The Crowded Street

by Winifred Holtby

XXXV

"My dear," remarked the vicar, far more gravely than he was accustomed to remark upon things in this curious, interesting, troublesome, but not grave world, "you are killing yourself."

Delia lit another cigarette with trembling fingers and swung herself on to the library table.

"Nothing of the sort," she replied brusquely. "Merely a little run down by an unvaried diet of quarrelling, press campaigns, acrimonious public meetings and stale fish. I don't know whether the indigestion has been due to the debates or the fish. I suspect the former. Most of my co-habitants at Morrison House seem to survive the fish with imperturbable appetites. My dearest Father, do not at your eleventh hour begin to play the heavy parent with me. Always hitherto I've admired your dignified self-restraint about my eccentricities a good deal more than I have considered it advisable to state—and now—well, really, just because I happen to have had two or three bilious attacks!"

The vicar removed his glasses slowly, leaned back in his chair, and looked up at his daughter. "It seems to me a little uncharacteristic of you, my dear, who have always been almost arrogantly neglectful of your bodily needs, to throw up your work in the middle of what I take to be a monumental campaign of militant good intentions, and to come down for a fortnight into the country because you have had three bilious attacks."

Delia removed her cigarette from her smiling lips and blew out a squadron of smoke rings that floated in beautiful order along the firelit air.

"Oh, well," she said, swinging her legs. They were painfully thin legs, thought the vicar, judging from what he could see of them. Owing to his daughter's attitude he could see a considerable extent. "I suppose that I might as well tell you—I've not been particularly well for some time. I don't know what it is. I suppose that I have been overdoing things a little."

"Sixteen hours a day?" queried the vicar mildly. "Meetings in Hyde Park, heart-to-heart talks with bishops, members of parliament, and prostitutes—really quite alarming articles in the Press, my dear, and all this office work. Your Twentieth Century Reform League sounds so terribly—strenuous."

"The twentieth century is strenuous. To tell the truth, there are so many men and women doing nothing with their leisure that those who have any sort of responsibility towards society are nearly bound to overwork. However, Dr. Boden——"

"You went to a doctor then?"

"She's a friend of mine. She works at the crèche and shelter home we run in Plaistow. She said that I ought to live somewhere—not in a club—where they'd keep meals and things for me. I ought to diet or something—you know, on unstale fish and eggs and things. But you know, Father, it's all absurd. How can I afford a house and servants—or to live in one of these communal palaces where everything is just so? She suggested that I should take unto myself a friend and share a flat with her—someone of a meek and domestic disposition—not herself. She's married and has four children. But now, father, can you honestly imagine me living peacefully with another woman, installed à deux in—say Aberdeen Mansions? Why, the poor creature would have a fearful time."

"She would. The worst of being a reformer is that you can't stop—even at your friend's characters, can you?"

Delia rose and pressed out the ashes from her cigarette against the hearth rail.

"I haven't any friends—of that sort," she said slowly. "You can't when you're really working hard. I have heaps of colleagues, but"—she shrugged her shoulders—"you know, since Martin was killed I do find it so awfully hard to keep my temper with other people. They infuriate me simply for not being he—because they dare to go on living, being so much less worthy of life, when he is dead. Of course it's entirely my own fault, and in my sane moments I realize how impossible I am to live with. But, however hard I work for some sort of vague idea of a regenerated society, I always seem to be fighting people instead of loving them." She laughed, pushing back her smooth black hair with her tobacco-stained fingers. "I am like one of St. Paul's unfortunates, who give my body to be burnt, not having charity. So I suppose my sacrifice is worth nothing."

There was a little catch in her voice. Her face in the firelight was almost fantastically wan, the face of a fighter prematurely old.

"Really," protested the vicar, "you terrible idealists give more trouble to law-abiding, peaceful people like myself than all the sinners God ever put into the world to leaven the lump of good intentions. Which reminds me—I've got one coming to tea."

"Good heavens! Who? Which? Idealist or sinner?"

"I don't quite know. A problem anyway. I do wish that you young women would let me alone."

"A young woman? Oh, father dear, don't you think I've had enough young women? I wanted the cloistered solitude of male society for a little."

