The Crowded Street

by Winifred Holtby

XXX

It was not going to be easy, but then Muriel was not quite sure that she wanted ease. She found herself at last comforted by a situation that demanded from her action, prompt action. That was what she found so terribly difficult, the action on her own initiative. Thraile was alarmingly different from Marshington, where nearly all judgments could be obtained ready-made from social conventions or from Mrs. Hammond. At Thraile nobody seemed to care what she did except Connie, and Connie as a councillor was worse than useless, for between moods of sullen silence, boisterous humour and hysterical despair she had lost even her very moderate supply of common sense.

For a fortnight Muriel stayed on at Thraile, watching and talking and thinking, thinking, thinking. She had tramped over the dark moor before the house; she had wandered down the farm that fell away behind it, acre after acre of drab stubble and harsh grass land, to the swirling waters of the Fallow. But whether she trod the sheep-tracks girdled with frost, or sat in the stuffy parlour listening to the endless tale of Connie's woe, the same conviction urged her.

She would have to speak to William Todd.

Last night she had written to her mother:

You see, the position here for Connie really is intolerable. Mr. Todd, the cripple, really rules this house. He loves Matthew; but because he considers him to have been "born in sin" he doesn't think it right to love him, and makes up for it by hating Ben, who has always been rather weak and sickly. Or else he just pretends to hate him, and really loves them both. I cannot say, for he is a queer man. Every one is terrified of him, though the girls think that he's quite mad. Anyway the point is that Ben and Connie are unhappy here and ought to get away. The farm girls suspect things and make jokes about Connie. Mr. Todd and Matthew both bully Ben. Ben and Connie are never alone together for a minute except at night. They are getting frightfully self-conscious and always under a sort of restraint which must be bad for them. Mr. Todd has a little farm at Fallowdale, quite a nice little house, which he was going to give to the first son that married. Now he says that Ben can't be trusted away from him at Thraile. I am sure that if Ben and Connie could get away together, they would be happy. Ben really seems to be very fond of her. I am going to speak to Mr. Todd myself, but, if he won't listen, I do wish that you or Father could do something. And couldn't we take Connie into a nursing home for when the baby comes? It's not that they are unkind to her here, and they make her as comfortable as they can, and she need do no housework unless she likes. It's only that they ought not to be here with all these people.

I am so sorry about your cold and father's indigestion, and I quite understand how busy you are about the luncheon party. I would come home and help you with it, but I really don't feel that I can leave here just yet, please, if you can do without me. If Mrs. Cartwright worries you about the Jumble Sale again, do tell her that Mr. Vaughan specially told me that we could not have the Parish Room until February 14th because of the Red Cross Exhibition. It is very nice of you to say you miss me, and you do understand why I'm staying on, don't you?

Please give my love to Father.

Your loving daughter,

Muriel.

P.S.—Can't you get Aunt Beatrice for the luncheon?

She simply could not help writing her letter. It was the nearest approach that she could make to asking for the advice that she so sorely needed. It brought her into touch with homely and familiar things before she plunged irrevocably into the deep waters of her own decision.

She had sat wrapped up in her thick grey cloth coat in the bare chilliness of her bedroom, reading and re-reading the neat, small handwriting that always looked as though it might be going to say something interesting and that never did. She felt about it as soldiers feel about letters written on the eve of an advance. From a strange place she stretched out her hands to grasp, perhaps for the last time, at the safety of the known world.

But she had not posted the letter. Re-read in the cold light of early morning criticism, she had decided that it promised more than her feeble courage might perform. A scrupulous mental honesty had made her recognize her weakness long ago. "I am going to speak to Mr. Todd," she wrote, but nobody should read the words till she had spoken.

All the same, the last letter from Mrs. Hammond, one of a resigned but plaintive series, had to be answered. That was just as well, for it set a limit at last to Muriel's procrastination. The postman came to Thraile at six o'clock, leaving the letters and taking away with him any written by the household. If Muriel could only end that awful interview before six, she still might post her letter to her mother.

On paper it had seemed so simple; but then on paper and to Mrs. Hammond it would have been impossible to do justice to the atmosphere of Thraile. Those were two terrible people, sitting in the small front parlour; the old lady mumbling and rustling from the arm-chair by the fire, whose bright unseeing eyes could yet see everything; the cripple lying stretched before the window, his fiery spirit slowly burning through his mutilated body, until it seemed that it must quite consume all that was mortal and regain the liberty it proudly craved.

