Winifred Holtby

“ She was sick of living through the long months of the year all on top of Muriel and her mother, sick of scenes with her father, because he would neither let her go away nor give her the allowance that she considered necessary. And she was sick of her mother's fretful hints and of her father's stupid chaffing. She was weary of cinema romances, where true love always triumphed. She was weary of Marshington reality where her school friends and neighbours smirked at her above their diamond half-hoops, or simpered at her over piles of trousseau lingerie. ”

“ But to Muriel the place was magic. She could not believe that real people moved behind those solemn windows. The still winter day, the cold light of the pale sun, the mouldering stonework of the terrace, were all part of a waking dream. A thrush, starting suddenly from a wet bough, shook down the rain-drops on to her face. She woke from her dream. This was the Weare Grange. She and Connie and Clare were going there to tea. This was the amazing adventure which the gods had brought her. ”

“ It was as though Delia in her London office, looking up from the work which her brilliant, courageous mind directed, might think of Muriel in Marshington, living her drab ineffectual life among tea-parties, and nursing accounts and faded dreams, and might say to herself, "There, but for the grace of God, goes Delia Vaughan." Most successful people, thought Muriel sadly, have a shadow somewhere, a personality sharing their desires, and even part of their ability, but without just the one quality that makes success. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Clare, completely oblivious of her distress, stared calmly out to sea.
"Oh, Muriel, there's such a big steamer on the horizon. Do hurry up and tell me where it's going."
But Muriel could not hurry. She was beyond hope, beyond sight, almost beyond fear. For she had just remembered Freddy Mason's stories of the Ladder, and how the men carrying sacks up it had overbalanced and fallen to their doom, far in the yard below.
Her grasp loosened. Rock and sky swung round her. Her feet slipped on the narrow ledge.
She must not fail Clare; here was the time to test her courage. ”

“ A motherly old lady in black silk and bugles looked up from her seat by the fire.
"Well, dearie, have you lost something?"
Not daring to risk a second prevarication, Muriel fled.
The door of the supper-room stood open. Inside she saw a glitter of glass and silver, of quivering crimson jellies and high-piled creams, of jugs brimming with orange cup and lemonade. There were no questioning grown-ups to drive her from that sanctuary. She slipped inside and curled up on a chair near the door. From far away came sounds of music, of laughter, of occasional faint echoes of applause. ”

“ Only in loving Clare had he ever been brushed by the wings of divinity, and Clare was the one person whom he could encounter who valued her own personality before she thought of his. "When it comes to it, Clare will be more selfish than Godfrey," she thought, and yet knew that for his sake she was glad that they had met again. For herself, she only knew that life had conquered her. She could not look into Mrs. Neale's sad, ugly face.
"I'm sorry," she said, shuffling her foot along the floor. "Men do as they like. That's where they're different. We just wait to see what they will do. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Life's not like that. Life's not like that, vowed Muriel. Fiercely she fought this sense of inexorable doom for the salvation of her dreams. Surely God made the world most beautiful, and set within it to delight man's heart music, and lingering scents, and the clear light of dawn through leafless trees. To teach man the holiness of law, He set the stars to ride their courses ”

“ And, lest man should grow weary in his wandering, God gave the last and deepest mercy, Death.
Not quite in definite words, Muriel thought this, but somehow her heart told her that Life was this joyous, regal journey. She was grown up. The whole world lay before her. The great adventure, which just must end right, was about to begin.
She raised her hand to feel the long plait falling between her narrow shoulders. Soon there would be a cold feeling at the back of her neck. Her hair would be twisted up below her hat. Did being grown up really make such a difference? ”

“ Hammond liked her to keep drawn. ("It looks so bad, dear, to see an uncurtained bedroom window. Even if people can't see anything, they always think that they can.") There were no stars in the deep sky, but from the darkness of the garden rose the thin and unmistakable breath of the spring. Muriel stood with outstretched arms holding back the curtains.
Down there in the valley lay the wonderful, perilous, grown-up world, holding its carnival of adventure and romance.
She pitied Connie, a child who was still at school. ”

“ Oh, be still, be still, said Muriel's dancing heart, and somehow here shall be delight.
The drooping leaves of a palm tickled the back of the pianist's neck. His left hand stopped banging out the bass chords and swooped as though to kill a fly. It missed the leaf, and flung itself back on to the keyboard to do justice to the Fortissima of the Coda. Back swung the leaf over the edge of his collar. Up went the hand, clutching and waving. There followed a battle royal between the palm and the polka. Muriel's chuckles now rose to her throat, but, being a polite child, she sought to stifle them. ”

“ Even Muriel, as she stood on the steps with Lady Grainger and her mother, felt the excitement, and laughed with them. She watched the figures on the lawn, moving out of the black shadows of the elm trees into the white field of moonlight. She watched young Staines and Captain Lowcroft separate the antagonists, measure sedately the paces between them, and supply them with their ammunition. Quick words of command rang out. A handkerchief fluttered down, silver-white in the moonlight. The fruit flew, the oranges glittering like golden metal. ”

