BOOK III

CONNIE

September, 1915--February, 1916

XXVI

Though there was no wind that evening to disturb them, the chintz curtains falling before the morning-room window would not hang quite together. A moth with heavy, powdered wings flopped through the open space and blundered blindly round the flaming gas-jet.

Muriel rose and drew the curtains for the third time. The garden outside lay quietly waiting, black shadows outstretched prostrate before the moonlit elms. No sound of horse hoofs trotting up the road greeted her straining ears. Only the soft thump of the moth's wings on the ceiling, and the rustle of her mother's sleeve as she flicked faster and faster at her tatting broke the perfect stillness.

Would he never come? The 7.40 had arrived, whistling up the valley. The 8.15 had come and gone. There was still the 9.50.

Muriel returned to her book and glanced mechanically down the page. Why didn't he wire? He had no imagination of what they must be feeling.

She read, "Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the North of England, but in eighteen hundred eleven-twelve that affluent rain had not descended: there was no Pastoral Aid, no Additional Curates Society to stretch out a helping hand to worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge."

Muriel was not interested in curates. She let _Shirley_ fall unheeded on her lap, and sat again listening for the sound of her father's horse along the road or of Connie's footsteps in the bedroom overhead.

The clock ticked stupidly, marking minutes, half-hours, hours; but at Miller's Rise endless years had passed since Mr. Hammond drove away that morning to catch the 10.20 train to Market Burton, and so on to Thraile. Centuries had passed while Mrs. Hammond sat with her tatting, staring into the painted glass fire-screen, and Muriel picked up books and embroidery and the nursing accounts and laid them aside again, and Connie up in her room, with red eyes and swollen, distorted face, passed from defiance to despair, and from despair to bitter comfortless surrender.

The telephone bell suddenly pealed into the silence.

Muriel rose, but Mrs. Hammond waved her aside.

"No, no, I must go. We don't know what--what----"

She rustled from the room, and Muriel heard her quick light step in the hall and the click of the receiver as she lifted it. Upstairs a door opened and footsteps crossed the landing hurriedly. Connie too was listening.

"No, no--Yes. This is Rachel Hammond speaking. Mrs. Waring? Oh, good evening, Mrs. Waring. No, no. I'm so sorry. Not to-night. Yes. That's quite true. Connie came home last night for a short leave. What? No--no. Well"--only Connie and Muriel could detect the strain in that familiar flutter of laughter--"perhaps we _may_ have some news for you soon, but I'm saying nothing now. Good night."

The whirring jar of the bell as she rang off snapped the tension of the house.

Muriel returned to her seat as Mrs. Hammond re-entered the room. Her quivering lips were almost as white as her drawn cheeks. She groped her way unsteadily to a chair. After a minute she said:

"That was Mrs. Waring. She wanted us to go and play bridge."

It seemed to Muriel incredible that people like Mrs. Waring and Mrs. Daunt should still be living in Marshington, playing bridge, chattering at the War Depot, and discussing the length of autumn skirts. For Miller's Rise that life had ended centuries ago, cut off by the startling anguish of Connie's wild confession. The echo of that storm still seemed to ring in Muriel's ears. Its violence had bruised and hurt her. She had been deafened by the raging of her father's voice, by Connie's shrill defiance and gusty tears. She could not bear to enter the drawing-room now lest she should see again her father standing by the fireplace, his great neck red and swollen with anger, his voice hurling at Connie those questions, unbearably coarse and brutal to Muriel's shrinking mind. She wanted to shut out for ever the remembrance of Connie's flaming, tear-stained face, and of her mother's terrible weeping as she lay crushed and broken, beaten out of her delicate composure into an abandonment that had tortured Muriel by its blind surrender to astonished pain.

And then slowly, from the terror and confusion, her mother's courage had risen above her agony. Muriel, watching her now as she sat fidgeting with the black tatting spindle, could feel again the effort of that re-assertion, until in the grey dreary hours of early morning, Mrs. Hammond had risen above her circumstances, quietly dominated the three of them, and had sent her husband off to Thraile to do the one thing left to save the Hammonds.

If Mr. Hammond could persuade young Todd to marry Connie immediately, this month, if Connie could be bundled away again to the isolated uplands of Thraile, then the tennis club need never know; then Lady Grainger would still smile graciously upon the Hammonds; then the Bennet relations, and the flouted malice of the Marshington Chapel folk need never jeer at Rachel Bennet, who against reason, against prudence, almost against decency, had married Old Dick Hammond's son.

