XXXII
The situation having been lifted again out of Muriel's hands, she did not for some time contest the way in which it was being handled. For the space of one evening, Ben seemed to have attained to manhood. So much the better for Ben. So much the better for Connie. So much the worse perhaps for Muriel, who was again left with no one in life having great need of her. Directly Connie was better, Muriel meant to go home. For Connie, not unnaturally, was ill. The evening's escapade had resulted in a severe chill, caught, she explained, because while going for a walk to cure her headache, she had fallen and wrenched her ankle, and lain in the rain until Ben and Muriel found her.
Well, she would soon be better. It never occurred to Muriel to protest against the standard of Thraile nursing. She followed Mrs. Todd about the chill, dark bedroom, acquiescing in suggested remedies. After all, what else could one do in someone else's house? It was nobody's fault that the fire in Connie's bedroom smoked, or that Dr. Merryweather was old-fashioned. Besides, she herself had a sore throat, and a bruised knee, and a weary battered spirit. Events must take their course. The whole household being incalculable and detached from sane life as she knew it, Muriel could not bring herself to think it real at all. She brushed her own torn skirt and Connie's, and carried trays upstairs for Mrs. Todd, who, with three invalids and the large family to manage, still remained imperturbably cheerful. Then, somehow, quite without Muriel realizing their importance, several things happened very quickly; the doctor's second visit; Ben driving off into the rain to Follerwick; her mother's arrival by the evening train.
Muriel stood in the room once shared by Alice, Gert and Polly, fingering silver jars upon the roughly stained dressing-table, and wondering how her mother always contrived to carry an atmosphere of Marshington drawing-rooms into the most incongruous surroundings.
"I can't understand it. I can't understand it," repeated Mrs. Hammond, methodically unwrapping her slippers from her linen shoe bags. "You say that she went out in the rain . . ."
"It wasn't raining when she went out," explained Muriel for the second time. "It began to rain later—after she had fallen."
"I can't help thinking, dear, that there was some grave irresponsibility. Knowing how careless she is, you never ought to have let her go out alone. It never should have happened—and then—since, Muriel, why didn't you see that a second opinion was called in?"
"We didn't think that she was so ill.—Dr. Merryweather——"
"Oh, Dr. Merryweather! A North Riding country practitioner—really, Muriel. But of course, dear, you never had any initiative, had you? Well, it may be all right now."
With gentle efficiency, Mrs. Hammond took control of the situation. Never had her conduct been more completely admirable. She had found her younger daughter seriously ill with pneumonia, her elder daughter in a strange condition of nervous paralysis, an impossibly inconvenient house, and a family complicated by the most uncomfortable relationships. Almost at once she made her influence felt. Muriel found herself shrinking into the shadows. She never remembered afterwards how she passed her time in that house grown hushed with concentrated anxiety. Once she remembered meeting Ben upon the landing. His face was drawn and grey. She remembered his long feet in their drab worsted stockings and the silly appeal in his light grey-blue eyes.
"Muriel," he had said in a hoarse whisper, "she ain't going to die, is she?"
"No, of course she isn't," Muriel answered irritably. How could she die, now that everything had just been put right? Of course she wasn't going to die!
He twisted the smooth knob at the top of the staircase. "She mustn't die," he whispered again. "I couldn't stand that, I tell you I couldn't." He cast a sidelong glance down stairs towards the passage where the door of the front parlour stood open. "Father says that it'll be the judgment of God upon our wickedness if she does die."
"What does he know about it? She won't die."
"I can't bear it," he repeated, his mouth agape, his eyes that nature had intended to be meek and kind staring ahead with a sad, unnatural concentration. "I couldn't abide to think of her dying in her sin."
"You don't think that at all. She's not in sin—any more than I am. You're talking nonsense. She's going to get well. And in April your baby will be born. And Mr. Todd will let you both go off to Fallowdale." She nodded at him reassuringly, as one nods to a child, and then went upon her quiet, mouse-like duties.
Three more days passed. A nurse had come from Hardrascliffe. Mrs. Hammond sat up half the night, and Muriel the other half. Mrs. Hammond wore a white apron over her pretty dresses. Her cool fingers had been denuded of their rings, but their little pink nails shone like jewels. The farm girls all had lost their heads and hearts to her. They wondered how on earth a dowdy little thing like Muriel, and a big jolly girl like Connie, could have had such a duck of a mother. Mrs. Todd treated her with cheerful and unimpressionable independence. Muriel followed her submissively, like a scolded child, knowing herself to be in disgrace, and yet never hearing a word of the reproach that she knew her mother felt.
Connie, she found inarticulate and pathetic, only occasionally cross and difficult. Most of the time she seemed to be uncannily obedient.
Once in the early morning, when Muriel was so sleepy that she had to hold her head right forward, so that it would not fall back against her chair, Connie's queer, grating whisper roused her.
"Mu——"
"Yes."
"It would be a queer thing if I was to die after all—wouldn't it?"
"Don't be silly. You aren't going to die."
"I don't want to. I want to have the baby. I'd like to have a house of my own, and a little Ford car, so that Ben and I could run in to Hardrascliffe for week-ends."
"Of course you will."
"Don't let me die, Mu."
"There's no question of your dying."
But she did not get better quickly. One night her temperature raced up, and she began to talk dangerous nonsense about Eric, while Muriel endeavoured to keep her mother from the room, and Mrs. Hammond, with heroic fortitude, stayed in and quietly controlled the situation. Then there was a miserable early morning when the oxygen cylinders did not arrive from Hardrascliffe; and, when the light crept through the curtains, Muriel stood in dry-eyed wonder while Ben buried his head in Connie's counterpane and wept loudly with an illogical wholeheartedness.
