XXXVII
Muriel sat by the fire at 53a Maple Street knitting a jumper for Delia. The flames glowed on the silk between her fingers, until the sheen of it gleamed like molten copper. The supper table was laid for two. Blue and yellow pottery, a vase filled with tawny chrysanthemums, and Muriel's workbag of bright-coloured silk hanging from the chair, gave to the room an intimate charm.
Muriel herself was pleasant enough to look upon. Her thin cheeks still were pale, her features insignificant; but instead of diffidence and dissatisfaction her face now wore a look of quiet waiting, of humour nun-like and demure, of a composure that would quicken to keen sympathy. Her parted hair was brushed sedately from her small, serious face; her blue dress of soft woollen stuff was finished daintily by collars and cuffs of finest cream material, the firelight sparkled on the coquettish buckles of her really pretty grey suède shoes. Muriel Hammond of Miller's Rise had vanished; Miss Hammond of 53a Maple Street was a very different person.
When the bell rang sharply, she put aside her knitting, glanced round the room, and went to the front door. Callers were always coming to the flat at all hours. At first they had come intent upon finding Miss Vaughan and laying their troubles before the redoubtable champion of social reform. Latterly many had been quite content to find Miss Hammond, no longer a nonentity, but a grave little lieutenant, who listened to their protests or pleadings or denunciations with serious attention, and upon whose undemonstrative consideration they relied. Muriel did not know this. She still held herself to be very stupid, and dreaded committing the final error of judgment which should cut her off from Delia's tolerance for ever. Even now as she went to the door, she was reckoning rapidly the many people who might even at this hour be coming to lay their recriminations or requests before the organizing secretary of the Reform League. She opened the door and looked into the gloom of the passage.
"G—good evening," remarked a voice, incredibly familiar, yet unexpected. "Is Miss Vaughan in?"
She opened the door wider and the light from the electric lamp fell upon Godfrey Neale's tall figure. He was staring past her to the sitting-room, not recognizing to whom he spoke.
Godfrey. Godfrey. For a moment Muriel was dumb. A thousand doubts and fears and memories rushed to her mind. An emotion that she hardly recognized clutched at her throat. Tenderness, consternation and regret all smote her. She shrank back into the shadows of the little hall.
She could not face him. Godfrey, who had been wounded and a prisoner; Godfrey, who must have suffered agonies unthinkable; Godfrey, for whom she had endured such suffering—it was impossible that she should speak to him unmoved. She was caught in a trap, whence she could not escape. She forced herself to answer:
"Miss Vaughan is out."
He recognized her voice. "Muriel Hammond? By all that's wonderful? W—what are you doing here?"
If only his voice had not faltered with that familiar heart-rending little stammer. If only his face, smiling down upon her, had not recalled the moment when he smiled down from the motor-lorry, riding towards the peril of a bombarded city; if only the lean hand that he thrust forward had not reminded her of his hand outstretched in congratulation after the tennis set, when she had made her début at the Recreation Club; if he had been quite different, she might have borne it. But his familiarity stunned her. His nearness raised a thousand instincts and emotions that she had thought to be long dead and decently interred.
She gave him her cold hand quietly.
"Won't you ask me to come in?" he asked. "Or shall I be in the way?"
Without a word she went before him into the sitting-room, and stood, dumb and unnerved, beside the supper table. His quick glance seemed to take in everything, each charming detail of the long, low room, the firelight leaping on the plain blue carpet, the piano, the books, the flower-decked table.
"You were just g—going to have your dinner?" he asked.
He seemed to be taller than ever, and his brown face was thin. Those were the only differences. His nose still hooked very slightly over the small winged moustache. The brows over his kind, honest eyes were still dark and smooth and level. He still had the same regal aspect of bearing himself as though the whole world knew that he was Godfrey Neale of the Weare Grange, confident, dominating and victorious. No, that was wrong. The victory had somehow failed him. Something had subtly changed his self-confidence, his air of conquest, and with the loss of confidence some slight charm failed.
