Chapter V: Book II: Mrs. Hammond (1)

JANUARY, 1914--SEPTEMBER, 1915

XIV

Against the car the wind hurled the challenge of a thousand angry spears of rain. With blow after blow they assailed the leather hood, only to break and fall helplessly to the streaming road.

"What a night for a dance," groaned Mrs. Hammond. "If I had known what it was going to be like, I really shouldn't have come, though I hate to disappoint you."

But even if she had known, she must still have come, and not only because she hated to disappoint the girls. For matters at Miller's Rise were growing desperate. Morning after morning Mrs. Hammond had come downstairs to find her daughters confronting her like the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual failure, Connie always bored and restless, Muriel becoming yearly more prim and silent. It was 1914 already, and nothing done. Adelaide Waring's husband at York earned £2,000 a year. Nancy Cartwright was now Nancy Buchanan, and even Daisy Parker, as Daisy Weathergay, lived in a little corner house along the Avenue, and kept a nice little maid, and paid calls, and shopped down the village street with one of those painted wicker baskets on her arm.

Of course there was Dr. McKissack. Surely, surely he must mean something. If only one were more certain of Connie. If only that queer, reckless strain in her nature would not make her do unconventional things that men disliked. She was so like Arthur, and yet in a woman, somehow, it did not do to be like Arthur. In the darkness of the car, Mrs. Hammond's face grew weary, thinking of bitter things. Her troubles were not confined to the spinsterhood of her daughters.

The car lurched and jolted round a corner into the mean street that crouched before the Kingsport thoroughfares.

"Muriel, I do wish that you would not tread on my shoe," complained Connie. "You know that they're my best ones. It isn't as if I could get a new pair any day."

"I'm sorry. I didn't see."

"No. You never do see. Mother, why can't we have an allowance? I'm sick of this beastly dependence upon Father. It's all to gratify his vanity. He'll take us in to Kingsport to buy a rotten hat, like when he bought my velour before Christmas, and I was simply pining for new furs. It's just to hear us say thank you, and to feel how generous he is."

"Oh, Connie, I've told you before that I have done my best. Don't let us start the discussion all over again."

"It's all very well, but if you'd only let me go on that chicken farm with Hilda there wouldn't have been any need to discuss it."

"And you wouldn't have been going to a dance to-night either. You know quite well that you would never have made it pay. We don't want to start all that again, surely."

They were passing through the main streets now, and the lamps looked through into the warm stuffiness of the car.

"At any rate," said Mrs. Hammond, calling up her courage, "it is going to be a nice dance." She had said that so many times. "You did say that the doctor was coming, didn't you, Connie?"

"He said he might." Connie's manner was off-hand, but in the darkness her face softened, and her brown eyes glowed with expectation.

She didn't care twopence for the little Scotch doctor, she told herself; but she was sick, sick, sick of Miller's Rise. She was sick of dressing up her fine young body, which nobody cared to see. She was sick of living through the long months of the year all on top of Muriel and her mother, sick of scenes with her father, because he would neither let her go away nor give her the allowance that she considered necessary. And she was sick of her mother's fretful hints and of her father's stupid chaffing. She was weary of cinema romances, where true love always triumphed. She was weary of Marshington reality where her school friends and neighbours smirked at her above their diamond half-hoops, or simpered at her over piles of trousseau _lingerie_. At twenty-one she had smiled when other girls talked about proposals; at twenty-two she had blushed and answered irritably; at twenty-three she had lied shamelessly and shrieked her noisy, jolly laugh. At twenty-four she would have no further need to lie.

She pushed back a curl of springing hair, and tried to imagine married life with Hugh McKissack. The wind enfolded the car in the fierce caress of brushing wings, tumultuous as love, as love, thought Connie. "Love," she whispered to herself, "Love, love, love," as though by an incantation she could call it to her.

There was a sentence in _The Romance of Emmeline_ by Sylvia Carlton, that had sung itself into her seeking mind.

". . . And as he approached her, her heart beat faster. In all that crowded room they were alone. He only took her hand, but his eyes caressed her, and youth and spring, sweet with laughter, clamorous with birdsong, leapt from the loneliness to meet them. Their formal greeting sang like a passionate poem, and in the shadows of her eyes he saw the amorous darkness of the perfumed night."

"Hugh McKissack," thought Connie, remembering the way in which his kind, short-sighted eyes peered through his glasses. Could men ever make you feel like that? Godfrey Neale, Freddy Mason, Captain Lancaster whom they had met at Broadstairs. She let a procession of "possibles" pass through her mind. At least if Hugh loved her he would take her away. "Let now thy servant depart in peace," thought Connie foolishly, "according to thy word. For my reproach hath been taken away from me. . . ." She felt strangely happy and yet urged by a strong desire to cry.

"Muriel, just see if that window is quite shut. There is such a draught."

"We're just there," said Muriel, peering through the rain-smeared glass, and wondering if she would be able to catch Mrs. Cartwright in the cloak-room to ask about the nursing subscriptions. Muriel's life had centred largely round the Nursing Club, ever since Mrs. Potter Vallery had taken up the Fallen Girls' Rescue Work, and Mrs. Hammond had abandoned the Club for her committee.

"Is there an awning up? I do hope that there is. Where is my bag, girls?"

The cars crawled forward, spilling their burdens of satin and furs and gleaming shirt fronts on to the damp red felt below the awning. As the Hammonds passed, a girl in a rain-soaked hat trimmed with wilting plumes called from the dingy group watching on the pavement:

"Good evening, Mrs. 'Ammond, 'opes you enjoy yourself!"

