The Crowded Street

by Winifred Holtby

XXXIV

Muriel had been to tea with Daisy Weathergay. She had nursed the Weathergay babies (there were now two) and looked at Weathergay photographs, and endured the reiterated recital of the heroism of Captain Dickie Weathergay in the Great War. She had been made to understand, if indeed she had not already understood, that the War only really affected the lives of those women married or engaged to soldiers at the Front; and the recollection that she was of those who had no right to feel anxiety or relief brought sharply home to her the thought of Godfrey at the Weare Grange.

"They say she's never been up there to stay since he came home," Daisy remarked with the confident knowledge of the already married. "Of course I was always sure that it would never come to anything and I still don't believe he'll marry her. A foreigner——"

"She's not," protested Muriel.

"Oh, well, she's half French or something, isn't she? Anyway, I'm sure she'd never do for Godfrey. Now poor Phyllis—— Really, it is terrible, isn't it? Ever since he came home, she's looking so ill and pale, though I do think that she's a little fool to wear her heart on her sleeve like that——"

A pleasurable pride lifted for a moment the depression of Muriel's mood. She at least evidently did not share in the folly of Phyllis Marshall Gurney, yet as she said good-bye at the garden gate of Daisy's little villa her depression returned to her again. It accompanied her on the walk homeward, blinding her to the clear tracery of budding trees across the sky, to the silver serenity of the spring evening. She thought, "Connie's baby would have been three years old now. They might at least have left me the satisfaction of being an aunt." She thought, "What on earth shall I do when I get home? Read? All books are the same—about beautiful girls who get married or married women who fall in love with their husbands. In books things always happen to people. Why doesn't somebody write a book about someone to whom nothing ever happens—like me?"

She thought, "If only I'd done what Mr. Vaughan suggested about St. Catherine's Home, I'd have the accounts to do this evening. Mother says that Mrs. Cartwright's got the tradesman's bills into an awful mess. But it's not the sort of thing that young girls do. Oh, no! Men hate to think of girls being mixed up in that sort of thing! O God, O God, what am I going to do! How much does Mother know about Eric? How long can I bear living in the same house as those two, knowing what I know, guessing what they know, and hearing them lie and lie and lie?

"I must be sensible. What could Mother do about Connie but pretend that she knows nothing? Did she know about Eric, though, before she made Connie marry Ben? There was something between them. How much did she guess? Oh, what is the use of going all over this again? I must think about something else. If I don't think about something else I shall go mad. What's the good, what's the good? What else is there to think about? The tennis club opening? The Nursing Association, the Marshington people? What shall I do—having nothing to think about, and nobody's going to marry me, and I'm here always, always? How many years? Three since I left Thraile? Then I shall probably live another fifty."

She tried as always, to reason herself back into sanity. "Even if I can't love Mother any more as I used to; even if I know that she's calculating and hard and insincere, at least Father needs me. He has come to like me a little more—to know me." But Muriel knew this to be at least uncertain. When she opened the door of Miller's Rise, she felt the atmosphere of the house close in upon her. She heard through the morning-room door her father's voice, "But, look here, Rachel, for the Lord's sake!" And her mother's, gently complaining, "Oh, of course, Arthur, I know. You always thought of the girls before you thought of me. You always preferred to have Muriel do things for you——"

"Oh, by gad, this is too bad! Muriel's a good lass enough, but you know it's nothing to do with that. A husband's and wife's income are clumped together for taxation, and I'm damned if I'll let this rotten Government fleece me right and left. Muriel will get it anyway when we're gone, she might as well have a bit now—I'll tie up the capital so that no rascal can marry her for her money——"

"Oh, I don't think that you need fear that she'll marry, and it's all very well putting it down to the income tax, but you know as well as I do——"

Muriel put down her umbrella with a clatter on the hall table. She went into the sitting-room to find her father standing in flushed exasperation near the mantelpiece, her mother sewing with indignant concentration at the table, and Aunt Beatrice, ignored as completely as the carpet, crocheting doilies in the window.