"It's Muriel Hammond. You remember her?"

"Oh, yes. Well, it might have been worse."

"I'm worried about her, Delia."

"Hum. I gathered from your letter that you were. Light gone out or something?"

The vicar nodded, his finger-tips pressed together.

"Yes, I suppose that is it—her light has gone out. Why, Delia? You know that I cannot provide myself as you can in a moment with biographical information to come to the aid of my psychology. What is wrong with her?"

"Wrong environment, intellectual idealist of limited capacity, not too much will-power, immense credulity and ridiculous desire to live up to other people's ideas of her, stuck in Marshington. Of course she was bound to find out some time."

"Find out what?"

"That this is the last place on earth for a woman whose mind runs upon other lines than the smooth road to matrimony, and whose personality isn't usually attractive. I'm glad she's come to her senses at last."

"She hasn't."

"She's not going to marry Mr. Robert Mason, is she?"

"Not that I know of. But I believe that she'd marry the dustman if he asked her."

"Good Lord. Bad as that? Poor child. Well, what are we to do. Take her and shake her?"

"I don't know. I leave her to you, my dear. As I have always said, I disapprove entirely of your sweeping condemnation of provincial towns. Your views on matrimony are appalling, especially as——"

"As I was inconsistent over Martin? But, Father dear, haven't I explained to you a million times that it isn't marriage I object to—only marriage as an end of life in itself, as the ultimate goal of the female soul's development——"

The door opened.

Mrs. Raikes, the vicar's housekeeper, looked in.

"Miss 'Ammond, sir."

They rose to welcome Muriel.

She came forward with characteristic timidity and shook hands with Delia and her father.

"I hope you're better?" she inquired of Delia.

"Better? I'm all right. Never been ill."

"You look very tired," remarked Muriel.

They gave her tea, the vicar absent-mindedly poking the fire with his boot. Now that he had handed over the problem of Muriel to Delia, he felt that he had done his duty, and might return to the congenial contemplation of mediæval taxes.

When tea was over he murmured some vague excuse about preparing a sermon and vanished hurriedly.

"Doesn't Mr. Vaughan want to prepare his sermons here?" asked Muriel.

"Not he. He hasn't gone to prepare a sermon either. If we went into the garden we should probably find him wandering up and down among the daffodils swearing softly over Pollard's Evolution of Parliament, which he calls a brilliant book, but most wrong-headed. Isn't it extraordinary that historians always seem quite pleased to find each other brilliant, but simply can't admit that they are anything but wrong-headed?"

"Do they? I don't know any historians. They don't live in Marshington—except your father, and of course we don't see much of him. I'm not surprised. We really aren't a very exciting lot of people." Again she laughed self-deprecatingly. "You know, you are very lucky, being so clever and going to Newnham like that. It must be frightfully nice——"

Delia lit another cigarette thoughtfully. "Smoke? No? You don't, do you?" Muriel shook her head. "You don't mind if I do, do you? I've got into rather a bad habit of doing it too much lately. You know, I've often wondered why you didn't go to college."

"I—oh, I—well, really as a matter of fact I did once think that I should like to. But I wasn't particularly clever you know."

"The last thing that one requires to make good use of a college education is brilliance. You want intelligence and industry and a sound constitution. The brilliant people can manage without it."

"Oh—well, it wasn't only that." Muriel leaned forward with her small hands stretched towards the fire.

"She doesn't look more than eighteen now," thought Delia. "What a solemn little child she is."

"You see Mother wasn't frightfully keen on it," explained Muriel sedately.

"Did you ask?"

"No, not exactly. I sounded Aunt Beatrice, who always knows these things. She said that they would be awfully disappointed if I wanted to leave them, and it did not seem worth while to me to make a fuss and to upset every one because I overestimated my own ability."

"Usefulness seems to me a question of intention rather than ability," remarked Delia. "Don't you think that this self-deprecation of yours was a little like cowardice? You hated an upset, and so you decided that you lacked ability."

She glanced sideways at Muriel, who still looked primly meek, facing the liquid flames.

"I wanted to help Mother too," said Muriel, seeking justice.