"Who was that girl?" asked Muriel, slipping off her cloak.

Her mother frowned. "One of the girls who used to be at St. Catherine's. They have no business to come and waste their time watching the people arriving at a dance. We got her into a decent situation too."

Muriel, who liked to see pretty things herself, thought, "Now that is just the sort of thing that I should have thought that those girls would have liked to do." For the streets of Kingsport on a winter evening were curiously devoid of colour, and the procession of pink and mauve and lemon-coloured cloaks gleamed like the lights from a revolving lantern down the pavement.

Connie murmured with a hairpin in her mouth, "What awful cheek." Being unconventional in her own behaviour at times through lack of self-control, she had little patience for other people who had suffered from an aggravation of the same offence. Muriel, whose behaviour was always scrupulously regulated, had more sympathy to spare for the exceptional. All the same, she did not know very much about St. Catherine's. Her mother would never let her go near the Home. It was not nice that unmarried girls should know about these things. Muriel, whose mind was singularly incurious, accepted without question the convention that only substantially married women could safely touch their fallen sisters. Her mother, Muriel heard, was most zealous in their cause, so firm, so sensible, so economical upon the House Committee. It had been her work upon that committee that had brought her to the notice of the Bishop. There was no doubting her ability. Better leave such work to her, thought Muriel; yet, as she clasped a bangle over her white glove in the cloak-room, the girl's eyes haunted her, mocking from the rain. Beyond this room with its cosy fire, beyond the decorous safety of Miller's Rise, lay a world of tears and darkness, of sudden joy and hopeless ruin. Muriel shivered, then followed Connie and her mother from the room. It was, at least, another world.

In the door-way they met Mrs. Waring, still slim and elegant in pale grey satin.

"Ah, I'm so glad that you were able to come," she smiled. "And the girls. How nice; Adelaide has brought a few friends of Sydney's from York. I must introduce them to you. There's an Eric Fennington and Tony Barton, such dear boys and devoted to Adelaide. She's so popular in York, you know. Naughty girl, I tell her that Sydney will be jealous if she always has a trail of young men following her about. And then, what will the unmarried girls do if staid matrons like her monopolize all the men?"

Mrs. Hammond smiled gently. "Ah, well, you know. There are still just a few men left in Marshington. We are not all as adventurous as Adelaide, going to York. But then, of course, a different generation----" She glanced across the room to the goodly paunch and receding hair of Sydney Rutherford, who was earning £2,000 a year and who looked every penny of it. Then she broke off. "Oh, there is Mrs. Potter Vallery. I promised to keep her in countenance as the only woman here in a last year's dress."

Only since her acquaintance with Mrs. Potter Vallery had Mrs. Hammond dared to say nasty things to the Marshington ladies. The relief, after so many years of restraint, was immense. She crossed the room, leaving Mrs. Cartwright, whom Muriel had just released from contemplation of the Nursing Club, Class A. Subscribers, to keep Mrs. Waring company near the door.

"Poor Rachel Hammond is growing quite thin, isn't she?"

"Yes," murmured Mrs. Waring into her fan. "Running after Honourables is hard work. And then, of course, they say"--Mrs. Waring dropped her voice--"that Arthur Hammond----" She shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, poor woman! poor woman! I hope it's not true. I dare say that she feels Marshington relaxing." Mrs. Cartwright's good humour led her always to attribute human trouble to the defects of impersonal locality. It saved her from having to blame people. "I'm sure that I haven't been well all this winter. I did think of going to Buxton in the spring, but Mrs. Marshall Gurney says that it didn't do her a scrap of good."

"But I don't think that it was for a change of air so much as a change of scene that Annabelle went to Buxton."

"Scene?"

"Scene. For Phyllis and for herself. An exclusive view of the Weare Grange becomes a little tiring after a time. I dare say that Mrs. Hammond may try for a change soon, but I rather think that she has the more staying power." Having tried the waiting game herself and abandoned it, Mrs. Waring felt that she had a right to find amusement in a contest that had once engaged almost the whole of Marshington, but which had now, she considered, been reduced to the final round.

Meanwhile, having secured her smile from Mrs. Potter Vallery, Mrs. Hammond reviewed her daughters' programmes. She had grown accustomed to these early arrivals, followed by a determined search for partners, while she shepherded stray young men gently up to her waiting girls. She did it well, and also contrived to achieve a reputation for introducing men to other people's daughters; this was one of her more clever strokes of statesmanship. To-night she felt that her burden might be easier. For some time things had been working up to a climax. Well, if Connie went before Muriel, what matter?

"Let me see, Muriel, was it the first waltz or the fifth that you were going to have with Godfrey Neale? The fifth? That's right. And Connie, let me see, where was it you said that Dr. McKissack promised to meet us?"

"He never exactly said," Connie began.

"He's over there, talking to that girl in green. They've just come in," said Muriel.

"I expect that he's waiting for us; I'll go and tell him that we've come." As Mrs. Hammond crossed the room, she was thinking, "Dickie Weathergay proposed to Daisy at the Tennis Dance . . . Hugh McKissack, Dr. McKissack, my son-in-law. A very old Scotch family. I only hope that Connie keeps her hair tidy for once. A doctor. A professional man." But when the tender smile curved her lips as she approached the young man, it was because she had thought for a moment of her husband.

