XXVI
Though there was no wind that evening to disturb them, the chintz curtains falling before the morning-room window would not hang quite together. A moth with heavy, powdered wings flopped through the open space and blundered blindly round the flaming gas-jet.
Muriel rose and drew the curtains for the third time. The garden outside lay quietly waiting, black shadows outstretched prostrate before the moonlit elms. No sound of horse hoofs trotting up the road greeted her straining ears. Only the soft thump of the moth's wings on the ceiling, and the rustle of her mother's sleeve as she flicked faster and faster at her tatting broke the perfect stillness.
Would he never come? The 7.40 had arrived, whistling up the valley. The 8.15 had come and gone. There was still the 9.50.
Muriel returned to her book and glanced mechanically down the page. Why didn't he wire? He had no imagination of what they must be feeling.
She read, "Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the North of England, but in eighteen hundred eleven-twelve that affluent rain had not descended: there was no Pastoral Aid, no Additional Curates Society to stretch out a helping hand to worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge."
Muriel was not interested in curates. She let Shirley fall unheeded on her lap, and sat again listening for the sound of her father's horse along the road or of Connie's footsteps in the bedroom overhead.
The clock ticked stupidly, marking minutes, half-hours, hours; but at Miller's Rise endless years had passed since Mr. Hammond drove away that morning to catch the 10.20 train to Market Burton, and so on to Thraile. Centuries had passed while Mrs. Hammond sat with her tatting, staring into the painted glass fire-screen, and Muriel picked up books and embroidery and the nursing accounts and laid them aside again, and Connie up in her room, with red eyes and swollen, distorted face, passed from defiance to despair, and from despair to bitter comfortless surrender.
The telephone bell suddenly pealed into the silence.
Muriel rose, but Mrs. Hammond waved her aside.
"No, no, I must go. We don't know what—what——"
She rustled from the room, and Muriel heard her quick light step in the hall and the click of the receiver as she lifted it. Upstairs a door opened and footsteps crossed the landing hurriedly. Connie too was listening.
"No, no—Yes. This is Rachel Hammond speaking. Mrs. Waring? Oh, good evening, Mrs. Waring. No, no. I'm so sorry. Not to-night. Yes. That's quite true. Connie came home last night for a short leave. What? No—no. Well"—only Connie and Muriel could detect the strain in that familiar flutter of laughter—"perhaps we may have some news for you soon, but I'm saying nothing now. Good night."
The whirring jar of the bell as she rang off snapped the tension of the house.
Muriel returned to her seat as Mrs. Hammond re-entered the room. Her quivering lips were almost as white as her drawn cheeks. She groped her way unsteadily to a chair. After a minute she said:
"That was Mrs. Waring. She wanted us to go and play bridge."
It seemed to Muriel incredible that people like Mrs. Waring and Mrs. Daunt should still be living in Marshington, playing bridge, chattering at the War Depot, and discussing the length of autumn skirts. For Miller's Rise that life had ended centuries ago, cut off by the startling anguish of Connie's wild confession. The echo of that storm still seemed to ring in Muriel's ears. Its violence had bruised and hurt her. She had been deafened by the raging of her father's voice, by Connie's shrill defiance and gusty tears. She could not bear to enter the drawing-room now lest she should see again her father standing by the fireplace, his great neck red and swollen with anger, his voice hurling at Connie those questions, unbearably coarse and brutal to Muriel's shrinking mind. She wanted to shut out for ever the remembrance of Connie's flaming, tear-stained face, and of her mother's terrible weeping as she lay crushed and broken, beaten out of her delicate composure into an abandonment that had tortured Muriel by its blind surrender to astonished pain.
And then slowly, from the terror and confusion, her mother's courage had risen above her agony. Muriel, watching her now as she sat fidgeting with the black tatting spindle, could feel again the effort of that re-assertion, until in the grey dreary hours of early morning, Mrs. Hammond had risen above her circumstances, quietly dominated the three of them, and had sent her husband off to Thraile to do the one thing left to save the Hammonds.
If Mr. Hammond could persuade young Todd to marry Connie immediately, this month, if Connie could be bundled away again to the isolated uplands of Thraile, then the tennis club need never know; then Lady Grainger would still smile graciously upon the Hammonds; then the Bennet relations, and the flouted malice of the Marshington Chapel folk need never jeer at Rachel Bennet, who against reason, against prudence, almost against decency, had married Old Dick Hammond's son.
Why wouldn't he come? Why wouldn't he come? Had the trap broken down? Had he missed the connection at Hardrascliffe? Supposing—supposing he had failed? Supposing? You never knew with Father. He had assurance and courage and cleverness, but still, still—
A door clicked again. Both sat up stiffly, listening. Steps descended the stairs. The door opened, and Connie entered the room.
"I can't stand it. That room upstairs gives me the horrors. I can't stand being alone."
She sank into her father's big arm-chair, exhausted by the strain of the last twenty-four hours. Muriel looked at her, thinking that this passion-torn creature was a stranger, queer and terrible, belonging only to the nightmare year since last night when that dark figure had crept along the drive. Her sister Connie had been gay and reckless, had loved flamboyant colours, and the harsh merriment of rag-time tunes. Muriel remembered her at Kingsport dances, flushed and exultant, with blue ribbon in her bright wild hair.