Why wouldn't he come? Why wouldn't he come? Had the trap broken down? Had he missed the connection at Hardrascliffe? Supposing--supposing he had failed? Supposing? You never knew with Father. He had assurance and courage and cleverness, but still, still--

A door clicked again. Both sat up stiffly, listening. Steps descended the stairs. The door opened, and Connie entered the room.

"I can't stand it. That room upstairs gives me the horrors. I can't stand being alone."

She sank into her father's big arm-chair, exhausted by the strain of the last twenty-four hours. Muriel looked at her, thinking that this passion-torn creature was a stranger, queer and terrible, belonging only to the nightmare year since last night when that dark figure had crept along the drive. Her sister Connie had been gay and reckless, had loved flamboyant colours, and the harsh merriment of rag-time tunes. Muriel remembered her at Kingsport dances, flushed and exultant, with blue ribbon in her bright wild hair.

"I won't do it." Connie's voice, flat and dead, came from between the hands covering her bowed face. "I won't do it. I hate him. I hate Ben Todd." She lifted her head with sudden fierce energy. "Mother, let me go away. By myself. I'll manage. I'll do anything. I'll work my fingers to the bone. I'll never come near here again. Let Father give me some money. I can't go through with it."

Mrs. Hammond's trembling fingers set down the foolish white cotton, the little looped edge of her work.

"Connie," she said quietly, "you know that's impossible. We--your father and I--are doing the best, the only thing we can for you. You must help us, we----"

"But if he can't----" In an urgency of appeal Connie lifted her eyes. "You don't know Mrs. Todd. She'll lie and lie. They'll say--they'll say I encouraged him. He--Ben-- does what she says. He's always done what she's said."

Mrs. Hammond opened her eyes and stared unseeing across the room to her elder daughter. Then she spoke softly, almost as though entranced:

"He can't fail. He can't fail."

"Yes, but I can!" cried Connie, springing to her feet. "I won't go back there. You don't know what you're sending me to. You don't know. The Todds were awful, awful. You should have heard them when--when they thought---- You don't know what it's like up there. The lot of them. They'll be all against me. They're proud. They're terrible. There's no bitterness like theirs'll be to me. If you send me there, I'll never, never have another moment's happiness. They'll watch and they'll watch. They'll suspect everything I do or say. Oh, they're hard, and that fearful old cripple--sitting in a corner, watching, watching---- You'll send me to that, just to save your skins, just to save your snobbish, rotten little ideas you'll send me to--to----"

Muriel couldn't bear it. She couldn't bear again the clash and jangle of that terrible violence. "Connie!" she cried. "Connie, don't, it isn't true. It's for your sake--it--they---- You mustn't say things like that."

Wide-eyed with astonishment Connie faced her, amazed that Muriel could so assert her personality.

Then she laughed. "You're backing them up too, are you? Of course. Your mother's little darling always! But I'll get round Father. I'll make him understand."

"Connie dear, you must see that for your own sake, and for the sake of the child, there's no other way. What would you do? You could not earn your own living alone, much less burdened like that."

"Who's to blame for that?"

"And then--the scandal. Your name . . ."

"I'll run away," sobbed Connie, for the twentieth time. But even then the shrewd common sense that underlay her recklessness realized the hopelessness of her position. Without support from her parents or from Ben, she could not face the world. Beyond her hysteria she foresaw defeat, yet could not yet acknowledge it. The desire to find an outlet for her emotion was too strong.

"I'll never face it," she repeated softly. Then, "Why doesn't he come?"

Far off a train whistled, entering the station.

"That will be the 9.50," said Mrs. Hammond.

Muriel realized then that she did not want her father to come and tell them. Her mind was chaotic with emotion. She only knew that she could not bear to face a repetition of last night's scene. Something whispered in her mind, "Father and Connie enjoy letting themselves go." If she could have brought herself to desert her mother, she would have left the room.

A motor-car hummed up the road. A motor-bicycle throbbed noisily. Then a horse came trotting, clop-clop, clop-clop.

Connie jumped up. "I can't--I can't," she gasped.

Mrs. Hammond rose, and with sudden tenderness went forward. Connie was, after all, her child. She laid gentle hands on Connie's arm that grasped the mantelpiece, but the girl pushed her roughly aside.