"I had thought that Delia would catch the 5 train. That means that she would have been home for supper. But she must have missed it by now," she said in a low voice.
"When will she be back?"
"I'm afraid not until late now—about eleven. It means that she will stay for dinner at the place in Sussex where she's speaking."
"Are—are you staying here, then?"
"I live here. Didn't you know?"
He shook his head. "Stupid of me. I hadn't realized. I've not seen Delia for ages. Only once since I left Germany, and then she was in such a hurry I hardly grasped anything but her new address. I never thought that she would be out."
It was like him to forget that people had other interests beside those concerning him.
"I'm sorry she's out. Won't you sit down?"
She prayed that he might go. She dared not trust her composure for much longer. She looked blindly round the room for help. If only he would go! His nearness hurt and bruised her. If only Delia were here, so that she were not left alone, trapped in the flat, bound to her task of hospitality by her recollection of his friendship for the vicar's daughter.
"Thanks, very much," said Godfrey. "If I may really—a—look here—are you doing anything to-night?"
"I? No—not exactly." She spoke before she thought.
"Then won't you come out and have some dinner with me? I'm up in town alone, missed the 5.30 train for Kingsport. It's rotten spending the evening alone at an hotel. You'd be doing a work of Christian charity to come."
"I suppose Clare's out of town," thought Muriel. She said: "I really don't think that I'd better leave the flat. Delia might still come." Her hospitable instincts overcame her panic. "Won't you—won't you stay and have supper here with me?"
She had not meant to say it. She did not want it. Even as she spoke she felt the whole of her personality rising in revolt, seeking to drive him from her. But he could not be so cruel as to accept. He would not force her thus to sit alone with him, in the unavoidable intimacy of that room.
He put down his hat with a sigh of relief.
"By Jove, are you sure that you can do with me? It's awfully g—good of you. I do so loathe a beastly evening alone in London."
"He takes it for granted that we've got plenty of food," thought Muriel. "He takes it for granted that I shall be pleased to see him, to wait on him, to give him supper. Oh, how dare he come here? How dare he? How dare he?"
Aloud she said: "Yes, do sit down. Take a cigarette. There are some in that little carved box on the mantelpiece. You don't mind if I go and get the supper ready, do you?"
He stooped to light a paper spill from the fire. "Sure I can't help? Sure I'm no trouble?"
"None, thank you," she said, and left the room.
Out in the kitchen, she did not begin to cook the fish that lay prepared with breadcrumbs and butter on the table. She crouched down upon the single chair, her face hidden in her hands, her body shaking. She felt herself to be outraged and assaulted. The agitation which he aroused in her violated her sense of decency. It was an outrage, a torture that she could be made to suffer by his presence. Did he think of her as a person? Did he remember that one kiss at Scarborough? The memory of his enfolding arms tormented her like the shirt of Nessus. Sham kiss, sham love, sham pitiful adventure, stirred by the recollection of sham peril—nothing more. Was this the emotion that had driven Connie to the river when she saw Eric's letter, knowing what she had done with Ben? Was this the revolt that had burnt and shamed her? What did she feel for Eric, love or hate? Violence of repulsion, or of love? Was this the love that she had always so idealized? No, no, a thousand times no.
"What shall I do? What shall I do?" moaned Muriel.
The evening stretched before her in her imagination, a time of interminable misery. While Clare and her mother had been with her, she had been able to face Godfrey in Marshington; but to sit opposite him, alone and quite defenceless, while every word that he said, every line of his face lacerated her quivering nerves, how could she bear it?
She sat very quietly, only from time to time shivering a little, her thoughts beating back and back against the same stark problem. "How shall I face him?"
Then she rose, and as though spellbound began to move about the kitchen. She lit the gas stove, set the pan of soup on to boil, and began to fry the fish, not knowing what she did. On the table a newspaper had been spread to shield the scrubbed, white wood from grease. Mechanically she read: "At the reception given by Lady Marion Motley, several people of note were to be discovered among the crowd of guests thronging the historic stairway." What did she care for guests or stairway?
