XXXIX
Godfrey and Muriel walked below the heavy elm trees. This part of the garden was deserted, but from far off, through the enshrouding greenery, came vagrant echoes of tunes played by the band. So thick was the cool, deep gloom of the great trees, that only here and there a golden point of sunlight fell on the shadowed path, and lay quivering as the dark leaves stirred.
They did not speak. A rabbit scuttled across the drive, bobbing suddenly below the tangled bramble sprays. Above in the elms a dove cooed sleepily, with all the warmth of drowsy summer in its call. The path was smooth, with small rounded pebbles sunk into the moss, and on each side the deep, dark grasses tangled round tall spears of willow herb, of sombre undergrowth, of hedges foaming cream with old man's beard.
At a turn of the avenue they came to a space where the trees to their right were cut away.
"I want you to see this," said Godfrey.
Beyond the low hedge, beyond two fields of the wide grassland where Connie had once ridden, stretched the long terraces of the Weare Grange. The house itself crowned them, grey and beautiful, looking down upon the coloured throng of people in the garden. Blue, white and pink, like shifting, wind-blown petals, the dresses of Marshington girls moved on the green. Clearer along the breeze came fitful gusts of music. Hidden by half a mile of winding avenue, the two looked back together on it now.
"It's singularly beautiful," said Muriel quietly.
"You t—think so? I'm glad. You don't think it's all rot?"
"What is rot?"
"Liking the old place and all that."
She shook her head. "Of course I don't. Who could? I think that it is a beautiful place. You're a lucky man in many ways, Godfrey. You have power and privilege and a tremendous influence." She looked as though she would have said more, then stopped and just stood, gazing towards the house.
"I suppose I have," he said. "I don't know that I'd thought about it quite like that. It gets into your blood though, doesn't it? By Jove, you know—the shooting down here is worth living for. Now do you see those bullocks there, in the far pasture? They're Jerseys—I'm breeding them as an experiment. M—Maddock, my agent, says they're the best of anything he's seen of the sort."
"Does he?"
"And you know, we're starting the Witchgate hounds again this autumn? I've been fixing it up with young Seton and Colonel Macallister. Seton'll be Master I think—in place of his brother. Rotten luck young Seton being killed. No son either. Do you know, Muriel, there were times during the war when I used to get the idea that I might never come back to it, and I used to lie awake at night and sweat with fear?"
"I do believe it."
"It gets you, you know. It gets you. There's not an acre that I don't know in Weare or Mardlehammar. Jolly good lot of tenants too. Have you ever met Willis of Ringpool Farm?—that's on the Mardlehammar land. Fine chap Willis, and brainy, too. You'd like him."
Again they were silent, watching the little Jersey cows in the far pasture, golden, like browsing flowers under the warm sunlight.
"You know," he went on, "you were right that evening in London. By Jove, you were. Clare could never have understood this. You've got to have a wife that understands. I was pretty well knocked down then, but I'm glad now."
He paused as though thinking this over.
"I'm glad it happened," he repeated solemnly, "the whole thing I mean. I wouldn't want not to have known her—except for one thing."
"What's that?" asked Muriel.
She turned to look at him, and below the broad brim of her charming hat her face was grave and sweet.
"Look here, Muriel, if I wanted a girl to marry me, would she mind that I had given Clare something—something I'll never have to give again?"
"Most girls wouldn't," Muriel said solemnly. "Very few women marry the man whom they first loved. Very few men marry the girl who first attracted them. When they do, those marriages don't seem to be the happiest."
He sighed with a great relief. "You really think so?"
"Yes."
Again they paused. So quietly they stood that a squirrel rattled nimbly down the tree beside them and flashed across the path. Then Godfrey spoke again, stammering badly, but smiling down at Muriel:
"Muriel, with everything that I didn't give to Clare, I love you. Will you marry me?"
She did not speak.