"Hum. And you thought that by helping your mother you would escape the responsibility of having to help yourself, didn't you? It was the difficult choice you couldn't face, not your own inefficiency."

Would Muriel take offence? Delia, well used to the outrage of her companions, watched the sensitive curve of Muriel's mouth tighten. Would she be too poor-spirited to make defence? Or too ungenerous to accept criticism?

For some time she did not speak. Delia was half afraid lest at the outset she should have wounded her too deeply, have frightened her away from any possibility of contact. She began to abuse herself as a tactless fool before Muriel's quiet little voice began again reflectively:

"I think that you are probably right. I was a coward. I've always been afraid. Desperately afraid—but not of unpleasantness exactly. I was afraid quite genuinely of hurting other people, of my own limitations, of the crash and jar of temperament. I—you won't laugh at me, will you?—wanted frightfully to be good. I did not realize what life was like, that nobody has a chance. It's all very well saying that I should have done this or that. Things happen against our will. Always being driven and we follow—voices." Her own voice gained intensity. Bright patches of carmine flared into her pale cheeks. "They promise us all sorts of things," she said, "happiness, success, adventure—don't you know? Of course you don't, you're clever. But we listen, we think that we are moving on towards some strange, rich carnival, and follow, follow, follow. Then suddenly we find ourselves left alone in a dull crowded street with no one caring and our lives unneeded, and all the fine things that we meant to do, like toys that a child has laid aside."

"My dear"—Delia's voice was softer now—"you are very, very wrong. You speak as though we had no choice in the matter."

"We haven't," said Muriel stubbornly. "Oh, you're clever and all that," her manner seemed to say, "but you can't deceive me now a second time."

"You are quite wrong," Delia answered slowly. "It's all very well to talk about life this and life that. You can't wriggle out of responsibility by a metaphor. Your life is your own, Muriel, nobody can take it from you. You may choose to look after your mother; you may choose to pursue a so-called career, or you may choose to marry. You may choose right and you may choose wrong. But the thing that matters is to take your life into your own hands and live it, accepting responsibility for failure or success. The really fatal thing is to let other people make your choices for you, and then to blame them if your schemes should fail and they despise you for the failure. What did you mean to do in Marshington?"

"I hardly know. All sorts of silly things—I put fine names on to all the conventional ways for killing the time between a girl's school-days and her marriage." Again Muriel laughed. "Oh, I've been a fine fool, fine. You know what you once said to me—'The only thing that counts at Marshington is sex-success.' I didn't know then what you meant, and I hated your criticisms of the sort of life my people lived. I thought them so disloyal."

"I know. Loyalty plays the devil with people until they see that its first true demand is honesty."

"If only I'd been like you," continued Muriel. "It's all very well for you to talk about choices and things, you know. You've really had everything. The best of both worlds——" She looked up unexpectedly. "Do you know that there was a time when I could have killed you—just for jealousy?"

"Really? When?" asked Delia with interest.

"Just after Martin Elliott was killed. You'd had the best of everything. Love to remember and work to do. Oh, I know you think you've suffered. Every one says 'Poor Delia!' I could have killed them. There you were with nothing to reproach yourself for, with no bitterness of shame, but a mind full of sweet memories. Why, you don't know what it is—the awfulness of a life where nothing ever happens; the shame of only feeling half a woman because no man has loved you; the bitterness of watching other girls complete their womanhood. And I didn't so much want marriage. I wanted to feel that I had not lived unloved, that there was nothing in my nature that cut me off from other women, made me different—Oh, I know that this sounds very primitive. We are primitive perhaps in Marshington. But what do I know of the world outside this village? I'm nearly thirty. People tell me that I look like a child. I feel like a child—beside you, for instance. But I do know this. That if ever I had a child and it was born a girl and not beautiful, I believe I'd strangle it rather than think that it should suffer as I've suffered!"

"Why—Muriel!"

"Oh, yes. Perhaps you're shocked. I know." The fire died from her voice. She dropped her head on to her small, clasped hands. Very wearily she spoke, "Oh, well. I suppose it does me good to say what I think, just once. Anyway what does it matter? I'm twenty-nine and to all useful intents and purposes my life is as much over as though I were ninety. I'm stuck here, I shan't marry. I don't know what else to do. You say that I've never made a choice—through cowardice. I dare say that you're right. But it's too late to begin now."

