On the evening of June 23rd, 1852, Old Dick Hammond, then still known
as Young Dick, locked the door of the little oil-shop, dropped the key
in his pocket, and turned westward up Middle Street in Marshington.
Beyond the village, black against the sunset, a broken windmill
crowned the swelling hill, even as the hill crowned Marshington.
"One day," he vowed to himself, "my son shall marry a lady and build a
house on Miller's Rise."
It was typical of Dick that he made his vow before the first sack
had been sold from the factory that eventually brought to him his
moderate fortune. Yet more typical was the promptitude with which he
forestalled his son and began himself to build the house at Miller's
Rise. When Young Arthur Hammond rode to Market Burton to court Rachel
Bennet, a house stood already prepared and waiting for his lady.
Whatever other objections the Bennet family might have raised against
Rachel's lover, at least they could not deny that he was offering her
the finest home in Marshington.
Fifteen years after Arthur's wedding, the house was more than a mere
dwelling place. Wind and rain had dimmed the aggressive yellow of the
brick walls, half covered now by ivy and the spreading fans of
ampelopsis. The tender olive and faint silver-green of lichens had
crept across the slates roofing the shallow gables. The smooth lawn
sloping to the laurel hedge along the road, the kitchen garden
overstocked until it suffered from perennial indigestion, the stiff
borders by the drive, wherein begonias, lobelia and geraniums were
yearly planted out, regardless of expense; all these testified that
the vows of Old Dick Hammond had been fulfilled in no grudging spirit.
"Eleven bedrooms, three real good sitting-rooms, and no making up for
lost space on the kitchens," Dick had declared. "When you go in for
bricks and mortar, go handsome. It's a good investment. Houses is
summat."
The house had been something more than the symbol of Old Dick's
fulfilment. It had been the fortress from which Rachel Hammond had
advanced with patient fortitude to recapture the social ground that
she had forfeited by marrying Dick Hammond's son. Old Dick had
mercifully died. When his continued existence became the sole obstacle
to the fulfilment of his vow, nature performed her last service to him
and removed it.
The death of her father-in-law had made it a little easier for Rachel
Hammond to live down the origin of his son, but even by 1903 she still
spoke with deference to Mrs. Marshall Gurney, and never passed the new
store on the site of the old oil-shop without a shudder. She kept her
difficulties to herself, and no one but her sister Beatrice knew how
great at times had been the travail of her soul. Beatrice alone stood
by her when she ignored the early callers from the Avenue and the
Terrace. No small amount of courage had enabled a young bride to
refuse the proffered friendship of auctioneers' wives and the
Nonconformist section of the village, when refusal might have meant
perpetual isolation. Old Dick Hammond had been a mighty witness before
the Lord among the Primitives; but for a whole year of nerve-racking
anxiety his daughter-in-law sat in the new house that he had built,
awaiting the calls of that Upper Marshington to whom Church was a
symbol of social salvation, and Chapel of more than ecclesiastical
Nonconformity.
Beatrice alone supported Mrs. Hammond when she carried the war into
the enemies' camp by inviting a formidable series of Bennet relatives,
Market Burton acquaintances, and Barlow cousins to purify the social
atmosphere of Miller's Rise. Sunday after Sunday these invincible
reserves appeared in the Hammond pew. The success of that campaign had
been slow but solid, and Mrs. Hammond, sitting in her elm-shadowed
garden on this summer afternoon bowed in gracious but satisfactory
acknowledgment to the hand that waved from Mrs. Waring's carriage,
rolling handsomely along the road.
She put down her sewing and gazed dreamily beyond the garden. The air
was heavy with sweet summer sounds and scents, melting together into a
murmurous fragrance; the breath of the wind on new-mown grass, the
cooing of doves, the sleepy orchestra of bees. On the upper stretch of
lawn the two little girls, Muriel and Connie, were making a restless
pretence at lessons with the governess, Miss Dyson.
Mrs. Hammond paused in her work, a faint frown on her smooth forehead.
Then she spoke, to herself rather than to her sister:
"Mrs. Cartwright said yesterday that Mrs. Waring is sending Adelaide
to school."
"School?" echoed Beatrice. Having been offered no clue yet, she knew
not whether to approve or to decry. Seventeen years spent as the one
unmarried daughter of a large family had taught Beatrice Bennet that
she existed only upon other people's sufferance. Since her parents had
died, she passed her time in a continual succession of visits from one
brother or sister to another, paying for their hospitality by lending
her approval, such as it was, to register or to confirm their own
opinions.
Mrs. Hammond had not hitherto expressed her opinion on the subject of
schools. Beatrice could therefore only wait and listen.
"To school?" she repeated, as her sister kept silence. "Did she say to
which school?"
"She was uncertain." Mrs. Hammond resumed her sewing. Her plump, white
hands with round, beautifully-polished nails, conveyed in repose a
deceptive impression of gentle ineffectiveness. Directly she began
to hem, inserting and withdrawing her needle with sharp, decisive
movements, the flashing diamonds on her finger cut through the
idle softness of that first impression. Her hands never fluttered
uncertainly above her work. She moved directly to the achievement of
her aim, or she kept still. Just now she sewed, with rapid ease, a
petticoat for Connie.
"Connie's hard on her things," she observed. "You'd hardly believe how
fast she grows, and then she tears them like a great tom-boy." She
sighed, clipping off a thread with her sharp scissors. "Mrs. Waring
seems to be thinking of York for Adelaide."
"There are good schools in York," suggested Beatrice.
"Well, there's the Red Manor School. Miss Burdass is a lady. Daisy and
Marjorie are going there, and now perhaps Adelaide. But I'm not sure."
"Mrs. Marshall Gurney's little girl still has a governess, hasn't
she?" suggested Beatrice with a helpful air.
Mrs. Hammond's eyes turned for one instant to the drooping figure of
Miss Dyson, now trailing wearily towards the house.
"Mrs. Marshall Gurney found a treasure in Miss Evans," she remarked
dryly. "I have already tried five for the children. You know that; but
they seem to be either feeble sorts of creatures like this Miss Dyson
or pert young minxes like that Porter girl. Mrs. Marshall Gurney
hasn't got to deal with Arthur."
Mrs. Hammond never alluded directly to those other troubles of her
married life unconnected with her husband's social position; but
Beatrice nodded now in perfect comprehension. With a spinster's
licence, she always believed the worst of husbands.
"Besides," her sister continued, "it's not only governesses. I was
talking it over last night with Mr. Hammond." She called her husband
Mr. Hammond sometimes from habit, because her subconscious mind
recognized that conversation with Beatrice was conversation with an
inferior, and prompted her accordingly. "He agreed with me that the
girls must go somewhere where they'll make nice friends. After all,
there are really very few nice people round Kingsport."
Beatrice followed her sister's glance beyond the flat meadows to where
Kingsport lay veiled in a light haze from the river Leame. The city
rose so slightly from the fields and gardens that its silver houses
gleamed like a pool of mercury poured on stretched green cloth,
leaving little drops and flattened balls before it had rolled
together Marshington, Danes, Kepplethorpe, and Swanfield over on the
pale horizon.
"I have to think of the future," Mrs. Hammond remarked.
Her sister nodded.
"Have you decided, then?"
"I did mention Heathcroft to Arthur. Mrs. Hancock's school is not very
large, but the dear Bishop recommends it, and I understand that even
the Setons of Edenthorpe thought of sending their little girls there."
"The Setons. Now, let me see, aren't they some connection of the
Neales?"
"Mrs. Neale was a Miss Henessey, and the Henesseys are cousins to the
West Riding Setons."
All Bennets had the gift of tracing genealogies by faith rather
than by sight. A naive confidence in the magic of Birth dignified a
curiosity that arose not from snobbishness alone.
A shadow fell across the lawn, darkening the upturned daisy-faces at
their feet.
"Well, well, well! Gossiping your heads off as usual, you two women?"
boomed Mr. Hammond's hearty voice.
They turned and looked up to where his figure dominated them,
ponderous, aggressive, radiating heat and energy. Arthur Hammond had
driven from the mill, but his great legs were encased from the knees
downwards in leather gaiters, and from the knees upwards in vast
checked breeches. His face was crimson, and his thick, darkly red hair
damp with perspiration. He wiped his head and whiskers with a blue
silk handkerchief, smoothing carefully into shape the heavy moustache
of which he was inordinately proud. He beamed contentedly upon his
women.
"Well, Mrs. H., how's tricks?"
His wife flushed slightly at the vulgarity of his phrase, even while
she felt, faintly across a gulf of disenchantment, the fascination of
his great virility.
"We have been discussing a school for the children, Arthur," she said,
her pretty voice as usual reacting with increased gentility in his
presence. "Beatrice agrees with me that Hardrascliffe has many
advantages."
"Bee knows a thing or two, what? Well, Mrs. H., I leave it to you. I
make the cash, Bee, but I let my wife do the spending."
It was true. His faith in her perspicacity was absolute. His offences
against her womanhood had never dimmed his appreciation of her wisdom.
"You really think that it would be the best thing, Arthur?" Mrs.
Hammond asked, with an assumption of deference only permitted when she
had already made up her mind.
"Ay, ay. Do what ye will with the lasses. If they'd 'a been lads, I
might ha' had sommat to say."
He lowered his great bulk slowly into the third garden chair. The
little girls came running across the daisied lawn, Connie dancing
ahead, Muriel following more sedately. Though she was fourteen, Muriel
still looked a child in her short holland dress and round straw hat.
"Father, Father," shrilled Connie. "When did you come home? Have you
been to Kingsport? How did the new bay mare go?"
They were singularly alike, Arthur Hammond and his younger daughter.
He smiled down at her with fond assurance.
"She went like old Miss Deale goes when she sees the curate coming
round t' corner."
"What do you mean, father? How does she go?"
"Arthur, I wish that you wouldn't say such things before the
children," reproved his wife's sweet voice.
He laughed enormously, putting his hand out and drawing Connie closer
to him, and thinking what a jolly thing it was to be sitting in
his pleasant garden with the day's work done, and an evening of
uninterrupted domesticity before him.
"Ay, Connie," he asked, "how would you like to go to school, eh? At
Hardrascliffe with old Mrs. Hancock, who'd beat you like anything if
you're a bad girl?"
"Oh, Father!" Connie glowed rapturously, understanding exactly how far
his threats were serious.
Muriel stood quietly before them, her slim hands clasped, her grave
eyes contemplative. She saw the sun lighting the pale brown of her
mother's hair to the soft shadow of gold. She saw the deep blue of
her aunt's flowing skirt against the speckled green and white of the
unmown stretch of lawn. She saw her father and sister, their two red
heads together, plotting some game of boisterous childishness that was
peculiarly theirs. She saw the wind among the lime trees tumbling
their leaves to delicate patterns of green light and shade.
Her wide eyes narrowed with the intensity of her secret thought.
"Mother," she asked unexpectedly, "do you suppose that there are many
families in Marshington as happy as we are?"
A faint shadow crossed her mother's face, like a wind-blown cloud
across a flower. Then she answered with the gentleness that she
reserved especially for her children.
"Well, dear, I hope that many families are happy."
But Mr. Hammond, thrusting Connie aside, clapped his hand against his
thigh and guffawed loudly. "Well, if that doesn't beat everything.
That's a real good 'un, that is. A happy family, well, well, well.
Which puts me in mind, Bee, did you ever hear tell of Bob Hickson and
his happy family?"
Beatrice, part of whose profession it was to have heard no tale
before, gathered her scattered wits to give attention. Connie, bored
by the prospect of a tale that she had heard before, danced off among
the grass and buttercups; but Muriel, who had put her question
seriously, stood patiently watching, a little puzzled, a little
rebuffed, a little sad.
So Muriel was sent to cultivate suitable friendships under the
guidance of Mrs. Hancock. Because she believed that school was a place
where one learnt things, she had been pleased to go. She wanted to
draw, to paint, to play the piano as no one before had played it.
Most of all, she wanted to learn about Higher Mathematics and the
Stars. Muriel felt rather vague about the exact meaning of Higher
Mathematics. But she knew that she found in figures a sober and
unfailing delight. They slid through her mind like water, separating
easily into their factors, uniting quickly for multiples and
additions, revealing their possibilities at a glance as a clear pool
reveals the pebbles below its water. Then in figures lay a comforting
assurance of absolute truth. In a world where Muriel was beginning to
suspect that most conclusions were at best a compromise, she found
triumphant satisfaction in the unquestionable certainty that, in all
places and at all times, two and two made four.
At Marshington, Muriel's odd tastes had been discouraged. At school,
she felt assured that she would reach her heart's desire. She would
make wonderful friendships, win all the prizes, filling her beautiful
mother's heart with pride, and Heathcroft with the glory of her
triumphs.
Before a week had passed, she began to make discoveries. First, with
a dull ache of disappointment, she found that school was not so
different from Marshington after all; indeed, in a queer way the new
place seemed to be more familiar than her home, as the type may be
more familiar than the individual. At home, for instance, her mother
said, "Muriel, I wish that you would keep the school-room cupboard a
little tidier." At school untidiness became a crime, to be punished
by order marks, to the disgrace of the whole form or bedroom. The
accidental regulations of Marshington life were shaken out of their
environment and transformed into infallible rules.
For Mrs. Hancock had been a wise woman when she founded her private
school for girls at Hardrascliffe. Opening in business an eye to the
main chance that she would have closed in private life, she realized
that a head mistress has to make a choice. Generations are like
divinities, and he who is not for them is against them. A school must
be run either for the parents or for the children. As a business
woman, Mrs. Hancock knew that the parents who pay the bills are the
indispensable factor of success. She also knew that, for most of her
parents, the unacknowledged aim of education was to teach their
children to be a comfort to them. And how could a child be a comfort
to parents whom she makes uncomfortable? Mrs. Hancock determined that
no education received in her school should be responsible for this
disaster.
Possibly these considerations influenced her when, during her first
term, Muriel unexpectedly asked for an interview. In response to her
"Come in, my dear," a small shy person stood before her, whose slight
figure was tense with a tremendous effort of courage.
"Well, Muriel?" Mrs. Hancock smiled, with that famous motherly manner
so much praised among her parents.
"Mrs. Hancock——" hesitated Muriel. Her temerity was born of deep
desire. "You said that those of us who wanted to learn special
subjects and things—extras—might come and ask you."
"Well, dear, I don't remember, though, that your mother said—— Now,
let me see, where is her letter?" Mrs. Hancock searched among the
orderly papers on her desk. "I don't remember that she asked for you
to learn any extras, except dressmaking, perhaps, if it fitted in to
your time-table."
"It wasn't Mother. It's me." Muriel groped her way to an untutored
request. "I want—please, may I have lessons on Astronomy?"
"Astronomy?" Mrs. Hancock gasped. "My dear child, what are you talking
about?"
Muriel, whose opinion of the wisdom of all grown-ups was sublimely
high, did not take it upon herself to explain. She only protested
fervently that she wanted to, always had wanted to, know more about
the stars, and to do calculations and things. It must be confessed
that it all sounded rather silly. The triumphant thing, the towering
audacity of her desire, collapsed into the futility of ruined hopes.
She felt that the tears were coming. Her unique adventure beyond
habitual self-effacement was going to fail. She gazed appealingly at
the head mistress.
Then, with a kindliness that Muriel found consoling even though it
sounded the death knell to her hopes, Mrs. Hancock explained how
there were some things that it was not suitable for girls to learn.
Astronomy, the science of the stars, was a very instructive pursuit
for astronomers, and professors (these latter being evidently a race
apart), but it was not one of those things necessary for a girl to
learn. "How will it help you, dear, when you, in your future life,
have, as I hope, a house to look after? If you really want to take up
an extra, I will write to your mother about the dressmaking. You are
quite clever with your fingers, I think, and though it is usual to
begin a little later, perhaps——"
"But, but——" Muriel began. She knew now quite certainly that she had
resolved to become a great mathematician. She was not quite sure what
this involved, nor could she trace her resolution to the day when she
first read The Life of Mary Somerville in the Lives of Fine Women
Series. She was certain that fate held for her something more exciting
than dressmaking lessons, and yet her initial failure sapped her
courage. She resigned herself to the wisdom of Mrs. Hancock.
Whatever doubts Muriel might have felt about that wisdom, Mrs. Hancock
had none. Acceptance of the conclusions reached by experienced and
older people, Muriel was told, was one of the first lessons to be
learnt by rash, unthinking youth. One day Muriel would laugh at her
childish fancies. She did not want to be considered different from
other girls, did she? Mrs. Hancock had noticed with regret a tendency
to hold herself aloof, to be a little odd. That should not be. Muriel
must learn to conform to the standards of other, wiser people. One day
she would be grateful to Mrs. Hancock.