It was all very well pretending that she did not mind. For nearly an hour that afternoon, Muriel had walked along the steep moor road with Connie, listening to the angry emphasis of her reiterated words. To comfort her, Muriel had said, "All right, I'll speak to him." She did not add that for nights now she had dreamed of the approaching interview, had seen herself standing in the bright stuffiness of that over-heated room, confronting the fierce relentlessness of those piercing eyes, feeling her own gentleness driven away in blind surrender out into the whirling darkness of the passage. And supposing that she made things worse? Supposing that he resented her interference? That he himself had been thinking of sending Ben to Fallowdale, but perversely changed his mind at Muriel's blundering suggestion?

Standing in the corridor she pressed her thin hands against her face. As though she could feel through the door the repulsion of his violence, she shrank against the wall. His fierce tongue probed her softness; his strength had outraged her submission; his independence, exaggerated almost to insanity, bruised and bewildered her well-tutored mind. "He's mad. He's mad," she thought. "Better not go at all than break down in the middle."

From inside the parlour the cuckoo-clock piped suddenly five hollow notes. "Five o'clock. If I mean to post that letter I must go in now—now."

She went forward and tapped at the door.

She had been in before several times with Mrs. Todd, but always had retreated as soon as courtesy made possible. Never before had she been in alone.

The room now seemed to float in liquid firelight. Upborne upon the flickering flood she could see here a jar of delicate gilt and ivory beneath a fiery glass bubble; there the corner of a polished picture-frame; a wool worked footstool, the basket of sewing that Mrs. Meggie had left on the table. Slowly the quivering movement steadied before her eyes, and from the dancing shadows the solid bulk of old Mrs. Todd's chair rose like an island, and there by the window she saw William Todd.

He lay as usual gazing out across the moor, his hawk-like profile outlined against the melting silver of the wintry sun that flowed between dark banks of hill and sky. All the Todds had sharp features and noses hooked almost to a deformity, but sickness had emaciated a naturally lean face, until William Todd was terrible enough to see.

Muriel closed the door very quietly, and went across to the couch in the window. Even when she stood beside him, he did not seem to see her, but lay as still as the furniture or the dark moor. The room was silent. Only the light flames rustled like the restless wings of a bird imprisoned in the hearth and the old woman nibbled and mumbled in her sleep. Far, far away from Marshington was this firelit parlour. Muriel spoke timidly.

"Please, Mr. Todd, can I speak to you a minute?"

"Evidently. You see that. Ah cannot get away."

A certain broadening of the vowels betrayed William Todd's county, but he spoke with a readiness unusual among the tongue-tied farmers of the Riding, and possessed a command of language won from long reading of the Bible, dog-eared theological tracts, and a surprising quantity of the more easily acquired English classics.

"I wanted to talk to you about Connie," Muriel continued. "You know that when—when she had—to—to——"

"To marry my son to save her own name from the disgrace that justly followed her own action. Well?"

This was not a promising beginning, but at least it seemed to Muriel, that, considering his own record, he was being a little unfair.

"Well," she said, more hotly than she had intended. "I don't see myself that it was such an awful thing to do. After all, many people don't even marry."

"Because the many have sinned, does that excuse the guilt of one? I think not."

This was dangerous ground. Muriel shifted her position. It was too late now for retreat. She spoke hastily.

"I didn't come to talk to you about whether Connie sinned or not. I don't pretend to judge such things. What I do feel is that somebody ought to tell you that living on here is being frightfully bad for them. They're never really alone together for a minute. Every one whom they see and every one where they go reminds them of what they once did. People laugh and sneer—and—oh, it's terrible. You can't see it of course, or you'd have known, I'm sure, how impossible it is."

"Please go on. This is no doubt very interesting."

"It isn't interesting, Mr. Todd, really. It's horrible. Oh, do let them go away. Please let them go. You've got a farm at Fallowdale, haven't you?"

No answer came to her from the shadows. Fearfully she continued:

"Well, why don't you let Ben farm it? Let them go off and live together, make a fresh start all on their own. I'm sure they could be happy. Connie loves farming, and they'd have the baby. Oh, I know you'd find they'd be far happier. Just those two, where they could forget what a bad start they'd made. It's cruel, it's just cruel to make that one mistake an ever-living shame to them because other people smile and sneer and insinuate, people who are probably every bit as bad but just more careful. How can they be happy like this?"

