XXIV
Muriel could not forget that expression upon Delia's face. It haunted her throughout a restless, interminable night. It rose with her next morning and stared at her across the breakfast table. All the way down to the hospital she repeated, "Martin Elliott's coming home to-morrow to marry Delia." Somehow she felt that if it had been anybody else but Delia she would not have cared.
At the hospital she was cross and intolerable. She snubbed poor Rosie Harpur, who gushed to her about the beauty of Delia's face now that she was happy. When she stood behind the screen, dusting the mantelpiece in the hall outside the nurse's room, she heard their voices as they drank their eleven o'clock cup of tea.
"My dear, don't speak to Hammond unless you want your head snapped off."
"What's come over her these days? She used to be so meek and mild and now she's like a hedgehog—all claws where she isn't prickly." That was Nina Farrell, whom Muriel had liked.
"Sour grapes, I should think. Sick that her little friend, Delia, has got off at last, and they say that Connie's clicked with a young farmer up in the North Riding. Muriel's just getting to be a thorough-going cross old maid."
"Oh, no, she's not," protested Rosie Harpur, in her thick, rather foolish voice. "She's all right. She told me this morning that she does not want to get married, she doesn't approve of it or something. She's frightfully clever really, full of ideas and things."
Muriel flicked her duster above charts and inkpots, and then fled. She knew now what they thought of her, a thorough-going old maid, mean and spiteful. She saw herself with the eyes of those young girls beyond the door. She contrasted their gay, ruthless youth with her bitter maturity. She saw the ten wasted years that lay behind her, and her barren future. She saw herself, grown sour with disappointment, grudging to Delia her happiness, to Connie her liberty, fretting herself over tasks that others might have performed as well, and having to learn generosity from women whom she despised, like Rosie Harpur.
She did not go to the Nurses' Room for her tea. She loitered instead about the wards and passages. The hospital was as usual over-staffed, and there was little enough to do. She walked the mile and a half home, hating herself with a fierce and bitter hatred.
Yet where had she gone wrong? What had she done? All her life she had tried to do the right thing. It was not her fault that things had gone wrong. She had wanted to be clever, but had sacrificed her intellect to her mother's need. She had meant to be like Delia and had grown like Rosie Harpur, because her duty had lain at home. She could have made Godfrey propose to her, but her fatal diffidence betrayed her. She could not stir herself to effort for her own sake. She had let him go.
And Delia was to be married to-morrow.
She endured the evening, though at supper she was curt and silent, hardly speaking to Connie, who had returned in high spirits from playing tennis with the Masons. Deliberately she seemed to wound herself by her resentment, forcing her lips to ungraciousness and her eyes to cold distaste, because she was conscious of having behaved badly, yet felt too weary of spirit to make amends.
Later, when Connie settled down to play rag-time, she could bear it no longer. She took her hat and walked out by herself along the road to Wearminster. She did not care in which direction the road lay, so long as she could walk away from herself and her own wretchedness. Her feet were tired, and her back ached, but the more her physical weariness oppressed her, the more she forced herself to go forward.
A dull sea of mist covered the valley, and the road stretched before her into a grey twilight.
Martin Elliott was coming back to Marshington to-morrow. On Friday he would marry Delia. Nobody would ever want to marry Muriel, and Godfrey was engaged to Clare.
She thrust her head forward, and walked into the mist, blind with pain. She never saw Delia until she was right upon her. They stood on a slight rise of the ground, where the tattered foam of mist curled round the hedge, like waves of a soundless sea, then fell away into the low lying fields. Delia had been walking towards Marshington, and the two women met face to face.
Afterwards Muriel remembered that, clear beyond the haze, three bright stars shone above the sycamore tree. She looked at the stars, because she could not bear to see Delia's face.
"What has happened?" asked Muriel, with a small hushed gesture.
Delia's voice came out of the mist, flat and dead:
"Martin was killed yesterday. Knocked down by a motor-lorry in Amiens station. Just the sort of idiotic thing that he would let happen to him."
A light breeze crept up the valley and shook the branches of the sycamore tree. It lifted a lock of dark hair and blew it against Delia's eyes. Delia never stirred nor spoke. She and Muriel stood quite still, with the knowledge of this thing between them.
"If he had been killed in action," Muriel said at last.
"He had no business to go and die now," stormed Delia. "He hated the war. He hated its barbarous futility and cheap sentiment. He only wanted to finish his great book. There were a thousand things for him to do. He had a great desire to live."
"You must finish the things for him."
"Don't be a fool. It was his work. He wanted to do it. If he had been a cripple, he could have borne it. If he had been blinded, he would have triumphed over it. There was no handicap that he could not have conquered. But now, now, he has no chance to fight."
She struck her hands together, in her urgency of pain. Then abruptly she said, "Good night," and swung off down the road. Her tall, bare-headed figure was engulfed in the soft grey distance.
Muriel did not go on, and would not follow her. She sat down on a heap of broken flints beside the road, feeling as though a storm had swept past her, with the force of Delia's angry grief.
Her lips moved, "Poor Delia, poor Delia," but there was no pity in her heart. She thought of Martin Elliott as she had seen him that afternoon at the Vicarage. She remembered his words, "Only sorrow comes upon us with a sudden blow, but happiness is built from long years of small pleasant things. You can't put that into a short story."
Where was Delia going, raging with her grief and anger through the mist? What should she do? She would walk away into the night with her sorrow, but she would return to face what life might bring her. And she would find that there were still amusing and exciting things, interesting friends, companionable talk, a little fame perhaps, and the consciousness of good work done. She would not forget, but her busy mind would have no time to linger with grief, and when she remembered it would not be with bitterness. She would still keep her love letters to read over, and her fresh unspoilt memories of happy hours. She had been lifted above envy or reproach. Sorrow such as hers would give her pride to bear it, and everybody would honour her dignity of loss. The dead, reflected Muriel, at least are always loyal.
"But I—but I," she moaned, "have been cheated even of my memories. There is no past hour on which I can think with pride. Delia thinks herself sad because she was once loved. But I would give all that I possess to share her tears if I could have her memories. I—I am hungry for her pain."
Then like a storm her tears swept down upon her.