"L—look here, are you sure that I can't help?" said his voice from the doorway. "I'm an awful genius at cooking really."
She shook her head, not trusting herself for a moment to speak. Then she answered:
"I shan't be a moment. Go in and sit down. Don't be impatient."
She carried in the little bowls of soup.
"There's only cider, and lemonade; would you like lemonade?"
"Cider, please. You know, this is enormously good of you."
He smiled at her across the table.
"Not at all," she answered primly.
She felt as though the soup must choke her, and glancing towards Godfrey she saw that he too seemed to find it difficult to swallow. His lean brown fingers crumbled the bread upon his plate.
When she rose to bring in the fish, both of them had left their soup half finished. Conversation seemed to be difficult, but silence was quite unendurable. She lifted her eyes from her plate at last.
"Are you staying for long in town?"
"Only to-night. I'm going back to-morrow, thank the Lord. It's a filthy place, isn't it? What on earth makes you girls choose to live here, I don't know."
"Our work's here," remarked Delia-instructed Muriel. "Whatever its disadvantages, it is infinitely preferable to Marshington."
"Don't you like M—Marshington?" he asked simply.
"I loathed it with all my heart and all my soul and all my spirit," declared Muriel fiercely.
He stared at her in amazement that so guileless a creature should show such emphatic disapproval of something that he had always taken quite for granted until two hours ago. To her profound surprise he asked:
"I say, is there really something about M—Marshington that makes girls hate it?"
She blushed to the white parting between her smooth, brown wings of hair.
"Yes," she gasped softly, pleating the tablecloth between her fingers. "But I couldn't possibly explain to you."
"By Jove, I wish you would!"
"But it doesn't concern you," she said more softly. Neither of them took any notice of the meal before them. They faced each other like antagonists.
"It concerns me damned well," he muttered.
"You'd better ask Clare, then. She might tell you."
"Thank you—I don't need to ask Clare's opinions."
"No. I suppose not. I suppose that you wouldn't mind much either what she thought: opinions of women don't usually matter much to people like you."
He looked at her, his face drawn to an expression of pained surprise.
"I say—you know—don't be too hard on a fellow. I d—did jolly well care."
"Did?"
"Yes, did. She can go to the devil now for all I care."
"Really——" said Muriel, then most unnecessarily she added: "Have you—have you quarrelled?"
"No. We've not quarrelled. We just—I just—— Oh, damn it all. We've just come to an end of it, that's all."
"I'm sorry." It was all that Muriel could trust herself to say.
He rose abruptly from the table, went to the fireplace and leant against it. "Oh, it's all right. You'd have to know some time. Every one will know soon enough. I should have known. It was the b—beastly place. She said that she couldn't stand living at the Weare Grange—wanted to drag me up to town. Good Lord! One would have thought a kid of two would have known I couldn't stick leaving the old place. 'Tisn't as if there was only oneself to consider anyhow—let alone hunting and shooting and all that, I've got to look after the estate."
"Of course," said Muriel softly.
An extraordinary thing was happening to her. The pain of agitation slowly faded. She found herself growing calm, and detached, and full of sympathy.
"I might have known that she could never stick it," he continued, hardly noticing her, "all that being engaged to me when I was in Germany and all that—it wasn't so difficult. But I suppose that being engaged to a fellow is one thing and marrying him another. I might have known." Fiercely he turned upon Muriel. "I suppose you knew?"
"What?"
"That she—she'd never st—stick living at the Weare Grange. You were her friend."
Muriel shook her head. "I did not think," she said.
Indeed, she realized now how little she had thought of Clare and Godfrey. Never once had the question of their real happiness entered her mind, so much engrossed had she been with the thoughts of her own misery. It had been herself, not Godfrey, who had filled her dreams. The recognition of her own past egoism shocked her.
"You might have thought. You might have told me," he continued. "There I've been thinking, for years, that I was going to marry her. And all the time it really was impossible. She couldn't stand that life—wasn't fit for it. Spoiled by all this singing and publicity and having her photograph in the papers—wanted to fill the house with damned foreigners and Jews and things."