"Don't touch me. I don't want you!"

Clop-clop. Clop-clop. The horse-hoofs rang clear and hard on the dry road. With a swish of dead leaves and scattering of pebbles, the cart turned smartly on to the gravel of the drive. A lantern light moved beyond the slats of the venetian blind down the side window. The groom's voice spoke. Mr. Hammond answered.

They heard his footsteps pass the window. They heard him in the hall.

Connie stood quite still as her father came into the room and stopped, facing her. She did not look up.

"Well," he said heavily, "I've fixed things up. Wedding's on 21st, Connie."

"No, it's not. I'm not going through with it." She spoke sullenly, bending towards the fireless grate.

"Ay, but ye will. Young Todd's a fool, but he seemed to be rarely set up to have you. The missus says she'll treat you well. They weren't the sort o' folk I'd thought on, Connie. I can't rightly size the whole business up, for they're decentish people."

"Decent? The old man's a fiend."

"Nay, nay, lass. Thou's not behaved so well thysen' that thou canst pick and choose. It's not the old man you'll be marrying. I cannot rightly see how it all came about."

Muriel looked at him. On his face was no longer the dark fury of resentment, but a rough tenderness, born of compunction and bewilderment. In his voice lay a new note of pity, almost, it seemed, of understanding. To Muriel this was the strangest thing in those strange days; but to Connie looking up from her clasped hands, it shone like a light through her darkness of rebellion.

"Oh, Dad, you'll help me," she cried, and stumbled forward, blindly sobbing, into the clumsy shelter of his arms.

XXVII

"Tum! Tum! Ter-um, tum, tum, tum!"

It was all over, then. The smooth bluish page scrawled over with signatures had completed the deed performed with greater solemnity in church. That was the wedding march of course, and soon they would process back down the aisle, following Connie's white fox fur and the tall shambling figure of the young man. All Marshington would watch them pass, and Muriel could imagine the things that would be said afterwards round luncheon tables all over the village.

"What do you think of the new bridegroom, Mrs. Daunt?"

"Hem, not much. A decent young man I dare say. Probably good enough for Connie Hammond." They would not be merciful, for they had been cheated out of their champagne reception. "Should ha' thought Hammond would ha' done things better," Colonel Cartwright would complain, and ladies who had hoped for an opportunity for new clothes would sniff surreptitiously over the announcement in the _Kingsport Chronicle_: "Owing to the severe illness of the bridegroom's father, no reception will be held, but all friends will be welcome at the church."

It had been a little weak, that, but if Mr. Todd Senior had not been conveniently indisposed what other excuse could have kept the Todd family away from Marshington? True, he was no more ill to-day than he had been for the past ten years or more, but nobody at Holy Trinity Church was likely to know the High Farm, Thraile, except the bridegroom, who would keep his own counsel. And the Todd family, as a visit of Mrs. Hammond to the High Farm had revealed, was quite impossible.

That visit had almost shaken Mrs. Hammond's confidence, almost, not quite. After it she had plunged with even greater thoroughness into the preparations for the wedding. "She must have cared," thought Muriel to whom the whole business appeared intolerable. She had not thought that anything Connie might do could have touched herself so closely. Yet, if Mrs. Hammond cared, she continued to hide her feelings with superhuman self-control. Of course it would have been almost impossible to preserve in private that attitude of shamed reproach while in public she posed as the proud mother, but Muriel was deeply shocked in some obscure pride of soul when Mrs. Hammond adopted almost at once her public pose for domestic purposes, and began to order clothes and household linen with the wholehearted interest that she usually devoted to such things.

Only Mr. Hammond ever seemed to doubt the wisdom of her policy, but he too followed where she led him with uneasy meekness, clumsily trying to comfort her with lace scarves brought from London, and an almost pathetic consideration of her wishes that drew them closer together than ever before since their days of love-making by the one passion that could steady his uncertain nature, or make her forget for a moment her quiet calculations.

Her mother and father were all right. They had each other. Connie was all right. She was going to be married. She had new clothes, presents and attention, all of which, her first rebellion overcome, she accepted with complacent satisfaction, as though they were her due. Night after night, Muriel had thought of it, feeling that sometimes she had been mistaken, that Connie's behaviour had not been disgraceful, outraging all her sense of delicacy and reserve. Perhaps to Connie it had been a swift romance, the madness of moonlight on the darkened moor, the sudden call of youth and brave adventure, then fleeting fear and hot rebellion to be assuaged by final victory. Sometimes Muriel had tossed on her bed, feeling the fury of her outraged virtue; sometimes she found in her own loneliness the greater shame.