"I know," he went on, "that you know all about me. I've told you about Clare. But I shan't love her again. Anyway she's going to marry that fellow from Austria. That's all quite over. And I believe that all the time, if I hadn't been a fool, I should have wanted you. You understand me better than anyone, and I don't believe that you're the kind of girl who'd want a fellow so much to love her that way—you're too sensible."
Still she did not speak, but smoothed with her soft fingers a broad leaf of the climbing hop plant that spread twisting green tendrils across the hedge before them.
"Don't hurry," he said magnanimously, "take your time and think it over. I'd be good to you. I swear I'd be good to you—little Muriel."
His voice was assured, but it was very kind. His clear blue eyes were honest. More handsome than ever was his lean brown face bent above her.
"I don't think that you dislike me—somehow. Couldn't you find it possible to care?"
She lifted her candid eyes to his. "Once I thought that I loved you very much, Godfrey. When I was a little girl, before I ever went to school, I once danced with you at a party. I was very shy, and rather left out of things, and you only were kind to me. I think I fell in love with you then. You seemed to me the true ideal of manhood."
"Did I?" His blue eyes softened tenderly.
"And afterwards, when I lived in Marshington, we played together at the tennis club the very first time I played."
"Did we really?"
She nodded. "That was Delia's doing. She wasn't thinking about you or me, but only about getting her own back on some other people. You were the king, the wonderful one. I hardly dared to play with you. I was a funny child in those days. I thought a lot of queer mistaken things. I made a sort of hero of you, Godfrey."
"You silly child," he said, but she could see how much his pride was loving it.
"I came home from school meaning to do such a lot of things. Every one was wonderful. The world was full, brimming with adventure. I meant to be so good."
He nodded. "I'll swear you did."
He would have caught at her small ungloved hands, but she put them behind her back and stood looking up at him, like a child saying its lesson.
"My head was full of dreams about love and service. I wanted to be wise and unselfish and to serve God. I gave up the idea of going to college or anywhere to train for working in the world outside, because I thought that Mother needed me."
He nodded, a little puzzled that she should consider this long preamble necessary; but liking her more and more for her solemnity. It seemed to him very sweet that she should tell him all her girlish hopes.
"I threw myself into the life of Marshington, meaning to give to it and to get from it only the best. I wanted to give it all of me, my intelligence, and my love, and my desire to serve. I began to go to parties and picnics and the tennis club. But, do you know, the things here weren't quite what I had expected? People did not seem to want me frightfully; I wasn't pretty—I was rather shy. I didn't understand the teasing and the jokes and the way that the other girls behaved. People began to avoid me. I remember a picnic once, when I walked for all the afternoon with Bobby Mason, because I was so terrified of being left behind"—she swallowed hard, but went on steadily—"without a man to walk with. I had not been at home for more than a year when I found that only one thing mattered here in Marshington for a girl, and that was to get married."
He was frowning a little now. Those things perhaps were true, but somehow he did not like his future wife to say them. She, however, continued to disregard his feelings.
"It took me about six years to discover that I was not the sort of girl whom men wanted to marry. Other girls found partners at dances easily. I sat against the wall, shivering lest every one should see that I was a wallflower, feeling terribly ashamed because to fail in this way was to fail everywhere. I used to think of life as a dance, where the girls had to wait for men to ask them, and if nobody came—they still must wait, smiling and hoping and pretending not to mind. One by one the things that I cared for fell away. Music, mathematics, beautiful things to look at—none of these mattered. They were only quite irrelevant details, because at Marshington there was only one thing that mattered and I had not got it."
He was about to protest, but she silenced him:
"No, no. It's no use saying that it wasn't so. Try to cast your mind back. Can't you remember 'poor Muriel Hammond'—she and Rosie Harpur—the 'heavy' people at the dances whom the nicer men would try to be polite to? Why, you used to be kind to me yourself. You always came and asked me for a waltz when we went to the same dance. I used to stand and watch your programme pencil breathlessly. Would you give me one dance, or two? You never thought that it mattered as much as that, did you, Godfrey?"