Muriel, of course, was grateful. She failed to explain to her head
mistress that her aloofness was not of her own making; but she had
learnt her lesson. She never again asked Mrs. Hancock for anything
until she said good-bye to her on her last day at school.
And yet that interview affected her life more deeply than she might
have guessed. For at the dressmaking classes, Muriel met Clare.
It happened during Muriel's second term. She sat in the big school-room,
opposite to the door that led up three steps into the hall. The
dressmaking class was half over, and Muriel, while her fingers
carefully tacked gathered nun's veiling, allowed her thoughts to dance
away as usual into a delightful day-dream. Always at this time Muriel
used her leisure moments to compose the next instalment of a secret
serial history of which she was the heroine. In her dreams, her
failures and timidities slipped from her. She became fascinating and
audacious. Mistress of life, surrounded by adoring friends, she stood
triumphant, poised on the threshold of some great adventure.
At the moment, having rescued the head girl, Rosalie Crook, from a
terrible death by drowning, Muriel, still pale and dripping, was
received upon the storm-swept sea-shore into the magic circle of
"Them," the great ones. "They" were the élite, the prefects and the
games captains, the popular and famous, surrounded by the ineffable
prestige of tradition-making youth. Yet Rosalie, with tear-filled
eyes, bent forward to her companions. "Did you know," she cried,
"that Muriel has often been lonely and neglected? Do you know that she
has lived in hourly dread of croc-walks, for fear lest she should not
have a partner; that she has shrunk in terror from Speech Day, in case
no one should ask her to sit next them? That she has been at school
two terms, but nobody has asked her to be their friend? Who will be
her friend now? I, for one, would have liked that honour, girls, that
honour." Her voice quivered with emotion as They, with one accord,
rose to claim the friendship of Muriel Hammond. The raging wind swept
their ringing voices out to sea, as . . . the door opened and Mrs.
Hancock entered, followed by Clare Duquesne.
Muriel rose obediently with the rest of the class, according to the
Heathcroft rule of courtesy, but afterwards the action appeared as
the natural result of instinctive allegiance to the triumphant
personality, not of the head mistress, but of Clare.
Clare stood at the top of the three steps, smiling down at the class,
not shyly, not stupidly, but with an assured and indestructible
friendliness. She was as much mistress of the situation as a famous
actress who has entered amid deafening applause to take her call. Not
beautiful, but with the confidence of beauty, not tall, but with a
radiant suggestion of height, Clare was utterly unlike anything that
Muriel had seen before. From the surprising bow upon her sleek brown
hair, to the shining buckles on her trim brown shoes, from her odd
short dress of pleated tartan to the frill of muslin round her firm
young neck, she defied all Marshington and Hardrascliffe conventions
of the proper attire for young girls of fifteen. Wholesome as an
apple, tranquil as a September morning, and unmysterious as a glass of
water, she yet held for Muriel all mystery and all enchantment. From
that moment, without calculation or condition, Muriel gave her heart
to Clare Duquesne.
"Now, girls," announced Mrs. Hancock. She never called her pupils
"young ladies," having informed their parents that this savoured of
middle-class gentility. They, anxious to fling off the least suspicion
of resemblance to the class to which they almost all belonged, had
approved with emphasis. "Now, girls, I want you to make room in your
class for Clare Duquesne. She has come unexpectedly in the middle of
the term because her mother has been called to the South of France on
account of her father's health. I want you therefore to be specially
kind to her, and to give her a pleasant welcome, as I know that you
will."
Having made her speech, Mrs. Hancock prepared to withdraw, but this
surprising Clare forestalled her.
"Thank you immensely," she said in her clipped, precise voice,
speaking as though English were a well-known yet foreign language to
her. "It is very kind of you to take so much trouble over me. But,"
she bubbled with laughter, the dimples quivering in her rounded
cheek, "I have no talent with my needle. Félix bet me five francs
that I would never learn even to sew on a button."
Mrs. Hancock, slightly surprised, but still benevolently gracious,
smiled kindly. "And who is Félix, Clare?"
"Félix? Didn't you know? He's my father." She turned to the class with
an engaging air of frankness. "You know, Mamma and I always call him
Félix, because she hates to hear me say Mamma or Papa. It makes her
feel her age, she says, and when you are on the stage it is a crime to
feel your age—on account of the dear public, is it not so?"
Clare's voice deepened to the rich intonation of Sophie O'Hallaghan,
the charming Irish-American actress who had married the half-brother
of Lord Powell of Eppleford, and who was, incidentally, Clare's
mother.
Mrs. Hancock had not intended to divulge the profession of Clare's
mother. It was, she considered, the approval of the dear Bishop
always in her mind, a delicate subject upon which one might have
expected Clare to preserve a little reticence. Especially since Félix
Duquesne had been considerate enough to write his distinguished but
embarrassing French prose in—French, and was, through his family
connections, of unprecedented value as a parent. But Clare knew no
more of reticence than a lark on a spring morning or a kettle on the
boil. She saw no reason for Mrs. Hancock's sudden stiffness, and
continued to smile at her with complete urbanity.
"Well, Clare," replied the head mistress, "I think that perhaps while
you are at school you had better refer to your father by his proper
title. Is there an empty place, Miss Reeve, for Clare? Now girls, go
on with your work. There is no reason for you to let Clare's arrival
interrupt it. You can continue just the same."
She swept from the room, masking a faint uneasiness behind her
gracious majesty of deportment, but for the first time questioning
her wisdom in admitting this new pupil.
In the school-room, however, Providence for once had favoured Muriel.
The empty chair to which Clare was conducted by Miss Reeve was next to
hers, and when Clare turned towards her with that dazzling smile
Muriel knew, for all Mrs. Hancock might say, that things would never
be quite the same for her again.
The term after Clare's arrival Muriel lay in bed staring at the faint
blur against the wall where Clare lay asleep. The room was dark and
still, but near the pale translucent panels of the window the curtains
stirred as though moved by the breathing of the seven girls.
The miracle that had led Clare to her on that first day still endured.
Clare and Muriel slept in the same room. Of course that did not mean
that they were friends. Clare had immediately marched with her
cheerful serenity right into the most exclusive circle of the elect,
of "Them." But to see Clare was an education; to speak with her a
high adventure. To sleep in the same room with her, to see her
bath-salts and her powder, only permitted at Heathcroft because she
was her father's daughter, to touch her underclothing, embroidered
in a Belgian convent—this was to live perpetually on the threshold
of a marvellous world, removed by millions of miles from school or
Marshington.
She was wonderful, this Clare Duquesne. At night Muriel would raise
her head above the bed-clothes and try to tell herself that this was
really true, that the world was large enough to hold people so
different as Clare and Muriel. Muriel, for all her brave dreams, knew
herself to be of those whose eager, clutching hands let slip prizes,
friendships and achievement, as quickly as they grasp them. But
Clare, lazy, careless, happy Clare, laughed when she made mistakes,
was amused by her arithmetic, hopelessly confused by premature
acquaintance with the metric system, cared nothing for her erratic
spelling, and swung up her average of weekly marks by her staggering
proficiency in languages. Her supremacy at singing and dancing cost
her no more effort than the wearing of fine raiment cost the lilies of
the field. Her French and German were more fluent than her clipped,
accentuated English. She could swear in Spanish, order a dinner in
Dutch, and write a love-letter in Italian. Impish as a street-urchin,
sophisticated as a cocktail, fearless of life, loved by it and its
lover, judging no man as no man judged her, she dazzled Heathcroft as
a glorious, golden creature not wrought from common clay.
Muriel's heart went out to her in a great wave of adoration.
Passionate emotion, stronger than any she had known, even on the
hushed silver morning of her First Communion, filled her small body
like a mighty wind.
"Oh, I would die for her," she breathed ecstatically. "O God, if
you've planned anything awful to happen to Clare, let it happen to me
instead. I could bear anything for her, even if she never knew how I
cared. But do let me know her. Let me get to be her friend!"
Forlorn hope, thought Muriel next day, preparing reluctantly for the
school walk. As usual the time was trapping her, and she had no
partner. Life at Heathcroft being organized upon the partner system,
this was Muriel's daily and hourly terror—to have no one to walk
with, to be driven as an enforced intruder to walk with the last
couple in the crocodile, to feel the checked resentment of the juniors
upon whom she was thus imposed.
She stood in front of the small glass, pushing the elastic of her
sailor hat beneath her long, brown plait, and thinking, "Well, there's
one thing about Connie coming here next term. I'll never have to walk
alone again." Which just showed how little at this time she knew her
Connie.
Then she heard Clare's voice.
"Will you not walk with me, Muriel?"
Muriel gasped. She could not believe that Clare had spoken. But there
was no other Muriel in the school, and no other voice like Clare's.
Yet, Clare, who could walk with "Them," surely she would never ask
Muriel? They never walked with those who were not of the elect. They
would not so imperil their dignity. But, of course, Clare never
bothered about her dignity. Years afterwards, when Muriel referred to
"Them," Clare asked with interest, "Who were 'They'?" But when Muriel
said, "Oh, you, and Rosalie and Cathie and Patricia. All the people
who counted." Then Clare laughed. "Oh, was I one? How perfectly
thrilling! And I never knew. What things we miss!" But now Muriel
only blushed and asked: "I beg your pardon?"
"I haven't got a partner," Clare said. "Will you walk with me?"
Muriel, blushing and palpitating, answered, "If you like." Always,
when she was profoundly moved, she became a little stiffer and more
prim, not gauche, but prim, like a Victorian teapot, or a bit of
sprigged muslin.
Clare never noticed. She was arranging her blue serge coat with the
air of a mannequin trying on a Paris model.
"Would you mind holding my collar straight?" she asked.
They took their place in the crocodile.
All the way along the Esplanade Clare chattered. Muriel at the time
was too much bewildered by her strange good fortune to remember
everything that Clare was saying, but she retained a glowing
impression of Clare skating outside a gay hotel in Switzerland, of
Clare in a box at the Comédie Française, listening to one of her
father's plays, of Clare crossing the Irish Channel in a ship, and
being sea-sick all the way. It was perhaps the most unquestionable
proof of Clare's attraction that even her sea-sickness became
distinguished.
Before Muriel had said three words, the girls had reached the cliffs
beyond the Esplanade. Beyond the asphalt and clipped box hedges of the
Promenade, the cliffs sprawled untidily. They were not even real
cliffs, but ragged slopes, overgrown with coarse grass and tamarisk,
sprinkled with yarrow, and patched with stunted bushes of rusty gorse.
Far below the tide crept up in circles, flat as paper, and washed
back, dragging with white sickles at the shelving sand. The place had
a deserted look, and Clare was bored.
"What shall we do now?" she asked obligingly, when Miss Reeve gave the
order to break rank.
She waited for Muriel to entertain her.
"Oh, I'll do anything you like," said Muriel fatally.
They strolled along the winding path. Abruptly to their right rose a
steep rock, witness of the time before the landslide, when the cliffs
had been cliffs. For fifteen feet it frowned above the way to the
sands. Clare stood still, gazing at it in contemplative silence. Then
she had an idea.
"Muriel," she suggested, "do let's see if we can climb that rock. No
one can see us now. Miss Reeves's miles away. I'll go first. Come on,
do."
Clare was like that. She never noticed natural things except as a
potential background to her own action. But, having decided to act,
she was prompt. She tore off her gloves and faced the rock. Muriel
stood, suddenly smitten dumb by an agony of apprehension. But without
looking back, Clare began to climb. Agile as a cat, she scrambled with
firm hand-grips and burrowing toes, clutching at the sheer side of the
rock and chuckling to herself.
"Clare! You can't. You'll fall. You'll be killed."
Muriel meant to cry out all these things, but somehow she said
nothing. She only stood at the bottom of the rock while a sick
numbness robbed her of her strength.
Then Clare was up. She swung herself easily on to the summit of the
rock. Her figure was outlined against a windy sky. Her laughing face
looked down at Muriel.
"It's glorious up here," she called. "But what a wind! I say, do come
on, Muriel!"
Before she had thought what she was doing, Muriel began to climb.
"Whatever I do, I mustn't funk in front of Clare," she thought.
Her fingers tore at the sharp ledges of the rock. Her toes slipped on
the uneven surface. She grasped at a brittle root of broom. It came
away in her hand. She almost fell. Unused to climbing, blind with
fear, she hardly saw the places for her hands to hold.
Clare, completely oblivious of her distress, stared calmly out to sea.
"Oh, Muriel, there's such a big steamer on the horizon. Do hurry up
and tell me where it's going."
But Muriel could not hurry. She was beyond hope, beyond sight, almost
beyond fear. For she had just remembered Freddy Mason's stories of the
Ladder, and how the men carrying sacks up it had overbalanced and
fallen to their doom, far in the yard below.
Her grasp loosened. Rock and sky swung round her. Her feet slipped on
the narrow ledge.
She must not fail Clare; here was the time to test her courage.
Fear swooped upon her, tore her fingers from the rock, poured drops of
perspiration on her forehead.
"Clare!" shrieked a voice that was not surely hers. "Clare, I'm
slipping!"
Clare's round face appeared between the edge of the rock and the
reeling sky. Clare's voice remarked imperturbably: "Oh, well, if you
do fall you haven't far to go, so it won't hurt. But hold on a bit and
I'll give you a hand."
She came over the edge again. Her solid, shapely ankles were on a
level with Muriel's hat, her eyes. A firm hand reached down for
Muriel's clutching, sticky one.
"That's all right. Come along. You've got a great dab of mud on your
nose, Muriel."
She never faltered. Somehow they both scrambled over the edge. Muriel
flung herself down on the short turf, too sick and humiliated to
notice even Clare.
She had disgraced herself. She had failed. Her cowardice was flagrant.
Far from conducting herself heroically, she had risked Clare's own
safety because she was afraid. Far more than her nerve had failed
then. Her confidence in her whole personality was shaken. Black with
the unlit blackness of youth, the future stretched before her.
"Muriel"—when Clare pronounced her name it sounded warm and
golden—"do you not think that the girls here are like children?"
Muriel opened her eyes and stared as if to discover some connection
between this remark and her own disgraceful exhibition of childishness.
But there was none. Clare, astounding, incalculable Clare, had not
even noticed the tragedy of Muriel. She had taken it for granted that
if you couldn't climb, you couldn't, and that was your affair. She
continued meditatively:
"You must know what I mean, for you are different." Oh, glorious
triumph! Mrs. Hancock forgotten, Muriel glowed at the delightful
thought that she was different. "Have you not observed? How many of
them have had affaires de cœur? But very few!"
"Affaires de cœur?" It is hard to grope with a meagre French
vocabulary when one has just emerged from one physical and two
spiritual crises. Affaires! Muriel's knowledge of Marshington
phraseology assisted her. De Cœur—of the heart. Of course.
"Why, Clare, you can't mean being in love!"
"And why not?" asked Clare serenely. "I have had five affairs. There
was the student at the Sorbonne, and the man who played with Mamma in
New York, and my cousin Michael at Eppleford, and, and——"
"But were you in love with them?"
"My dear child, no! Why should I be?"
"Then, how?"
"Dear me, chérie, have you never observed that I am very attractive?"
Her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous.
"What a solemn face! Muriel, do you ever smile? No, no, I shan't fall
in love for years. Perhaps never. But crowds and crowds of men will
fall in love with me. That's why Félix decided that I had better come
to school. 'They're beginning too soon,' he said. 'You mustn't cut out
your mother yet, child.' And he sighed. He's terribly sentimental, my
Félix. I'm sure I didn't mind. On the whole it bores me. Men in love
are so terribly alike, I think, don't you?"
Fascinating, incredible conversation!
"Of course, really, I'm rather grateful to Félix," Clare continued
sagely. "It's no use getting it all over too soon. And of course one
day one might go too far, and really I don't want to marry yet,
however rich he was. What do you think?"
"But, Clare, do—do men fall in love with all women if we let them?"
"Why, of course. Else why be a woman?" Clare responded with
tranquility. "Of course there are some, poor dears, like Miss Reeve, I
suppose, and most schoolmistresses, and missionaries, and things, but
they are hardly women, are they?"
"I—I don't know. I——"
Somehow, it must be confessed, Muriel had always thought of these
unfortunates as women. That merely showed her terrible simplicity.
With a sigh, she pondered over her ignorance of Life.
"Oh, Muriel, do look at Miss Reeve coming up the path!" Clare darted
forward and peered over the edge of the rock. The young lady from the
Swiss hotel, the sophisticated philosopher on Life, had vanished. The
Irish urchin, impish, grinning, disreputable, took her place. "Do just
watch her hat bobbing along the path! It's as round as a soup plate.
