XXV
The spring passed; the summer came, and in September Mrs. Hammond gave her dinner-party. It was no formal party, and therein lay the proof of that lady's genius.
The Graingers had been satiated with Marshington hospitality. Their simple souls had quailed before champagne suppers with the Marshall Gurneys, and exclusive little dinners with Mrs. Waring. But these Hammonds seemed to be natural, homely people. Where other ladies talked of the County and politics and the vulgarity of their neighbours, Mrs. Hammond gossiped gently about servants and the price of butter. She seemed generous too, and spoke kindly of the queer, absent-minded vicar, attributing much of his parochial deficiencies to the shock of that terrible tragedy in the spring when his would-be son-in-law was killed. The old man had cared so much more than his daughter. So Lady Grainger came to think of Mrs. Hammond as a nice woman.
Meanwhile, Miller's Rise had been thrown open to the young officers of the camp. Sunday after Sunday they came to play on the tennis-courts, to strum rag-time on the drawing-room piano, and to consume quantities of cigarettes. Two pleasant but foreseen results rewarded Mrs. Hammond. The first was that Mr. Hammond became interested in the young men, and liked to talk aeroplanes with Bobby Collins, and machine guns with Captain Lowcroft, and horses with young Staines. The boys found him to be a jolly good sort, and missed him when he was not there. All of which was excellent for him.
Secondly, the fame of Miller's Rise reached the ears of Colonel and Lady Grainger, and since they took a real interest in their subalterns, and since the tone of Marshington society had distressed them, they became immensely grateful to the Hammonds. So it happened that one evening in September Colonel Grainger met Mrs. Hammond at Kingsport Station, and stopped to thank her for her kindness to the boys.
"I wish that Maude and I were young enough to be included in your invitation," he added wistfully.
"Well, if you promise not to spoil their fun, as a great favour, I'll give you a pass!" laughed Mrs. Hammond. "As a great favour."
The only thing that spoiled it was that Mrs. Marshall Gurney could not hear.
On this Thursday evening, the colonel and his wife had joined the party. Till now, it had been uproariously successful. The colonel sat pulling at his moustache and smiling quietly, and Lady Grainger's kind little round face beamed all over with pleasure, and Mr. Hammond was on his very best behaviour. He had told her only his most presentable stories, and treated her with the exaggerated gallantry that he sometimes thought fit to show to his wife's friends, and which Lady Grainger found to be "so quaint and old-fashioned and nice."
As for the boys, they needed no entertainment. They were eating dessert now, and Bobby Collins with an intent, serious face, bent over the orange skin that he was carving.
"What is it, Mr. Collins?" asked Muriel. She rather liked these boys, who treated her like a pleasant kind of aunt, and whom even Mrs. Hammond never regarded in the light of anything more intimate than a stepping-stone to the Graingers.
"Pig," replied Bobby comprehensively.
"I beg your pardon?" Young Smithson raised his head from Muriel's other side. "Kindly repeat that word."
"Pig," repeated Bobby obligingly, and continued to play with his knife.
"Do I understand," shouted Smithson in mock wrath, "that this epithet is intended as an insult to that charming lady?"
"Understand what you like. Aha! I've done it," cried Bobby in triumph.
Smithson rose with dignity and bowed to his hostess. "Pardon me, Mrs. Hammond," he declared with dignity. "But words have just now been said in this room which no gentleman could pass. An insult has been offered to your charming daughter. Ahem! Mr. Collins, in the name of Miss Hammond, I demand satisfaction."
The table was in an uproar. Muriel, blushing but amused, looked along a line of laughing faces to her mother.
"A duel, a duel!" shouted Captain Lowcroft. "Pistols for two and coffee for one on the Hangman's Heath in the morning."
Bobby Collins, very round and solemn, arose and faced Smithson across Muriel's dark head.
"A plague upon your mornings, sir. I will fight now, with oranges, upon the lawn. And it shall be to the death."
"Outside with you then, for goodness' sake," cried Mrs. Hammond. "Remember my china!"
They trooped outside together.
The September night was warm and still. A great harvest moon hung low above the elm trees. The windows, carefully curtained by order of the government, left the house mute and dark, but white moonlight lay along the level lawn, and moonlight touched the laughing, running figures.
There was madness in the air. Even Muriel, as she stood on the steps with Lady Grainger and her mother, felt the excitement, and laughed with them. She watched the figures on the lawn, moving out of the black shadows of the elm trees into the white field of moonlight. She watched young Staines and Captain Lowcroft separate the antagonists, measure sedately the paces between them, and supply them with their ammunition. Quick words of command rang out. A handkerchief fluttered down, silver-white in the moonlight. The fruit flew, the oranges glittering like golden metal.
