XVI
The War came to Marshington with the bewildering irrelevance of all great catastrophes. It came also at a most upsetting time for Mrs. Hammond. Really, it was vexatious when everything was just going so nicely. Connie had settled down with quite good grace to the prospect of calling upon Mrs. McKissack, née Hemmingway. Two visits to old school friends at Buxton and Harrogate had sufficed to cure her wounded vanity. As for Muriel, of course it was too early to say anything definite, but Mrs. Hammond had confided in poor Beatrice that really, you know, Godfrey Neale was showing her an uncommon amount of attention. Ever since April, or was it March? those motor rides, that party at the Weare Grange, all spoke of possibilities.
"After all, he is really quite young yet, only about thirty. And with his temperament and his social position he would naturally go slowly. That was the mistake that Mrs. Marshall Gurney made. She would hurry him, and he grew frightened. By the way, I hear that she is taking Phyllis to Germany to learn music or something. Very wise, I think."
Aunt Beatrice nodded, approving Mrs. Marshall Gurney's double wisdom. Music was a sovereign remedy for broken hearts, and foreign travel would add distinction to an already pretty and taking girl. Her absence, however, would leave the field clear for Mrs. Hammond, by a process of elimination. Well, that did not show that she was stupid, but only that she knew when she had been fairly beaten. Rachel had been wonderful again, but then Rachel always was. It was impossible to believe that in the end she ever could be beaten.
And then the War came, right into the very middle of the tennis tournament.
Of course, as it happened, the tournament was not going to be quite such an event as usual, for Godfrey Neale had gone camping with the Territorials at Kaling Moor, and Connie had sprained her wrist and could not play. But still it was the Annual Tennis Tournament and that was no small thing.
The day after it had opened was the 3rd of August, and people began to feel uneasy. Just as the Hammonds were preparing for supper, Mr. Hammond rang up from Kingsport to say that he was waiting for the last train to pick up any more news that might be coming through. "Particularly trying of him to-night," said his wife, "because I've got such a nice little duck." After all, every one knew that nothing really would happen. There had been scares before.
The evening was close and, even up at Miller's Rise, oppressive.
"Wouldn't it be rather nice to walk down to the village after supper and see if we could buy a paper?"
So, after supper, they went.
Aunt Beatrice said that she never had liked Germans, so stuffy, that sleeping with the feather beds on top of them, and then the way they bought all that cooked meat and sausage stuff at shops.
All the way down to the village, she said that she had always known that the Parkers' German governess had been a spy.
The village street was strangely unfamiliar in the half light of the summer evening. Unexpected shadows and whisperings moved and rustled in the quiet air. Little knots of people stood round the open doorways of shops that should have been shut long ago. Noises, from down the road, the horn of a motor-car, the call of children at their play, broke in upon the stillness. With significant reiteration, a dog in a far-off farm-house barked persistently.
"Go into the Ackroyds', Muriel, and see if you can get an evening paper. I want to talk to Mrs. Cartwright. There's that bazaar on the 4th."
The paper shop was small and very crowded. It smelt of paraffin from the swinging lamp above the counter. Muriel watched two great moths flapping with unbelievable clumsiness against its flyblown globe.
She pushed her way to the counter. The proprietor, a meek little man with a fierce black moustache, stood shaking his head nervously. "The ultimatum expires to-night at midnight," he said hoarsely. "That's a very serious thing. A very serious thing." Then he saw Muriel. "Good evening, Miss Hammond."
"Have you any papers left?"
"I'm sorry, miss, I'm very sorry. I always like to oblige anyone from Miller's Rise. You might get one at the station perhaps."
He bobbed with forlorn little curtsies, pulling at his moustache, apologizing for the inconvenience of a European situation for which he, as the agent through which Marshington must see the world, felt a personal responsibility.
"Oh, well." Muriel turned to go.
An old woman in a man's cap, who for some inexplicable reason had planted herself on a chair by the counter, looked up at her.
"War's bloody hell," she remarked mildly. "Ah'm telling you God's truth. Two o' my lads went i' South Africa. Bloody hell. That's what it is."
She rose and hiccoughed unsteadily from the shop, the little crowd making way for her ungainly figure.
Unaccountably stirred by this brief encounter, Muriel left the shop, her mind wounded and yet quickened by the old woman's words. It was as though in her obscenity, she had been a foretaste of something to come, something sinister and violent.
The village street lay wrapped in the grey twilight of a dream. Bloody hell. Bloody hell. She saw the hell of a child's picture book, gleaming with livid flame. The blood smell faintly nauseating, like a butcher's shop on a hot day. Across the road, Connie and her mother talked to Mrs. Cartwright. "It's all over the village," Mrs. Cartwright was saying. "Mr. Marshall Gurney has telegraphed, and telegraphed, and can't get any answer through. They say that he is nearly mad with anxiety. If the war is declared against us, they're sure to be murdered."
"Nonsense," said Mrs. Hammond. "You don't murder people nowadays, even if there is a war on. The Marshall Gurneys will be all right, though I always did say that it was a mistake to go off abroad like that. It doesn't somehow belong to those kind of people."
Muriel looked at the four of them, and at their eager absorbed faces as they talked about the Marshall Gurneys. Yet somehow she felt as though her mother were not anxious so much as jealous, jealous because it was Mrs. Marshall Gurney and not herself who was enjoying the unique distinction of becoming involved in a European crisis. That Kaiser, whom every one in England was reviling, might turn Mrs. Marshall Gurney's failure into victory.