Why do people wear such hats? It should be forbidden by law. Here,
hand me one of those little stones. Quick!"
Unthinking and hypnotized, Muriel obeyed.
Plop! went the stone, right into the middle of Miss Reeve's round hat.
Clare was back behind the rock.
"Oh, Clare, she'll see you," agonized Muriel.
Clare chuckled. "She won't. I never get found out."
But for once she was wrong. Her crimson scarf, blown by the wind,
waved a bright pennon from the rock. Nobody else at Heathcroft wore
such a scarf.
"Clare Duquesne, Clare Duquesne!" Miss Reeve's shrill voice was ripped
to ribbons of sound by the wind.
Clare leant down, smiling benignly upon the furious lady on the path.
"You called?" she inquired politely.
"What are you doing there? Come down! How dare you?"
"How dare I come down? Well, it does look rather steep. I'm not sure
that we can this way," pondered Clare, her head on one side.
"Don't deliberately misunderstand me. Who threw that stone?"
"The stone?" Clare's innocent voice repeated, but Muriel knew that the
situation was growing serious. With the ardent heroism of a martyr,
she flung herself into the breach—in other words, her head appeared
over the rock by the side of Clare. Desire to serve her beloved had
vanquished fear, hesitation and conscientiousness.
"It wasn't Clare's fault, Miss Reeve," she called. "We were trying to
get to the other path, and—and I slipped, and that set some stones
rattling down, and Clare came to stop me falling, and I do hope that
nobody's hurt."
Relieved to find that this was not a situation requiring to be dealt
with by a major punishment, an embarrassing ordeal at the best of
times, devastating when the culprit was Clare Duquesne, Miss Reeve
contented herself with a haughty stare.
"I do not think that you two have been behaving very nicely. It is
not ladylike to climb these high rocks, and I am sure that it is
dangerous. Please come down at once, both of you."
It was impossible to scold two heads detached from bodies, appearing
from the sky like cherubs from a Christmas card cloud. Muriel and
Clare withdrew.
Safely back behind the rock, Clare chuckled delightedly.
"I didn't know you had it in you, Muriel; that was quite magnificent."
But Muriel, to her own surprise as much as Clare's, suddenly began to
cry, aloud and helplessly, like a little child.
"But, Muriel, chérie, what is the matter?"
"I don't know. I'm so sorry to be so stupid. I think—I—you know, I
didn't mean to tell a lie. It just came out."
"You? What? Is that all? But you didn't. We were going to the lower
path—sometime. And that stone was loosened with your foot. And you
did slip. That wasn't a lie. It was a stroke of genius."
Then, with a sudden access of delighted interest, Clare turned upon
Muriel.
"My dear, is it possible that you have a temperament? And I never
guessed it. But how very odd. I should not have thought it somehow. It
just shows that you never can tell. And I have been so bored with
these suet dumplings of girls." Them! The elect and sacred "Them"
suet dumplings! Muriel forgot her tears. "Although I, thank heaven, I
have no temperament myself. That is why Félix says that I shall never
be a singer."
She flashed her dazzling smile upon the embarrassment of Muriel, who,
resolutely determined to acquire a temperament—whatever this might
be—immediately, was returning thanks to a benevolent providence who
sends success to people in spite of their own failures.
Friendships at Heathcroft should usually be registered, like births,
deaths, and marriages, with all due publicity and certitude. It was
just like Muriel that, right up to the moment of leaving school, she
should never know whether she could really call herself Clare's
friend.
She stood on the platform, waiting for the arrival of the York train
that was to carry Clare off to London, Leipzig, singing lessons and
Fame. Clare, radiant, blossoming already into a young lady in a hat
sent by her mamma from Paris, smiled serenely from the carriage window
down at Muriel.
"Au revoir," she laughed. Her rich voice lightly dropped the words for
Muriel to take up or to leave as she would. Clare did not care.
"Good-bye, Clare," Muriel replied solemnly. She made no fuss about it,
for that would have been cheek, as though she had some right to mind
saying good-bye. "I hope that you will have a good time in Germany. I
expect that when I see you again you will be a famous singer. But
don't forget that if ever you should want to stay in Yorkshire we
should love to have you at Miller's Rise."
"Oh, thank you, chérie, I shall not forget."
She smiled and waved her hand, tossing back to Muriel, like a fallen
flower, the invitation that had cost such terrific courage to propose.
But Muriel rushed away to her own carriage on the local line to
Kingsport with a sense of desolation that ached sullenly beneath the
excitement of being grown-up at last.
Because Muriel did not much care for babies, they pursued her in
railway trains and buses with relentless faithfulness. The carriage
into which she hurled herself after Connie's vanishing figure was hot
and overcrowded, and directly opposite to Muriel sat a baby, wriggling
on its mother's knee, its mouth smeared with chocolate and crumbs of
biscuits.
"Disgusting," thought Muriel. "How like Connie to choose a carriage
full of babies." For Connie was at this time indiscriminately
friendly, always scraping acquaintance with babies, all crumbs and
chocolate, or puppies, all smells and fleas. And now, because of her
lack of sensitiveness, Muriel at this crisis in her life had to endure
a slow train, where at every station people with baskets crowded in
upon her, even more hurriedly than her own overwhelming emotions.
Connie would come by this train, because it arrived at Marshington
half an hour before the express, and Muriel always tried to be
unselfish. She might have guessed what it would be like, for
circumstances never had much reverence for her feelings. Perhaps that
was why she had come to think that they did not much matter herself.
The world was all right. It was she who was wrong, caring for all the
wrong things. She could not, however hard she tried, stop herself from
loving Clare, though passionate friendships between girls had been
firmly discouraged by the sensible Mrs. Hancock. Their intimacy, she
considered, was usually silly and frequently disastrous. If carried
too far, it even wrecked all hope of matrimony without offering any
satisfaction in return. Love was a useful emotion ordained by God and
regulated by society for the propagation of the species; or else it
inspired sometimes the devotion of a daughter to a mother, or a parent
to a child. It could even be extended to a relative, such as a cousin
or an aunt. Or in a somewhat diluted form it might embrace Humanity,
engendering a vague Joan-of-Arc-Florence-Nightingale-Mrs.-Beecher-Stowish
philanthropy, to which Muriel aspired faintly, but without much hope
of realization. But Love between two girls was silly sentiment.
By loving Clare, Muriel knew that she had been guilty of extreme
foolishness. And she wanted so much to be good.
The words of Mrs. Hancock's farewell interview returned to her through
the smoke-laden atmosphere of the train. "My dear, to-morrow you are
going to take your place in the world outside your school, and there
are one or two things that I want you to remember. I believe that
sometimes you girls laugh at those words of Kingsley's, 'Be good,
sweet maid, and let who will be clever,' but they contain a great
truth, Muriel. Character, my dear, to be a fine womanly woman, that
matters so much more than intellectual achievement. To serve first
your parents, then, I hope, your husband and your children, to be
pure, unselfish and devoted, that is my prayer for each one of my
girls." Mrs. Hancock coughed. She had repeated this little homily so
often that she did not hesitate for words, and yet now and then,
unguessed by her hearers, would come a moment of wistful doubting
whether this message contained the final expression of her wisdom.
Below her worldly wisdom, Mrs. Hancock, like Muriel, wanted to be
good. "I want you to remember the school motto, dear, 'Læta sorte
mea,' Happy in my lot. God will, I hope, give you happiness, but if
He chooses to send you disappointment and sorrow you will, I hope,
resign yourself to His dear will."
Forget? How could Muriel forget? It had been so sweetly solemn. A vast
desire seized upon her then to serve, to be devoted, to be faithful.
Sometimes at the early service she had knelt in the dim chancel, and
thought the fluttering candle flames above the altar to be stirred by
the soft breathing of the Holy Ghost. Then, too, she had prayed with
passionate ardour for self-abnegation and for service. But last night
the desire had swept upon her with rushing, mighty wings, and she
had stood gazing into Mrs. Hancock's face with eloquent eyes, and
murmuring, "I will try. I will try."
Connie's strident voice swung Muriel back from the dream of life to
its business:
"Did you say that his name was Tommie? That's a nice name, isn't it?
Tommie, Tom! No, my sister isn't fond of babies."
"Oh, I am," protested Muriel, always ready to sacrifice her tastes to
other people's feelings. "Sometimes," she added, respectful to the
truth. Her appealing eye sought those of the baby's mother, who nodded
understandingly.
"Lor, bless you! I know. A bit scared of 'em, eh? You wait till you've
had eight on 'em like me. Then a bairn's neither here nor there as the
saying goes. Ah've got six an' buried two, dearie me, but Ivy's in
service now, so I'm not complaining. The Lord's will be done, as I
says to Mrs. Dalton, who's had fourteen. The Lord's will be done so
long as He don't overdo it."
"Of course," smiled Muriel shyly, feeling somehow that the answer was
inadequate.
Was that really the end of it all? Six alive and two buried, and the
Lord's will being done, while one's face grew florid and coarse, with
a network of purplish veins across the cheek, and days and nights
passed in an endless race to keep abreast with small domestic duties?
Life's not like that. Life's not like that, vowed Muriel. Fiercely she
fought this sense of inexorable doom for the salvation of her dreams.
Surely God made the world most beautiful, and set within it to delight
man's heart music, and lingering scents, and the clear light of dawn
through leafless trees. To teach man the holiness of law, He set
the stars to ride their courses; for patience, He showed the slow
fertility of earth; for wisdom, He granted an eternal hunger that
would snatch its secret from the lightning, and their riddle from the
tombs of ancient men. He gave man beauty of body, and delight in
swift, free, movement. He gave him friendship, and the joy of service.
And, lest these things should be too sweet, and cloy with sweetness,
He gave him danger, that man might know the glory of adventure. And,
lest man should grow weary in his wandering, God gave the last and
deepest mercy, Death.
Not quite in definite words, Muriel thought this, but somehow her
heart told her that Life was this joyous, regal journey. She was grown
up. The whole world lay before her. The great adventure, which just
must end right, was about to begin.
She raised her hand to feel the long plait falling between her narrow
shoulders. Soon there would be a cold feeling at the back of her neck.
Her hair would be twisted up below her hat. Did being grown up really
make such a difference?
The train jerked on. Beyond the window the flat, dun country slid
past wearily. Hot July fields, ripening into dusty yellow for the
harvest, paddocks dried to rusted fawn, hundreds and hundreds of
allotments, variegated as a patchwork quilt, speckled with crazy tool
sheds, seamed with straight dykes, splashed here and there with the
silver-green of cabbages, or the faded motley of a wilted border of
July flowers—this was the country that surrounded Marshington. After
the ringing splendor of the wind-swept wolds, the stale flatness of
the plain seemed doubly depressing.
But Muriel was not depressed. Marshington to her was not a select
residential suburb of Kingsport, compensating for its ugliness by
its respectability. It was the threshold of life, the gateway to a
brimming, lovely world, whence she might start upon a thousand strange
adventures. Its raw, red villas were transfigured. Its gardens glowed
to meet her. When she could see from the right-hand window the
elm-crowned hill of Miller's Rise, her excitement almost choked her.
She leaned back in her seat, half wishing that she need never rise,
but Connie darted to the window.
"I say, Mu, hadn't we better pull the bags down? Look out! There's
your tennis racket. Where's my book box? My book box, Mu? Good-bye,
Tommie, bye-bye! See, Muriel, he's ta-ing his little hand at us!
Isn't he an angel? Oh, there's Father! Cooee, father, cooee! We're
here! We're here!"
It really mattered. To have a belt that fastened trimly on to one's
new serge skirt, a safety-pin that under no circumstances would expose
itself to public view, a straw hat that sat jauntily (so long as it
was not too jaunty) upon one's piled up hair, all these things meant
more than just "being tidy."
Being grown up was puzzling. It seemed to make no difference at all in
most things, and then to matter frightfully in quite unexpected ways.
It meant, for instance, not so much the assumption of new duties as
the acceptance of new values.
Was she more stupid than other people, or did every one feel like this
at first? She was travelling in a land of which she only imperfectly
understood the language. Would she learn gradually, as one learnt
French at Heathcroft, or would the new significance of things suddenly
flash out at her, like the meaning of a cipher when one has found the
key?
"My dear child, you were never thinking of going to the Club with
that terrible handkerchief? You must have a linen one. Scent? No, I
think not for a young girl. It seems a little fast, I think, Beatrice,
don't you? And whatever happens, a girl in her first season must not
give people the impression that she is fast."
People. People. Until she had grown up, Muriel had been woefully
ignorant of how important People were. At Heathcroft, if you were
naughty, you offended God. At Marshington, if you were "queer" you
offended People. Perhaps the lesser offence was noticed by the lesser
deity, and yet the eye of the All-Seeing could hardly have been more
observant than the eye of People, who measured worth by the difference
between a cotton and a linen handkerchief.
Muriel was going for the first time to the Recreation Club since she
had left school. Connie, who, being still a schoolgirl, cared for none
of these things, walked beside her in sulky silence. She disliked the
Club, because, as a junior member, she could only sit on the Pavilion
steps to watch the sedate activities of her elders.
The Club being on the north-west side of Marshington, the Hammonds had
about half a mile to walk from Miller's Rise, a half-mile which Mrs.
Hammond improved by final injunctions to her daughter.
"The first time is so important, dear," she said.
By the time that they had reached the wire-topped gate, Muriel was in
a state of frigid and self-conscious terror. In a dream she followed
her mother's lilac-coloured linen across the wide grass path to the
Pavilion, wondering whether she ought to smile at Mrs. Lane, and
whether her hat was straight, and whether that terrible pin was
showing yet above her skirt. But at last she was seated safely on
the steps with Connie, while Mrs. Hammond was swept away by Mrs.
Cartwright for a game of croquet. She sat quite still, waiting for the
familiarity of the things she saw to remove the strangeness of her new
attitude towards them. At least she could play her old game of
Watching People, a game made doubly thrilling by the realization that
now she, too, was one of the grown-ups. That thought amused her a
little as she listened to Mrs. Marshall Gurney's rich, authoritative
voice in conversation with Colonel Cartwright. Absurd that Muriel
should now be grown up-like Colonel Cartwright! He was not a real
colonel, Mrs. Hammond had once said. He had made lots of money by
manufacturing soap. (Was soap more vulgar than sacks? Father made
sacks.) But he had taken advantage of the Volunteer Movement to win a
bloodless victory over the more exclusive circles of Marshington. Even
Mrs. Marshall Gurney, who would hardly otherwise have known the
creator of the Cartwright Complexion, loved to punctuate her comments
upon life by "Ah, Colonel," and "Oh, Colonel."
She was saying it now.
"Ah, Colonel, if it were merely a question of leaving the Parish."
"Deuced fine girl, though, Mrs. Marshall Gurney, deuced fine girl."
The colonel gallantly hid the traces of a Yorkshire accent behind a
barrage of military phrases. "We shall miss her at the Club. I must
say that I like to see her playing with young Neale. They make a
damned fine couple."
"Oh, there's nothing in that, I do assure you, Colonel. Take it from
me. He really takes no more notice of Delia than of any of the other
girls about here. Except, of course, that she has had rather more
practice at tennis than most of the others, and he likes a good game,
being such a splendid player. He plays for his college at Oxford, you
know. The other day, he told Phyllis——"
"Of course"—Mrs. Parker's gruff masculine voice cut across her
pleasant amble—"Godfrey Neale knew the Vaughans long before Mrs.
Neale condescended to associate with any of us."
Mrs. Marshall Gurney bridled. Muriel could hear offended dignity in
every creak of her basket chair.
"I hardly think so, Mrs. Parker," she said with majesty. "I used to
dine at the Weare Grange when Godfrey was quite a little boy. After
her trouble Alice Neale turned to me a great deal. Why, Godfrey and
Phyllis . . ."
"Godfrey Neale never looks at Phyllis M.G.," whispered Connie with
scorn. "Old Mrs. M.G. always makes out that they are bosom friends.
Doesn't he play beautifully, though?"
On the court to the right of the Pavilion, a vigorous set was in
progress. That tall splendid young man in the perfect flannels,
with his shirt just open enough to show his fine brown throat, and
the conquering air of the accomplished player in his sure, swift
movements, that was Godfrey Neale, really and in the flesh Godfrey
Neale, no longer a mythical but heroic figure, whose exploits, riches
and tastes were whispered breathlessly at Marshington tea-tables, or
described by the more imaginative with the assurance of intimacy.
That was Godfrey Neale. And Muriel had actually spoken to him. Once at
a dance, years and years ago, a party memorable for bitter shame,
Muriel had not only spoken but danced with Godfrey. He had been a
witness of her dire calamity. Did he remember?
"Well, I think it distinctly lacking in a sense of duty, that Delia
should go gallivanting off to college just now when her father's
getting old," the denunciation from the veranda continued.