"Things are never too late, only more difficult."

"You would say that, now, wouldn't you? I'm sure that you're a splendid lecturer, Delia. You must be able to tell people an awful lot of good home-truths. You get so much practice, don't you?"

Delia smiled ruefully. She rose and crossed to the tea-tray and poured herself out a cup of quite cold tea, allowing Muriel to talk on.

"Do you know," said Muriel with mild surprise, "I never could stand up on a public platform, but I do believe that if I could I should be able to tell your audiences things you never could?"

"Of course. I'm sure of it."

"You know," she paused, as though she were thinking of some quite new thing, "you don't know half the time what you are talking about."

Up shot Delia's eyebrows. "I might have expected this," she told herself gleefully. "I might have known that when Muriel really did begin to talk we should hear some surprising things." Aloud she said, "Go on."

"You rail against faults like mental slackness, and sloppiness and being content with other people's standards. But you don't know what they mean. You're clear-sighted. I don't believe that's nearly so much a merit as a gift. How can you know what blindness is when you can see? But I know what it's like. I know what fear and stupidity and muddle-headedness can feel like. Because I did not recognize them till it was too late does not take away from me now the right to see them in other people—But I can't. What's the good here? Only—I wish—I wish that if you see anyone else in the same sort of muddle as I was in—ten years ago—you'd—you'd really make it clear to them."

"I blame myself—I blame myself," said Delia. "I should have made things clear."

"Oh, no. You mustn't think that. Why, you were the one person who ever lifted a hand to undeceive me. It was my fault. I was too arrogantly sure of my own righteousness to listen. I was too much set on living up to other people's expectations of me. You—you always——" She swallowed heavily, but went on. "Do you know, you've always meant a lot to me—I think—I think I used to sort of idealize you—as the person I might have been if I had not been such a fool."

"Me, Muriel?"

"Yes—er—it was impertinent, wasn't it?" Again she laughed, and rising hurriedly began to draw her gloves on, blushing and shy. "Good-bye, it has been most awfully good of you to talk to me like this. I—I shan't forget it. Please will you say good-bye to Mr. Vaughan for me?"

Delia turned from the tea-tray.

"Where are you going?"

"Going? Back—home—to Miller's Rise," said Muriel with surprise.

"Oh, no, you're not," commanded Delia. "Sit down a minute."

"But I'm keeping you—I——"

"No, I'm going to keep you. Please sit down."

Meekly, Muriel sat down and waited. She had to wait for a long time. Delia folded a derelict slice of brown bread and butter and began to cut it into neat, rectangular disks upon her plate. When she did speak, her question was quite unexpected.

"Have you a great deal of patience, Muriel?"

"Patience? Me? I—I haven't much idea."

"No—no. N—o." Delia's fingers tapped at the round brass tea-tray. "No, you wouldn't know. Really it seems incredible that—however—you're keen on accounts and things, aren't you?"

"Yes—I—suppose I am. I'm not much——"

"Good at them, though? Of course not. Nobody is without a proper training. However, if I remember the Nursing Association you have quite a genius for method. Do you like house-keeping?"

"That depends. At home it's such a routine now. I often used to think it would be lovely to have a little house all of one's own—only again the necessity of sharing it with a husband was an obstacle."

"I see."

"But I must really go. You'll be getting tired of talking about me——"

"Oh, no, I shan't. For Heaven's sake sit down and do be a bit more interested in yourself. You'll have to hear a lot of home-truths before I've finished with you. By the way, I'm ill."

"Ill? Oh, I was afraid——"

"Not very ill. But I shall be, unless I change my way of living. I ought to move into a flat, where I can have special meals and a more or less selected diet. I have enough money for the diet, but not for a whole servant to cook it, nor a whole flat to keep her in, and I certainly haven't time to cook my meals myself. What would you suggest?"

"Why? I should suggest that you should get some one to share a flat and do the housekeeping."