Dr. McKissack turned with a slight flush to face her greeting. Being not entirely shameless, the memory of many Sunday night suppers oppressed him. But he was a Scotchman, and wanted to marry, and had no private means, and cold saddle of mutton had been welcome.

"Ah, Mrs. Hammond, good, good. And how are ye? Glad you were able to come." Seeing her pretty, waiting face, he felt more nervous than was reasonable. But he was a man of courage. Had he not been, he never could have enjoyed his saddle of mutton. "I want to introduce you to my fiancée. I think that you know Miss Hemmingway."

Mrs. Hammond, who did not know the daughter of a retired grocer, bowed. She even continued to smile. "Of course. I am so pleased to meet you at last. Naturally I remember having seen you at dances and things for years, haven't I? But we've never really managed to meet."

She was even able to search out Mrs. Cartwright, and to remark casually:

"Seen the latest couple? That Hemmingway girl and Dr. McKissack? He's just told me that they are engaged."

Mrs. Cartwright nodded comfortably. "Yes, it's been coming on for a long time, I understand. I'm so glad for her sake, poor girl. People haven't been very nice to her."

"Well, I had never come across her before, but, considering who she is, I thought that she seemed quite a nice sort of girl. Most suitable, I think. I know the doctor a little. Used to entertain him when he first came here."

"Yes. I know how good you always are to the boys," Mrs. Cartwright said without irony. Because she had a charitable mind, Mrs. Hammond found her restful; but when she had left the shelter of her disarming simplicity, and found herself surrounded again by Warings, Parkers and their friends, her courage almost failed her. She had needed it so often lately. The infamy of it! The graceless, wicked ingratitude! All that cold chicken and salmon, and the saddles of mutton. Besides, she had liked the little man. She had thought that he liked her. She could have sworn that he liked her. Connie. Her small, tightly gloved hands locked round her fan. She felt tired and suddenly old; but there could be no respite for her. Already the orchestra was groaning and wailing before the first dance. The girls must have partners. Connie must be told without being upset. It was difficult to tell with Connie. She rather liked to make a scene, like Arthur, but without his faculty for success. Mrs. Hammond drew the soft feathers of her fan across her aching forehead, and went into the ball-room.

Adelaide Rutherford was leading her young men across the floor. Now if only Connie were sensible and had a fairly full programme, she might still carry things off. She certainly looked well to-night, and one of Adelaide's young men from York, while talking to Gertrude Larkinton, seemed continually to be watching Connie's gay blue dress. Supposing that Connie, unconscious of the doctor's perfidy, were keeping dances for him? She must be told, and told quickly. Muriel, who did not mind, would do it best, but Muriel was talking to Rosie Harpur. That was one of Muriel's irritating habits. People might begin to think of them together, as poor Rosie Harpur and poor Muriel Hammond. Failure is so contagious.

"Muriel, dear, just a moment."

"Yes, Mother?"

"Is she--do you know whether she has been keeping any dance for Dr. McKissack?"

"Several, I think."

"You've got to tell her, now, that he's engaged to that Hemmingway girl." Her voice quivered fiercely. "It's disgraceful. Disgraceful."

Muriel's mouth twisted into a small, cold smile. "It's not the first time that it's happened. Are you surprised?" Being used to these reverses, she was hardly interested. The little doctor was just one of the many men who had come to their house, and gone. Then she saw that her mother had been surprised. Pity as usual froze her to stiff shyness, though she wanted then to carry Mrs. Hammond away home and kiss her better, for she had looked for a moment as small and defenceless as a hurt child. But Mrs. Hammond was not a hurt child. She braced herself for battle.

"We must tell Connie." She had seen the young man from York leave Gertrude Larkinton to ask Adelaide some question, looking all the time in the direction of Connie's blue dress. If only Connie could have this little piece of flattery to soothe her directly she had been told about the doctor, like a chocolate after the dose, it might just save the situation. Mrs. Hammond hurried to her daughter.

"Connie, you'll never guess." They must take it lightly. "_Such_ a piece of news, isn't it, Muriel?"

"Oh, I suppose so. Dr. McKissack and that Hemmingway girl are going to be married," remarked Muriel without enthusiasm.

Adelaide was leading the young man across the room. Connie started and looked up.

"How did you hear?" she asked quickly.

"He told me now. She's here. In the green dress."

They waited for a time that seemed to be years long, while the first notes of "The Pink Lady" summoned couples from their seats. Then Connie's shrill laugh rang out.

"So you've only just heard? You know, he told me days ago."

Adelaide was there with her young man.

"Hullo, Addie, how's the world with you?"

"I am very fit, thanks, and I want to introduce you to Mr. Fennington, or rather, he wants to be introduced to you. He's been pestering me all the evening."

Adelaide smiled indulgently. Out of her plenty she could afford to throw an occasional partner to the Hammond girls.

Mrs. Hammond and Muriel withdrew, well pleased.

"No partner for this one, dear? Oh, well, that's that. I wonder why she never told us, though? She'll be all right this evening, I think. That young man meant business. And what about you?"

"Oh, I'm all right. Don't worry about me."

What need to worry about her, about anyone? Muriel sat against the wall, her brooding eyes fixed on the kaleidoscope of colour before her. Two years ago, she would have smiled uncomfortably over her fan, pretending to wait for a non-existent partner. But now she was tired of pretence. The world was like that. There were always some people who danced and some who sat by the wall, watching until the candles guttered in their sockets, until the dancers wearied of encircling arms, until the bleak, grey light peered through the curtained window. Muriel was just one of those. That was all.