He shook his head.
"It mattered everything. Or rather I thought it did. Do you remember the day of the bombardment of Scarborough? And after the bombardment, in my aunt's house?"
Her face was flooded now with glowing colour, but she spoke on, in her small even voice:
"You kissed me. Perhaps you had forgotten. These things pass easily, don't they? When a man kisses a plain girl. It was kind of you. I expect that you thought I should be pleased and flattered." She paused. "I was pleased."
He made a gesture of protest.
Far away down the park a little burst of cheering rose into the silence and died down. They were beginning the sports that were to be the final entertainment of the fête.
"I was pleased," said Muriel. "I thought of nothing else by day or night. You had kissed me. You, who were the ideal, the prince, of all that Marshington thought splendid. I thought at first, daringly, that it might mean that you could come to care for me, to marry me, to take away from me the reproach of failure. I knew about Clare of course, but I thought her married, and that you had decided that she was quite impossible. I used to grow sick, waiting for the posts. I would lie awake half the night, thinking that a letter might come in the morning. And half the day I would have a pain here, in my side, with the feeling that a letter might come by the afternoon's post. You never wrote. I heard that Clare had come to England. Then, one night at a concert, your mother told me that you were engaged."
"I didn't know," he cried, really remorseful.
"Of course you did not know. I remember that. But, oh, I knew. I don't know what became of me. I think that I fell into a sort of stupor, thinking of all that I had thrown away to follow this, and in the end to fail."
Her voice died away. The aching pain of those past days had left her, but it was not easy to recall them now.
"There's something else," she almost whispered. "Something that I can't tell you much about because it's not my story. I was made to see—the Marshington way—carried to its logical conclusion. Girls do not always wait to be asked. Instinct, you see, is on the side of the tradition. In every woman there must be so much nature—of her womanhood. Take from her all other outlet for vitality; strip her of her other interests, and in some cases the instinct, reinforced by social influence, breaks down her control. I had to stand by helpless and watch—somebody else—come to complete ruin. And just because I had believed what people once had told me, because I had accepted Marshington standards without question, I found myself quite powerless to help. Indeed, I even made things worse, far worse. I think that I went almost mad then. My mind had a kind of shock—— You see, there was nothing left. Even mother—belonged to the things that had failed me. Nothing had happened. People, knowing my life, would have said that I had never known great sorrow. There was just nothing.
"If it hadn't been for Delia, I should have died—not with my body, but my mind. She could not give me back the things that I had lost. She took me away instead. She let me see, not that the thing that I had sought was not worth seeking, but simply that there were other things in life. To fail just in this one thing was not failure. A perfect marriage is a splendid thing, but that does not mean that the second best thing is an imperfect marriage."
"I know," he said. "I know. Look here, I'm sorry, Muriel. I'd no idea what a rotten time you'd had. But now, forget it. We'll make our marriage perfect."
"Dear Godfrey," said Muriel, "if you'd asked me to marry you any time during the past twelve years until last winter, I would have married you, without hesitation. And we should both have made a great mistake."
"No, no," he said, "not we."
"Oh, yes, we should. That time you came to me in London—I'd never seen you before—only a sort of legend of my dreams. You're a dear, Godfrey. I like you immensely. And you'll make some wife very happy yet—but not me——"
"But why on earth?"
"Because—of—every reason. It's too late."
"Do you care for someone else?" he asked sharply.
"No. Not that way. Please, I want you to understand." She smiled suddenly. "This isn't a devastating experience, you know. You like me, but not more than you could like lots of women."
"That's not true."
"Oh, yes, it is. You'd like to marry what you think is me—what I was, but that's not what I am. I'm only sparing you the pain of discovering too late that I'm an uncomfortable person to have married. To begin with, Godfrey dear, I can't stand Marshington. The Weare Grange is a heavenly place, and Delia tells me that there are prospects of regeneration for Marshington. She believes that the Twentieth Century Reform League is going to remedy its faults. I don't know. It may do. But not for me. It's cost me too much. I'm too near the shadow of its influence. I should slip back to it."
