think that I'd better leave the flat. Delia might still come."

Her hospitable instincts overcame her panic. "Won't you--won't you

stay and have supper here with me?"

She had not meant to say it. She did not want it. Even as she spoke

she felt the whole of her personality rising in revolt, seeking to

drive him from her. But he could not be so cruel as to accept. He

would not force her thus to sit alone with him, in the unavoidable

intimacy of that room.

He put down his hat with a sigh of relief.

"By Jove, are you sure that you can do with me? It's awfully g--good

of you. I do so loathe a beastly evening alone in London."

"He takes it for granted that we've got plenty of food," thought

Muriel. "He takes it for granted that I shall be pleased to see him,

to wait on him, to give him supper. Oh, how dare he come here? How

dare he? How dare he?"

Aloud she said: "Yes, do sit down. Take a cigarette. There are some in

that little carved box on the mantelpiece. You don't mind if I go and

get the supper ready, do you?"

He stooped to light a paper spill from the fire. "Sure I can't help?

Sure I'm no trouble?"

"None, thank you," she said, and left the room.

Out in the kitchen, she did not begin to cook the fish that lay

prepared with breadcrumbs and butter on the table. She crouched down

upon the single chair, her face hidden in her hands, her body shaking.

She felt herself to be outraged and assaulted. The agitation which he

aroused in her violated her sense of decency. It was an outrage, a

torture that she could be made to suffer by his presence. Did he think

of her as a person? Did he remember that one kiss at Scarborough?

The memory of his enfolding arms tormented her like the shirt of

Nessus. Sham kiss, sham love, sham pitiful adventure, stirred by the

recollection of sham peril--nothing more. Was this the emotion that

had driven Connie to the river when she saw Eric's letter, knowing

what she had done with Ben? Was this the revolt that had burnt and

shamed her? What did she feel for Eric, love or hate? Violence of

repulsion, or of love? Was this the love that she had always so

idealized? No, no, a thousand times no.

"What shall I do? What shall I do?" moaned Muriel.

The evening stretched before her in her imagination, a time of

interminable misery. While Clare and her mother had been with her, she

had been able to face Godfrey in Marshington; but to sit opposite him,

alone and quite defenceless, while every word that he said, every line

of his face lacerated her quivering nerves, how could she bear it?

She sat very quietly, only from time to time shivering a little, her

thoughts beating back and back against the same stark problem. "How

shall I face him?"

Then she rose, and as though spellbound began to move about the

kitchen. She lit the gas stove, set the pan of soup on to boil, and

began to fry the fish, not knowing what she did. On the table a

newspaper had been spread to shield the scrubbed, white wood from

grease. Mechanically she read: "At the reception given by Lady Marion

Motley, several people of note were to be discovered among the crowd

of guests thronging the historic stairway." What did she care for

guests or stairway?

"L--look here, are you sure that I can't help?" said his voice from

the doorway. "I'm an awful genius at cooking really."

She shook her head, not trusting herself for a moment to speak. Then

she answered:

"I shan't be a moment. Go in and sit down. Don't be impatient."

She carried in the little bowls of soup.

"There's only cider, and lemonade; would you like lemonade?"

"Cider, please. You know, this is enormously good of you."

He smiled at her across the table.

"Not at all," she answered primly.

She felt as though the soup must choke her, and glancing towards

Godfrey she saw that he too seemed to find it difficult to swallow.

His lean brown fingers crumbled the bread upon his plate.

When she rose to bring in the fish, both of them had left their soup

half finished. Conversation seemed to be difficult, but silence was

quite unendurable. She lifted her eyes from her plate at last.

"Are you staying for long in town?"

"Only to-night. I'm going back to-morrow, thank the Lord. It's a

filthy place, isn't it? What on earth makes you girls choose to live

here, I don't know."

"Our work's here," remarked Delia-instructed Muriel. "Whatever its

disadvantages, it is infinitely preferable to Marshington."

"Don't you like M--Marshington?" he asked simply.

"I loathed it with all my heart and all my soul and all my spirit,"

declared Muriel fiercely.

He stared at her in amazement that so guileless a creature should show

such emphatic disapproval of something that he had always taken quite

for granted until two hours ago. To her profound surprise he asked:

"I say, is there really something about M--Marshington that makes

girls hate it?"

She blushed to the white parting between her smooth, brown wings of

hair.

"Yes," she gasped softly, pleating the tablecloth between her fingers.

"But I couldn't possibly explain to you."

"By Jove, I wish you would!"

"But it doesn't concern you," she said more softly. Neither of them

took any notice of the meal before them. They faced each other like

antagonists.

"It concerns me damned well," he muttered.

"You'd better ask Clare, then. She might tell you."

"Thank you--I don't need to ask Clare's opinions."

"No. I suppose not. I suppose that you wouldn't mind much either what

she thought: opinions of women don't usually matter much to people

like you."

He looked at her, his face drawn to an expression of pained surprise.

"I say--you know--don't be too hard on a fellow. I d--did jolly well

care."

"Did?"

"Yes, did. She can go to the devil now for all I care."