"Your oranges," murmured Lady Grainger. "They are very naughty boys."
"Not at all," sighed Mrs. Hammond. "This is so good for them, a little innocent fooling. The oranges will be all the sweeter." She waved a pathetic little hand. "You see, I had no son to give."
"You have at least a very nice daughter."
"Two. My baby, Connie, is working on the land."
There came a burst of shouting from the combatants on the lawn.
"A hit! A hit! A palpable hit. (Whatever that means. I seem to have heard it somewhere.) Miss Hammond, your insulter is wounded."
With a groan Bobby Collins flung himself upon the lawn.
"Come and render first aid."
Muriel ran down.
Always afterwards she remembered kneeling there with her delicate dress carefully tucked up, binding a silk scarf round an imaginary wound in Bobby's shoulder. She remembered the sticky feeling of his tunic where an over-ripe orange had burst, and the sound of mad-cap laughter and those gay young voices. Then something made her look up, and beyond the drive, in the shadow of the elm trees, she saw a figure moving. Somebody was walking slowly and furtively, stealing from the darkness of one tree to another, a figure bowed and drooping, as though in pain or weariness. Almost it seemed to be familiar. Muriel thought of Delia, who had walked off through the mists four months ago; but it was not tall enough for Delia.
"It'll be somebody coming to see one of the maids," she told herself, and rose to her feet, for Bobby Collins was being lifted from the ground by three of his friends, and the procession moved towards the house.
Mrs. Hammond opened the front door to receive them. A flood of golden light poured out on to the steps, the drive, the disordered returning figures. Colonel Grainger bore a dish piled high with yellow oranges. Bobby was carried shoulder high by the laughing boys.
"The children. The absurd children," laughed Mrs. Hammond. "Come in. The Zeppelins will catch us if we leave our lights showing, and Arthur is a special constable."
As she watched the colonel tossing oranges to her husband, her face was happier than Muriel had known it for many years.
"Are they all in? Shut the door," said Mrs. Hammond.
Muriel turned to obey.
Out in the garden the watcher from the shadows had crossed the lawn. Somebody stood in the moonlight on the edge of the drive. The face was hidden, but again a curious familiarity in the attitude stopped the beating of Muriel's heart for a moment.
"I'm seeing things," she told herself. "That can't be Connie, for she's at Thraile. Somebody has come from the road to see whatever we were doing. We are being mad enough to bring anyone in."
She drew the heavy curtains across the hall door.
They flocked into the drawing-room for music, such music as had become part of the Miller's Rise programme. Mrs. Hammond and Lady Grainger sat in the big armchairs, and Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hammond looked as though they had smoked cigars together all their lives.
The boys grouped themselves around and on the piano at which Muriel sat, accompanying indefatigably.
"Prithee pretty maiden, will you marry me?" sang Bobby Collins, still bandaged and orange-smeared.
"Hey, but he's doleful, willow, willow, waly," shouted the chorus cheerfully.
Annie came into the drawing-room, her face stiff with importance, and crossed to Mrs. Hammond. Muriel saw her mother leave the room.
"The coffee's overboiled again," she thought, and yet for some reason, she felt stupidly uneasy. She could not put out of her head the thought of that watching figure on the lawn.
Mrs. Hammond did not return. The singers laid aside Gilbert and Sullivan, and took up the Globe Song Book.
"There is a tavern in the town, in the town,
And there my true love sits him down, sits him down,
And takes his cask of wine across his knee
And never, never thinks of me, thinks of me!"
"We want a drummer," declared Bobby.
"The gong. Where's the gong? Miss Hammond, may we get the gong? We can't live without a drum."
"Of course you can have it. Mr. Collins, go and fetch it from the hall."
Bobby went, leaving the door ajar. They watched for their drummer, Colonel Grainger and Mr. Hammond in high good humour, humming the refrain,
"Fare thee well for I must leave thee,"
From the hall came a sharp exclamation and the sound of a scuffle.
Then Bobby questioned sharply and a voice, Connie's voice unmistakably, was raised in protest.
They all turned towards the door.
Then Bobby returned. In one hand he carried the large brass gong and its padded stick; the other hand was firmly grasped round Connie's wrist.
"See what I've found," he cried triumphantly. "Not only a drum, but a drummer! Allow me, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce to you Miss Constance Hammond, youngest daughter of our respected host and hostess, just this moment returned on unexpected leave from her strenuous duties upon a farm in the North Riding, where she has been carrying on the splendid work of feeding our nation in its hour of peril."
They rose, they shouted, they went forward to drag Connie, blushing and protesting, into the room.
"Three cheers for Miss Constance Hammond! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Three cheers for the land girls in khaki! Cheers for the girls who grow the spuds to beat the U Boats!"