She stopped, amazed by her own temerity. Beyond the moor the last silver gleam of sunlight lay like an outstretched sword between the dark embrace of hill and sky. William Todd lay watching it for a long time before he moved. Then he said slowly:

"You seem to set great store by happiness."

She was surprised. Eagerly she tried to see his face through the growing shadows as she said:

"I do, I do. Surely it's the right of people to be happy!"

"Really? To think o' that now! Are you happy?"

"I?" Three months ago she had told herself that she was the most miserable of frustrated women, but to a stranger she would have laughed nervously and answered, "I'm all right." Somehow at Thraile and to this madman, one spoke the truth if possible. She answered thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. No, I don't think I'm happy. I've never really had any of the things I wanted most. I've never done anything I meant to do. I'm a failure, I suppose. Nobody needs me . . ."

"Well?" He cut short the flow of self-revelation, so alien to Muriel's usual habit. "And do you think that I am happy? or Meggie, my wife? or my mother there? Do you think that God Himself is happy? What then do you expect for your sister and my son, eh?"

She could answer this, but her speech came stumblingly.

"But if we see any way to make people happy. . . . They have a right to all possible happiness. Now if Ben and Connie could go to your farm at Fallowdale, they might forget—everything, and just be—happy."

"You think that they have a right now to be happy, having sinned. I tell you, young woman, that I too sinned when I was young, and walked wildly before the Lord after the lusts o' my own flesh. And I too thought to cover the wickedness o' my ways from the sight o' men by asking the Lord's blessing on a union made in hell. But the Lord is righteous and in Him is no shadow of turning. He laid upon me the blessing of this judgment. I had desired with the desire of the flesh for my own lusts, and with the desire of the world for my ambitions. The Lord took away from me the means of all fulfilment. He laid His hand upon me, and I lie here while others reap what I have sown. I lie here while my own sons bring forth the fruits of destruction. The Lord is just. He gave, and He hath taken away. Blessed be His name."

"I know you've suffered," she cried softly, "but, because you are unhappy, do you think that you have the right to make them suffer? After all, it's a tremendous responsibility to undertake the Lord's judgments without His wisdom. I thought that you were keeping Fallowdale from Ben because you couldn't afford to let him have a separate farm, or because you were afraid he couldn't manage it; but if it's just because you think he ought to suffer as you suffered. . . ."

"Did I speak o' suffering for myself? You seem to have a queer notion of the ways o' things. Do you think that I could make your sister happy if I wanted to, or Ben the godly man I would ha' had him be? From their own hearts and deeds comes their own misery."

"Yes, but really, Mr. Todd," persisted Muriel desperately. "Really and truly living here makes it all worse. It's estranging them."

"Their shame estranges them."

"It's making Connie bitter. She's getting to despise Ben because the girls laugh at him."

"That is part of their punishment."

"It's not. It's not. Why should they be punished? And why should you do it?" She drew a deep breath and felt as though all winter's storms passed over her as she said, "It's like a sort of pride to you. You think that because the Lord punished you in a special way you sinned some great, particular sin. I don't believe that it was a great sin and probably your accident was nothing but an accident, and you've been brooding and brooding until you think that you had a dispensation of providence specially made for you, so now you are going to make one for somebody else. I hate your religion or whatever you call it if it gives you the right to make other people miserable!" She broke off, suddenly appalled at her own arrogance. This was what people did if they spoke out of character. They always went too far. Oh, it was this queer, terrible place that made every one behave unlike themselves! If Connie had never come to Thraile, nothing would ever have happened, she was certain.

She stood in the dark room, waiting for him to destroy her.

She had to wait for a long time.

The clock ticked. The fire rustled. From the old woman's chair broke little snatching sounds of difficult breath. Her asthma was troubling her in her sleep.

At last Muriel heard the slow voice of William Todd. Again his gentleness amazed her.

"I rec'lect when I was a lad that I thought I knew pretty well everything worth knowing. My father went t'chapel and my mother went to church, and I'd have naught to do with either. So you hate my religion, eh? Now, I wonder if ye know at all what my religion is? Mebbe ye think ah've just got a kind o' spite against my son and your sister and ah justify it by the cloak of righteous disapproval, eh? That ah've just lain here fashing myself over my own soul and forgetting the right sense o' the great wisdom o' the children of this world. Is that it?"

She did not answer because she could not. She had said more than enough. Her mind was a dry husk, empty, blown before the wind of his strange spirit.