"Yes, of course. That would seem to be the obvious thing if it were not for one difficulty. I am an impossible person to live with. Look at me. I live largely on platforms and in publicity, which is always uncomfortable for one's friends. I suffer abominably from indigestion and consequently my friends suffer from my temper. I insult bishops and civil servants from platforms for the good of their souls. I'm running one of the most provocative and militant societies in England. I'm pursued by anonymous letters, threatened libel actions, and clergymen with outraged susceptibilities—and I mind it all damnably. I'm not a scrap heroic. I quail before every adverse criticism; I'm hag-ridden at night by memories of things that I might have done, and haunted all day by a sense of furious impotence. I'm never in the same mood for two minutes running, and all my moods are irritating. Worst of all, when my own affairs go wrong, I always blame the first person who happens to be near, and, try as I will, I can't reform myself. You see, I have no right to ask anyone to live with me."

Muriel was silent for a long time. Then she said:

"You may be partly right, but I think you exaggerate. The girl who came to live with you might be happier in some circumstances, but those might be beyond her power, and at least she'd have the satisfaction of knowing that she was living with someone who needed her. If you are unpleasant to your immediate neighbours sometimes," recollections of early chapters in Delia's career lit the ghost of a smile in Muriel's eyes, "at least you try to be of some use to the world at large. One may be alarmed by you, but one can't despise you. It's living with people whom you suspect are using you for ends that you yourself despise that kills you. It's having nothing to do, not having too much, which is intolerable. I should go ahead and ask anyone whom you can think of. Let them refuse if they will. But do see that you get a good cook."

"Muriel," laughed Delia, "do you know that you are quite a lamb?"

Muriel stared at her as though she had gone mad.

"It's all right," Delia reassured her. "I'm not going to tax your charity."

"How? What do you mean?"

"By asking you to come and share my flat and work during the day in the office of the Twentieth Century Reform League."

Into Muriel's face the quick light leapt and died.

"No, no, of course not. I'm much too stupid. But I hope you'll find someone nice."

"You—you can't want to come—if I did ask you?"

"You mustn't ask me. I'd get on your nerves."

"But you can't want to come?" repeated Delia incredulously.

"More than anything I can think of at the moment," said Muriel.

"But you can't think what it's like. It's quite impossible."

Muriel stood looking at her. Then suddenly she sat down at the table facing Delia.

"I want to get away from Marshington," she said. "I've wanted to for months—for years I think. I didn't know how—I'm no good at acting for myself. I thought that there was nowhere else for me to go. I thought that the only means of escape for me was marriage. But if you want me, if you'll help me," her urgent, hurrying voice was not unlike her mother's now, but there was in it a note of appeal that puzzled Delia, "If you'll only help me to get away. You said that I never made a choice. I didn't only because it seemed to be no use. It's no good choosing a thing that you can't do. But if you'll give me work, show me some way of being useful——"

"But supposing you get tired of it? Or supposing I do? Supposing that you get on my nerves? I shall not scruple to let you know, and there's even the conceivable possibility that I might not live very long. They say I must be careful. I can't be. I shall be impossible to live with and possibly worst of all from your point of view, you may find yourself totally unsuited for the kind of life."

"Well, I could always go again."

"And come back here? Muriel, would you? I'm terrified of taking you out of the one environment you know into one equally impossible for you, and leaving you neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring."

"But I don't know this environment and it doesn't know me. I'm living like—like a person that I'm not. Oh, you don't know it all, I can't explain, I never can, but I've seen things that happen out of this environment. I've seen cruelties and ruin and wretchedness that even you don't dream about, and if you don't help me to get away, I've got nobody, I've been—nearly mad sometimes—just trapped, feeling there's no escape from Marshington—Please, Delia, oh, I do so—need you."

Delia took out her handkerchief, rolled it into a ball, opened it out and looked at Muriel.

"You need my need for you more than you need me, I suppose really," she said. "Well—we must think it over, but I warn you you'll be exchanging the evils that you know for an infinitely worse evil that you don't know——"

"I don't care——"

The door opened and the vicar wandered in.

"Delia, Delia, have you seen my glasses?"

"Oh, Father, come in, do. We want you," said Delia quickly. "I'm in such a mess."