Connie passed, dancing with the young man from York, her red head high, her eyes bright. Which was Connie, one of the dancers, or one of those who watched? It was hard to tell about Connie. Nobody might ask her to dance, and yet, and yet, Muriel could not somehow picture Connie sitting by the wall. But to go forward on one's own was against the rules of the game. And never was game more hedged about with rules than this which women played for contentment or despair.

These were silly thoughts. Nobody was asking Muriel to be contented or desperate. She was simply being sentimental because the little Scotch doctor, who was nothing to the Hammonds, had become engaged. Her next partner, Mr. Mullvaney from the Bank of England, had come across the room to claim her.

The dance passed much as other dances. Muriel's partners were scattered but reliable. Connie seemed to be more than usually happy. Everywhere that Mrs. Hammond looked, she seemed to see the bright hair and laughing face of her younger daughter. Then, after supper, the strange thing happened.

Muriel's waltz with Godfrey Neale had come, the waltz that he unfailingly offered her. Godfrey liked regularity and tradition. They had waltzed sedately, and now sat on a plush-covered sofa in the corridor, silent as usual, for they had little enough to say to one another. Even the excitement of thinking that she really was dancing with Godfrey Neale had left Muriel. He had been too long the goal of Marshington maidenhood.

She wished that the passage were not so draughty, and that she did not feel so dumb.

Suddenly from behind a screen along the passage, rang out a clear, shrill laugh. A resounding kiss shattered the silence more boldly than a cannon shot. There followed the sound of a slap--bare flesh on flesh. A voice called, broken with laughter, "Oh, you naughty boy!"

Muriel and Godfrey sat up. Such things simply did not happen in Marshington ball-rooms.

Muriel always remembered the stiffening of Godfrey's figure. He hated so emphatically all that sort of thing. And yet, she herself shuddered with fear. For she thought that she had recognized the voice.

In another moment the orchestra would play. The next dance would begin. Probably the couple might emerge from behind the screen. It couldn't have been Connie. She was sometimes rather silly, but she would never do a thing like that. All the same, it was not safe to wait until she was sure.

Muriel never knew whether she ran away because she did not want Godfrey Neale to know, or because she did not want to know herself. She always tried to hide unpleasant truths for as long as possible.

"Isn't there rather a draught here?" she asked. "Shall we be strolling back?"

They went, and Muriel thrust misgivings from her mind.

As she undressed that night, her mother came to her.

"I think that Connie's all right now, don't you?"

The misgivings returned. Had Connie cared?

"Oh, quite all right, I think, mother."

What business had Muriel with misgivings? Mrs. Hammond was pitifully tired and needed to be reassured.

"Well, good night, then, dear. We needn't have worried, need we? Really, I'm very glad that it has turned out like this. He _is_ rather a commonplace young man."

"Oh, I never thought that there was anything in it."

The memory of Connie's face before she had laughed returned to Muriel. Yet she could not have cared for him, not Connie, for that little man.

"Well, then, it all went off very nicely."

"Very. Good night."

The door closed. Her mother's soft slippers padded away down the passage, and Muriel went to bed. But through the early morning darkness her thoughts strayed in drowsy confusion, and she saw again the glittering ball-room, and heard that horrible laugh from behind the screen, and saw, though she had forgotten them during the curious evening, the mocking eyes of a girl in the rain-dark street.

XV

It had all happened so quickly that Muriel found no time to readjust her thoughts to the hurried sequence of events, Delia's engagement, Connie's queerness about it, and the invitation to tea at the Vicarage.

"Go by all means," Connie had said. It was a wet day, and she could not even play golf, and nobody had asked her out, and she was bored. "If you like to be patronized all over about this Twentieth Century Reform League, or whatever it is that Delia runs, go by all means. But don't expect me."

"Didn't Mrs. Cartwright say that he was quite a distinguished man?" Mrs. Hammond murmured dreamily. It was hard that Delia should not only have defied Marshington, but have defied it with success, moving steadily from college to a secretaryship in London, and from this to the organization of the Twentieth Century Reform League. Mrs. Hammond could not approve of the Reform League, but she had to admit that the list of Vice-Presidents impressed her. And now, here was this Martin Elliott added to Delia's triumphal procession through life. She sighed, aware that she had never thought before of Delia with such toleration. The girl might be unpleasant, but she was not negligible. Perhaps Muriel had been wise to maintain with her that queer, half wistful, half antagonistic friendship.

"His book, _Prosperity and Population_, is supposed to have revolutionized sociology," said Muriel.

"The warden of a slum settlement," Connie sneered. "She's welcome to him. Still, it's surprising really that she's caught anything. She must be over thirty, and that skinny figure of hers and then all those stories about her being a suffragette, and going to prison. It's just the kind of thing that all nice men hate."

So Connie, in spite of Mrs. Hammond's protests, had refused Delia's half-smiling invitation to meet Mr. Elliott at tea at the Vicarage, and Muriel found herself walking down the road alone. She felt strangely excited, because of the absurd though insistent feeling that there existed between her and Delia some tie. It was as though Delia in her London office, looking up from the work which her brilliant, courageous mind directed, might think of Muriel in Marshington, living her drab ineffectual life among tea-parties, and nursing accounts and faded dreams, and might say to herself, "There, but for the grace of God, goes Delia Vaughan." Most successful people, thought Muriel sadly, have a shadow somewhere, a personality sharing their desires, and even part of their ability, but without just the one quality that makes success.