"But why——?"
"Why shouldn't it? Because I'm—myself, that's all. I found that out in London. I've actually got tastes and inclinations and a personality. And they're all things that you would disapprove of immensely. Oh, yes, you would. You want a good wife, Godfrey, someone who'd be the hostess of shooting-parties, who'd listen to your hunting stories, and who'd be interested in your tenants. You'd want somebody who would be satisfied by your possessions and by your prestige, and whose goal in life would be to make you comfortable. Clare wouldn't have done that. In one way, it's a pity you didn't marry her. You'd have been miserable, and she'd have broken away, but it might have been better for you. As it is—it's too late, Godfrey. Some day perhaps, I may marry, but it won't be you. I once was in love with you, but I don't love you. Your interests are not my interests—we haven't a taste in common.
"I'm going back to London. I'll go to-morrow. I'm learning there a lot of things and it hasn't done with me yet. Delia mayn't want me always. Probably she's going to America soon anyway. It isn't that. I've got an idea—I don't know how to express it—that I think I've always had in my head somewhere. An idea of service—not just vague and sentimental, but translated into quite practical things. Maybe I'll do nothing with it, but I do know this, that if I married you I'd have to give up every new thing that has made me a person."
"You wouldn't."
"Oh, yes, I would. Can't you just picture us, Godfrey? You, the typical country squire. I, the epitome of all Marshington virtues."
He frowned at her. He was a little sad, a little hurt, a little disappointed. She knew that he was not heart-broken.
"I can't be a good wife until I've learnt to be a person," said Muriel, "and perhaps in the end I'll never be a wife at all. That's very possible. But it doesn't matter. The thing that matters is to take your life into your hands and live it, following the highest vision as you see it. If I married you, I'd simply be following the expedient promptings of my mother and my upbringing. Do you see?"
"I don't see. It's all that London nonsense. It's Delia. It's——"
"No it isn't. It's Muriel—at last. You see, when she's really there, you don't much like her. Godfrey dear, how could we live together? We'd quarrel from the first."
"You said that you might marry—one day——"
"Who knows? But it won't be you. Why, you'll be married long before."
A little breeze blew along the avenue. Muriel shivered.
"I think we'd better go. I've talked too long. There's nothing else to say. Don't be more angry with me than you can help. We've both been honest with each other."
"Yes—— We've been honest."
He liked that. She felt his eyes straying again towards the open vista, to the fields where now long shadows stretched across the gilded grass, to the crowded terraces, to the grey house. He would find comfort there for whatever soreness she had left with him.
"I'll go," she said. "And—very good luck to you, Godfrey."
Shyly she held out her hand.
He frowned. For a moment his wounded pride withheld him, but she looked so very small and powerless before his height, his strength, and his position. His smile came suddenly and he took her hand.
"By Jove," he said, "I'm only just beginning to realize what I've missed."
He stood, holding her small hand, under the arching elms.
"You won't remember long. And, when you do, you'll be glad that I did not marry you."
He shook his head. She broke from him and walked quickly away along the drive. Chequered sunlight and shadow fell on her small, upright figure. She moved steadily forward, not looking back at him. As he watched her go, an expression of tenderness, compassion and regret crossed his face. He sighed a little. Perhaps she was right. A wife with ideas? How queer women were! It always seemed as though he, who knew himself to be sought after, only wanted what he could never gain. He felt older and a little weary. Certainly it would be good to go where he was wanted, to have his vanity soothed by a simple, loving woman who would accept him as he was.
Queer little thing, Muriel. If he had known what she was like, would he have spoken? After all, perhaps it had been an escape.
With a sigh he turned again towards the house. Far away, on the high terrace, fluttered the rose-pink dress of Phyllis Marshall Gurney.
THE END
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ANDERBY WOLD
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