XX
Muriel opened the front door wearily and glanced at the brass tray on the hall table. Surely it must come soon, to-day, to-morrow he must write. He could not just go off like that into the silence of an unknown world after what had happened.
There were three letters on the tray for her, one from Janet Holmes, now nursing in Newcastle, one from the vicar's wife at Kepplethorpe about the egg collection, one from a Nursing Club member.
Muriel hated the letters, hated the brass tray, hated sullenly and fiercely the weariness of her ankles and her shoulders. She had been standing nearly all day in the Red Cross Depot, lifting bundles that were too heavy for her. She leaned forward with her hands on the cool marble of the hall table, resting for a moment before she climbed the stairs. The smooth blades of an aspidistra plant confronted her. She hated aspidistras too.
From the dining-room came the flat reiteration of her mother's voice, scolding, scolding with gentle but monotonous persistence. Then followed Connie's shrill defiance, and her father's deep-toned boom. They were quarrelling again, always quarrelling. Connie was too bad, always upsetting everybody like this. As though the war in itself were not enough, lying like a heavy weight upon your heart, day and night, numbing your feelings to all but the bitter things.
She could not bear it much longer. She would have to go away. Why should not she become a proper army nurse like Janet? She liked nursing, that kept her body active and would not let her think. She loved to look after people. It soothed the soreness of her heart. Her daily visits to the Depot, her hours of dusting round carefully disinfected convalescents at the local hospitals were only sops for the unquiet conscience of Marshington. Marshington wanted to feel that it was doing its bit, yet desired the merit without too great discomfort. Muriel was not like that. She had a terror of finding the War over and herself as usual out of it. She saw a triumphal procession marching through the city square of Kingsport, with braying trumpets and flying flags, and herself isolated, sad, standing up a back street because she had no part in the rejoicing. For those who were in it, the War brought suffering, and anxiety and blinding sorrow. But these were glorious. You could make a song of them and sing it through your tears. For those who were not in the War, it was a grinding hunger, an agony of isolation; and of these things you could not make a song. You felt no pride of loss, no glory of sacrifice. There were only shameful tears to shed, and the long ache of pain which had no remedy.
Why was her mother so angry now? Her mother had been splendid. Every one said so. The way in which she had emerged from her terrific experience at Scarborough, shaken but undaunted, to resume her patriotic duties here in Marshington, had been quite admirable. Mrs. Marshall Gurney's escape from Germany paled before her greater heroism. Mrs. Hammond had been rightly elected President of the Local War Services Association.
Why didn't Godfrey write?
The dining-room door opened, and Connie flounced out, hurling defiance over her shoulder as she came.
"Well, I'm jolly well going, so there!"
She banged the door.
"Good Lord, Muriel, how you startled me! What on earth are you doing?"
"I've just come in. I'm going up to change."
"Oh. Then I suppose that you heard."
"No. I didn't hear anything except that you were quarrelling, as usual."
She was not interested. She climbed the stairs wearily, dragging at the handrail, wondering why the last five steps were always so much steeper than the others. Then she told herself that she was only tired, and that she must pull herself together. A hot bath soothed her body and mind. She put out her blue poplin dress on to the bed, and a blue ribbon for her hair. While she was changing, Mrs. Hammond entered the room.
"I suppose that you've seen Connie. Now, isn't it too bad?"
"I don't know. What is it?"
It appeared to be a great many things. Mrs. Hammond had gone into Connie's room at midday, and found the bed unmade, and Connie reading a novel. When she had remonstrated, Connie just threw the counterpane above the chaos left by last night's slumber. And when Mrs. Hammond discovered this, and pointed out very seriously what a bad example it set the maids, Connie had said, "That's all we keep maids here for—to set them examples. Why should we keep a dog and bark ourselves? There's no room for three women in a house. You should have let me go to that chicken farm."
"It's all too bad," sighed her mother. "You don't know how she hurts me." Mrs. Hammond pushed back her tears with a small lacy handkerchief. Connie was her favourite daughter. She had tried to do her best for her. But where Arthur was possible though difficult to manage, Connie was quite beyond her. "Connie's so inconsiderate. I don't know what's happened to her lately. I've done my best. I'm sure that I've done my best for you both. And now she wants to go and work on the land at some horrid place in the North Riding called Thraile."
"Well, why not?" Muriel clasped her necklace and set straight the things upon her dressing-table. She wished that this domestic wrangle had not come just when she was feeling calmer and more sane.
"Connie? On a farm? Well, now, Muriel, you do know her a little. And in any case, her father won't hear of it. The breeches, Muriel. And then, it isn't as if there wasn't plenty to do here. I'm sure that I could do with a little more help."
Muriel was ready to go downstairs. She shivered in the cold room. Her mother still talked.
"If only she would be reasonable. . . . So naughty to her father."
With Mrs. Hammond's complaints still trickling over her, Muriel went down to a supper of fish-pie and apple-tart. It somehow failed to stimulate her. Her father had gone out, as usual. Connie sat glum and injured, eating incredible quantities of fish-pie, to assert her independence.
Muriel lay afterwards in an arm-chair in front of the morning-room fire. There were magazines that Mrs. Hammond had collected for the Hospital, and Muriel loved magazines. She saw photographs of lovely ladies in pearls and white veils, "Working for our brave lads," "Helping with the wounded," "Among our hospitals." It had become fashionable for beauty to go meekly dressed, with clasped hands, and the light directed becomingly upon a grave profile.
"I ought to go to bed," she thought, but it was cold upstairs.
The lovely ladies soothed her. She almost forgot to think about Godfrey, and how she had let him go. She almost forgot the deathliness of spirit that her years of failure had left for her, and that had come between her and Godfrey, so that she could not hold him when he came. Indeed, she knew that she had lost him long before he came to her. But until he had kissed her, she had never looked like this into the future, to see how it held nothing more of life for her.
She lay back luxuriously, warming her toes, and letting the friendly heat of the fire steal through her body.
"Signora Clare Alvarados," she read, below a full page photograph of a most lovely lady, "is the daughter of Félix Duquesne, whose delightful comedies have taken by storm the French-speaking public. Signora Alvarados has recently returned to London to take part in the organization of concerts for our brave lads in the hospitals. All society is speaking of her beautiful soprano voice. It will be remembered that her husband was killed about a year ago in a tragic motor accident in Chile."
It was Clare, more radiant than ever, smiling out of the paper at Muriel with the friendliest of all friendly smiles.