"All the same, I was right," she told herself fiercely. "I had to look after Mother. I had no choice. It was not my fault, but theirs. People don't choose."

She stopped to unfasten the bars of the big Vicarage gate. It had been wet all day, and the garden was musical with the manifold noises of the rain, of the murmuring runnels through the clean washed pebbles of the drive, of the ceaseless rustle of water in the branches. All the spring garden sang with youth and promise. The crocus chalices had overflowed. Here and there the wind had overturned their brimming cups, showering their burden to the grass below, in a mystical communion of earth and rain.

Muriel stood by the gate, listening and looking. As though this were the last hour that she would look on beauty, she opened her heart eagerly to scent and sound and colour. The deep significance of the spring oppressed her. Beyond the sodden trees, a firelit window glowed like a jewel of warm liquid light. Undoubtedly that was where Delia now sat with her lover.

Muriel had no part in the silent movement of nature's slow regeneration. Delia, who had striven in the artificial world of books and men and jangling rules of government, was now to be akin to wind and water, obedient to an older law than man's. She had won the best from both worlds, because she had been selfish. Wise, fortunate, beloved Delia! Was there no justice in life's scheme of things?

Muriel, who had neither success nor love, nor any great emotion, moved forward slowly, a small grey figure beneath the dripping trees.

Delia opened the door for her.

"Did you get wet? You must be washed away." She was a new creature, thought Muriel, gentler, saner, with an indefinable bloom of happiness that lent to her real charm. "If I had known that you were going to walk, I should have told that idle creature Godfrey Neale to call for you with his car."

"Father does not like us to use our car when it's wet. I did not know that Godfrey Neale was coming." She had not met him since that dance in Kingsport when the girl had laughed. She did not want to meet him now, when she had intended to forget everything except her sympathy with Delia's happiness.

They entered the comfortable, book-lined room, splashed with liquid firelight. The chairs and tables and people seemed to float as in a fiery sea. She could see nothing clearly until Delia followed her with a lamp.

"Father, Martin, Miss Hammond. Muriel, this is Martin. Godfrey Neale you know."

The room seemed to be full of books, tea-cups, and men. Mr. Vaughan smiled blandly through his spectacles. Godfrey rose and bowed beautifully. Then Muriel found herself shaking hands with Martin Elliott.

He was not at all as she had expected him to be, ironic, lean and scholarly. She stared openly at the short, stocky man, dressed like the shabbier kind of farmer, and smiling at her from a broad humorous face. His untidy hair stood up on end, his tie was crooked, giving a curious effect below his unexpectedly pugnacious mouth and chin, so that he always looked as though he had just emerged from a street row, which indeed, more frequently than most people, he had. Altogether the effect of him was so surprising that Muriel forgot her manners.

He bore her scrutiny for a moment. Then he turned to Delia.

"Delia, she doesn't like me. She doesn't like me a bit."

"I'm not surprised. You look like a perfect hooligan. Have you been arguing with Father again? Muriel, don't mind them. Clear some books off that seat and sit down."

"But I do like him," exploded Muriel, not sitting down, because she found nowhere to sit, except a pile of formidable looking volumes crowned by an ink-pot.

"Delia, you are a shocking hostess," remarked the vicar mildly, handing Muriel his own plate and a half-eaten scone with the well-intentioned vagueness that characterized his dealings with all such mundane objects as tea-things and collar-studs.

"Sorry, Muriel. It's all right, Father." Delia quietly transferred the scone to its rightful owner, cleared a seat for Muriel and passed her a clean plate. "Muriel's used to me. I scandalized her years ago, when I told her that she was wasted in Marshington, and she came prepared for an uncomfortable afternoon."

"My dear, how arrogant of you to say such things to Miss Hammond," reproved the vicar, stirring his tea absently. "That's so like all these strenuous young people who call themselves reformers, isn't it, Neale? They think all activity except their own a waste of time. They forget that if every one thought as they did, they would be out of work."

"Think, think!" cried Delia, laughing. "We don't expect them to think at all. That would be hoping for too much."

"Delia wants to teach people so many things," continued the vicar calmly. "She is certain that human nature can be rendered perfectible by parliamentary institutions. I am an old man. And I have written three standard textbooks upon parliamentary institutions. And I should hesitate to put into the minds of my parishioners anything but some simple and final expression of wisdom like the Gospels."

"Of course you are right as far as you go, sir," broke in Martin Elliott, obviously resuming some hot but interrupted argument. "My contention was simply that in a district like the Brady Street area in Bethnal Green people cannot understand the Gospels; and in a case like that to sell all that you have and give it to the poor simply is unsound economics. Don't you agree with me, Neale?"

"I'm afraid it's not much in my line." Godfrey was sitting upright in his chair, glowering a little, as he always did if the conversation passed beyond his sphere of interest.

"Muriel is the person to argue with on economics--and on morals," interposed Delia. "Try her, Martin. She has the mind of a mathematician. She ought to have been on the staff of the _Statistician_ instead of giving sewing-classes in Marshington."

Martin Elliott crossed to Muriel's side. "How much am I to take seriously from that madwoman? Do you really take sewing-classes? I think that must be rather interesting, because all teaching is rather fun, I think, don't you? If only one's pupils are kind to one; but sewing must be more satisfactory than most things, because you can actually see the work growing under your fingers."

"I know what you mean. But I don't really do much sewing."

"You read then?"

"Not much now. I used to, but the books in the Kingsport libraries are all so much alike, and one gets out of the way of ordering other things."