He was hurt and angry, wounded in his self-assurance, wounded even more deeply in the one thing that he had cared about more than he had cared for Clare.
"Wouldn't see it either. Wouldn't see my point of view. Didn't see why I shouldn't shut up the Grange and come to live in London, or Paris or some filthy hole. Good Lord, as if I hadn't had enough of dirty foreigners. Wasn't three years in Germany enough in all conscience? But no, she'd have her own way. She——"
He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. Muriel sat quietly, at the table, watching him.
"I told her that I wanted to marry a wife, not a p—prima-donna," he stormed. "I wanted someone who'd be a companion, who'd take an interest in my work. A man in my position wants some one to be his—his hostess, and look after his home and all that sort of thing. By Jove, she d—doesn't know what she's missed, though."
He turned to the fire, speaking gruffly and shamefacedly, amazed at the affront to his fine self-esteem, and too much of a child still to avoid seeking sympathy.
"I'd have been jolly d—decent to her. There aren't many men who'd have been as patient all these last months, though, standing meekly aside while she filled her flat with dirty little Jewish swine and mugs and pacifists. I—good Lord, I wonder how I stood it?" His voice dropped. Its wistfulness wrung Muriel's heart. "She used to be a jolly little kid, though."
He lowered himself into Delia's big arm-chair, and sat smoking fiercely. Without a word Muriel cleared the supper that they both had been unable to eat, and brought in coffee. He took it, thanking her but hardly noticing who she was. She realized that he had to talk things out, to run to somebody with his sad story. For indeed the thing that had happened hurt him deeply. He lied when he said that all he had sought in Clare had been a wife. Muriel knew that he lied, but because it was a lie she could have loved him. For Clare had been far more to him than a woman, beautiful, radiant, of rich vitality. She had been his ideal of all women, the star remote and bright which he could worship, the beauty that lay beyond all lovely things. Thus, though he had not known it, though now, perhaps thought Muriel, he would never know it, he had loved her ever since as a wild, pretty child she had smiled herself straight into his heart. But Godfrey was not the man to cast off everything for an ideal. He stood, and Muriel knew it, rooted and grounded in tradition. "He has roots," she thought and compared him with her father. Where Mr. Hammond was reckless, Godfrey was cautious. Where one was volatile, having no standards but his transient desires, no traditions but those of his creation, the other's life was only the chapter in a story, a long and not ignoble tale of Neales, stretching far back into the dim but dominating past. Mr. Hammond, standing alone, master of his own wealth and his desires, would woo or discard where he would. But Godfrey was far more than just himself. He was an embodiment of a legend, not all of his own making. He belonged to the Weare Grange far more than it belonged to him. So, when the inevitable conflict came between Clare and his home, there had never been cause for half a minute's hesitation. But the knowledge that such a choice had been inevitable, that his dream and the prestige of his position had not sufficed to hold her, had been very bitter. It was this that had robbed him of his air of conquest. His years in Germany had never touched him, for he carried the environment of the Weare Grange with him. That he could never lose. What he had lost was that fine and fugitive ideal, that sense of beauty born from something more universal than his own position, more sacred than the traditions which had formed his conduct. He, the man of property, of dignified assured possession, had been pursued by the passing urgency of that idealism which makes men poets and visionaries. The dream had left him now, and he would never see again the light that once had glorified his youth.
And Muriel, who realized this, for the first time considered him rather than herself. She saw that, with his dream, the legend of his strong, all-conquering charm lay broken. He had lost something that neither she nor anyone else could give him, and she was sorry, sorry, sorry—for him, not for herself.
She let him talk and smoke and fall into long silences, sitting moodily beside her fire. At intervals the cuckoo clock upon the wall called softly, clear small woodland notes. Her knitting needles clicked convulsively. At last he said:
"I suppose that I cared for her really less than I thought."
But this was disloyalty, and Muriel would not have it.
"No, no. You loved her truly. It was she who was not—quite what you thought you loved."
