Chapter XI: Book IV: Delia (1)

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."