She spoke diffidently. It was incredible that a man should really want to talk to her about herself. Men talked about motors, or their own insides, or hunting.

Martin Elliott smiled at her. "Have you found that too? Don't you think about the books in most circulating libraries that they are nearly all the wrong way round. Short stories with happy endings and long stories with sad ones. Quite wrong."

"Why that?"

"Ah, surely the short story should end with tragedy, for only sorrow swoops upon you with a sudden blow. But happiness is built up from long years of small delightful things. You can't put them into a short story."

It was true. Muriel looked across at Delia sitting by the tea-table in her red dress. She thought, "This is what he means. Years of sitting by Delia in a firelit room full of books and talking pleasant nonsense. Friends who know what you mean and speak your own language. Rain-washed gardens when the birds call. Work that's fine and hard and reaches somewhere. Marriage, such as theirs will be. Children, perhaps, and laughter that they share. You can't put all those into a short story."

She felt cold and dull, shut out from a world of small delightful things. She made no answer, sitting with her chin on her hand, while the talk flowed round her, talk of books, and socialism, and plays, and people that they knew, and what you ought to take on a walking tour, and whether Sir Rabindranath Tagore should have won the Nobel prize, and school care committees. (They weren't really any use, Mr. Vaughan said.) And all the time she felt herself being drawn to Martin Elliott by surprised delight. She was at home at last, among people who spoke her own language, even though the things of which they spoke were strange. She felt as though after many years she had returned to her own country. But she never spoke.

Then she became aware that her thoughts had slipped away from the conversation altogether, and that Delia was teasing Godfrey, and that he was protesting, half uncomfortable, half amused, because he could never become really angry with the vicar's daughter.

"Now, look here, D--Delia. That's not true."

An impish spirit had seized upon Delia.

"Oh, yes, it is, isn't it, Muriel? Godfrey's never yet proposed to any girl because he knows that he'd be accepted, and if he had to marry that would upset his habits. Godfrey dear, you don't realize how much you hate to be upset."

"You know t--that's untrue."

"No, no, no. You're afraid that you won't be able to afford both a wife and hunters, and you prefer the hunters. Martin, Godfrey is one of those people who pretend to cultivate the earth in order that they may destroy its creatures. He is that odious relic of barbarism, a sporting farmer."

"I--I'm not a farmer," stammered Godfrey.

It was a shame, thought Muriel. Delia had no right to tease him so. How he must hate being chaffed in front of her.

"Then if you aren't a farmer, you are simply a social parasite, and your existence would not be tolerated in any ordinary, sane society. Oh, I don't mean that you aren't very much tolerated to-day, because this society is neither ordinary nor sane. But when Martin and I and the Twentieth Century Reform League have been at work for a score of years or so, say seventy-five . . ."

She rattled on, foolishly, happily, teasing him with the kindest smile in the world on her thin face. But Godfrey was not happy. His sense of humour had become atrophied from want of use. He did not understand Delia's fooling, and to him the incomprehensible was the unpleasant. He passed from boredom to indignation, and yet felt too much his old debt of friendship to show indignation before Delia's lover. He was not going to have the fellow think him jealous.

Muriel watched him and, as she watched, she too grew indignant with Delia. It was unlike the vicar's daughter to go so far, but she had always said that Godfrey needed teasing. All the same, it wasn't fair. She took him at a disadvantage, and he really hated it. Muriel leaned forward, quiet but resourceful.

"Delia," she interposed unexpectedly, "I do wish you'd tell me, for we hear nothing up here, what do they really think in London about the Irish Question?"

Now Godfrey really did know something about the Irish Question. He had once been asked to stand as the Conservative member for the Leame Valley Division, and although he had rejected the offer, as he always rejected the unknown at this time, yet a faintly political flavour still clung to his mental palate.

He drew a deep breath, like a diver emerging from the sea, then, slowly, with solemnity, he began to contradict Delia's picturesque but unorthodox opinion on the Irish Question.

Not, however, until he was seated again in his small covered car driving back to the Weare Grange did he recover his usual composure. Muriel had been tucked in at his side by Delia, to be dropped at the gates of Miller's Rise. The familiar feel of brakes and wheel, and the smooth running of the little car, reminded Godfrey that there was a sane and ordinary world in which to live. He sighed comfortably.

"I don't think that that fellow Elliott has improved Delia much. She tries to show off a bit, I think."

"Oh, no. It isn't that. She's just happy, and when Delia's happy she talks nonsense."

"All very well for her to be happy at other people's expense," Godfrey grumbled. He was enjoying himself now. The car responded to his touch, and the Hammond girl responded to his mood. The world was all right.

"Oh, I know that she teases. But one doesn't mind, because you know all the time what a splendid person she is. I do hope that Mr. Elliott will make her happy. But I think that he will."

Godfrey liked girls who stuck up for one another. She had her wits about her too, the little mouse of a thing. The Irish Question! He had given Delia as good as she gave about the Irish Question. Delia was a clever woman, but when women got on to politics it just showed. Now Muriel Hammond showed her good sense by keeping quiet when there was a subject which she did not understand. On the whole, he liked quiet girls. Besides, there was another reason why he should feel rather tenderly towards Muriel Hammond.

"You've not been to see us for a long time," he said.

"No. It is a long time," said Muriel dreamily, thinking of Martin Elliott, and what life might be like, if one could meet such men as he. "Not since that time Clare stayed with us, and Connie tried to ride your horse, and it ran away with her."