Lately Mr. and Mrs. Hammond had argued much more frequently. Again it had been the Thraile incident that seemed to mark the turning point in their relations. Mrs. Hammond was blaming her husband for his bequest to Connie of the ungovernable temperament which had nearly brought ruin on the Hammond family. She was sore at her one failure, terrified now of another. Muriel could read in her increasing plaintiveness the anxiety that racked her, lest her elder daughter also should defeat her ends. And this continual strain was telling upon Mr. Hammond. He had married Rachel Bennet largely because she was pretty, clever and a lady. She brought things off. Arthur Hammond loved people who brought things off. He liked to pay dearly for good stuff, but he expected it to be good. Muriel remembered his advice, applied equally to horses and workmen, and, she supposed, to his wife, "Go for the best i' the market, pay top price, and let 'em rip." He had gone for the best on the market. He had given Rachel a free hand, till now she had always brought things off, but just recently she had begun to doubt her own capacity to triumph, not so much over circumstance as over other people's limitations. Connie had jarred her self-confidence, Muriel was wearing it fine, and Arthur Hammond was becoming bored.

Without taking off her hat, Muriel sat down by the table, wondering whether they would tell her about the argument. Whatever it was, it evidently concerned her closely.

"Muriel, dear, I wish that you would not sit about in your coat and skirt. You know how it spoils it to sit about in it indoors."

"Oh, all right, Mother." She rose to go.

"Here, M.," her father called her back, "I've got some papers I want you to sign after supper. Come to my desk in the dining-room."

Muriel guessed what these were. She saw her mother's eyes, hurt and angry, looking across the table to her. She went slowly from the room and closed the door.

She had not been in her own bedroom more than five minutes, and was slowly taking off her silk shirt blouse, when her aunt tapped at the door and came in.

"Oh, you're changing?"

"Yes," remarked Muriel, lifting a grey velveteen dress from her wardrobe. "What is it, Auntie?"

"Oh, I don't know, dear. Nothing in particular. Did you hear anything interesting in the village?"

"Nothing. Does one ever hear anything interesting in Marshington? What was the trouble downstairs, Auntie?"

"Trouble, dear? What trouble do you mean?"

Muriel picked up her dress and pushed it over her head. When she emerged from her temporary eclipse she said "Father and Mother."

"Oh—er—nothing, dear."

Muriel fastened an amethyst brooch carefully into her dress. She was thinking, "I really can't stand this feeling of secret exasperation in the house. I can't stand not talking to someone." Aloud she asked:

"Auntie, have you noticed—Father and Mother seem to get on each other's nerves now, like they never used to do?"

"Oh—I shouldn't say that, you know, Muriel."

"Oh, Auntie, you must have noticed it. What was it now about the income tax?"

"Oh, well, your father wants to invest some money in your name, to save super tax—just as a business investment, you know, and your mother——"

"Thinks that she ought to have it?"

"Well, yes, dear. But you know that wouldn't do. As your father pointed out, it doesn't act somehow if the wife has it."

"Mother doesn't like Father—doing things for me, does she?" Muriel reflected. "Perhaps you've noticed. She doesn't like my doing things for him either."

"Well, dear," Aunt Beatrice sat down in Muriel's arm-chair, eager to clear away doubts and difficulties, her eyes shining with excellent intentions, "you see, your father and mother have always been so very much to one another. Far more than most husbands and wives. Your mother gave up a great deal for your father—my family weren't at all pleased at a Bennet marrying a Hammond. We held a very good position in Market Burton, you know. And your mother has been wonderful, she has never looked back once. But naturally she expects—wants—would like to have the—the first place in your father's consideration."

"Of course," murmured Muriel, "and she is inclined to fear anything that might come between them?"

"Oh, yes, dear. Naturally. Though of course this money——"

"Of course—this money. That's hardly the point, I know. Just a trifle, which of course she will come to see in its true proportion. The real thing is that she does not like the idea of anyone else getting the attention which she naturally expects from Father."

She began to arrange the little silver-topped boxes and hairpin tidies and pincushions upon her dressing-table with light, careful movements, while her mind worked feverishly.

"Father admires Mother immensely, doesn't he? More than most husbands about here admire their wives?"

"Yes, yes. I always said so. He thinks her wonderful. You know dear, of course, when you were younger I should not like to have said anything; but you must see some things for yourself now—your mother's influence has been wonderful over your father. She—she's always so—splendid," Aunt Beatrice returned to the word for lack of better definition.

Muriel, however, supplied the deficiency. "Yes, she always carries things off, doesn't she? It would be terrible if for once she did not carry things off. That's the quality he most admires in her. I'm afraid," she continued dreamily, "that that's why he's been less—less certain of her lately, aren't you? Because he isn't certain whether she's going to carry things off——"

"I don't quite see, dear—well, what?"