"Old?" snapped Mrs. Parker, who was only forty-five herself. "I was
not thinking of his age, but that we should have to get a curate, and
I don't know who's going to pay for him. All that I do hope is that,
after all this, Delia will learn a little common politeness. I have
rarely met a more disagreeable young woman than she is now."
"Well, I can't see why we should have to pay for a curate in order
that the vicar's daughter might learn to be a lady," said Mrs.
Marshall Gurney, quite tartly for her. Usually her consciousness
of her own superiority helped her to regard with tolerance the
failures of other people. But Delia Vaughan, as the one person in
Marshington who refused to recognize that superiority, had committed
the unpardonable sin. She had done more than that. Mrs. Marshall
Gurney looked across the courts to where Phyllis, charming in her blue
dress, was playing languidly in a ladies' double while Delia flaunted
her intimacy with Godfrey Neale. Her heavy face hardened. "I can't
think where she gets it from. Her mother was a delightful woman, one
of the Meadows of Keswick, you know, and the dear vicar, even if he is
a little unpractical, is a scholar and a gentleman. I hear that his
last book has been a great success."
Mr. Vaughan wrote books. That was magic in itself for Muriel. A
Critical Survey of the Relation between Scutage and the Subsidy, his
latest triumph, did not sound frightfully thrilling, but it was a
manifestation of profound scholarship which left Marshington mystified
but complacent. Marshington liked to feel that its vicar's academic
distinction was in some way a tribute to its own intelligence.
"Jolly good shot!" cried Connie, as a cannon-ball service from Godfrey
Neale ricochetted along the grass and struck the step of the Pavilion
with a resounding thump. "Muriel, isn't his service wonderful?"
"Splendid," murmured Muriel absently, straining to catch further
scraps of gossip from the group behind her. She settled down again
just in time to hear Mrs. Parker remark acidly:
"Delia Vaughan is one of those girls who pride themselves that,
however objectionable they may be to your face, they are even more
offensive behind your back. She may call it being outspoken. I call
it sheer ill-breeding."
The set was over. Bobby Mason collected the balls, and Daisy Parker
fluttered round him apologetically. "I'm so sorry that I played so
badly."
It always seemed curious to Muriel that Mrs. Parker should have such a
fluffy daughter. She supposed that Daisy must have inherited her
femininity from her father. Mrs. Parker, with her caustic tongue and
masculine garments, looked more like the mother of Delia Vaughan.
Muriel shivered with delightful apprehension as the victors strolled
towards the steps. Life could never be dull while it contained beings
so romantically distinguished as Delia and Godfrey Neale.
She heard Godfrey say, with his charming little stammer, "Thanks
awfully, p—partner. That was a splendid game."
Marshington gloried in Godfrey's stammer. In him it appeared as a
gracious concession to human weakness, a sign that in spite of
Winchester, Oxford, and the Weare Grange, Godfrey was a man of like
infirmities to other men.
But not even the stammer impressed Delia Vaughan. That disagreeable
young woman dropped idly on to the Pavilion steps quite close to
Muriel and sat leaning forward, her racket against her knees.
"Godfrey, is there any tea?" she suggested. "And you need not think
that the splendid game was due to your good play, my friend. Your
first two services were abominable."
Fancy anyone daring to talk to Godfrey Neale like that!
Godfrey handed a tea-cup to Delia.
"Would you like some bread and butter, or shall I g—get you some of
those little round buns?"
"Have they sugar on top?" asked Delia.
"Sugar? No, currants, not sugar. There is only one bun with sugar on
it, and I want it for myself."
"Then you can't have it. How like a man to think that he has
an indisputable right to the best bun. Bring me the sugar one,
and—Godfrey, Miss Hammond hasn't had any tea yet. Have you, Miss
Hammond?"
"Oh, s—sorry," said Godfrey Neale, and handed to Muriel his other
cup.
Never before had Delia appeared to notice the existence of Muriel.
Godfrey had never spoken to her since the Party. And here was Delia
attending to her desire for tea, and Godfrey handing her his own cup!
The traitor blushes glowed in Muriel's face, and chased themselves
across her neck like the shadows of cloud across the tennis courts.
"Oh, I'm all right," she gasped. "Please keep that. It's your cup,
isn't it?" She could not bear this unendurable honour.
"You must have that. Godfrey can fetch another. He is growing fat and
lazy."
"Connie," desperately blundered Muriel, seeking as usual to cast the
responsibility of life's gifts on to someone else, "don't you want
this?"
"Godfrey, get two more cups," said Delia.
But Connie unexpectedly replied:
"No thank you, Miss Vaughan, Freddy Mason promised to bring me some."
"Did he?" whispered Muriel, under the sheltering stir of Godfrey's
departure back to the Pavilion.
"No, of course he didn't. But do you think I was going to have that
Vaughan girl showing off in front of me? You've got no pride, Muriel."
So after Godfrey Neale returned, Muriel, being without pride, drank
gratefully the cup of shame, while Connie thirsted proudly by her
side.
At that moment, Mrs. Hammond, returning from her croquet, appeared
round the corner of the Pavilion with Mrs. Cartwright. She saw Muriel
on the steps. She saw Godfrey Neale bending over her with a plate of
little cakes. Muriel, looking up, saw the sudden gleam that crossed
her face, like winter sunlight on a melting pool.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Neale. Home from Oxford, I suppose? Have you had
some good tennis?"
"I thought s—so, Mrs. Hammond, but my partner tells me that I have
been playing abominably," smiled Godfrey.
"Muriel, I hope that you haven't been scolding Mr. Neale," Muriel's
mother began.
Mrs. Cartwright's eye flashed balefully upon her. Between them, Muriel
was in despair. To say nothing was to act a lie, to let her mother go
on thinking that she had been honoured by Godfrey's partnership. He
would think that she was showing off. It was an unendurable position.
Muriel blushed; Godfrey Neale hesitated smilingly; Mrs. Cartwright
awaited in triumph the revelation of Mrs. Hammond's error. Delia's
clear voice cut the tension of the listeners:
"As a matter of fact, it was I who scolded Godfrey. He and Miss
Hammond are just about to take their revenge on me."
"Well, I hope that they are not too hard on you," smiled Mrs.
Hammond, and passed on to her triumph, while Muriel sat speechless at
the unexpected turn of events.
"Look here, Delia, is that a challenge?" asked Godfrey, too polite to
show surprise.
"Of course. Directly I have finished my tea. Go and find Dennis
Smallwood and tell him that he can play with me. He's asked me about
six times to-day, because he wants to practise for the tournament. Of
course this is if Miss Hammond has no objection," she added, inclining
her head towards the miserable Muriel who sat crumbling her bread and
butter, and wishing that she might plunge into her tea-cup and remain
engulfed there for ever.
The proximity of the gods is exhilarating, but when they descend from
their machines they are apt to be a little overwhelming.
"I—I'm so bad," stammered Muriel. "I've hardly played this year. I
shall spoil your game."
"If I had thought that you played well," remarked Delia imperturbably,
"do you think that I should have chosen you as a handicap for
Godfrey?"
After that, there could be no escape. Godfrey returned, followed by
the obliging Dennis. Delia stood up and flung off her jacket.
Muriel felt a little sick. These things simply did not happen. If
only she could be a success. If only she could by some miracle play
brilliantly. She tried to picture the delight on her mother's face. In
a dream she rose, nervously fingering her racket.
"Muriel!" came Connie's hoarse whisper. "Your safety-pin's showing at
the back!"
She clutched at her belt. "Excuse me," she murmured.
"Toss for courts, please," commanded Delia, ignoring her.
"Excuse me," she repeated, measuring the distance between the steps
and the cloak-room door.
"The sun ought to be fairly well behind the roof," said Delia.
"Rough."
"Smooth it is. You'll have to face the sun," cried Godfrey.
"Come along, Miss Hammond."
"But——" protested Muriel weakly, but too late. Dennis gathered up
the balls and sauntered leisurely with Delia across the court. Muriel
was left, her back and the terrible, indecent safety-pin exposed to
the full gaze of Social Marshington in the Pavilion. Once, she had a
nightmare that while shopping in Middle Street all her clothes fell
off. Even that had not been as embarrassing as this.
Godfrey was measuring the net.
"Bit higher, Smallwood. G—good thing that we won the toss, Miss
Hammond. The sun's awful."
A good thing that they won the toss! Muriel, hearing a burst of
laughter from the Pavilion, felt sure that somebody had seen the pin.
She gave a sickly smile.
The other courts were deserted. The whole of Marshington was there on
the veranda. The whole of Marshington, finishing its tea, had nothing
better to do than to watch the set. Muriel felt fifty eyes boring
holes into her humiliated back.
Her mother would see. Her mother would see the pin. And the first time
was so important.
She made a despairing effort to recapture her self-possession. At
Heathcroft she had been counted as quite a steady player. Well, now
she would show Marshington. She would show them that, in spite of the
safety-pin, she could at least play tennis. If Godfrey Neale liked
girls because they played well, then he should have no cause to
dislike her.
"Service!" called Delia.
Muriel steeled herself for effort.
The first ball came driving, clean and straight, across the court.
Muriel, dazed but optimistic, put out her racket. The ball sped on
unchecked and bounded against the Pavilion steps.
"Fifteen love!" called Dennis.
"Hard luck," consoled Godfrey.
"I'm so sorry," murmured Muriel.
Godfrey returned the second serve to Delia. She flashed it back to
him. Really, it wasn't nice for a girl to drive so straight and so
efficiently. Delia's tall, white figure became to Muriel something
malevolent and ruthless.
Godfrey returned the ball again, but Dennis at the net put out his
long arm and sent the ball crashing down at Muriel's feet, to rise and
soar far above her head, beyond her reach, beyond hope.
"Thirty love," called Dennis.
"My fault. I didn't place it well," said Godfrey.
"I am so sorry," pleaded Muriel.
Her time of trial came again. She stood up brave and stiff.
"Play!" called the vicar's daughter.
Muriel played.
She played with such goodwill that the ball rose into the cloud-flecked
sky.
"Forty love," called Dennis, polite but obdurate.
Godfrey Neale, infected perhaps by his partner's impotence, lost the
next point.
"Game," announced Dennis. "Neale, look to your laurels."
"Your service, partner." Godfrey smiled his charming smile. "I messed
up that last game fearfully."
Had he not seen that it was her fault? She could have kissed his hand
for his forbearance. Negotiating carefully, so as not to expose to him
at least the shameful pin, Muriel picked up the balls.
She could not decide whether to hold two or three. Which had she
generally done at Heathcroft? She could remember nothing. They seemed
suddenly to have grown large and slippery, heavier than cannon-balls.
Surely it must be bowls that she was playing, and not tennis?
She was losing her nerve. She felt it going, and she could not stop
it.
She would not lose her nerve.
She stepped back carefully, three paces from the line.
"Service," she called, in a voice that would not have roused a rabbit.
That, as it happened, was unimportant, for her first ball hit the net,
and her second, slow and careful to avoid mistakes, sailed gently into
the wrong court.
"Love fifteen," said Godfrey. "Bad luck, partner."
"So sorry," repeated Muriel mechanically.
She would serve the next one well.
"Play!" she shouted, and with all her strength she smote.
"Oh! Oh, Mr. Neale, I am so sorry!" For Muriel's ball, driven at
last fair across the court, had hit the unfortunate partner right
between his shoulders.
"My fault," he said gallantly. "I got in the way. I stopped a
s—splendid service too."
Entirely unnerved, she sent a ball so cautiously that it dropped
before it reached the net. Godfrey picked it up and brought it to her.
Crimson-faced now, she was forcing back her tears. He looked down at
her, kindly, carelessly, not even noticing her discomfort.
"I say," he said, "I'm awfully glad that you hit me just now. It's a
favourite trick of Delia's, but if she sees other people doing it
she'll stop, just from perversity. She's a bit like a cyclone when she
gets going, isn't she?"
The humorous twist of his smile, the appeal to her criticism of his
friend, the flattery of his attention, soothed Muriel's injured
vanity. She giggled. Then with a sudden burst of confidence, she
whispered:
"She's like the Day of Judgment, I think. I always remember all my
misdoings in her sight. I—I'm terrified of her."
He laughed. "So am I, to tell the honest truth. But she's a ripping
sport really, so for goodness' sake don't tell a soul."
They laughed, sharing a secret together, Muriel and Godfrey Neale.
With one sentence he had drawn her in to the magic circle of his
intimacy. She forgot her double faults and the safety-pin. She began
to play to redeem his game against the girl who terrified him.
Her next serve went straight and hard. In her amazement, Delia failed
to return it.
"Fifteen thirty," cried Godfrey. "Well done, partner. Do it again."
She did it again, not once nor twice. For the rest of the set, she
played with serious care, keeping out of the way for Godfrey's
smashing volleys. The air shimmered with dancing gold. Never before
shone grass so green. Never were balls so white. Never was the joy of
swift movement so exhilarating.
They won the next game and the next. Delia, half amused at the little
Hammond child's spirit, was playing badly.
From the Pavilion, Muriel heard Mrs. Waring's voice:
"Your little daughter plays a good game, Mrs. Hammond. You must be
pleased to have her at home now."
"Yes, it is delightful. Naturally I missed her dreadfully," answered
Muriel's mother.
Someone beyond the net was asking, "Shall we play it out or have
sudden death?"
"Sudden death," declared Delia, in the voice of a judge; but Muriel
did not care. Neither death, pestilence, nor famine could affright her
now.
"Game—and set," said Godfrey Neale. "By Jove, Miss Hammond, we must
have some more like that!"
Sunning herself in his smile, she walked back to the Pavilion.
Congratulatory smiles met her. For some reason, utterly unguessed by
her, she had become a heroine. That Delia's defeat could be sweeter
than honey to Marshington never occurred to her. She accepted the
glory of the moment as it came.
"I say, Mu"—she had forgotten Connie. She turned upon her now with
sudden irritation. But Connie had had no triumph. She was thirsty. She
was bored. She thought that Muriel had had enough success—"do you
know that your safety-pin's come undone, and you've got your blouse
all out behind?"
Muriel fled to the cloak-room.
The excitement of Muriel's début at the Club was not repeated. She
certainly went often enough, and once or twice Godfrey Neale spoke to
her. She did not, however, play with him again, but sat for most
afternoons on the steps of the Pavilion until asked to join a Ladies'
Double with Nancy Cartwright and Sybil Mason and poor Rosie Harpur,
who had also just left school, and who could play tennis no better
than she danced. Then the tennis season closed, and Connie returned
to school, and Muriel learnt how to order joints from the butcher's
and stores from the grocer's, and passed cakes at her mother's
tea-parties, and helped her with the accounts for the Mother's Union
and the G.F.S., and wondered when her real Life was going to begin.
Then came November and the Lord Mayor's dance, and Muriel woke up next
morning to remember that she had come out.
It would all have been wonderful, if only her hair had kept tidy. Next
morning she sat before her looking-glass and wrestled with aching arms
to cure her hair of its irresistible tendency to fall in heavy locks
upon her shoulders. It had spoilt everything, the band, the supper,
the confused medley of names upon her programme. From her first ball,
Muriel brought home only the memory of a scrambling rush to the
cloak-room, and of her mother's worried face bending above hers in the
long mirror.
She rested her chin on her hands and gazed at her thin, solemn face in
the glass, wondering whether she was really very plain, or whether she
would improve with time, as Mrs. Cartwright said that Adelaide had
done.
She was so much absorbed by these reflections that she did not at
first hear Annie, the housemaid, who knocked and came straight in with
the ostentatious familiarity of the old servant.
"Miss Muriel, a telegram for you."
"For me?" People were not in the habit of sending telegrams to Muriel.
She was not that kind of person.
"It's addressed to Muriel Hammond," remarked Annie stolidly. She, too,
found something unbecoming in the sending of telegrams to Miss Muriel.
Muriel took the envelope and fingered it. "Where's Mother?" she asked
slowly.
"Mrs. Hammond's in the kitchen."
"Oh."
For a moment, Muriel's training fought with her curiosity. Then her
training conquered. She seized her rope of hair, twisted it lightly
round her head, and fled downstairs with the unopened envelope.
Mrs. Hammond was alone in the kitchen writing up the menu for the day.
She raised her eyebrows at Muriel's flying entrance.
"Well, dear? Oh, Muriel, what have you been doing to your hair?"
"Doing it. Oh, Mother, there's a telegram."
"For me, dear?"
"No. It's for me." She hesitated, still afraid lest her mother should
consider the receipt of telegrams by her improper.
To her surprise, Mrs. Hammond took it quite calmly.
"Well, Muriel, who is it from?"