"No." The car jerked forward under Godfrey's hands. He did remember, ah, how he remembered, the turn of her head, the laughter in her eyes, her clear, triumphant voice. "Yes. I remember, of course. Clare Duquesne." He liked to say her name again. "By Jove, what years ago, and what kids we were!" He turned the car carefully in to the winding, elm-shadowed drive of Miller's Rise. "Do you ever hear from her now, at all?"

"No. I haven't heard for years. She married, you know. A Spaniard. They went to live in South America. I have not heard since, but I should think that the life there would suit her. She loved warmth and sunshine and gaiety. He was rich, I believe, and musical too. I don't know much more, but I should think that she would be happy. You somehow can't imagine Clare unhappy."

"No. You can't." He was bringing the car to the circle of gravel before the door. She could not see his face, but something told her that he had been profoundly moved. She became immensely sorry for him and yet glad that he had loved Clare, glad that he had not forgotten. His faithfulness belonged to her romantic dreams of him, when she had been a child, and had worshipped with the rest of Marshington. "If by any chance you should see her again, or be writing," he said very slowly, trying to control his stammer, "you might remember me to her, and say that I--I hope that she's very happy."

The car had stopped before the pillars of the porch. Muriel unwrapped herself from the rugs.

"If I ever am writing, I will," she said. "Thank you for the ride. The car runs beautifully."

"Yes, she's not a bad old perambulator, is she? Are you keen on cars? Would you care to come out for a spin in her in better weather?"

"Thank you. I should like it very much."

It was the first time that a man had asked her to come for a ride in his car. She felt the occasion to be immense.

As they shook hands in the rain, he held her small glove for just the fraction of an inch longer than was necessary. She forgot to ask if he would care to come inside.

"Good-bye, and thank you."

"So long, and we must fix up a day for a run, a fine day."

She passed into the house.

"Well, dear," said Mrs. Hammond, "did you have a nice party?"

"Yes."

"You're back early, aren't you? Did I hear a car just now?"

"Yes. Godfrey Neale brought me back."

"Oh." Mrs. Hammond smiled. She was tired, and the day had been difficult for many reasons. Muriel knew this. She felt the passion of admiring pity for her mother, which was always her strongest emotion over any person.

"He has asked me to go for a ride in his new car, some day soon," she remarked indifferently.

Mrs. Hammond threaded the needle that she was holding.

"Well, dear, that will be nice, won't it?" was all that she said, but as Muriel turned to leave the room she looked at her, and for a moment they waited, smiling a little at each other.

XVI

The War came to Marshington with the bewildering irrelevance of all great catastrophes. It came also at a most upsetting time for Mrs. Hammond. Really, it was vexatious when everything was just going so nicely. Connie had settled down with quite good grace to the prospect of calling upon Mrs. McKissack, _née_ Hemmingway. Two visits to old school friends at Buxton and Harrogate had sufficed to cure her wounded vanity. As for Muriel, of course it was too early to say anything definite, but Mrs. Hammond had confided in poor Beatrice that really, you know, Godfrey Neale was showing her an uncommon amount of attention. Ever since April, or was it March? those motor rides, that party at the Weare Grange, all spoke of possibilities.

"After all, he is really quite young yet, only about thirty. And with his temperament and his social position he would naturally go slowly. That was the mistake that Mrs. Marshall Gurney made. She would hurry him, and he grew frightened. By the way, I hear that she is taking Phyllis to Germany to learn music or something. Very wise, I think."

Aunt Beatrice nodded, approving Mrs. Marshall Gurney's double wisdom. Music was a sovereign remedy for broken hearts, and foreign travel would add distinction to an already pretty and taking girl. Her absence, however, would leave the field clear for Mrs. Hammond, by a process of elimination. Well, that did not show that she was stupid, but only that she knew when she had been fairly beaten. Rachel had been wonderful again, but then Rachel always was. It was impossible to believe that in the end she ever could be beaten.

And then the War came, right into the very middle of the tennis tournament.

Of course, as it happened, the tournament was not going to be quite such an event as usual, for Godfrey Neale had gone camping with the Territorials at Kaling Moor, and Connie had sprained her wrist and could not play. But still it was the Annual Tennis Tournament and that was no small thing.

The day after it had opened was the 3rd of August, and people began to feel uneasy. Just as the Hammonds were preparing for supper, Mr. Hammond rang up from Kingsport to say that he was waiting for the last train to pick up any more news that might be coming through. "Particularly trying of him to-night," said his wife, "because I've got such a nice little duck." After all, every one knew that nothing really would happen. There had been scares before.

The evening was close and, even up at Miller's Rise, oppressive.

"Wouldn't it be rather nice to walk down to the village after supper and see if we could buy a paper?"

So, after supper, they went.

Aunt Beatrice said that she never had liked Germans, so stuffy, that sleeping with the feather beds on top of them, and then the way they bought all that cooked meat and sausage stuff at shops.

All the way down to the village, she said that she had always known that the Parkers' German governess had been a spy.

The village street was strangely unfamiliar in the half light of the summer evening. Unexpected shadows and whisperings moved and rustled in the quiet air. Little knots of people stood round the open doorways of shops that should have been shut long ago. Noises, from down the road, the horn of a motor-car, the call of children at their play, broke in upon the stillness. With significant reiteration, a dog in a far-off farm-house barked persistently.

"Go into the Ackroyds', Muriel, and see if you can get an evening paper. I want to talk to Mrs. Cartwright. There's that bazaar on the 4th."