And now it was all over.

The vestry was hot and stuffy. Muriel wished that they need not all wait so long. Why did the bridegroom hesitate so while signing his name, Benjamin Durdletree Todd, in weak slanting copper-plate across the page? Constance Rachel Adeline. Muriel had almost forgotten that all this was Connie's name, sprawled in her dashing black signature almost into the columns for Spinster, Age and Parish.

Mrs. Hammond rustled forward in her lilac silk. "Muriel dear, won't you sign too?"

So Muriel's small, symmetrical signature went below, and the little crowd rocked and stirred about the vestry table.

"Well, is that all?" laughed Connie.

"Quite all, Mrs. Todd," smiled Mr. Vaughan. "Please let me offer you every happiness."

But his thin queer face looked troubled as he shook Connie's hand, and he glanced at the tall sheepish young man with an expression of veiled bewilderment.

Muriel put down the pen, wondering why the pens in vestries and offices always disguise one's signature so effectively.

And then she caught sight of the bridegroom again and began another wonder. That is Connie's husband. That is my brother-in-law. They are married. They will share the same house, the same room. She will see him always, at breakfast, at dinner, when they get up in the morning. His relations are my relations. Connie is going to live at his father's house. Connie, Connie, who used to play in the day nursery at weddings, with a lace curtain over her head.

The bride did not wear a veil now, for this quiet war-wedding was far more chic. Dorothy Daunt and Peggy Mason, who had secured their young officers, assisted by six bridesmaids and a military escort were made to feel hopelessly ostentatious by the aristocratic restraint of the Hammond wedding. So Connie hid her bright hair beneath a large, white hat, and her white coat frock of soft silky material spoke the last word in decorous elegance. Her eyes shone with excitement, and she held her head high with reckless pride.

"She's almost beautiful," thought Muriel, and was dazed by the wonder of it all. For two days before, Connie had broken down again, and declared that whatever happened she could not go through with it. Mr. Hammond had said gruffly, "Look here, Rachel, had we better chuck it? I'll do something for the kid." But Mrs. Hammond had persisted, declaring that it was too late to withdraw now, when the wedding had been arranged, and every one would know. Then finally Connie herself had saved the situation, by crying out that since they'd pushed her into it she supposed that she'd go on. But if they knew what Thraile would be like, they hadn't the feelings of a toad, and for God's sake they weren't to fuss her any more, for she was fed up with it all.

But, after that, she had recovered her spirits. Even during the awful hour before the car arrived, she had not faltered in her attention given to gloves and hat and white _suède_ shoes. And now she looked as though she had just gained her heart's desire in the rather pale, dark young man who kept looking sheepishly askance at his newly acquired father-in-law, as upon one who had bought, at the price of paying off the Todds' long-standing debts, the honesty of his erring daughter.

They stood waiting for something, the bride, the bridegroom, the Hammonds, the best man--a vaguely non-committal cousin of the Todds selected after much diligent searching by Mrs. Hammond, and imposed upon the now thoroughly intimidated Ben without compunction--Aunt Rose, Aunt Beatrice and half a dozen Bennet relatives.

"Well, Ben," smiled Mrs. Hammond tremulously, "aren't you going to do your duty?"

He blushed. He hesitated. Then he turned and kissed Connie with clumsy awkwardness that knocked her hat aside. While she straightened it, he kissed Mrs. Hammond, and came in her turn to Muriel. It was as he bent above her, very lanky and tall and smelling of the earth and leather and warm black clothes, that suddenly she doubted.

Had they been right to force Connie into this? What had they done? This terrible young man! But even then it was Connie again who reassured her.

"Come on, Ben. Stop kissing Muriel. You know she isn't used to it. Pull up your socks, old man. We've got to face them!" She seized his arm and started almost at a run down the long aisle. They followed her, Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, Muriel and the strange young man, the trail of relatives behind.