It was most terrible to see men cry. Muriel wondered whether her father would cry when he came. Anything might happen in a world where Connie had been allowed to die. A sense of baffled impotence seized Muriel. Connie had been preserved so miraculously through two crises—God could not really have let her die.
She wandered round the silent house, very weary but yet more bored, wishing that she could even join the nurse's secret ministration up in Connie's bedroom, rather than have this desolating feeling of no purpose. Then Mrs. Todd, with practical kindness, set her to wash up breakfast plates, with a significant nod to Gertie—"Muriel is going to be taken bad next if we don't look out." And afterwards Mrs. Hammond, with a dignity of self-control that astonished every one but Muriel, called her upstairs and gave her letters to write, and began to discuss details of the funeral.
Mr. Hammond was in London. He could not reach Thraile until Tuesday morning, even by travelling all night. Mrs. Hammond therefore had to make her own arrangements—the funeral to be at Follerwick, the letters to all relations, the notices to the Yorkshire papers.
"Have you been to see Mr. Todd, since——?" asked Mrs. Hammond, delicately pressing down the flap of an envelope.
"No, Mother, why?"
"Well, dear. I do think that one of us ought to go to him. Just to show that we—that, well, I do think that we ought. And I don't feel——" Bravely she pushed aside her tears with a small handkerchief.
Muriel walked slowly down the stairs. The little parlour was flooded with afternoon sunlight. Through the uncurtained window, Muriel could see the moors frozen to hard, black beauty, cold as stone beneath the cold, clear light.
William Todd was lying by the window. Ben, a forlorn and uncouth figure in his ill-fitting black clothes, sat on the chair beside him, his large red hands upon his knee.
Muriel came into the room quietly and shut the door. She wished that she knew what was the right thing to say.
"I am very sorry, Mr. Todd," she said at last, feeling that somehow it was what he should have said to her.
"You are sorry. Your sister is dead. My son tells me that she did not die unrepentant. I am glad. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. When men shall say Peace, and all things are safe, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as sorrow came upon a woman travailing with child, and they shall not escape."
"No," answered Muriel, "I suppose not." But she thought all this to be irrelevant. She felt sorry for Ben, who sat there with bent, dumb bewilderment, but she did not know what to say. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry that the baby for whose sake he had forgiven Connie had never been born. She only said: "Ben has been splendid, Mr. Todd, all through her illness. I am sure that you will understand far more than I—— Do be—please be—nice to him."
The cripple's bright eyes seemed to pierce her brain.
"Shall not the Lord deal justly with his own? You tried to save your sister from the punishment of man; but a greater than man had judged before you. But, thank God, her death has not been quite unfruitful. My son, my son has even seen the error of his ways."
William Todd turned his face to the young man. A queer twisted tenderness broke for a minute the clear lines of his face. Then it hardened again. His son sat without movement, his eyes upon the carpet.
"Ay. That's so," he murmured dully.
The old lady by the fire nodded and smiled at Muriel, nibbling a pink sweet. She was happy because she had outlived her grandson's wife.
Ben followed Muriel from the room.
"How much does your father know?" asked Muriel.
"Nay. I don't know. He's said nowt but what he knew before. But he is right. The destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed. It was for the ungodliness o' my soul, he says, the Lord took my wife and my child."
He raised his head with a smile of ghastly pride, as though consoled by the Lord's impressive punishment of his offence.
"Ben!" cried Muriel, no longer sorry. "You don't really think like that. You can't think like that." Connie and miserable sinners simply could not live together in the same thought. Connie was a person, intensely alive, wilful and foolish, made for enjoyment and companionship. She was not an instrument of God sent for the punishment of any man's misdeeds.
Ben stared at her foolishly. Then without a word he passed her by and stumbled up the stairs.
Next morning Mr. Hammond came. He saw Muriel in the hall.
"Where's Rachel?" he asked.
"Upstairs, Father. I'll show you."
He followed her, stepping softly up the winding stair. Mrs. Hammond stood in the doorway. On her face was an expression of relief, anxiety, tenderness. Now that he had come, she wanted nothing more.
Muriel watched her father enfold her mother in his great arms. She, the imperturbable, the gently adamant, gave herself up to his rough mastery, and found rest there. Neither of them noticed Muriel.
"There, there, little woman," he said softly, stroking her bowed silver head with his large hand. "It's all right. It's all right. Poor Connie. You did your best. You did everything, little woman, I know. You've been wonderful."
She let him treat her like a child. Before him alone she lost her perfect self-command. Muriel saw this with the jealous perception of the onlooker. "They don't want me," she told herself, and went downstairs.
On the morning of the funeral came the wreaths, piles and piles of them, colder than the snow now white along the moorland. Their sickly smell filled the stone house. "It is the smell of death," thought Muriel.
The land-girls stole about, red-eyed, admiring, with crêpe bands round the arms of their tunics.
Dolly lifted a card.
"Oh, come and look at this," she whispered to Gert. "With deepest sympathy from Colonel and Lady Grainger."
Mrs. Hammond, black-veiled and pathetic, entered the hall. They all fell back respectfully. She leaned above the lilies, touching their waxen trumpets with a gentle finger. She also lifted the card.
"Oh, Muriel, how kind of them!" she cried softly. "How very, very kind."
But Muriel went away and cried bitterly because Connie was dead, and now she had not even a sister left who needed her.