The paper shop was small and very crowded. It smelt of paraffin from the swinging lamp above the counter. Muriel watched two great moths flapping with unbelievable clumsiness against its flyblown globe.

She pushed her way to the counter. The proprietor, a meek little man with a fierce black moustache, stood shaking his head nervously. "The ultimatum expires to-night at midnight," he said hoarsely. "That's a very serious thing. A very serious thing." Then he saw Muriel. "Good evening, Miss Hammond."

"Have you any papers left?"

"I'm sorry, miss, I'm very sorry. I always like to oblige anyone from Miller's Rise. You might get one at the station perhaps."

He bobbed with forlorn little curtsies, pulling at his moustache, apologizing for the inconvenience of a European situation for which he, as the agent through which Marshington must see the world, felt a personal responsibility.

"Oh, well." Muriel turned to go.

An old woman in a man's cap, who for some inexplicable reason had planted herself on a chair by the counter, looked up at her.

"War's bloody hell," she remarked mildly. "Ah'm telling you God's truth. Two o' my lads went i' South Africa. Bloody hell. That's what it is."

She rose and hiccoughed unsteadily from the shop, the little crowd making way for her ungainly figure.

Unaccountably stirred by this brief encounter, Muriel left the shop, her mind wounded and yet quickened by the old woman's words. It was as though in her obscenity, she had been a foretaste of something to come, something sinister and violent.

The village street lay wrapped in the grey twilight of a dream. Bloody hell. Bloody hell. She saw the hell of a child's picture book, gleaming with livid flame. The blood smell faintly nauseating, like a butcher's shop on a hot day. Across the road, Connie and her mother talked to Mrs. Cartwright. "It's all over the village," Mrs. Cartwright was saying. "Mr. Marshall Gurney has telegraphed, and telegraphed, and can't get any answer through. They say that he is nearly mad with anxiety. If the war is declared against us, they're sure to be murdered."

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Hammond. "You don't murder people nowadays, even if there is a war on. The Marshall Gurneys will be all right, though I always did say that it was a mistake to go off abroad like that. It doesn't somehow belong to those kind of people."

Muriel looked at the four of them, and at their eager absorbed faces as they talked about the Marshall Gurneys. Yet somehow she felt as though her mother were not anxious so much as jealous, jealous because it was Mrs. Marshall Gurney and not herself who was enjoying the unique distinction of becoming involved in a European crisis. That Kaiser, whom every one in England was reviling, might turn Mrs. Marshall Gurney's failure into victory.

XVII

Mrs. Hammond was right.

The ultimatum expired. Great Britain and Germany assumed a state of war; and the Marshall Gurneys, miraculously unmurdered, returned to Marshington in triumph. The news of their escape through Switzerland outrivalled, at hurried and informal tea-parties, the problem of food shortage, the departure of the Territorials to join the camp near Scarborough, and the possibility of a German invasion. It was even rumoured that Phyllis had received a letter from Godfrey Neale congratulating her upon their escape, and that she, with the glamour of adventure like a bloom upon her youth, might yet warm up the tepid interest that her charms had once inspired.

After a spring and summer of reviving hope, Mrs. Hammond found herself facing the autumn of 1914 from much the same position as she had faced it in 1913.

Oh, when one was young and success was one's own to make or lose, then life was easy! But for a wife and mother whose success depended upon other people, then came the heart-breaking years. Of course the War must be over soon, and things would settle down to their normal condition, but meanwhile it was hard to see Mrs. Marshall Gurney becoming President of the Belgian Refugee Committee, while Phyllis, who had nothing like Muriel's ability for handling figures, was made treasurer of the Junior Red Cross Association, and went daily into Kingsport in her becoming uniform.

At the end of November they stood in the gloom of the unlit station, watching the 5th Yorkshire Guards entrain for Aldershot--well, if it was not Aldershot, it was somewhere in the South and so much nearer to the German guns. There was no particular reason why the Hammonds should have gone to see them. They knew no one besides Dickie Weathergay, Daisy's husband, and the station was cold and draughty. Mr. Hammond had stayed in late at the Kingsport Club as usual, but Mrs. Hammond was determinedly patriotic. In spite of discomfort she stood now with her girls among a crowd of curious, laden figures, distorted by their burdens out of all semblance to the human form. It was the world of a dream, when even the corporeal presence of such everyday people as Dr. and Mrs. Parker and Colonel Cartwright became part of a dim and dreamlike darkness. The crowd shuffled and jolted, appearing unexpectedly from the dense shadows into a circle of faint lamplight that flickered intermittently on bayonets and badges.

Mrs. Hammond was suffering from indigestion, the result of fragmentary and scrambled meals. The meals at Miller's Rise had not been hurried because nobody had time to eat them slowly, but because it hardly seemed to be patriotic in those days to sit down comfortably to enjoy them. Mrs. Hammond, dreading the secret murmurings about her husband, dreading the pity which could destroy more effectively than enmity the position which she had won, determined to kill pity by admiration for her patriotism. She stood in the darkness, while passing soldiers lurched into her, and knocked sideways her fur-trimmed toque. This must all be endured as part of the campaign. She felt her courage, born from her supreme passion, riding triumphantly above fatigue and pain.

"It would be nice if there were somewhere to sit down," she murmured, but without complaint. "Is that Daisy over there?"

Muriel, who had been standing all day in the newly instituted Red Cross Depot, shifted her weight from one aching foot to the other, and remarked:

"I'm so sorry. There are no seats," as though it were her fault. She added, "Yes, that's Daisy, in the blue cloak."