Tum, tum, terum--tum, tum--tum! triumphed the organ. A sea of bobbing faces greeted the procession, pallid in the dimness of the church. The scent from Muriel's bouquet of pink carnations choked her. The organ shook and quivered in its ecstasy. She saw Connie's white dress gleam before her. She felt a curious sensation of unreality, as though her mind were quite detached from her body, and she were looking down upon Muriel Hammond's saxe blue dress, upon her flower-crowned hat, and the rocking sea of the congregation. Suppose that this had been her own wedding--hers and Godfrey's? The young man at her side grew taller; his pleasantly mediocre profile hardened and straightened into Godfrey's features as she had last seen them, the straight fine nose, the splendid sweep of his dark eyebrows, the curve of his too-handsome, rather obstinate mouth, his firm chin uptilted against the dark pillar of the aisle.

People were shaking hands at the church door, crowds and crowds of them. Connie, laughing and blushing, was thanking them for their good wishes so volubly that nobody noticed the bridegroom's silence. Even if he had spoken, so many quite eligible young men in Marshington talked with Yorkshire accents that nobody would notice how common Ben's voice sounded. Here was Lady Grainger smiling down at them, and Lady Grainger's kind, guileless face, and her pleasant voice saying, "Well, Mrs. Todd, when I first made your acquaintance so short a time ago, I hardly thought that to-day I should come to your wedding." Mrs. Hammond replied laughingly, "Wasn't she a sight that night? Coming into the drawing-room all muddy! I was ashamed of her."

Really, thought Muriel, is Mother just being wonderful, or does she really feel quite happy? But she knew that Mrs. Marshall Gurney's presence luring Lady Grainger's little speech had helped Mrs. Hammond over a difficult place.

Little Miss Dale, being as usual unable to make her presence felt at the centre of interest, pushed her way to Muriel's side.

"A charming wedding," she said tearfully. Nobody knew whether Miss Dale always wept at weddings out of sympathy for the bride or sorrow for her single state. But she always went, and she always wept. "I love a wedding," she continued, "And _how_ sweet Connie looks! and positively everybody here. The Graingers of course, and I am sure that Mrs. Neale would have been if it had not been for her sad news."

"Her news? What news?"

"Oh, well." Miss Dale hesitated, darting quick, bird-like glances at Muriel and the bride. "I wish that I hadn't mentioned it--at a wedding. We must think of bright things. Happy the bride that the sun shines on, and of all such good things. The sun _is_ shining. Dear Connie. A nice young man, I expect. Younger than she is, surely? But I thought that you would be sure to have heard."

"No. We've been rather absorbed by our own affairs for the last few weeks, I am afraid." Then, with sharpening anxiety, "Not about--her son?" She could not say his name.

"Poor Godfrey. Yes, poor Godfrey. We only heard last night over the telephone. Mrs. Marshall Gurney rang up about the nursing fund, and then . . ."

The crowd moved forward. In another minute Miss Dale might be swept away and Muriel would not know. She stretched out her hand and caught at the little woman's sleeve.

"You said--you were saying--Mrs. Neale had heard . . ." Her heart cried, "Tell me, tell me," yet she did not want to know.

"Poor Godfrey---- She had a telegram from the War Office---- Reported wounded and prisoner of war. Of course reports are not always true. As I said to my sister Maud . . . you know, she was _so_ sorry that she could not come to-day," and Miss Dale proceeded to describe all that Muriel had known for weeks past about her sister Maud's sciatica.

But Muriel did not hear. She was picking at the silver paper round her pink carnations while she fought for self-control. She saw all sorts of irrelevant, meaningless things, her father's broad, black back, the frightened pertness of the bow in Miss Dale's hat, Mrs. Marshall Gurney's flowing scarves and veils. Part of her mind recalled the stale Marshington joke that Mrs. Marshall Gurney wore as many veils as a widow because she had forgotten her husband's existence long ago. The other part remembered as though she herself had seen them, the horrors that she dreamed of at the front. She saw again pictures drawn by the too graphic pencil of a war-artist. She saw the wooden face of an old woman in a lamp-lit shop, who said, "War's bloody hell, ah'm telling you, bloody hell." She saw Godfrey's splendid body torn and broken, his handsome face distorted out of its complacency, his smiling eyes looking straight into despair.

She supposed that she must have followed her sister out into the sunlit churchyard, where fallen chestnut leaves spread a carpet of mottled gold and green before the bride. She supposed that people must have thrown confetti at her, for afterwards she shook it from her hat and it lay on her bedroom carpet like the fallen petals of pink and white may. She must have sat through the long luncheon party, and have helped Connie into her brown travelling dress, and have talked to Uncle George and Aunt Rose, and the long-legged cousin, Adeline, from Market Burton, who would stay until the evening train.