"Really----" said Muriel, then most unnecessarily she added: "Have

you--have you quarrelled?"

"No. We've not quarrelled. We just--I just---- Oh, damn it all. We've

just come to an end of it, that's all."

"I'm sorry." It was all that Muriel could trust herself to say.

He rose abruptly from the table, went to the fireplace and leant

against it. "Oh, it's all right. You'd have to know some time.

Every one will know soon enough. I should have known. It was the

b--beastly place. She said that she couldn't stand living at the

Weare Grange--wanted to drag me up to town. Good Lord! One would have

thought a kid of two would have known I couldn't stick leaving the old

place. 'Tisn't as if there was only oneself to consider anyhow--let

alone hunting and shooting and all that, I've got to look after the

estate."

"Of course," said Muriel softly.

An extraordinary thing was happening to her. The pain of agitation

slowly faded. She found herself growing calm, and detached, and full

of sympathy.

"I might have known that she could never stick it," he continued,

hardly noticing her, "all that being engaged to me when I was in

Germany and all that--it wasn't so difficult. But I suppose that being

engaged to a fellow is one thing and marrying him another. I might

have known." Fiercely he turned upon Muriel. "I suppose you knew?"

"What?"

"That she--she'd never st--stick living at the Weare Grange. You were

her friend."

Muriel shook her head. "I did not think," she said.

Indeed, she realized now how little she had thought of Clare and

Godfrey. Never once had the question of their real happiness entered

her mind, so much engrossed had she been with the thoughts of her own

misery. It had been herself, not Godfrey, who had filled her dreams.

The recognition of her own past egoism shocked her.

"You might have thought. You might have told me," he continued. "There

I've been thinking, for years, that I was going to marry her. And

all the time it really was impossible. She couldn't stand that

life--wasn't fit for it. Spoiled by all this singing and publicity and

having her photograph in the papers--wanted to fill the house with

damned foreigners and Jews and things."

He was hurt and angry, wounded in his self-assurance, wounded even

more deeply in the one thing that he had cared about more than he had

cared for Clare.

"Wouldn't see it either. Wouldn't see my point of view. Didn't see why

I shouldn't shut up the Grange and come to live in London, or Paris or

some filthy hole. Good Lord, as if I hadn't had enough of dirty

foreigners. Wasn't three years in Germany enough in all conscience?

But no, she'd have her own way. She----"

He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. Muriel sat quietly, at the

table, watching him.

"I told her that I wanted to marry a wife, not a p--prima-donna," he

stormed. "I wanted someone who'd be a companion, who'd take an

interest in my work. A man in my position wants some one to be

his--his hostess, and look after his home and all that sort of thing.

By Jove, she d--doesn't know what she's missed, though."

He turned to the fire, speaking gruffly and shamefacedly, amazed at

the affront to his fine self-esteem, and too much of a child still to

avoid seeking sympathy.

"I'd have been jolly d--decent to her. There aren't many men who'd

have been as patient all these last months, though, standing meekly

aside while she filled her flat with dirty little Jewish swine and

mugs and pacifists. I--good Lord, I wonder how I stood it?" His voice

dropped. Its wistfulness wrung Muriel's heart. "She used to be a jolly

little kid, though."

He lowered himself into Delia's big arm-chair, and sat smoking

fiercely. Without a word Muriel cleared the supper that they both had

been unable to eat, and brought in coffee. He took it, thanking her

but hardly noticing who she was. She realized that he had to talk

things out, to run to somebody with his sad story. For indeed the

thing that had happened hurt him deeply. He lied when he said that all

he had sought in Clare had been a wife. Muriel knew that he lied, but

because it was a lie she could have loved him. For Clare had been far

more to him than a woman, beautiful, radiant, of rich vitality. She

had been his ideal of all women, the star remote and bright which he

could worship, the beauty that lay beyond all lovely things. Thus,

though he had not known it, though now, perhaps thought Muriel, he

would never know it, he had loved her ever since as a wild, pretty

child she had smiled herself straight into his heart. But Godfrey was

not the man to cast off everything for an ideal. He stood, and Muriel

knew it, rooted and grounded in tradition. "He has roots," she thought

and compared him with her father. Where Mr. Hammond was reckless,

Godfrey was cautious. Where one was volatile, having no standards but

his transient desires, no traditions but those of his creation, the

other's life was only the chapter in a story, a long and not ignoble

tale of Neales, stretching far back into the dim but dominating past.

Mr. Hammond, standing alone, master of his own wealth and his desires,

would woo or discard where he would. But Godfrey was far more than

just himself. He was an embodiment of a legend, not all of his own

making. He belonged to the Weare Grange far more than it belonged to

him. So, when the inevitable conflict came between Clare and his home,

there had never been cause for half a minute's hesitation. But the

knowledge that such a choice had been inevitable, that his dream and

the prestige of his position had not sufficed to hold her, had been

very bitter. It was this that had robbed him of his air of conquest.

His years in Germany had never touched him, for he carried the

environment of the Weare Grange with him. That he could never lose.