“ And all the time Muriel's prim little voice had told him tale after tale of Clare at school, Clare on the Continent, Clare galloping wildly along the sands at Hardrascliffe on a rough hackney, after a mad Saturday outing with a school friend's brother. Godfrey felt somehow that he would not have liked that brother, but he listened to the tales, greedy for more. Muriel, delighted to find in a man such unexpected interest and sympathy, unlocked to him the doors of her mind, and poured forth all the wistful hero-worship hitherto suppressed for fear of ridicule. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But when they appeared in the station, there at the end of the platform, surrounded by three suit-cases, a roll of rugs, a side-saddle, a hat box, a long, thin dachshund on a lead, and all the porters, stood Clare. She turned and saw them. She came to meet them. More beautiful and radiant than ever, in a grey travelling cloak, and a little grey toque with a scarlet quill, she hurried forward with outstretched hands to greet them, the dimples flickering in her cheek.
"You are Mr. Hammond, I am sure? But how good of you to come yourself to meet me!" ”

“ Grateful but embarrassed, Muriel went forward, and climbed in among the knees and new tweed skirts of the élite of Marshington. She counted them surreptitiously, Adelaide Waring and a cousin, Dennis Smallwood, Nancy Cartwright, Bobby Mason and Delia. A man for every girl except herself. Wise by experience, she sighed, thinking of the long day before her. At Heathcroft, if you had no partner, you could at least walk with the last couple in the crocodile. At Marshington it seemed that you could only sit and look forlorn among the sandwiches. ”

“ Godfrey smiled his charming smile. "I messed up that last game fearfully."
Had he not seen that it was her fault? She could have kissed his hand for his forbearance. Negotiating carefully, so as not to expose to him at least the shameful pin, Muriel picked up the balls.
She could not decide whether to hold two or three. Which had she generally done at Heathcroft? She could remember nothing. They seemed suddenly to have grown large and slippery, heavier than cannon-balls. Surely it must be bowls that she was playing, and not tennis? ”

“ She sobbed as she ran and the two babies in the perambulator were crying.
"This is real," said Muriel to herself. "This is a really great adventure, and none of us know this minute where we shall be to-morrow and nothing matters like success or failure now, but only courage. This must be why the soldiers sing when they go to the trenches. It's all so beautifully simple." She wanted to die then, when life was simple, rather than face Marshington again and the artificial complications that entangled her life there. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not beautiful, but with the confidence of beauty, not tall, but with a radiant suggestion of height, Clare was utterly unlike anything that Muriel had seen before. From the surprising bow upon her sleek brown hair, to the shining buckles on her trim brown shoes, from her odd short dress of pleated tartan to the frill of muslin round her firm young neck, she defied all Marshington and Hardrascliffe conventions of the proper attire for young girls of fifteen. ”

“ Enchanted castles are apt to conceal an ogress or two. Mrs. Neale felt disposed to let the Weare Grange live up to its reputation. Between her abrupt boredom and Muriel's timidity, the afternoon appeared interminable to Connie. She hated the white and draughty drawing-room. She hated the small gilt clock ticking in the corner. She hated the mixture of ceremony and discomfort, of wealth and squalor that characterized the house shared by Godfrey and his mother. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Her instincts of economy refused to allow her to take a furnished flat. She braved motor-buses and tubes, she faced landladies, caretakers and decorators. When Delia, nearly convalescent but still shockingly unfit for work, departed northwards on a speaking tour, Muriel worked almost day and night to prepare a home for them both. She spent part of her own dress allowance on blue curtains and hand-painted lamp-shades and the most luxurious of soft arm-chairs for Delia's weary body. Here at last Delia, who had missed the softer things of life, should find a home. ”

“ Mrs. Hammond, perhaps, had been responsible for the choice. Muriel's manner combined the boredom of distaste with the confusion of timidity. The vicar watched her moving from chair to chair, picking up conversations, hovering on the edge of confidences, turning away again before contact was established. He watched her shepherding the committee ladies into the drawing-room for tea, hearing her half-apologetic invitations, her laugh abruptly breaking off, her sentences deferentially curtailed. Her indifference shattered his serene detachment. No girl of her age ought to look like that. ”

“ There were three letters on the tray for her, one from Janet Holmes, now nursing in Newcastle, one from the vicar's wife at Kepplethorpe about the egg collection, one from a Nursing Club member.
Muriel hated the letters, hated the brass tray, hated sullenly and fiercely the weariness of her ankles and her shoulders. She had been standing nearly all day in the Red Cross Depot, lifting bundles that were too heavy for her. She leaned forward with her hands on the cool marble of the hall table, resting for a moment before she climbed the stairs. ”

“ Then, with a sudden access of delighted interest, Clare turned upon Muriel.
"My dear, is it possible that you have a temperament? And I never guessed it. But how very odd. I should not have thought it somehow. It just shows that you never can tell. And I have been so bored with these suet dumplings of girls." Them! The elect and sacred "Them" suet dumplings! Muriel forgot her tears. "Although I, thank heaven, I have no temperament myself. That is why Félix says that I shall never be a singer." ”

“ Mrs. Marshall Gurney replied in the deep throaty voice that belonged to her because she was Mrs. Marshall Gurney. Muriel could not hear what she said, but Mrs. Hammond answered with her gentle little laugh, "Oh, yes, she's only eleven and rather shy." So Muriel knew that they were talking about her.
Grown-ups, of course, always did talk about children as though they were not there. Muriel wished that it wouldn't make her feel hot inside as though she had been naughty, or had begun to cry in front of strangers. Connie, she thought enviously, rather liked it. ”

“ 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. ”