Only when she had helped to tidy the abandoned luncheon table, and helped Annie to pack in their tissue paper the rose bowls and silver inkstands destined incongruously for the High Farm, Thraile, horror and desolation overcame her. Perhaps the act of packing away Connie's presents reminded her of that evening at Scarborough when she had packed her mother's trunk, and Godfrey found her. Perhaps, all the time since Miss Dale spoke to her, her imagination had been feeding upon horrors. But suddenly she put down the painted blotter that she was holding, and fled from the room. The house was full of borrowed maids, and aunts and stray acquaintances. She rushed to the only sure retreat and locked the bathroom door behind her. Flinging herself down beside the towel rail, she stifled her sobs in the rough softness of her father's bath towels.

"Oh, Godfrey, Godfrey!" she moaned. "Oh, poor Godfrey. He mustn't be hurt. He mustn't." Her own body writhed as with acute physical pain. She could feel the agony of his wounds. They tore her without mercy.

The light of motor lamps in the yard shone through the uncurtained window on to her small, shaking body and the bowed darkness of her head. Her lips moved.

"Oh, God, don't take him out of the world, don't let him die. Even if he has to marry Clare. Make him come back. Come back to me, some day." She remembered one dreadful night, soon after Martin Elliott's death, when she had wished Godfrey dead too, in a storm of jealous bitterness. She felt herself a murderess.

"Don't let him die. Don't let him die!" Her hands tore at the thick towels. Her imagination, beyond all control, tortured her with his pain. She had heard tales of prison camps. . . .

"Muriel, Muriel," called her mother's voice. "Where are you, dear? Come and help me to forward these telegrams to Connie."

With her hand to her mouth, choking the little sobs that broke from time to time, she stared round the room like a trapped creature. The wan light from the yard gleamed on the enamel bath, the metal rails, the polished taps.

"Muriel! Muriel!"

The house claimed her. She was bound to its routine as to a wheel. It would not stop, wherever Godfrey lay, his broken body nursed by alien hands.

"Come along, dear."

Slowly, as in a dream, she rose and turned the key.

XXVIII

The wind shrieked through the cutting and dashed itself against the crawling train. Up and up the steep curve of the gradient panted the blunt-nosed engine. Pushing forward slowly, it flung two streamers of fiery smoke out for the swooping hurricane to snatch and tear to ribbons. From the carriage window Muriel could see blank walls of grey rank grass, scarred by rough boulders and disfigured here and there by the blackened skeletons of burnt-out gorse. Once or twice a wheeling sea-bird with strong, outstretched wings swept across the sky, and twice since Aunby Station the embankment had dipped, revealing the huge desolation of the moor beyond. Only once she had seen through a gash in the hill-side the dark tumbling water of the wintry sea, whirled into patches of white foam and driven ruthlessly against the broken cliff.

She consulted again the map on the other side of the railway carriage, flanked by pictures of Whitby Abbey and Scarshaven shore. She could trace there the railway straggling up the coast past Scarshaven, Aunby and Flying-fall, before it branched inland again to Follerwick. Only one more station separated her from Connie. It was surprising how little Muriel had thought about her for the past four months. The news of Godfrey's disaster had wiped her sister as completely from her mind as a sponge erases writing from a slate, and even the later information that the disaster was less terrible than she had feared had not so much recalled the Thraile family to Muriel as it had recalled Muriel to Marshington. Mrs. Neale had heard of Godfrey. His wound was a slight one, and the worst consequence of his prison life seemed to be an exasperating but tolerably safe boredom which at least might save his life until the end of the war. That was a vast relief. It had enabled Muriel to face with greater equanimity the post-girl's rap at the door, and the soft flutter of letters into their wire cage; but at the time when Muriel heard it she was racked by another anxiety that engrossed her mind and body. Mrs. Hammond had caught influenza. She began with it one morning early in November and continued to have it badly for about six weeks. "She has got thoroughly run down--seems to have been worrying. You ought to take care of her, you know," said Dr. Parker; and Muriel, who considered that she had done nothing else for the past twelve years, thought this a little hard. Nor was Mrs. Hammond easy to nurse. When Muriel brought her Benger's food, she wanted Bovril, and when Muriel brought her Bovril, then she didn't think that she really could eat anything just then. For three weeks Muriel nursed her night and day, sleeping in her father's dressing-room, or rather lying there in drowsy apprehension waiting for her mother's call.