"I've been a damned fool," he muttered.
"You haven't. You must not think like that. Your love was fine, not foolish. You must not get bitter about yourself; don't spoil it. Don't think of her or of yourself as small. Think of her still as noble and beautiful. You were right to love her. You were." Her small voice grew urgent. Her grave, earnest eyes implored him. "Think of her as the loveliest thing that you knew, and of yourself as fine in loving her."
"She was a ripping kid—that time she came to Marshington."
"I know. I thought that too. I loved her at school as though she were something wonderful. She was like that."
"By Jove, she was," he said.
Though she knew him to be inarticulate, Muriel could imagine how the dancing flames again turned for him the rich silk of Clare's dress to the colour of very old dark wine. She could think of him seeing Clare's head uplifted proudly, and her white arms lying along the gracious flow and rhythm of her gown; she could feel his response to the gallant challenge of her youth.
"She's selfish—heartless as hell," half whispered Godfrey. "I was a fool."
"She's not. That's wrong and wicked." Forgetting herself, she slipped on to the hearth-rug and knelt there facing him, her eyes glowing, her small figure pregnant with the desire to save for him his dreams. "She's not selfish, nor were you a fool. She had an artist's temperament, swift and changeable. One should have seen—one should have seen. She did not understand you. She could not see what the Weare Grange meant for you. Look at her life—the publicity, the applause, the sunlight. She fed on the love and praise of people. It was her right. How could she come and bury herself in the country? How could she understand?"
He looked down at her eloquent face and her great shining eyes.
"Don't you see?" she implored him. "Don't you see you weren't a fool? It was inevitable that you should love her, seeing how beautiful she was. But it would have been wrong to try to make her your wife. You can't help yourself, any more than she can help being what she's like. Your wife must be quiet and controlled, understanding the ways of country life and the requirements of a house like the Weare Grange, valuing it as you value it, honouring its traditions. Over that at least, there must be no misunderstanding between you—and don't you see, however much Clare had wanted to, she couldn't understand!"
He looked at her, and slowly realization dawned upon his mind, clearer than resentment or self pity. "By Jove, you're right," he said. "She couldn't understand."
They did not speak again for some time. She, suddenly grown self-conscious, took advantage of her unconventional position to poke the fire, and then retreated to her chair.
At last he rose.
"It's after ten. I really m—must go. I say, you've been a brick, Muriel. I'll never forget it. I'm awfully glad that you were in. I believe that you understand me better than anyone—even than Delia. She's a decent sort but a bit—lacking in imagination if you know what I mean! You've been more decent than I can say."
"I haven't. I've been glad to be here." Her low voice never faltered. "You see, I loved—Clare. I should have hated it if you'd gone away—bitter—— It was all unfortunate—but—don't—don't be sorry that it happened, will you?"
She had risen now, and they stood facing one another, he, tall and weary, she, small and stiff with the battle for his dreams.
He thought, then slowly came to a conclusion.
"No. I'm not sorry that it happened." With the simplicity that she liked most of all in him, he held out his hand. "Thank you," he said, and at that moment was conscious neither of his magnificence nor of his wrongs.
She smiled up at him bravely.
"You've been a brick," he continued. "I felt that I had to tell someone. It's not the sort of thing, though, that you can talk over with another fellow quite, and I can't tell the mater much. She hates to think I've been upset."
Again his niceness and his simplicity moved her. She only shook her head.
"I'm glad you came."
They shook hands, and he left her. She heard his heavy footsteps down the stairs. For a long time he seemed to walk away from her, then, very far off, the street door slammed.
She went back to the fire and sat down on the hearth-rug. The room was full of his remembered presence, the scent of tobacco smoke, the crumpled cushion in his chair, the cigarette ash that he had spilled on to the hearth.
She leaned against the chair where he had sat, and so lay very quietly, gazing into the fire with eyes that did not see.
When Delia came in, nearly an hour later, she found Muriel asleep, her eyelids red with crying, her head down on the big arm-chair, and a little smile, childlike and tender, tilting the corners of her mouth.