What he had lost was that fine and fugitive ideal, that sense of

beauty born from something more universal than his own position, more

sacred than the traditions which had formed his conduct. He, the man

of property, of dignified assured possession, had been pursued by

the passing urgency of that idealism which makes men poets and

visionaries. The dream had left him now, and he would never see again

the light that once had glorified his youth.

And Muriel, who realized this, for the first time considered him

rather than herself. She saw that, with his dream, the legend of his

strong, all-conquering charm lay broken. He had lost something that

neither she nor anyone else could give him, and she was sorry, sorry,

sorry--for him, not for herself.

She let him talk and smoke and fall into long silences, sitting

moodily beside her fire. At intervals the cuckoo clock upon the wall

called softly, clear small woodland notes. Her knitting needles

clicked convulsively. At last he said:

"I suppose that I cared for her really less than I thought."

But this was disloyalty, and Muriel would not have it.

"No, no. You loved her truly. It was she who was not--quite what you

thought you loved."

"I've been a damned fool," he muttered.

"You haven't. You must not think like that. Your love was fine, not

foolish. You must not get bitter about yourself; don't spoil it. Don't

think of her or of yourself as small. Think of her still as noble and

beautiful. You were right to love her. You were." Her small voice grew

urgent. Her grave, earnest eyes implored him. "Think of her as the

loveliest thing that you knew, and of yourself as fine in loving her."

"She was a ripping kid--that time she came to Marshington."

"I know. I thought that too. I loved her at school as though she were

something wonderful. She was like that."

"By Jove, she was," he said.

Though she knew him to be inarticulate, Muriel could imagine how the

dancing flames again turned for him the rich silk of Clare's dress to

the colour of very old dark wine. She could think of him seeing

Clare's head uplifted proudly, and her white arms lying along the

gracious flow and rhythm of her gown; she could feel his response to

the gallant challenge of her youth.

"She's selfish--heartless as hell," half whispered Godfrey. "I was a

fool."

"She's not. That's wrong and wicked." Forgetting herself, she slipped

on to the hearth-rug and knelt there facing him, her eyes glowing,

her small figure pregnant with the desire to save for him his

dreams. "She's not selfish, nor were you a fool. She had an artist's

temperament, swift and changeable. One should have seen--one should

have seen. She did not understand you. She could not see what the

Weare Grange meant for you. Look at her life--the publicity, the

applause, the sunlight. She fed on the love and praise of people. It

was her right. How could she come and bury herself in the country? How

could she understand?"

He looked down at her eloquent face and her great shining eyes.

"Don't you see?" she implored him. "Don't you see you weren't a fool?

It was inevitable that you should love her, seeing how beautiful she

was. But it would have been wrong to try to make her your wife. You

can't help yourself, any more than she can help being what she's like.

Your wife must be quiet and controlled, understanding the ways of

country life and the requirements of a house like the Weare Grange,

valuing it as you value it, honouring its traditions. Over that at

least, there must be no misunderstanding between you--and don't you

see, however much Clare had wanted to, she couldn't understand!"

He looked at her, and slowly realization dawned upon his mind, clearer

than resentment or self pity. "By Jove, you're right," he said. "She

couldn't understand."

They did not speak again for some time. She, suddenly grown

self-conscious, took advantage of her unconventional position to poke

the fire, and then retreated to her chair.

At last he rose.

"It's after ten. I really m--must go. I say, you've been a brick,

Muriel. I'll never forget it. I'm awfully glad that you were in. I

believe that you understand me better than anyone--even than Delia.

She's a decent sort but a bit--lacking in imagination if you know

what I mean! You've been more decent than I can say."

"I haven't. I've been glad to be here." Her low voice never faltered.

"You see, I loved--Clare. I should have hated it if you'd gone

away--bitter---- It was all unfortunate--but--don't--don't be sorry

that it happened, will you?"

She had risen now, and they stood facing one another, he, tall and

weary, she, small and stiff with the battle for his dreams.

He thought, then slowly came to a conclusion.

"No. I'm not sorry that it happened." With the simplicity that she

liked most of all in him, he held out his hand. "Thank you," he said,

and at that moment was conscious neither of his magnificence nor of

his wrongs.

She smiled up at him bravely.

"You've been a brick," he continued. "I felt that I had to tell

someone. It's not the sort of thing, though, that you can talk over

with another fellow quite, and I can't tell the mater much. She hates

to think I've been upset."

Again his niceness and his simplicity moved her. She only shook her

head.

"I'm glad you came."

They shook hands, and he left her. She heard his heavy footsteps down

the stairs. For a long time he seemed to walk away from her, then,

very far off, the street door slammed.

She went back to the fire and sat down on the hearth-rug. The room was

full of his remembered presence, the scent of tobacco smoke, the

crumpled cushion in his chair, the cigarette ash that he had spilled

on to the hearth.

She leaned against the chair where he had sat, and so lay very

quietly, gazing into the fire with eyes that did not see.

When Delia came in, nearly an hour later, she found Muriel asleep, her

eyelids red with crying, her head down on the big arm-chair, and a

little smile, childlike and tender, tilting the corners of her mouth.