And now she was better, and Christmas was over, and Muriel was being carried in the train to Thraile. Connie had responded to her offer without enthusiasm, she thought; but Connie's letters never were particularly indicative of her feelings. Her handwriting did not adapt itself to lucid analysis. Yet a secret apprehension drew Muriel from Marshington into this bleak country where everything was just a little sinister, and therefore where anything might happen.

The rain rattled now against the window. It flooded out the landscape, leaving for Muriel's eyes only a blurred line of horizon and for her ears the howling of the wind. Sound rather than sight gave to Muriel her first impression of the Follerwick moors.

The train came to a standstill with a grinding scream of brakes. Muriel pulled her suit-case from the rack, buttoned her fur collar more tightly, and wrestled with the door. The wind caught it from her and almost hurled her out on to the platform. She staggered out into the driving rain. For a moment she stood bewildered, facing a short stretch of wooden platform, a deserted shelter, and the grim pile of the moors beyond, hill after hill shouldering up into a melting sky.

The wind flung itself upon her like a fury and almost tore her suit-case from her hand.

Then, just when she was beginning to wonder whether this could possibly be a station, Connie bore down upon her; Connie wrapped in a great man's mackintosh, her dripping arms outstretched, her cheeks wet and her eyes shining through the rain.

"Oh, here you are! Good old Mu! By Jove, it's good to see you!"

She enfolded Muriel with a damp but unequivocal embrace.

"Oh, Connie," shouted Muriel reproachfully; she had to shout because of the wind and the rain. "You shouldn't have come. This awful day!"

Connie laughed, and Muriel was glad of her laugh. It seemed to loosen the tight feeling of doubt and fear that ever since her father's illness had bound her chest uncomfortably.

"This? Oh, this is nothing! My dear, we didn't know what weather was at Marshington. That your bag? Come on."

On the road outside the station stood a high-wheeled, springless vehicle known, possibly on account of its cumbrous heaviness, as a "light cart." A red-nosed youth in oilskins held the reins of a very old, yellowish horse that stood dejectedly, its tail between its lean legs, and its back hunched against the blinding storm.

They climbed into the cart and Muriel wondered how ever Connie could endure the constant jolting as the wheels jarred over stones, jerked in and out of ruts, and set the cart rocking like a ship on a rough sea. Wind and rain prevented any attempt at conversation. Muriel, sitting sideways behind the driver, could see Connie's profile, her eyes, swollen with wind or tears, the sullen misery of her mouth. She turned away, sorely troubled, but there was nothing else to look at. Grey curtains of rain shut down the travellers. They seemed to be isolated from all life or colour. Marshington and the warm comfort of their mother's drawing-room was in a far-off world. It seemed impossible that the journey would end at another house, where there would be fires and tea and dry clothes to wear.

The thick black waterproof rug across Muriel's knees grew heavy with rain. She found that she had been sitting with her hands in a pool of water. Timidly she shook it off her knee, and watched it run away through the cracks in the bottom of the cart.

They had been driving for years and years, while Muriel's courage fluctuated between fear of the unknown and gladness that a change had come at last into the monotony of life. Slowly the second feeling conquered the first. This was Thraile. Connie was here and unhappy. Something had to be done and if possible done by Muriel. She lifted her chin obstinately, determined that no fear should shake her purpose, though what she had to do or how to do it were equally unknown to her. Her imagination already raised her to unfounded ecstasies, and through the rain her eyes shone as in her mind she sang Bunyan's hymn:

"Hobgoblin nor foul fiend Shall daunt his spirit . . . There's no discouragement Shall make him once relent If he do but consent To be a pilgrim."

The driver unfastened a gate and led the cart along a rough field road bordered on one side by a broken wall of piled grey stones. At the top of a steep incline another wall enclosed a narrow strip of mud, and tangled, stunted bushes known as the garden. Beyond it, facing westward across the moors, stood the High Farm. Stark bare to all winds that blew were its grey walls. Five narrow windows above and four below stared blankly at the winding road, like eyes without eyebrows. A few farm buildings huddled to the south and crept behind the shelter of the hill, but the house stood square to the wild wind and the wild sky and the waiting menace of the moor.