Muriel opened the envelope and read: "Can you have me week or longer
harribels have measles Felix not due England till 24th no money to go
Italy Duquesne."
She read it to herself. She read it aloud to her mother. She could not
believe her eyes.
"What does it mean?" asked Mrs. Hammond.
Muriel explained. "It's Clare, Clare Duquesne. You remember, my great
friend at Heathcroft, at least she wasn't exactly my friend, but I
always wanted her to be. She went to Germany to learn singing."
"Yes, but I don't understand. Does she want to come here?"
"Well—I—she—I think. It looks as though she had been going to stay
with the Harribels, and they had measles."
"But, who is Félix?"
"Félix is her father, Félix Duquesne, you know, the writer; he writes
in French, and it's Clare's mother who insists that he shall be called
Félix because 'Mother' and 'Father' make her feel so old and when you
are on the stage you have to keep young because of the dear public,"
Muriel explained, feeling that somehow she was not being as clear as
she might have wished.
"But, my dear child, you can't expect her to come here on her own
invitation like this at a moment's notice. I never heard of such a
thing. And uninvited. Really, I don't know what girls are coming to."
"But I did say—I mean I didn't ever think that she'd come, only I did
say that I knew we should be pleased to see her. You see——"
Mrs. Hammond frowned. "Now Muriel, this is really too bad of you.
Can't you see what a position you put me into? You know how much I
want you to have the things that you like, and I should have been glad
enough to let you have a school friend to stay at some proper time,
but you know that Father doesn't like just anyone, and just now——"
"Well, mother, of course if we can't have her—I mean if it's
inconvenient——"
Hope died from Muriel's grey eyes. Four months at home had taught
her that argument, when not wicked, was futile. It meant not just
difference of opinion, but a way of making things difficult for Mrs.
Hammond, who had to see that the house ran smoothly.
"Well, dear, of course you must see how impossible it all is. I don't
know anything about this girl. I'm very busy just now, and surely she
must have other friends in England? It's a queer name. Is she French
or something?"
"Half French, half Irish, I think. I don't think that she has any
relatives in England. The nearest that I know of are the Powells at
Eppleford in Donegal." Muriel's voice was sullen with resignation. She
had turned from her mother and stood, smoothing out the creases from
the telegram, while an enchanting vision of Clare faded into the limbo
of impossibilities.
"Powells, at Eppleford? Surely, where have I heard that? Why, is this
the girl of whom Mrs. Hancock spoke, Lord Powell's niece?"
"Yes. Did she tell you about her?" sighed Muriel, still without hope
and rather wishing that her mother would close a painful conversation.
She had been good. She had not pressed Clare's claims. For her
mother's sake, no one should ever know how bitter a disappointment she
had swallowed down, there by the kitchen table.
"But, dear, you never told me that she was a particular friend of
yours. I thought that that Janet somebody or other——"
"Oh, Clare wasn't exactly my friend." These things could not be
explained even to somebody as sweet and beautiful as Muriel's mother.
"She was so lovely and so popular. She knew all the—all the people I
didn't know."
In spite of her resolute stoicism, Muriel gulped. Her mother looked
sharply at her averted face.
"You really want her so much, then?"
"Oh, mother!"
"Well, I must talk to your father. It just might be arranged. But I do
wish that you had told me about this before, dear. You make things so
difficult for me. Why didn't you tell me, dear?"
"There didn't seem to be anything to tell until now," said Muriel.
"I thought that she had quite forgotten me. She never answered my
letters; I thought that she hadn't liked me much."
"Dear, you mustn't be so—so backward. People will take you at your
own valuation, you know, and there is nothing more objectionable than
the pride that apes humility. Now run away. Have you done the flowers
yet? I thought not. And for goodness' sake tidy your hair, and tell me
when your father comes in."
"Then—then, will you ask him?"
"Yes, yes, I'll ask him, though I can't say what—— Why, my dear
child! What? Now don't crush my dress!"
For Muriel had flung her arms round her mother's waist in an ecstasy
of gratitude for her sympathetic understanding.
Because he wanted to drive the new chestnut mare, Mr. Hammond chose to
go to the station to meet Clare. Muriel could come too if she liked,
but the real reason was the mare. If there was one thing that Mr.
Hammond prided himself upon more than another, it was his knowledge of
horseflesh. The new mare was delicately perfect, from aristocratic
shoulder to quivering nostril. A network of soft veins trembled
beneath the shining velvet of her neck.
Muriel, terrified lest they should arrive too late, and always nervous
in the high dog-cart, watched her father draw the lash of the whip
lightly across the mare's back, playing it subtly as an angler plays
a fly. He flirted with the mare as another man might have flirted with
a pretty girl, chuckling because she was so daintily feminine and
capricious. He had forgotten Muriel and Clare.
"Father," she spoke softly, being more than a little afraid of him,
"we'll never be there in time." She watched for the curling smoke
between the chimneys.
"By Jove, what time did you say that your friend's train arrived?"
"3.45."
"Well, now, if I hadn't had to stop to tell Tom Bannister about that
order, we might just have done it. Maybe train'll be late."
But the train was not late, as trains never are except when you
need them to be punctual. A little stream of Marshington residents
had trickled out of the wicket-gate and separated up and down the
straggling length of Middle Street before Muriel and her father drew
up in the station yard. A shudder of apprehension stirred Muriel, who
for one awful moment feared lest Clare should never have arrived, or
lest, having arrived, she should have been offended that nobody was
there to meet her. How like Father not to bother just because he
thought Clare a child!
But when they appeared in the station, there at the end of the
platform, surrounded by three suit-cases, a roll of rugs, a side-saddle,
a hat box, a long, thin dachshund on a lead, and all the porters,
stood Clare. She turned and saw them. She came to meet them. More
beautiful and radiant than ever, in a grey travelling cloak, and a
little grey toque with a scarlet quill, she hurried forward with
outstretched hands to greet them, the dimples flickering in her cheek.
"You are Mr. Hammond, I am sure? But how good of you to come yourself
to meet me!" Her small suède glove slipped into his capacious paw
and rested there a moment longer than was necessary, while she smiled
up at him, fearless, friendly, the least little bit in the world
amused. He was such an enormous father for funny little Muriel
Hammond! Muriel saw her father's big red face, first grave, then
surprised, then broadening out into a delighted smile. His blue eyes
twinkled.
"Well, now, Miss Duquesne, a nice sort o' welcome we gave you leaving
you like this all alone on the platform." He winked gaily at the
surrounding porters.
Muriel shrank back, a little hurt. They had greeted one another like
old friends, as though she did not count.
Then Clare saw her. "Muriel, my dear! How perfectly ripping to see
you again! My dear, it is good of you to have me. Behold me, a lone
creature lost in London, and the Harribels, with whom I was to stay,
all over measles and things."
"Very glad to have you, Miss Duquesne." Mr. Hammond rubbed a stiff
hand across his chin, a sure sign, as Muriel knew, that he was
pleased. "Now then, what about all this luggage, eh?"
Clare explained volubly. "Oh, I'm frightfully sorry, but, you see, I
had to bring all my things from Germany because I don't know when I'm
going back, and the side-saddle is because Jimmie Powell promised me a
mount when I go to Ireland. And Fritz was a most embarrassing gift
from a student. I was in such a hurry that I couldn't make up my mind
what to do with him, so I brought him all the way through the customs
and everything rolled up in the rugs, with my umbrellas. He hated it,
and I don't really care for him, and if there's a lost dogs' home
here, for goodness' sake let me dispose of him painlessly. Down, my
friend, down!"
"Oh, he's not a bad little tyke," commented Mr. Hammond with the eye
of a connoisseur. "But it's all this other stuff I'm thinking about.
Look here, Miss Duquesne, can you manage to-night with one of these
bag things and have the rest of the caboodle sent up to-morrow? My
man's sick or I'd have him come down for 'em now."
"Of course I'll manage. Only, wait a minute." Clare stood meditating
while the youngest porter wrestled valiantly with the dachshund, and
the others gazed with tolerant amusement at the eccentricities of this
young lady, who at least seemed to be worth a good tip. "Now the point
is," continued Clare, looking as though for enlightenment at the
youngest porter, "my night things are in that bag, but my yellow
dress, which I must wear this evening, is in this trunk."
Muriel was about to say, "Oh, don't trouble about that, because we
don't change at night," when she remembered that while Lord Powell's
niece was staying at Miller's Rise they were to have late dinner.
"I know," cried Clare. "A sudden inspiration. Can you wait just two
minutes? I'll take the dress from the trunk and put it into the case,
and then we'll be all right. Yes, go on holding the dog, please.
Muriel, chérie, take my gloves. Mr. Hammond, will you be an angel
and undo these straps for me?"
Muriel gasped horror-stricken. Even Clare could surely not take these
liberties with impunity. But Mr. Hammond seemed to have forgotten
the new mare and to be reconciled to his novel rôle of angel. He
knelt upon the platform, breathing heavily as he tugged at straps,
unfastened locks, and chuckled to himself while Clare dived into a
foam of tissue paper, billowing chiffon and frothing lace.
"There, just hold that a minute." Clare thrust a tray full of gossamer
lingerie into the arms of the eldest porter, while she herself shook
out the cloudy folds of primrose chiffon.
It must have been this that proved too much for the patience of Fritz.
A fur-lined slipper fell from the tray, its fluffiness doubtless
reminiscent of happy days of rabbiting. With a bound he broke from
the hold of the youngest porter. A streak of yellow shot along the
platform. The fur-lined slipper vanished, Mr. Hammond dropped the lid
of the case, and the dachshund, free at last, forgot the tedium of his
late experience.
Clare, regardless of her laden arms, started in pursuit. Muriel
followed. Fritz, evading the ticket collector, dived under the
bookstall, then out again towards the wicket-gate just as a tall,
tweed-clad figure strolled leisurely on to the platform.
"Fritz!" cried Clare. "Catch him, catch him!"
A long arm shot down. A sudden squawk announced the breaking of
Teutonic dreams of liberty, and Clare stood, her arms full of tissue
paper, a filmy nightdress, a single bedroom slipper, face to face with
Godfrey Neale.
Solemnly he held out to her a mangled slipper and an armful of
protesting, elongated dachshund.
"I think that these are yours," he said.
For a moment Muriel saw them stand in silence. Then, simultaneously,
they broke out into uncontrollable laughter.
"Of course, if it had been your dog, Mu, it would have run into the
curate," Connie observed cuttingly.
"But I haven't got a dog," sighed Muriel.
Connie looked at her with pity. Really there were times when she
wondered whether Muriel was quite all there.
Mumps at Heathcroft had conspired with measles in London to throw
Connie once again into Clare's company. School had broken up early,
and Connie arrived at Miller's Rise two days after Clare's spectacular
descent upon her family. She failed to appreciate the honour.
"Never in my life did I see any one make so much fuss of a girl.
You're all daft. Mother's as set up as a pouter pigeon because she's
got Lord Powell's niece staying here, and Mrs. Neale brings Godfrey at
last to call—if you can say that it was a call. I wouldn't stand this
eleventh hour patronage from a duchess, let alone just Mrs. Neale, and
every one knows that she's crazy anyway. And look at Father! The way
he goes on as though he'd never seen a girl before."
"Connie, don't be horrid."
"Horrid yourself. You see if I'm not right. And Mother can't stand her
really, only she won't say anything before she's had a chance to show
her off to the rest of Marshington."
"That isn't true. You're being simply horrid because you think it's
clever, and you're jealous of Clare because Father takes a lot of
notice of her. It's only because she's a visitor. You're always so
unreasonable."
"Wait till she's been in the house a bit longer, and you'll see who's
unreasonable."
Muriel turned away and left Connie to her dark prophecies. There
were times when her younger sister exasperated her by a shrewd
interpretation of their parents' motives which Muriel rejected as both
unpleasant and untrue. Connie had no business to go about saying nasty
things about people, just to pretend that she knew more about Life
than Muriel who was grown up.
That conversation took place the day before Mrs. Hammond opened her
campaign. She was sitting before the dressing-table in her room,
finishing her morning toilet. She knew that in her dressing-jacket,
with her plump arms bare from the elbow, she looked girlish and very
charming. The silver in her hair gleamed like moonlight rather than
Time's theft of colour. She rather liked to see it spread softly
about her shoulders before she coiled it high upon her head.
From the dressing-room she could hear her husband whistling through
his teeth, as a stable boy whistles when he grooms a horse. Through
the open door she could see him standing before his shaving-glass,
brushing vigorously his wiry thatch of hair.
Mrs. Hammond set down her own brush and called softly:
"Arthur!"
The whistling stopped. Mr. Hammond put down his brushes and began to
flex and unflex his arms, then ran his hands down the firm line from
his arm-pits to his thighs.
"Hardly an ounce of spare flesh, by gosh," he remarked irrelevantly.
"Few chaps o' my age could say the same thing. Have you seen Ted
Hobson? great coarse-looking, over-fed fellow, he's grown. Lifts his
elbow a bit too often they say. Nothing like that for——"
"Arthur, you know I think that while Clare is here we ought to give a
dinner-party."
"Of course I don't object to a moderate tipple myself——"
A little pucker of thought appeared on Mrs. Hammond's forehead. "I
was thinking of just a few people, the Marshall Gurneys perhaps, and
Colonel Cartwright, and Mr. Vaughan now that Delia's away. Arthur! Are
you listening?"
"Yes, yes, my dear. Let 'em all come. Have a dozen dinner-parties for
all I care."
"And the Neales, Arthur. I returned her call yesterday, but she was
out with those everlasting dogs."
"Knows a good dog, the old lady. Yes, go ahead. Ask the Neales. Ask
the Prince of Wales. Ask the whole blooming royal family."
"Arthur, I do wish that you would take this seriously. You know
perfectly well that it's as much your duty as mine to do what you can
for the girls."
"Oho! It's the girls, is it? And what do you expect to get for them
out of all this fussification, eh?" He stood in the doorway now
between the two rooms, smiling down at her, his eyes twinkling with
amusement. "Are you going to marry Connie off to the vicar?"
"You needn't pretend to be stupid when you aren't," snapped Mrs.
Hammond. When she saw him in a good temper she could sometimes take a
holiday from her habitual patience.
She began to gather up her rings, and slip them one after the other on
to her white fingers. Here was the diamond half-hoop, her engagement
ring. Arthur had been generous but unoriginal. Here was the emerald
that he had bought during their honeymoon. Here, the ruby set between
two splendid pearls that he had bought her after that affair. She
twisted it round on her finger reflectively. Her gentle face hardened.
From the dressing-room she could hear her husband jingling pencils,
pennies and his watch, as he transferred them from the chest to his
pockets. "Does he still keep her photograph in his watch case?" she
wondered. That would be like Arthur, to repent extravagantly, and then
to keep one little trace of his misdeed to sigh over.
Mrs. Hammond was not a sentimentalist. She clapped the ruby ring down
on top of the emerald and diamond, and smiled faintly without too much
bitterness as she heard the faint whirring sound of Arthur winding up
his watch. It was his inevitable prelude to descent for breakfast.
"You'll order some more Burgundy, Arthur, won't you?"
"Better have a few bottles of fizz up while we're about it, hadn't
we?" Mr. Hammond was dressed and disposed to take the world and the
dinner-party more seriously. Like many middle-aged men he laid aside
maturity with his clothes, and looked like a schoolboy in pyjamas,
feeling like one too.
"Not champagne, I think, Arthur. We don't want to be thought
ostentatious. Things must be right."
Reluctantly he agreed. Though his taste in parties differed from hers,
he had to admit that in these things she was right. Although he
chaffed her, he paid this tribute of acknowledgment to the long years
of patient sowing of the social ground in Marshington until now at
last the Neales were ripe for harvest.
Half amused at the object of her ambition, pleased to allow her to
please herself if that did not interfere with his comfort, proud that
she was successful in the quest that she had undertaken, Arthur
Hammond went downstairs to order some more of the best Burgundy.
Dinner was over. It had succeeded so far beyond Mrs. Hammond's wildest
dreams. Mrs. Neale had talked dogs and horses with Mr. Hammond, and
Clare had been effectively subdued between Colonel Cartwright and the
curate. The colonel himself had lent a distinguished air of political
interest to the party, proving that these "confounded Radicals will be
the death of the country, Mrs. Hammond. All this talk of Home Rule and
Insurance and whatnot. What I say is that the people were happy enough
before Lloyd George began to give 'em eightpennyworth of conceit of
themselves." Mrs. Marshall Gurney, whose efforts to disengage Godfrey
Neale's attention from Muriel had been unavailing, had been forced to
console herself with the admirable saddle of mutton and the carnations
from Kingsport, ninepence each. And the soufflé had been a dream,
and Connie looked quite nice in her blue dress, and, best of all,
something had happened to Muriel to startle her out of her usual dumb
nervousness. Godfrey Neale really seemed to be quite taken by her. Why
not? Mrs. Hammond looking down the charmingly appointed table smiled
to herself. Why not, indeed, why not?