The room rang with their cheering. Colonel Grainger stepped forward and introduced himself, shaking both Connie's red, trembling hands, and telling her how good her mother had been to his boys. Muriel, mystified, profoundly stirred by some strange premonition, stood silent while Connie shook hands with the colonel and kissed her father. Then she asked:
"Have you seen Mother?"
"Yes," said Connie, and no more, for Bobby made all the necessary explanations with delighted volubility.
"She was sneaking away upstairs because she didn't want to see us before she'd made herself look beautiful. She came from Market Burton on the 9.50 unexpectedly to give her family a surprise. I think that it was to see how they behaved while she was away. Aha, Miss Hammond, but now we've caught you, we'll keep you. You are conscripted as our drummer."
Muriel, from the piano, said:
"Connie, this is nice. How long have you?"
Then for the first time she saw Connie clearly through a crowd of chaffing, chattering boys. Connie's cheeks were flushed. She held her wild head high and recklessly, but her eyes were fierce with the desperation of a trapped animal.
"I don't know for certain," she said, in her high, shrill voice. "It depends on how you treat me." Then quickly she turned to the men. "What were you singing? Come on. Don't stop. Where's my drum?" She sprang on to the back of the sofa, and Bobby held the gong before her. "Go on. Play up, Muriel!"
With a sense of impending doom, totally unreasonable, Muriel struck the keys with stiff, frightened fingers. The voices shouted again, madly joyous, punctuated by Connie's crashings on the gong.
"He left me for a damsel dark, damsel dark,
And every night they used to spark, used to spark,
And now my love, without a thought of me
Takes that dark damsel on his knee, on his knee."
Crash-crash-crash, went the gong. The room rocked to the stamp of feet and the roar of voices, while high above them, from where she stood on the sofa end, smashing at the swinging gong, shrilled Connie's wild, mad gaiety.
So Mrs. Hammond, returning to the drawing-room, found them and stood spellbound, like a frozen figure in the doorway. Lady Grainger saw her and smiled, beckoning. Muriel, between the gusts of laughter, heard their voices.
"They kept you a long time," murmured Lady Grainger. "I hope that it was nothing bothering. You—you'll excuse me saying so, you look a little tired. I hope that our rowdy boys are not too much for you."
"Oh, no. Not at all. I like it."
"I'll hang my harp on a weeping willow tree,
And may the world go well with thee, well with thee."
chanted the chorus.
"Chorus again," called Connie. "I'm bandmaster to-night."
"Fare thee well for I must leave thee,
Do not let the parting grieve thee . . ."
As the refrain died down to the reverberations of the gong, Muriel heard Lady Grainger say:
"If only more girls were brought up like yours, with such a healthy, homely influence, an atmosphere, I'm sure that you'll understand me, dear Mrs. Hammond. It does help the boys so."
Then her mother answered in that soft hurrying voice that was so much her own:
"It's very kind of you to say so. I don't know, I'm sure. Of course I've always tried to—to give them a high ideal of—of home life and—and so on."
She faltered, and Muriel, looking over her shoulder, saw her mouth set to a despairing smile, and her tongue pass over her dry lips.
"I—we try to, you know," repeated Mrs. Hammond, as though she were saying a lesson.
Connie, from the sofa head, turned round and looked at her mother. Muriel felt the tension in the room to be unendurable. Somehow they were torturing that gentle little lady on the sofa. The evening became abominable to her. The laughter, the rollicking songs broke round her like a nightmare sea. Her hands slid from the keyboard and she clenched them on her knee.
"Oh, come along, Muriel," called Connie. "Are you tired? Then let me come."
Muriel was pushed aside from the stool, and Connie swung herself into her place. Connie's red, work-soiled fingers rattled over the keyboard.
"What shall we have now?" Her jangling discords changed to the clashing refrain of an old song.
"I went down south to see my Sal,
Singing Polly Wolly Doodle all the day."
The party was jollier than ever.
At last they began to go. There was a scramble for coats and scarves and leather gauntlets. Then the lamps of the motor-cycles would not light. Captain Lowcroft's little car refused to start. The colonel stood on the door-step and smiled down on them benignly.
"I can't tell you how grateful we are, Mrs. Hammond. This is just the sort of thing to keep the boys out of mischief, what? Your husband has promised to come and look over our horses one day. I hope that we shall see you both up at the Mess one of these days."
The boys shouted. Somebody began to sing, "For He's a jolly good fellow." Muriel went back to the drawing-room. Her mother still stood on the steps. Mr. Hammond had gone to lock up the garage.
Connie stood in her tweed coat and skirt still by the fire-place, kicking a mouldering log with her mud-splashed boot. Her face was turned aside from Muriel, but her whole figure drooped with weariness.
"Connie, has something happened?"