"Me, for instance," murmured Muriel. "It would be a terrible thing if after all she never got me off, wouldn't it? Especially after Connie's death. You know, it was a pity that I hadn't any brothers. Boys can go and get married on their own. But when women like you and I, Auntie, are left unmarried, it is rather a trial for our parents, isn't it?"

"Oh, but, dear, of course you will marry one day. It's early to talk——"

"Is it? Do you think I shall?" Muriel turned from the dressing-table and looked at her aunt. "I'm nearly thirty. Nobody has ever proposed to me yet. Do you think that it's likely?"

"Why, of course, dear. Heaps and heaps of girls marry long after they are thirty."

"Of course—there's a hope, isn't there, that one's life may not be utterly wasted—even at the eleventh hour—one might—marry?"

Even Aunt Beatrice could not bear everything. She rose from her chair and crossed to the window, a timid, inefficient, untidy little figure, with weak wistful eyes and a stubbornly submissive mouth; but there was a quiver of animation in her voice that Muriel had never heard before.

"I hope very sincerely, dear, I always have hoped that you would marry, both for your own sake and for your mother's. I am very fond of your mother. I was bitterly sorry about her terrible trouble with dear Connie, though I dare say that no one but another mother could know quite what it felt like to lose her child and grandchild together, so to speak. I should like for her sake to see you married. It would repay her for many troubles she has known."

Aunt Beatrice looked from Muriel's room to the darkening plain beyond the garden. Her gentle voice grew sharp with unconscious bitterness.

"But even more for your own sake, dear. You will marry, I am sure. Marriage is the—the crown and joy of woman's life—what we were born for—to have a husband and children, and a little home of your own. Of course there are some of us to whom the Lord has not pleased to give this. I'm sure I'm not complaining. There may be many compensations, and of course He knows best. But—it's all right while you're young, Muriel, and there's always a chance—and when my dear mother was alive and I had someone to look after I am sure no girl could have been happier. It's when you grow older and the people who needed you are dead. And you haven't a home nor anyone who really wants you—and you hate to stay too long in a house in case someone else should want to come—and of course it's quite right. Somebody had to look after Mother. Everybody can't marry. I'm not complaining. I'm sure they're very kind to me, but I sometimes pray that the good Lord won't make me wait here very long—that I can die before every one gets tired of me, and of having me staying round——"

The room was growing dark. Shadows grey and desolate stole from the long curtains. Only in the small, dim woman's voice lay the intensity of realization that has passed despair.

"I used to pray every night that I should never come to a time when nobody wanted me. There's no real need for me in this house. Rachel's only kind to have me here when there's room. Oh, Muriel, my dear, if ever a good man offers you the chance of a home, of children, of some reason for living, don't throw it away, don't, don't."

"I don't suppose that there is any prospect of my doing so," said Muriel. Part of her wanted to go and put her arms round her aunt and be gentle to her. The other part was fighting a grim battle to defer her vision of something that she wanted not to see.

It fought during the whole evening, during supper, during her signature of unintelligible papers at her father's desk, when he told her gruffly that she would now have an income of £350 a year minus income tax, which would return to her in some mysterious way after negotiations. "I could understand this myself if he would once explain," she thought. But he did not explain, and she had to return to the gas-lit drawing-room to face her mother's drawn mouth, her aunt's timid efforts to keep out of the way, and the aftermath of her father's temper.

There was nothing to do.

She sat down at the piano and began to play drearily. Her father rose, looked at her, and a few moments later left the room. They heard his car humming away down the drive.

Mrs. Hammond glanced up at Aunt Beatrice, then she continued to sew without further comment.

The silence grew unbearable.

"I suppose—er—Arthur's gone to the club, Rachel?"

"I suppose so. Muriel, pass me my other scissors, please."

Not a word was said about the money.

As soon as she could escape decently, Muriel kissed her aunt and mother, and went upstairs to bed.

The moon had risen. It threw light panels of grey across the dark floor of her room. Muriel left her blind undrawn, and went to stand where that afternoon her aunt had stood, gazing towards the twinkling lights of Kingsport.

Of course she had known for weeks that this was coming, but she had tried to shut her eyes against the truth. She could not stay at Miller's Rise.

Ever since Connie's death she should have known this. Her mother had failed with Connie, yet she had met bitter failure with such outstanding social strategy that it had become transformed to something like a triumph. But it had opened her eyes to the knowledge that with Muriel she might fail without hope of safety. You can hide the unhappiness of a marriage, but no one can hide in a provincial town the glaring failure of no marriage whatsoever, and every one in Marshington knew that poor Muriel Hammond had not had so much as an affair.