Afterwards, when the men reappeared from their cigars and excellent
port, there was music in the drawing-room. As he entered, Godfrey
Neale looked hurriedly round the room for Clare Duquesne. He was
uneasy and puzzled. All through the interminable dinner he had
searched across the barrier of flowers for Clare's charming face, but
the ninepenny carnations had blocked his view. Once he heard her
laugh, full-throated and merry. And all the time Muriel's prim little
voice had told him tale after tale of Clare at school, Clare on the
Continent, Clare galloping wildly along the sands at Hardrascliffe on
a rough hackney, after a mad Saturday outing with a school friend's
brother. Godfrey felt somehow that he would not have liked that
brother, but he listened to the tales, greedy for more. Muriel,
delighted to find in a man such unexpected interest and sympathy,
unlocked to him the doors of her mind, and poured forth all the
wistful hero-worship hitherto suppressed for fear of ridicule.
Godfrey, completely oblivious of her, sunned himself in the wonder of
Clare's swift vitality. Only when Muriel had left the past for the
future did he check her with abrupt, almost discourteous questioning,
afflicted suddenly again with his worst kind of stammering. She had
faltered then, played with her fork, and looked up at him with wide,
wondering eyes. So, for a moment, he had seen, not Clare, but Muriel,
facing her as for the first time and noticing her solemn childish
face, her mobile mouth, and the questioning trustfulness of her slow,
quiet glance.
In a moment she had answered his question, and each lost the sense of
the other in the concentration of their thoughts on Clare.
At first, on looking round the drawing-room, he did not see her;
then she became clear to him, withdrawn from the circle round the
fireplace, sitting with head erect against a heavy background of dark
curtains. The gloom of the unlit window-bay had quenched the glowing
crimson of her dress, but its folds of still brocade flowed round her
like the drapery in a Pre-Renaissance drawing. The dress covered her
arms, but left her shoulders bare, so that her clasped hands lay
together on her lap like a pale flower, and the faint glimmer of her
perfect shoulders moved him to sudden anger against the shadow that
robbed him of the purity of their line.
Why did she wear that queer outrageous dress? Why had she never spoken
to him before dinner, but only smiled demurely as she bowed? What
right had she to come straight from Ostend and Naples to Marshington,
where the girls were all dull and stiff? Besides, she was fast. That
ridiculous exhibition at the station. That was just the sort of thing
that Godfrey hated. And his mother disliked her, though as usual she
said nothing, and—well, altogether Godfrey felt that he had good
reason to be angry with Clare Duquesne.
He pushed his way through the chairs to the window seat, disregarding
Mrs. Hammond's gentle invitation and Phyllis Marshall Gurney's pallid
smile. He sat down on the narrow window seat beside her, making
himself as uncomfortable as possible out of spite against her. There
was a wretched draught.
"Are you going to sing, Miss Duquesne?" he asked.
His usually friendly voice bristled with his grievance.
Clare looked up at him in surprise. "Who told you that I sang?"
"Miss Hammond told me during dinner that you are going to be a
professional singer. Are you?"
Clare laughed, still sitting upright with her hands lying on her
wine-red dress. He could only see the profile of her face.
"That is as may be. It is not so easy as I had thought to become a
great prima donna. They want me to work. I detest working." She
shrugged her bare, smooth shoulders. "Life is too short for spending
its best years in stuffy German parlours singing scales that no one
but an old professor wants to hear." Suddenly she turned upon him her
full loveliness. "Why do you ask?"
"I—I——" Godfrey Neale himself was at a loss for words, feeling
gauche as any country bumpkin.
"Do you disapprove?" Clare continued cheerfully.
"Yes," he said, unreasoningly rude. "I do. Decidedly. You, singing for
the public, for just any ass——"
She opened her dark eyes very wide. "But why not? Not all the public
are asses. Besides, my mother does it. She acts."
"Oh, I did—didn't mean that. I mean, it seems somehow such a waste."
"Waste? Comme vous êtes drôle! Ils sont tous fous, les anglais." She
laughed again, teasing him, knowing how much he hated for her to speak
French, partly because it was a foreign language, partly because he
dreaded more than anything in the world that she should make a fool of
him. "Why a waste? Is it not better to sing for the many than for the
few?"
"No, no. It is not." He fumbled indignantly with his ideas, only
knowing that he could not bear the thought of her, standing on show
for any fool to gape at, any ill-bred, foreign fool, greasy Germans,
nincompoop Frenchmen, Italians—ugh!
"How very English you are, Mr. Neale. That proprietary instinct. You
want everything for yourself, land, ladies, music. You would like to
put up a notice on me like you put up on your woods. 'Trespassers will
be prosecuted.'"
"When did you see my woods?"
"Hush, I want to hear Mr. Smallwood sing."
Godfrey could not sing. He disliked fellows who chirruped inanely in
drawing-rooms; but he had to sit there, consoling himself by watching
Clare's intent, uplifted face.
"O flower of all the world, O flower of all,
I see thee in my garden and I dare
To love thee, and though my deserts be small,
Thou art the only flower I would wear."
"O flower of all the world," thought Godfrey, seeing only Clare's
glowing dress, her hands, her perfect arms.
"I dare to love thee," triumphed Dennis Smallwood's pleasant baritone
voice.
Clare Duquesne was going back to Germany, to flirt with dapper little
German officers. A good thing that she was going. Godfrey knew her
type.
"A rotten song, that, isn't it?" he growled. "Smallwood plays a decent
game of tennis. I wish that he'd stick to it."
"He sings rather well. Ah! Mon Dieu!"
"What is it?" Godfrey was all solicitude.
"Nothing. Except that our friend Connie is going to sing, and I—I
have heard her before."
Her whisper soothed the young man's ruffled feelings. He did what all
the evening he had been intending not to do. This connection with the
Hammond ménage had gone far enough. He said:
"Look here, do you ever care to ride, Miss Duquesne?"
"When I have a mount," she answered.
"When the birds go north again!" shrilled Connie.
"I wondered if perhaps, I've got rather a jolly little mare, a perfect
lady's hack. My mother was going to ride her, but she hasn't been
awfully fit, and hasn't been riding much. It would be a perfect
charity if you would be good enough to exercise her. If you could come
up one afternoon."
Clare smiled demurely. "Well, if Mrs. Hammond does not object, we
might all come up one afternoon."
"All?"
"Well, you can hardly expect me to go alone, surely?"
He saw that it was not possible, but a new scheme was at work in his
mind.
"Look here, I'll get the mater to ask up the Hammond girls one
afternoon next week, if you'll sing to us to-night."
Clare frowned. "You see," she confided, "I've received not exactly
orders but intimations that I am to keep in the background to-night.
I'll sing when I go to tea with your mother."
"You'll sing to-night," said Godfrey. He was determined now that she
should do so, not so much because he wanted to hear her, as because he
wanted her to do something just because he willed it. "Just wait until
Connie has sent those birds north again, and then you shall sing."
She shook her head, but as Connie left the piano, Godfrey rose.
"Mrs. Hammond," he said, "we have had a great stroke of luck. I have
persuaded Miss Duquesne to sing."
So Mrs. Hammond had to be delighted, and Clare followed Muriel to the
piano, and whispered to her. Muriel nodded once or twice, a frown of
responsibility upon her face. She was a good accompanist, and had
played for Clare many times at Heathcroft.
Mr. Hammond, leaning back in his chair, winked at Colonel Cartwright.
"Now we shall have a treat," he said.
Muriel began to play. Her soft dress faded into the white walls of the
room. Her hair was a brooding shadow above her earnest face. But about
Clare was nothing pale nor shadowy. Her vivid dress had caught all
light and colour from the room, and held them, glowing with barbaric
splendour. She stood, not stooping over her music like the Marshington
young ladies, but by herself in front of the piano, her head lifted
proudly with the triumphant power of undaunted youth.
The accompaniment paused. The last chord hung for a moment poised
above the waiting stillness. Across the room Clare looked full into
the expectant face of Godfrey Neale.
Then she sang.
She had chosen Mignon's song, and at first she sang plaintively the
cry of the lost maiden. But, at the end of the verse, with the
sweeping melody of the refrain, she released the full power of her
voice.
"Kennst du es wohl? Dahin! Dahin!
Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn."
Mrs. Hammond pulled herself together. She could not understand German.
Neither, she was thankful to reflect, could Arthur or the girls; but
of one thing she was certain. No one could have sung with such
impassioned appeal a song that was completely proper.
She decided that Clare must sing no more.
Directly the song was over, she rose amid the spontaneous applause
that for once replaced the conventional thanks of Marshington "musical
at homes."
"Thank you so much, Clare, dear. That was very nice. And how clever of
you to remember all that German by heart. You must have worked very
hard. And now, Arthur, did you say that you were going to carry the
colonel and Mr. Neale off to bridge? Mr. Vaughan, you play, don't
you?"
So Godfrey heard Clare sing no more, but at the end of the evening,
when the company met again to say good-bye, she smiled up at him.
"Well," she said, "and when are we coming to tea?"
All the way home in his mother's stuffy little brougham, Godfrey
forgot Clare and talked about the roof to be repaired on the
Thaskholme cottages, and the agent at Mardlehammar; but as he ran up
the shallow steps of the Weare Grange he suddenly saw Clare standing,
the delicate contour of her face outlined against the curtain, her
provocative smile teasing him.
"Damned pretty little minx," he told himself, determined that he would
not be caught so soon. And, as he undressed, the song which he found
himself whistling, with a cheerful disregard for time or tune, was not
Clare's song, but Dennis Smallwood's.
"O flower of all the world, O flower of all."
During the morning, Connie had hoped that it would rain; but wind and
weather never favoured her. She walked mutinously along the muddy
road, splashing in and out of puddles in the vain hope that she might
thus leave her mark upon Clare's polished boots. How exactly like
Clare, to be walking booted and habited along the road to the Weare
Grange to ride with Godfrey Neale, while Connie, who adored horses,
was only going to tea with his mother.
"And she's mad," reflected Connie bitterly.
"It was nice of him to send for the saddle," remarked Clare. "I
thought that I should have to walk there carrying it on my head like
the ladies walk in Palestine."
"What?" said Connie wearily. "Have you been there too?"
Muriel laughed nervously. It was difficult to keep the peace.
"We've never been allowed to ride since Father's accident," she
said. "Years ago he let his favourite horse down on the road from
Kepplethorpe market. It was badly hurt, I think, and he had two ribs
broken. But he was frightfully angry with it for failing him, so he
never said anything to anyone, though he must have been in great
pain. He just walked back to the house and got his gun, and went back
and shot it. He fainted afterwards, and was brought home and was
frightfully ill for ages, and when he got better he sold all his
hunters and wouldn't let any of us ride again. But he loves driving."
"Ah, poor Mr. Hammond," murmured Clare, but without much interest, for
the road had turned, and to the right the hedge was broken by tall
gates of delicately wrought ironwork, as fragile in appearance and
as strong in reality as the barrier that enclosed the Neales from
Marshington. Beyond the gates, half a mile of straight, shining road
led to the grey square house. There was no park, but in the fields
between the house and highway fine elms and chestnuts spread their
naked boughs above the great Weare cattle, grazing with slow serenity
on the vivid grass.
"So this is the Weare Grange," observed Clare. "What a delightful
house! But, Dieu, how dull to live here all the year round."
But to Muriel the place was magic. She could not believe that real
people moved behind those solemn windows. The still winter day, the
cold light of the pale sun, the mouldering stonework of the terrace,
were all part of a waking dream. A thrush, starting suddenly from a
wet bough, shook down the rain-drops on to her face. She woke from her
dream. This was the Weare Grange. She and Connie and Clare were going
there to tea. This was the amazing adventure which the gods had
brought her.
She did hope that Connie would behave.
The bell of the Weare Grange was one of the most powerful defences of
that social fortress. It had a round, rusty head, and a long, stringy
neck. Muriel put up her hand (and incidentally her new glove) and
pulled. There was a harsh screeching sound. The neck extended three
good inches from the wall. She let it go. Nothing happened. She pulled
again. No faintest tinkle reached her ears.
"Let me try," said Connie.
"No, no, it may have rung."
They waited on the shallow steps, smudged with bird droppings and the
multitudinous paw-marks of the dogs. Muriel's courage began to trickle
away more rapidly than it had come. No wonder that only the Marshall
Gurneys from all Marshington had dared to call upon the Neales. That
bell was in itself a social snub.
"You're no good. Let me try," urged Connie. She thrust Muriel aside,
pressing her knee against the wall, and tugged at the bell with both
hands. A grinding, screeching sound, followed by a far-off tinkle,
rewarded her just as a cheerful-faced young manservant appeared in
answer to Muriel's second ring.
He took Muriel unprepared.
"Er—er—is Mrs. Neale at home?"
There was a blurred vision of vast hall, a confusion of shy greetings,
the departure of Godfrey and Clare to the stables, and the fortress
was entered.
"Once we really get started it will be easier," Muriel told herself.
It was not so. Mrs. Neale had dragged herself away from her kennels
and rabbit-hutches at her son's request, but even her devotion to him
could not make her genial to the Hammond girls. She disliked the whole
affair, and only the knowledge that she could not stop it had brought
her to face Muriel and Connie, seated in her great eighteenth-century
drawing-room, across the wreckage of her afternoon.
She attacked Muriel first.
"Do you ride too?" she asked.
"No, I'm afraid I don't."
"I often used to meet your father with the Weare Valley hounds."
Muriel nodded dumbly.
There was a pause.
"Your sister ride?"
Connie made no answer. She was looking through the long windows, from
which she could see Clare and Godfrey cantering side by side along the
level green of the wet grass.
Mrs. Neale turned again to Muriel.
"You like dogs?"
"Not very much."
"Cats?" flashed Mrs. Neale.
"Fairly, when they're clean."
A withering glance. "Perhaps you like goldfish?"
"Fairly. Yes. I mean I do rather," confessed the hapless Muriel.
Enchanted castles are apt to conceal an ogress or two. Mrs. Neale felt
disposed to let the Weare Grange live up to its reputation. Between
her abrupt boredom and Muriel's timidity, the afternoon appeared
interminable to Connie. She hated the white and draughty drawing-room.
She hated the small gilt clock ticking in the corner. She hated
the mixture of ceremony and discomfort, of wealth and squalor that
characterized the house shared by Godfrey and his mother. The place
seemed to be getting at her, making her feel vulgar and schoolgirlish.
The thought of Clare and Godfrey riding together in the winter
sunshine maddened her with jealousy.
But it was Muriel who relieved the situation.
After a longer pause than ever, she looked round the room and saw a
single photograph on a table near the fire-place.
"Is that Mr. Neale when he was a little boy?" she asked in desperation.
That was enough for Mrs. Neale. Upon one subject alone could she
be trusted to break her habitual silence, and Muriel's ingenuous
questioning went direct to her heart. From the drawing-room to the
smoking-room, from the smoking-room to the long gallery marched the
procession of three, recapitulating pictorially and photographically
the stupendous progress of Godfrey Neale from the nursery to
Oxford, and from Oxford to the mastership of the Weare Grange and
Mardlehammar. Connie, stumbling behind the other two, tripping over
dogs and carpentering tools, grew full and more full of passionate
resentment. When the riders appeared again by the terrace, so warm,
so happy, so pleased with life and with themselves, Connie, who was
neither warm nor happy, nor pleased, could bear it no longer.
"Well," snapped Mrs. Neale, with her stiff smile that seemed to creak
from lack of use. "Good ride?"
"Ripping. Golden Girl went like a bird, and Miss Duquesne is a real
sp—sportswoman."
Connie pushed her way past Muriel down the terrace steps.
"Mr. Neale, can I try?"
"Oh, Connie," began Muriel's shocked voice.
"Do you ride, Miss Hammond? I'm so sorry. I thought that you didn't. I
would have found you a mount," lied Godfrey.
"I used to ride a lot before Father had his accident and would not let
us any more."
The story was well known in Marshington, where picturesque incidents
were not common. Here was a trouble that Mrs. Neale could understand.
"If she really wants to, let her have a trot down the drive while I
order tea."
"Connie, you can't. You can't really," protested Muriel. To have
stormed successfully the Neale citadel, to have come creditably
through the ordeal of the drawing-room, and then for Connie to behave
like this, was too bad.
But Connie was determined. The dogged look which Mrs. Hammond knew
well upon her husband's face had descended upon Connie.