"You'd better ask Mother," replied Connie's muffled voice.
Muriel looked round at the desolation of the disordered room, the cigarette ash spilled upon the carpet, the scattered sheets of music, the cushions overturned. Outside she could hear the hum of the motor, the call of last farewells, and her mother's answering "So glad that you were able to come."
Connie lifted her head to listen, and Muriel saw then that she had been crying.
"Oh, Connie," she began.
Mrs. Hammond came into the room and shut the door behind her.
Connie stood looking at her. "A top-hole evening, Mother, was it? So glad that they were able to come."
Then the storm broke.
"Connie, in Heaven's name, what induced you to come in?"
"Come in? I didn't come in. Do you think that I wanted to come and entertain your jolly friends? I was going upstairs when that young idiot found me. Then I had to come. But at least I played up. You must own that. I saved your party for you."
"Oh, yes. You played up." Mrs. Hammond came forward and sat down, crouching over the dying fire, a tired old woman.
"Well," demanded Connie, "now that I am here, what are you going to do with me?"
"We must tell your father," said Mrs. Hammond. "We shall have to tell your father." She spoke as though in this telling lay some unendurable agony. Her voice was bitter with defeat. "Yes," she repeated softly. "We must tell him."
"Oh, tell as many people as you like. Tell Muriel. Tell her now. She'll have to know some time. I'd lie willingly, only I can't. I can't think of a good enough story. You've always been so much better at that sort of thing than the rest of us."
Mrs. Hammond did not speak, but sat, crouching forward, sliding a pearl and ruby ring up and down her finger.
"Why don't you tell her?" jeered Connie. "You do so hate doing anything disagreeable, don't you? Very well, then I will. Muriel, you may be interested to hear that I have left Thraile because I have been dismissed. And I have been dismissed because I am going to have a baby, and the baby's father is Mr. Ben Todd, and I do not happen to be Mrs. Todd. And the worthy Ben's respectable parents seem to object to my staying in the house. Well? . . . Don't look at me like that!" Her voice rose to a scream.
Muriel felt her way to a chair and sat down.
"Well?" persisted Connie. "Well?"
"Oh, Connie, I'm awfully sorry. I——"
"Are you? Do you hear that, Mother? Muriel's awfully sorry. It's more than Mother is. Mother's awfully angry, because I let Bobby Collins drag me in to the party, which I couldn't help. And she's angry because I'm going to make this family not respectable, but she isn't sorry."
"That's not true, Connie," came the stifled voice from the sofa.
"She's always brought us up to have such high ideals, you see," Connie continued, in her high, hard tone, ignoring her mother's protest. "She liked us to have a good influence over the young men, so that Lady Grainger would be awfully grateful to her, didn't you, Mother? And you wouldn't let us work or go away, or have any other interests, because you were afraid of our spoiling a chance of a good marriage. And if we didn't get partners at dances we were beastly failures. And if our friends attracted more attention than we did they were sent away. And it was all because of our healthy homely influence, wasn't it, Mother? And now that one of us has taken the only means she saw to fulfil your wishes and get married, and it hasn't come oft, you're very angry, aren't you, but you aren't sorry, and if I'd been successful, you wouldn't have been angry, would you, Mother?"
As though Connie would strike her, Mrs. Hammond held up her hand against her face. Her small figure rocked backwards and forwards on the sofa in comfortless distress.
"If I'd been like Muriel," cried Connie, "I'd have sat at home perhaps and waited for things to happen. But I wasn't like that. I wasn't made to spend my life sewing for the G.F.S. If you wanted your daughters to be perfect ladies, why did you marry Father? You knew what he was like!"
"Connie! Be quiet. You shan't speak like that. Oh, what shall I do? The shame, the shame! Connie. Don't take it like this. I didn't know . . . I couldn't . . ."
As though it had been broken, the delicate mask of prettiness fell from her. Uncaring for the crushed silk of her new grey dinner frock, she flung herself forward among the cushions of the sofa, utterly defeated.
Muriel sat as though frozen, helplessly watching.
The front door shut with a clang. There was the sound of a key being turned. A bolt was shot. Mr. Hammond's voice hummed cheerfully:
"And now my love without a thought of me
Takes that dark damsel on his knee."
"There he is," choked Connie. Hysteria was sweeping down upon her. She began to laugh, very softly.
"I can't, I can't," said Mrs. Hammond.
The door opened.
"Hullo, hullo, hullo, not to bed yet? Why, hullo, what's wrong?"
The room was perfectly quiet. Through the open window from the moonlit garden came the dreary call of an owl. Far off in the valley a train whistled, leaving Marshington station.
The four in the room stayed quite still.
"Now then, Connie," asked Mr. Hammond, grown suddenly serious, "what's the meaning of all this?"