"Ye'd better sit down. Ah've had to listen to you say your piece. Now mebbe ye'll listen to me for a bit. You took it upon yourself to hate my religion. Ah misdoubt if you know what you're talking about." He paused, as though he sought a difficult word. "There is only one thing that matters, and that is the vision of the spirit. Men are poor things at best, but there's one power that dignifies them, and that's the sight o' something greater than this world. Folk nowadays are apt to call it truth or Science or whatnot. I call that glory God. We are born in sin and reared in wantonness, and there are those of us to whom no light is shown. We worship false gods most of our time. Our bodies and our pride and the opinion of our fellow men; but to the Elect there comes a day when they see, though through a glass darkly, the shadow o' that light."

"Well?" murmured Muriel.

"The Lord has said, 'Thou shalt have none other god but me,' but we can only worship what we know, and to all men the light is not vouchsafed, so that they worship false gods thinking them to be the true. Ah'm telling you, though ye'll forget it, and mebbe ye'll never understand, that the most precious gift to man is just this vision of his God. And once he has seen, then he must never rest. I remember when I was farmin' how always the moors were pressing on these lands. They never sleep, if we do. Ye may build your walls high, an' weed and dig, but slowly by night creep up the gorse an' heather, an' who's to say 'an enemy hath done this'? 'Tis the same wi' vision. Once ye have seen, there's never sittin' down and waiting for the Lord to come to you again. All foolishness an' rioting, all chambering an' wantonness comes in between a man and his own sight. Purity is a matter o' the spirit you may say, and what is a man's body that he be so mindful of it? In the body we live, and from the body we die, and a man can give his body mastery over his immortal soul; but the things o' the body come like wind and weather between a man and his clear spirit. For it is hard enough for any man to see the light, and harder yet to keep it burning clear. And if your light be darkness, then is man robbed of God. The last betrayal and the ultimate unworthiness is the defilement of the vision."

He paused, it seemed to be for a long time. Then he said: "I cannot let it be as though my son had never sinned. Wouldn't it be far easier for me to say, 'It doesn't matter. It was a little thing'? To say as you say, 'Well, he married her,' as if it made amends to God to hide your own wrong from the eyes o' men? I let him marry her, because it did no good to keep them from each other, and he would. But if my own son will use his own body as an instrument of pleasure, and thinks that as long as he gives his name to the child he does no ill, I'll not be still. If all this happiness you prate of were but the gratification o' their lusts ah'd say no more. But till he's shamed to his soul at what he's done, ah will not let him go."

"Oh, but he is ashamed!" she cried, striking her hands together with the force of her sudden sight. "They are ashamed, but of the wrong thing. They're ashamed not because they did wrong, but because they were found out. They must go away from this place to forget that. Please let them go. You'll see. Talk to Connie if you like. She does not understand you. Only let them go. If not——"

"Well?"

"I'll have—I'll have—I'll make my father come again and force them from you."

The man on the couch laughed at her. "Do ye think your father could do ought about it? While I mean Ben to stay here, here he'll stay. He married Connie because ah gave him leave. The boy's no man yet, and he's been living in sin. It must be as the Lord wills, I only wait upon His guidance."

His voice became suddenly flat with weariness.

"Go now and ask my wife to come to me."

She felt her way to the door and knew that she was defeated. She had done nothing, less than nothing. What could she do against the fires that consumed that fierce, relentless cripple? He puzzled her. He puzzled her. Her father had found him shrewd and grasping, well able to strike a good bargain. Her mother had found him strange but interesting, a self-educated man of unusual refinement for his environment. And she—surely he was sincere? He felt sincere. Yet, what was one to do for Connie?

She groped her way towards the kitchen door that thrust a bar of light across the blackness of the passage.

The postman leant against the table, a slab of saucer-custard in his hand, a mug of tea beside him. She remembered now her letter to her mother. What use was there to send it? They would never understand. She delivered her message to Mrs. Todd, and received in return a letter addressed to

"Miss Constance Hammond,

Miller's Rise,

Marshington,"

readdressed to The High Farm, Thraile. The envelope was crushed and dirty, and bore the foreign service stamp. She carried it to the room where Connie lay upon her bed, reading a novel.

"Letters?" she asked sleepily.

"One—forwarded from Marshington. That's all." Muriel retreated to her own room, sick and weary with defeat. She had done nothing, nothing. She had helped neither Connie nor herself. She felt that she hated William Todd.