As for Godfrey, he had no desire to ride with a lumpish schoolgirl
after that wonderful afternoon, and yet even he felt a slight
compunction at the way in which he had used the two Hammond girls. He
knew the glacial atmosphere of his mother's drawing-room.
"But she hasn't a habit or anything," Muriel pleaded.
"That doesn't matter. I have often ridden without," laughed Clare.
"Here, take my whip."
She held Golden Girl for Godfrey, while he went to tie his own horse
to a ring on the terrace wall. She watched him loosen Blue Boy's
girths and tie one end of the reins round the ring.
"Aren't you going to ride?" asked Connie.
But even for his conscience' sake Godfrey would not risk the breaking
of the yellow mare's knees.
"No, I think I shall walk this time."
Connie stood before the mare. Somehow she seemed to have grown
miraculously taller. The saddle upon which her rider must sit was
miles up in the air. The chestnut head tossed restlessly. Even
Clare's caressing fingers could not quell the baleful frenzy of the
rolling eye.
Godfrey returned.
"Now, put your foot on my knee, Miss Hammond, and hold the reins so,
and the saddle here. I shall count one, two, three, up. When I say
up, you must jump. Don't worry about the stirrup. That comes later."
Connie obeyed the directions. Golden Girl seemed to grow before her
like Alice in Wonderland after she had eaten the magic cake. Was it a
cake she ate? Connie could not remember. She could hardly see the sky,
or Clare, or Godfrey. A huge yellow mare blotted out heaven and earth.
"One, two, three, UP!" called Godfrey. "Oh, but you must jump, Miss
Hammond."
"So sorry. I wasn't quite ready," lied Connie. "Will you count again?"
"One, two, three, JUMP!"
Connie jumped. Unluckily the mare jumped also, and Connie landed back
into a puddle sending a shower of water over Godfrey's perfect
breeches.
"Oh, Connie, give it up. Don't make a fool of yourself," whispered
Muriel. Then she remembered her own school-days, and the rock. "Look
how you are splashing poor Mr. Neale."
"That's all right," said Godfrey heroically. After all it was the
Hammond girl who was making a fool of herself, not he. "Now then,
we'll try again."
Connie jumped. A strong hand seemed to lift her up, up into the cold
clear air. She jumped with such a will that she almost seemed to fall
on to the other side of the mare, but not quite. There she was,
mounted at last, while Godfrey Neale placed her muddy boot in the
stirrup, and Clare arranged her short serge skirt.
"Ah, now that is excellent," said Clare. "Hold the reins so, and press
your left knee well against the pommel. Sit square and face the
horse's head."
"You and your horse's head!" laughed Connie. "You talk as though I'd
never been up before."
But for all her defiant gaiety, she felt that indeed she hardly had.
Golden Girl was different from the old, lop-lobbing pony. When she
thrust down her disquieting head, there seemed to be little enough
between Connie and the gravel drive. Still there she was. She looked
patronizingly down at the group below, at Mrs. Neale, grimly amused,
at Clare laughing back at her, at Muriel, white-faced and anxious.
"I'm ready," she said.
They began to walk sedately down the drive. Now that Golden Girl was
actually moving, Connie found it less alarming. Indeed, she told
herself, it was good beyond all dreams of goodness. The great house
gaped at her from a score of long, blank windows. On the steps stood
Clare, now only a spectator in the drama, and by the side of the mare
walked Godfrey Neale, Connie's companion for as long as she could keep
the mare's head turned away from the house down the long drive.
"You all right?" he asked.
"Rather. Don't bother to hold the reins, please. I'm really quite used
to it."
Dubiously he let her go. Just to show her independence, she touched
the mare lightly with her whip. It started.
"Steady, steady, old girl. Ride her on the snaffle, Miss Hammond. Her
mouth's awfully sensitive. She won't stand the curb."
Curbs and snaffles were all the same to Connie. These slippery,
writhing strips of leather slid through her hands as the mare tossed
her head. She struggled to arrange them to her satisfaction. In
another minute Mr. Neale might say, "Don't you think that we had
better turn?" and back they would go to that awful drawing-room and
to Clare's easy triumph.
Connie sat straight, her red, wind-blown head high. The reins slipped
in her left hand, but her right held Clare's riding-crop. She would
show them that even if she could not ride like Clare she too was a
sportswoman.
Again she flicked her whip. The mare broke into an uneasy trot,
shaking Connie up and down in the unfamiliar saddle.
"Hold hard," called Godfrey, stretching out his hand for the slack
rein.
"It's all right. This is splendid," cried Connie and, with set teeth,
gave the mare another cut.
The mare shuddered. For one moment Connie felt the earth rise to meet
her. Then she was suddenly jolted down into the saddle. The shaking
trot gave place to a rhythmical rise and fall, the wind brushed past
her, touching her wide bright eyes, her flying hair, and Connie was
away at full gallop down the drive.
"Stop her," cried Clare, running down the terrace steps. "Stop her,
you idiot. The mare's bolting."
"It's all right. The gate will stop her," Godfrey called. For all his
swiftness he could not reach her now.
"It won't. We left it open. Don't you remember?"
"Oh, damn!" Connie mattered less to Godfrey than the mare, but both
were serious propositions.
He stopped now. Clare, running, was nearly up to him. He faced her on
the drive. There was nobody else in the world then but Clare and
Godfrey, looking for some solution of the problem into each other's
eyes. Muriel, hurrying behind Clare, felt this even then.
Without a word, Clare ran back to Blue Boy.
"Quick. You must catch her before she reaches the road," she said,
tugging at the knotted strap.
"The girth's not fastened," cried Muriel, who knew just enough to see
this.
Godfrey never listened. He was mounted, had turned, and was off along
the drive in pursuit of Connie's flying figure.
The yellow mare was going hard, making for the gate at the south end
of the drive. Godfrey, seeing this, swerved suddenly to the right.
"Where's he going? The gate's not there," cried Muriel, running
blindly along the drive. Clare followed, picking her way delicately
among the chalky puddles. Then she stopped, watching the stooping
figure on the great black horse.
"He's going to take the hedge. And he said that he'd never found a
horse to leap it yet! Bravo, the sportsman!" she breathed. Her eyes
shone. A smile of excitement parted her lips. The dimple flickered
on her cheek.
Muriel gasped. "To jump? With his girth unfastened, and only one
rein?" She nearly sobbed. "He'll never do it."
"He will. He will. Did you ever see such riding?"
Above the blackness of the hedge, against the transparent, water-coloured
shimmer of the sky, the great horse and his rider thrust up suddenly a
black silhouette. They hung for a moment thus, poised between earth
and sky, then disappeared.
"Ah, good," whispered Clare, with a little sigh of pure enjoyment.
"But they'll be killed," moaned Muriel.
"Not they," laughed Clare.
The two girls walked in silence down the drive. By the gate the
hoof-marks swerved to one side, cutting deeply into the turf, as
though Connie had made one desperate effort to pull up. Then they
went on again, along the rough, chalk road.
"They've gone a long way," remarked Clare imperturbably. "Your sister
is having a good run for her money."
"Oh, Clare, don't joke. What if they are killed?"
"Killed? Nonsense. Why, here they are!"
Over the brow of the rising ground they came, Godfrey leading both the
horses, Connie by his side, limping a little, spattered with mud from
head to foot, her hair wild, her cheeks flaming.
"I didn't fall off," she announced jubilantly. "Not until right at the
very end. Oh, it was glorious. I galloped, and Mr. Neale galloped. We
had a race, hadn't we, Mr. Neale? Did you see him jump the hedge? Oh,
Muriel, you do look queer. Your eyes are popping out of your head.
Were you frightened? I wasn't frightened a bit, although we went at
a terrific rate right down the field."
"I was," laughed Godfrey. "I was in a blue funk."
Clare looked at him. "How high is that fence?"
"I don't know. N—nothing much." It confronted them then, laced thick
and high with blackthorn, a nasty obstacle under the best conditions.
"With a loose girth and one rein," half-whispered Clare. "That was
great riding, Mr. Neale."
They walked back to the house together, Connie chattering all the way.
She was upborne upon the wings of triumph. She had conquered her fear,
conquered Muriel's prudishness, and Clare's attractions, and the
indifference of the Weare Grange. She was happy.
Muriel saw her happiness with a sudden heartache, for she saw also
what Connie did not see.
She saw that this adventure was not even their adventure. It was
Clare's and Godfrey's—Clare's because she had taken upon herself the
command of rescue, Godfrey's because her whisper of praise had fallen
upon him like an accolade. Connie had been merely a pretext for
Godfrey to perform deeds of daring before Clare. At tea-time, though
with remorseful attention Godfrey handed to Connie cakes and little
biscuits such as she loved, it was Clare to whom, in the intervals of
his duties as a host, he turned and smiled.
There was an unwritten rule at Miller's Rise that one bathed at night,
not in the morning. Morning baths consumed the washing-up water, and
even if they did not they had not been the custom, and so were not
approved. Muriel, who accepted all domestic theories with reverence,
frowned anxiously as, on her way to her mother's room, she heard
Clare's voice upraised in ablutionary song behind the bathroom door.
Ever since the episode of the ride a week before, Muriel had been
worried by her mother's attitude to Clare.
Mrs. Hammond was polishing her nails when Muriel came in. It was their
custom to hold a little conference in Mrs. Hammond's room before
breakfast if Mr. Hammond had left the house early upon business.
"Well, dear? You dressed? Are you tired after last night?" Mrs.
Hammond's nails shone like polished pink glass as she held them up to
the light. "Muriel, that wasn't Clare whom I heard just now in the
bathroom, was it? Didn't Annie take her some hot water? Surely you
told her that we——"
"I expect it was because of the dance last night. It was too late to
bath when we came in." Recently, Muriel always seemed to be explaining
Clare's actions to her mother. It was a duty that she hated.
"I think it unnecessary. Clare is evidently a little selfish, or else
inconsiderate. This house is not a hotel."
Wasn't it? For a moment of bitterness, Muriel wondered whether to
Clare it was much more. She crossed to the window, and stood looking
out into the rain-soaked garden.
"Muriel," her mother's voice continued from the dressing-table, "do
you know how long your friend intends to stay?"
"Her father comes to England on the 24th." Muriel knew what would
follow.
"Oh." There was another pause. Muriel could hear the soft brush, brush
of her mother's nail pad. "Well, of course that's all right. We can
manage, I suppose, though of course it comes rather hard on me now
that I am so busy over Christmas and everything. Still, if Clare likes
to take us as she finds us, I dare say that we shall get through.
Still I had thought that perhaps she would have been able to—— Oh,
and that reminds me, about Saturday night, dear, at the Warings'.
There is no need when we go out like that for Clare to push herself
forward in that way. She is only our visitor, after all, and that
time Mrs. Waring particularly wanted to hear how Connie's singing had
improved. There was no need for a stranger to monopolize the whole
programme."
"But they kept asking Clare to sing."
"Naturally, they had to say something out of politeness, but nobody
meant her to go on and on like that. However, I should not have
mentioned even that if it had not been for last night."
Muriel could feel the stiffening of her mother's figure before the
looking-glass. She, too, braced herself for battle.
"I—I don't know what you mean, mother."
"Now you know perfectly well what I mean. Clare is a very nice girl in
a way, and up till now it has been quite a pleasant visit. I have
managed to keep things running smoothly. But I realize that, with her
continental upbringing, she has rather different standards from those
which we think proper in Marshington. How many dances did she have
last night with Godfrey Neale?"
Then Muriel knew that Clare would have to go.
"Oh, five or six perhaps. But——"
Between the mist-shrouded valley and the sodden lawn, Muriel could see
a vision of Clare and Godfrey as they had danced together, of Clare's
laughing face, of her strong young arm pressed firmly against his
black coat, of the swing and balance of their turning figures. She
caught her breath.
"Well," remarked Mrs. Hammond, "that may be all right for Ostend, but
when you consider the position that Godfrey holds in Marshington——"
The dancing figures swayed towards Muriel. So near they came, they
almost warmed her with their glowing happiness. She pressed her small,
cold hands against the window-sill, and gazed out towards the dripping
trees.
"Just come and fasten my dress, dear. No, the bottom hooks first.
Clare's very selfish. She wants everything for herself."
Was she? Was she? Muriel, fastening hooks and eyes at complicated
angles knew that in spite of last night, in spite of everything, she
had a fierce desire for Clare to stay. What if she did dance with
Godfrey Neale? Who else could match her for charm and for daring? Yet,
even while Muriel told herself that this was as it should be, she
remembered the dragging hours of the Kingsport dance, while she sat by
the wall and the couples passed her, the girls' dresses swinging out
against her knees. She remembered how she had tried to compose her
face into an interested yet indifferent smile above her fan, as though
she did this sort of thing because she liked it, not because her
mother's valiant efforts to fill her programme were unavailing.
That fear of being left out was horrible.
"If Clare does go," thought Muriel, "that won't make Godfrey look at
me."
She went downstairs to order breakfast. "If Clare doesn't go, Godfrey
will never look at anyone else." Why care whom Godfrey looked at, whom
he knew? Why did she feel this silent force of her mother's will
coming between her and the most glorious friendship that she could
ever know? Who cared if Clare danced every dance with Godfrey
Neale—not that she would, because she said that he bored her just a
little when he was not riding or dancing or doing something with his
body?
If only all the people whom she loved would care for one another and
not make her feel disloyal because she could not share in their
distastes, how simple life would be!
As she ran downstairs, Muriel heard her mother meet Clare on the
landing.
"Well, Clare, good morning. How are you after last night? Not tired?
That's right. I'm so glad. So nice you looked too!"
Clare went; the winter dances came, and Muriel's programme still
remained half empty. Connie returned to Heathcroft. Aunt Beatrice came
to stay and went. Muriel continued to be grown up. Her hair sat more
securely on her shoulders now. She grew accustomed to the whiteness of
her neck above an evening frock. She paid calls with her mother; she
dusted the drawing-room. She went to church assiduously, seeking in
the Early Service for an emotional satisfaction that she could find no
other way. She bought and read shilling copies of the classics. She
began to study Astronomy with the help of three second-hand textbooks
and a toy telescope, but here she found herself handicapped by lack of
instruments and tuition. She did the Nursing Club accounts for her
mother, who was at this time much occupied by charitable works.
She took piano lessons with Fräulein Heissler every Wednesday in
Kingsport. The days passed quickly enough, and yet something seemed to
be lacking. Then, in April, came Clare's letter.
Muriel dear, it may amuse you to hear that I am going to be married.
His name is Ferdinando Alvarados. He is a Spaniard, but he lives
mostly in South America, where it is gloriously warm and you live on
oranges and play the guitar. I am not going to have a career, thank
Heaven, but I'm going to try being very rich instead. Félix and Mamma
are disappointed but resigned, and Ferdie is the most amusing thing
God ever made. I adore him and am very happy. Needless to say, he
thinks that I am the loveliest thing in the world, which just shows
his good taste. When are you going to get married? How is dear,
quaint Marshington? Did I ever write to thank you for the good time
that you gave me there? I don't believe I did. Forgive me. I never was
brought up properly, as I think that your mother saw. If you ever see
Mr. Neale now, tell him that I never met a nicer mount than Golden
Girl. My cousin's gees in Ireland were nothing to her.
Yours to eternity,
Clare.
The letter came the day before the Conservative Club Picnic. Politics
in Marshington were of particularly acute interest that year. Mrs.
Marshall Gurney, it is true, held the presidency of the Club for the
third time running, but when Mrs. Hobson was elected treasurer Mrs.
Waring had to replace Mrs. Parker as the secretary.
"Whatever the men may choose to do," said Mrs. Parker, justly
indignant, "I will not countenance the introduction of just anyone
on our committee. Hobson himself may be a very decent man and a
good Conservative. But we never have had a publican's wife on the
committee, and if I can stop it we never will. Even if the Duchess
of Northumbria goes in for indiscriminate toleration, in Annabelle
Marshall Gurney that sort of thing is pure affectation. One might as
well be a Radical, like all the Nonconformist clerks in Marshall
Gurney's office."
So Mrs. Parker left the committee, and Mrs. Waring reigned in her
stead. Mrs. Hammond, who had only recently decided to show an interest
in politics ("The new Conservative candidate was such a nice man"),
after some mental struggle resolved not to follow Mrs. Parker into the
wilderness, although she had once been a useful ally, but declared
herself a supporter of Democracy and Mrs. Marshall Gurney.
It was therefore particularly distressing that the day before the
picnic Mr. Hammond should have announced himself to be unwell, and
have retired to bed.
"Oh, well, dear," Mrs. Hammond told Muriel, "you will just have to go
alone."
"Oh, no, Mother. I should hate to do that. Do let me stay and look
after Father, you know that there's nothing really wants doing. You go
instead."