"I won't do it." Connie's voice, flat and dead, came from between the hands covering her bowed face. "I won't do it. I hate him. I hate Ben Todd." She lifted her head with sudden fierce energy. "Mother, let me go away. By myself. I'll manage. I'll do anything. I'll work my fingers to the bone. I'll never come near here again. Let Father give me some money. I can't go through with it."
Mrs. Hammond's trembling fingers set down the foolish white cotton, the little looped edge of her work.
"Connie," she said quietly, "you know that's impossible. We—your father and I—are doing the best, the only thing we can for you. You must help us, we——"
"But if he can't——" In an urgency of appeal Connie lifted her eyes. "You don't know Mrs. Todd. She'll lie and lie. They'll say—they'll say I encouraged him. He—Ben— does what she says. He's always done what she's said."
Mrs. Hammond opened her eyes and stared unseeing across the room to her elder daughter. Then she spoke softly, almost as though entranced:
"He can't fail. He can't fail."
"Yes, but I can!" cried Connie, springing to her feet. "I won't go back there. You don't know what you're sending me to. You don't know. The Todds were awful, awful. You should have heard them when—when they thought—— You don't know what it's like up there. The lot of them. They'll be all against me. They're proud. They're terrible. There's no bitterness like theirs'll be to me. If you send me there, I'll never, never have another moment's happiness. They'll watch and they'll watch. They'll suspect everything I do or say. Oh, they're hard, and that fearful old cripple—sitting in a corner, watching, watching—— You'll send me to that, just to save your skins, just to save your snobbish, rotten little ideas you'll send me to—to——"
Muriel couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear again the clash and jangle of that terrible violence. "Connie!" she cried. "Connie, don't, it isn't true. It's for your sake—it—they—— You mustn't say things like that."
Wide-eyed with astonishment Connie faced her, amazed that Muriel could so assert her personality.
Then she laughed. "You're backing them up too, are you? Of course. Your mother's little darling always! But I'll get round Father. I'll make him understand."
"Connie dear, you must see that for your own sake, and for the sake of the child, there's no other way. What would you do? You could not earn your own living alone, much less burdened like that."
"Who's to blame for that?"
"And then—the scandal. Your name . . ."
"I'll run away," sobbed Connie, for the twentieth time. But even then the shrewd common sense that underlay her recklessness realized the hopelessness of her position. Without support from her parents or from Ben, she could not face the world. Beyond her hysteria she foresaw defeat, yet could not yet acknowledge it. The desire to find an outlet for her emotion was too strong.
"I'll never face it," she repeated softly. Then, "Why doesn't he come?"
Far off a train whistled, entering the station.
"That will be the 9.50," said Mrs. Hammond.
Muriel realized then that she did not want her father to come and tell them. Her mind was chaotic with emotion. She only knew that she could not bear to face a repetition of last night's scene. Something whispered in her mind, "Father and Connie enjoy letting themselves go." If she could have brought herself to desert her mother, she would have left the room.
A motor-car hummed up the road. A motor-bicycle throbbed noisily. Then a horse came trotting, clop-clop, clop-clop.
Connie jumped up. "I can't—I can't," she gasped.
Mrs. Hammond rose, and with sudden tenderness went forward. Connie was, after all, her child. She laid gentle hands on Connie's arm that grasped the mantelpiece, but the girl pushed her roughly aside.
"Don't touch me. I don't want you!"
Clop-clop. Clop-clop. The horse-hoofs rang clear and hard on the dry road. With a swish of dead leaves and scattering of pebbles, the cart turned smartly on to the gravel of the drive. A lantern light moved beyond the slats of the venetian blind down the side window. The groom's voice spoke. Mr. Hammond answered.
They heard his footsteps pass the window. They heard him in the hall.
Connie stood quite still as her father came into the room and stopped, facing her. She did not look up.
"Well," he said heavily, "I've fixed things up. Wedding's on 21st, Connie."
"No, it's not. I'm not going through with it." She spoke sullenly, bending towards the fireless grate.
"Ay, but ye will. Young Todd's a fool, but he seemed to be rarely set up to have you. The missus says she'll treat you well. They weren't the sort o' folk I'd thought on, Connie. I can't rightly size the whole business up, for they're decentish people."
"Decent? The old man's a fiend."
"Nay, nay, lass. Thou's not behaved so well thysen' that thou canst pick and choose. It's not the old man you'll be marrying. I cannot rightly see how it all came about."
Muriel looked at him. On his face was no longer the dark fury of resentment, but a rough tenderness, born of compunction and bewilderment. In his voice lay a new note of pity, almost, it seemed, of understanding. To Muriel this was the strangest thing in those strange days; but to Connie looking up from her clasped hands, it shone like a light through her darkness of rebellion.
"Oh, Dad, you'll help me," she cried, and stumbled forward, blindly sobbing, into the clumsy shelter of his arms.