No, it was quite certain; she would never marry now. Better to face the fact and deal with it unflinchingly. What then? Could she stay there at Miller's Rise to "help her mother" indefinitely? She knew that her mother had never wanted help. Always the hope had been that she would marry. To this end alone had she been trained and cared for; and now she sat, meal after meal, between her mother and her father. She knew that they found her presence secretly humiliating. She was spoiling the best thing in the lives of both of them.

"I ought to go," thought Muriel. "But where? How?" What in the whole world was there left for her to do? She had abandoned all hope of a career to help her mother, and her mother did not need her, and she was unmarried. "Nobody wants me—I'm like Aunt Beatrice, living in fear of an unloved old age. I must have some reason for living. I must, I must. I can't bear to live without. I just can't bear it. Oh, what am I going to do with myself?"

From the calm valley the mist-veiled fields gleamed silver like still water. The unanswering moon sailed on across the sky.

She began to walk now up and down the room. She could not bear herself. She wanted to fling off her body. She wanted to become wildly hysterical, to sob and scream with a pain of despair that was physical as well as mental.

"What have I done to bring this on myself?" she asked, she to whom this terrible burden of negation proved a torture. "I always tried to do the best that I could see."

The best that she could see. She pressed her hands against her head. Some fugitive echo of memory lay in the words, sight, sight. "The last betrayal and the ultimate unworthiness is the defilement of the vision." That mad fanatic at Thraile, that warped religious maniac, what right had he, with his crude theories of self-mortification and God's vengeance, to come before her now with his dark prophecies of vision? Sight? What sight? Had she not always done the best that she had seen?

"We can only worship what we see." All very well to talk. She pressed her hands against her eyes and in the darkness she tried to read again the visions she had seen.

She saw the God of her early school-days, a benign and patriarchal creation of her own emotions, bidding her be submissive and content, and smiling on her with approbation that curiously resembled Mrs. Hancock's.

She saw Clare; and immediately her desires altered. To be good meant to be gay, to be loved, to be beautiful, to dance through life right up to Godfrey's arms.

She shivered. That vision had soon died. Beauty and gay success in love could not be hers. What vision then? She saw her mother, the passionate devotee of the great god of People. She saw herself accepting now new standards. The thing that mattered in Marshington was neither service nor love but marriage, marriage respectable and unequivocal, marriage financially sound, eugenically advisable, and socially correct. She had sought it. Oh, no doubt she had sought it but never found, for though Godfrey Neale had kissed her he had not unnaturally forgotten. In the emotional reaction after a crisis of fear, she had found the only sign of the satisfaction that she had sought as love.

Then she had gone to Thraile. She saw more clearly now the reeling nightmare of those days, when she had lost all touch with sane reality. At Hardrascliffe and at Marshington she could deal with a given crisis according to known rules, but at Thraile she had been swept right off her feet, having no standard of her own to hold by. She had wanted to help Connie and had followed a policy of blind opportunism, blundering from one notion to another. Connie in trouble must be married. Connie, when married, must have life made tolerable. This she had seen, and, seeing thus, had acted. But never once had Muriel Hammond, Muriel who sought before all things excellence of conduct, never once had she thought clearly about what it all meant. She had never once lifted her head higher than Connie's, but had left to Mr. Todd the task of trying to make clear what her sister and Ben had done. But when you faced it frankly, you saw that it all came to this. At Marshington the only thing that mattered was marriage. Connie, who knew this, who was wild and reckless but who at least was brave, had ruined her life and Ben's, had saddened Eric's, and had brought her family to bitter shame. Muriel, with no less intention but less courage, had sat at home and waited and grown bitter. And now she was still waiting and her youth was passing by.

And yet, and yet, it had not been her own way to want this only. A respectable marriage had not always been the one goal of her life. She had dreamed dreams. She had seen visions, but her visions had faded before the opinion of others; she had lacked the courage of her dreams. And now there was left to her nothing but Marshington. She could not even go away. It had trapped her in the end, for she had shut her eyes to anything beyond its streets, and was a prisoner now to her own blindness.

"The only thing that Marshington cares about is sex-success." Delia Vaughan had said that. Muriel did not believe her. It was true enough, quite true.

Her hands dropped from her face. She looked as she had looked thirteen years ago across the moonlit fields to the dark city.

Well, Delia had been proved right at last. What next?