"It's quite impossible." Mrs. Hammond picked up her husband's
supper-tray. "I like to think that you can enjoy yourself. Go along,
dear, and have a good time. I shall manage."
Muriel knew that her mother had wanted to go. She knew that, as far as
Mr. Hammond was concerned, the maids could have administered to his
wants. But she had slowly come to realize that the passion which had
once led Mrs. Hammond to commit her single social indiscretion could
still draw her aside from that concentration on her position which had
once or twice moved Muriel to vague uneasiness.
She had not wanted to go, and her spring hat had not come yet from
Kingsport, and the morning of the picnic had been strained and
harassed at home because of Father, and Mother's disappointment, and
the rest of it. By the time that she arrived at the yard from whence
the picnic was to start in hired waggonettes she was wishing that she
never need have come.
There stood Mrs. Marshall Gurney with a bunch of primroses on her
sables, and Mrs. Waring, looking elegantly worried as she stooped with
her lorgnette over a bunch of papers, and Mrs. Hobson, fussing
backwards and forwards between the gate and the already laden
waggonettes. Everybody looked terribly smart and confident and self
absorbed. The space between Muriel and the waggonettes was painfully
wide. She wanted to shrink away on to her seat and be forgotten.
"Any room in the last waggonette?" called Mrs. Marshall Gurney.
"Quite full up," returned Mrs. Hobson, with the metallic crispness of
one who may have a Yorkshire accent but knows that she is as good as
many of those who haven't.
"Any room in your carriage, Phyllis?"
But Phyllis Marshall Gurney regretted that she had promised to keep
the only seat available in her carriage for somebody else, and blushed
deeply as she said it. Muriel was almost ready to retire defeated,
when Delia Vaughan called to her from the first carriage. Grateful but
embarrassed, Muriel went forward, and climbed in among the knees and
new tweed skirts of the élite of Marshington. She counted them
surreptitiously, Adelaide Waring and a cousin, Dennis Smallwood, Nancy
Cartwright, Bobby Mason and Delia. A man for every girl except
herself. Wise by experience, she sighed, thinking of the long day
before her. At Heathcroft, if you had no partner, you could at least
walk with the last couple in the crocodile. At Marshington it seemed
that you could only sit and look forlorn among the sandwiches.
The waggonettes waited.
"Are we never going to start?" asked Adelaide.
Mrs. Marshall Gurney and her committee were conferring hurriedly.
"Did anybody see Mr. Neale on the way down?"
Nobody had enjoyed that honour.
"I suppose that he is coming?"
From every waggonette Muriel could feel the tension of anxiety. A
Primrose Picnic without Godfrey Neale would be like lamb without mint
sauce. Phyllis Marshall Gurney's pretty face grew pale beneath her
pink hat.
"Ah, here the conquering hero comes," laughed Nancy, who was still
secure in the pose of enfant terrible. "It's more effective to be
late, isn't it?"
Godfrey Neale strolled into the yard. His breeches were beautiful, his
smile the most disarming, his confidence superb. Phyllis Marshall
Gurney gripped more tightly the hand-rail of her waggonette. Delia
Vaughan nodded carelessly. Godfrey made his apology to the waiting
committee, and moved towards the carriages.
Muriel calculated rapidly. If he joined the waggonette in which she
sat he would make the numbers of males and females equal. She held her
breath.
Godfrey hailed Miles Buchanan in the last carriage, exchanged a
greeting with Phyllis Marshall Gurney in the second, and then climbed
up beside Delia Vaughan in the first. The carriages rattled down the
village street into a world glittering and green. In every meadow the
grass stretched upright blades like thirsty tongues to drink from the
dripping trees; but the clouds had broken and blew about a radiant
spring sky like wind-tossed feathers.
"It's going to be fine," observed Adelaide complacently. "I'm glad
that I put on my new light tweeds."
"Stunning," commented Dennis, exhibiting his well-shaped leg. "What
about my own light tweeds?"
Everybody seemed to be in high spirits. After all, the drive would not
be so bad, thought Muriel. She could watch the grey, flat road unwind
like ribbon behind the waggonette. She could see the clay-red furrows
of the ploughed land, and she could hear the cry of sea-birds circling
behind and around the plough. Some magic lingered in the fresh spring
air.
Lunch was pleasant enough too, although she found herself seated on an
unsteady log between Mrs. Hobson and Colonel Cartwright, who had
motored to the woods. He at least was bent upon enjoyment. As an old
campaigner he insisted upon showing every one how to do everything,
from lighting a fire with two matches, to opening ginger-beer bottles
with a walking-stick.
"Dangerous things, picnics," he declared to Muriel, determined to show
her how to be jolly too.
Anxious to learn, she said sedately:
"Why, Colonel?"
He winked at her. "Ah, the spring, and a young man's fancy, happy
hours and woodland bowers, and chaperons asleep under the trees."
"I don't think that that sounds very dangerous," said Muriel politely,
and received a light flutter of laughter from the party as a reward
for her naïveté.
But she was soon to learn where for her the danger lay.
After lunch Adelaide's cousin, Mr. Weathergay, said to Nancy:
"There's a jolly old church, I hear, at Ribbleswaite, that seems the
sort of thing one ought to see. Won't you show it to me?"
And Nancy giggled that churches weren't much in her line, but she
wouldn't mind a walk.
Then Miles Buchanan bore off Freda Mason, and her two brothers
wrangled for the right to escort Mrs. Farrell, a charming girl, who
was staying with the Warings. The company scattered into couples and
quartettes. Muriel still sat on her log, playing with a strand of
long coarse grass, and hating picnics.
She saw neither the budding woods nor the delicate cream of primroses
upon the banks. She saw only the ignominy of her own position, and
with averted head she dug her fingers into the soft turf as couple
after couple vanished through the trembling curtain of foliage. She
was glad that her mother was not there to see her shame, and yet this
probably only meant a short respite, because Mrs. Waring was certain
to betray, as she had done before, the curious solitude of Mrs.
Hammond's daughter.
From the other side of the abandoned meal she could hear Delia's
careless voice:
"Well, you can lie and smoke in the sun if you like, Godfrey. The
grass is wet, and you are growing fat from idleness, but I don't care.
I, the only Socialist among you, am going to celebrate Primrose Day
properly and pick primroses. Coming too, Muriel?"
No wonder that Delia was unpopular, monopolizing Godfrey all through
lunch, and then abandoning him to smoke his pipe alone. The sheer
wanton waste of it appalled Muriel. She shook her head.
"No, thank you," she said, shivering a little at her courage. To have
gone with Delia would have been to put an end to her misery, but it
would also have been a confession of defeat.
Delia went, and Muriel was left alone upon her log. Bobby Mason,
defeated by his brother in the contest for Mrs. Farrell, was
pretending to do something scientific to the fire, and Mrs. Marshall
Gurney was directing the repacking of the luncheon baskets. She looked
round the clearing, then beckoned Bobby majestically to her side.
"Go and make yourself agreeable to the Hammond girl, for goodness'
sake," she commanded. "We want to hold a committee meeting here."
Muriel could feel the young man approaching her. She guessed why he
had come. She was half crying with shame and weariness.
"Like to see the jolly old church, Miss Hammond?"
Dumbly she nodded. They too went.
The young birches curtsied round them. A delicate earthy scent of
ferns and leaf mould and wet grass rose to their nostrils. Muriel saw
and felt nothing, but she heard Bobby Mason say:
"Been to Burley Woods before, Miss Hammond?"
"No. Have you?"
"Er—no."
There was a pause.
"Going to play golf this year, Miss Hammond?"
"No. I don't think so. Are you?"
"No—er, in the office you know. Men like myself haven't much time."
"I suppose not."
The silence grew more gloomy.
Muriel rehearsed to herself the coming interview with her mother.
"And what did you do, dear?"
"Oh, I went for a walk to see an old church with Bobby Mason."
"Oh. That was nice, I expect. That boy's coming on, I think. They say
that he's doing very well in his father's office," followed by a swift
look at Muriel's face, and a reflection that the Masons were quite
successful timber merchants even if the boys were reputed to be a
little brainless.
Muriel did so much want to make her mother happy.
The silence oppressed them like a heavy weight. It grew fecund with
other silences. They walked through the springing woods.
It was like that all the afternoon.
Then, when they had returned to the clearing and had finished tea,
Delia returned. Godfrey Neale had gone to find her and they appeared
together. Her eyes shone. Her thin cheeks glowed with colour. An
elfish, secretive smile of happiness quivered on her lips, and her
hands were full of primroses and great sprays of beech leaves.
"Did you have a good time?" asked Phyllis Marshall Gurney wistfully.
Delia nodded. She was standing to eat her tea, for the rest had
finished. A thick slab of cake replaced the primroses, and she and
Godfrey swooped upon the last of the tartlets.
Muriel climbed into the waggonette, and sat still, hating Delia.
Somewhere in the woods that day had lurked happiness and beauty and
gay liberty. Delia, who cared for no one, who was selfish, had been
free to find them. And Godfrey Neale had followed her unsought.
She was talking to him now, softly under cover of the rattling of the
wheels, only Muriel with an effort could hear stray fragments of their
conversation. Delia was scolding him about some girl.
"My dear Godfrey, you are as tenacious of your rights over a practical
stranger as you are over your own tenants. The girl probably forgot
you months ago."
The carriage jolted on. Bobby smoked moodily. His duty for the day had
been done. Adelaide chatted with her cousin. Delia was talking again.
"You think too much of your unconquerable charm. You won't be fit to
speak to until quite three women have refused to marry you."
Godfrey pulled placidly at his pipe. He appeared to enjoy her
lecturing, as people do who prefer to have their personality
criticized rather than ignored.
Muriel thought that she understood. "They're talking about Clare," she
said to herself. "And he doesn't know that she's engaged." She felt
glad that she knew something which neither Delia nor Godfrey knew. She
was no longer powerless, but armed. She could, if she would, make a
difference to the lives of these two Olympians. She, Muriel, could one
day say to Godfrey Neale, "Do you know that my friend, Clare Duquesne,
is going to be married?" He would take notice of her then.
She still felt proud, though chilled and stiff, as she climbed out of
the waggonette, and said good-bye to Mrs. Marshall Gurney.
When Delia Vaughan suggested, "I'm going your way. Shall we walk
together?" she answered with indifference, as though she were
accustomed to such offers.
"Well, and how do you like living at Marshington?" asked Delia as they
left the yard.
"Very much, thank you," she answered primly.
"Good, what do you do with yourself all day?"
"I help my mother. We have been very busy with the Nursing Club
lately. And I sew a good deal. And I study music and astronomy."
"Music and astronomy?" The vicar's daughter looked at her in genuine
surprise. "How delightfully mediæval that sounds! But why astronomy?
You can't study it in Marshington properly, can you? Do you mean it
seriously? Are you going to college or somewhere?"
Muriel shook her head. "Oh, no. I could not go away. My mother and
father need me at home. I just do a little reading on my own."
Delia looked wonderingly at her small, secret face. "Look here," she
began, "you can't go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on
a thing, and it's a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no
use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is
a coward's way of shifting responsibility on to some one else. Reading
at Marshington! It's only a sort of disguise for the futility of life
here. I know. I've tried it."
She was warming up to her favourite topic. Her dark eyes glowed above
the trailing boughs of beech. Muriel, unaccustomed to exhibitions of
strong feeling, looked coldly at her.
"Do you seriously intend to stay here all your life?" asked Delia. "To
wash dishes that the next meal will soil, to arrange flowers that will
wither in a week, to walk in fear and trembling of what Mrs. Marshall
Gurney will say, although you know quite well that she hasn't got the
intelligence to say anything worth saying?"
Intelligence? Muriel remembered how once she had suggested to Aunt
Beatrice that she would like to go to college, and Aunt Beatrice had
replied, "Well, dear, it isn't as if you were as clever as all that,
is it?" And reluctantly Muriel, with the memory of the elusive
mathematics prize before her, had had to admit that she was not as
clever as all that.
"We can't all be clever," she said, without much joy in the thought.
"Clever? who said that we all had to be clever? But we have to have
courage. The whole position of woman is what it is to-day, because so
many of us have followed the line of least resistance, and have sat
down placidly in a little provincial town, waiting to get married. No
wonder that the men have thought that this is all that we are good
for."
Muriel looked at her with grave distaste. She knew what her mother had
to say about the suffragettes.
"Because I happened to be an idealist," remarked Delia, with the
solemnity of twenty-two addressing eighteen, "Marshington could never
forgive me. It could not forgive me for thinking my education
incomplete unless I sought it beyond the councils of Marshington
matrons. I happened to think that service of humanity was sometimes
more important than respectability. I valued truth more highly than
the conventional courtesies of a provincial town, while Marshington
spends half its time in sparing other people's feelings in order that
it may the more effectually ruin their reputations."
Muriel remembered hearing what Delia had said to Mrs. Cartwright over
the Nursing Club accounts. She felt interested but uncomfortable. She
had never been to a college debating society, and was unaccustomed to
hearing what she called rudeness defended on principle. Also, she
distrusted all this talk, feeling that she could be an idealist, too,
without making so much fuss about it.
"But of course," continued Delia, "women in Marshington are not
expected to have Ideals, only sex."
Muriel knit her brows. Sex conveyed to her merely a synonym for
gender, masculine, feminine or neuter. She sought for more familiar
ground.
"I certainly am not going to college, because my mother needs me at
home. I am not unhappy here. Some of us have to stay at home. I have
my duty too," she added stiffly.
Delia looked at her, a queer sidelong glance below her long lashes.
Then she laughed a little. "And I am being properly called to order
for pursuing my selfish ambitions while you are following the path
of virtue?"
They had come to the Vicarage gate, and stood below the budding trees.
"Well, well," smiled Delia, "I hope that you will be happy. I suppose
that it's no good arguing. But for goodness' sake stay with your eyes
open. Remember, there's only one thing that counts for a girl in
Marshington, and that is sex success. Turn and twist how you will, it
comes to that in the end. The whole of this sort of life is arranged
round that one thing. Of course it's an important thing, but it's not
the only one. If that's what you are after, stay by all means, and
play the game. But if you can't play it well, or if you really care
for anything else, clear out, and go before it is too late."
She opened the gate of the Vicarage garden, and stood for a moment
looking down at Muriel.
To her surprise Muriel answered her gravely, with a wistful obstinacy
that stiffened her slim, small figure as though for some great act of
courage.
"It's all right to talk, Miss Vaughan, but we all have to do what we
think right, haven't we? And some of us can't choose. We have to take
life as it comes. I don't see why I shouldn't be doing just as much my
duty here as you where you are." Then, feeling that she was not being
very explicit, she added, "I hope that you will be very happy at
Cambridge."
"Thank you," said Delia with equal gravity. Then quite suddenly she
laughed. "That's the second time you've snubbed me, Muriel, you
strange child. Good-bye. Don't hate me too much."
She held out her hand, then with a flutter of bright green leaves she
had vanished, lithe as a wood nymph, queer, graceful, and confusing.
Muriel walked home, thinking of Clare and Godfrey, Delia and college,
and the meaning of sex-success.
When she arrived home, she found her mother coming from her father's
room with an empty tray. The happy, satisfied expression that her face
wore rarely transfigured her. She looked charming as a girl when she
smiled at her daughter and said: "Well, dear, did you have a good
time?" And Muriel replied, "Yes, thank you, mother. Bobby Mason took
me to see the old church at Ribbleswaite."
That night she stood before her bedroom window and pulled back the
curtains that Mrs. Hammond liked her to keep drawn. ("It looks so bad,
dear, to see an uncurtained bedroom window. Even if people can't see
anything, they always think that they can.") There were no stars in
the deep sky, but from the darkness of the garden rose the thin and
unmistakable breath of the spring. Muriel stood with outstretched arms
holding back the curtains.
Down there in the valley lay the wonderful, perilous, grown-up world,
holding its carnival of adventure and romance.
She pitied Connie, a child who was still at school.
She pitied Delia, who was, after all, still at college, which was only
a kind of glorified school.
She thought of herself, holding the key to Godfrey Neale's happiness
or sorrow, she alone, who knew that Clare was going to be married. She
was sorry for Godfrey, who, she was sure, had fallen in love with
Clare; but the thought of her power was more exciting to her than
pity.
Oh, lovely, rich, full, adventurous life, teeming with experience,
glowing with beauty, hurry, hurry, hurry! Let me come to you and learn
your secret, in your strange carnival of love and tears!
The soft wind fanned her cheeks as though it were the breath of life
itself. She sank upon her knees, holding out her arms to the heavy
darkness of the sky.
Down in the valley, the lights of Marshington winked at her, one by
one.