"Is--is this Thraile?" Muriel faltered.

Connie smiled at her, a queer light smile of pride, of fear, of challenge.

"Yes, this is Thraile all right. The High Farm--Muriel. Muriel--the High Farm. Now you are properly introduced. And very nice too, I _don't_ think!"

The wind caught her laugh and snatched it away, as it had caught the smoke of the ascending engine.

XXIX

Mrs. Todd drew her pie from the oven and sniffed it appreciatively. Its billowing crust was slowly ripening to the rich gold of maturity. Its savoury smell satisfied her. She replaced it, shut the oven door with meticulous care and rose stiffly to her feet, her corsets creaking as she moved. She began to grumble aloud cheerfully:

"All I can say is--if Miss Muriel can't eat a bit of good pie like that, she can go without. Good meat houses there is, and bad 'uns there is, and no one can say that Meggie Todd's near wi' her lads, nor lasses neither, though I'm fair sick o' these Hammonds. What wi' Mr. Hammond trampin' round like a mad elephant an' Mrs. H. mewing round like a sick cat, you might ha' thought Ben had murdered their lass instead o' marrying her."

She clapped a dish of bacon on to the long table and whisked her oven cloth on to a nail beside the stove, for she did nothing without enormous vigour.

"A fat lot o' use it is, me havin' Connie front ways if she's not going to give a hand wi' t'work, but s'always gadding round after her fine relations. Ah suppose William 'ud tell me that the wife's kin are a scourge sent from God for t'original sin o' t'husband," and she tossed the head that had once been the pertest in Follerwick. But she was not William, nor did she really dislike Connie as much as her words implied; but she found in these monologues of indictment an outlet for the accumulated irritation of reproaches born without resentment. She contemplated the clean white cloth on the table, straightened a couple of dishes on the dresser, then flew towards the yard door and the coal-house, murmuring as a parting message to the kitchen, "I'm sure the Lord made relations-in-law to square up for them as can't get married."

She had, indeed, good reason to see in relations-in-law a doubtful blessing. As Meggie Megson, the bright-eyed daughter of a Follerwick publican, she had been wooed with greater enthusiasm than discretion by William Todd of Thraile. A hasty marriage ensured the legitimate birth of her eldest son, Matthew, but did not quiet the uneasy conscience of her lover. For a year of bitter recrimination alternating with reckless passion, he had lived with her as her husband, but before her second son, Benjamin was born, the Lord took vengeance upon the wickedness of William. A false step while manœuvring the thrashing-machine robbed the wild young Todd of his left leg, and so much injured his spine that he lay now always on a couch in the front parlour, contemplating the inexorable justice of God and the unending pageant of the sky from the west window. William Todd did not so much find religion as religion found him, the sunless, menacing religion of a tramping preacher, part Calvinist, part Wesleyan; a religion wherein strange anomalies of predestination strove with a Pauline emphasis upon justification by faith, without which, in spite of the admonition of St. James, works were dead. Meggie accepted her husband's religion as she had accepted his love. Finding herself regarded as an enticement sent from the devil, she listened with patience to the outpourings of St. James, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God . . . but each man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed. Then the Lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin, and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death." But she endured with less tranquility the continual assurance that from her sons, Matthew and Benjamin, such sin and death should come. Since, however, things were as they were, she proceeded to her cooking, scrubbing, baking and nursing with undiminished vigour, comforted, perhaps, by the thought that if her husband despised her only less than he despised his children at least he could not do without her.

William's mother unfortunately also tended to regard her son's accident as something in the nature of divine retribution, not for compromising a publican's daughter, but for marrying her; and when it became known that Ben, the weakling, the awkward boy whom every one conspired to brand as "wanting," had got Connie, the land-girl, into trouble, then the fierce scene of personal remorse, impotent bitterness and denunciation had been visited, not so much upon Connie, as upon Mrs. Meggie, since she was clearly the root of all evil at the High Farm. Yet, after Connie had returned to the High Farm as Ben's wife, it was Mrs. Meggie who continued to make her new life bearable. To tell the truth, Mrs. Meggie was secretly glad that Ben had married under any circumstances. Between the grim couple of invalids in the front parlour and the boisterous conviviality of farm workers in the kitchen, she had been unconsciously numbed with loneliness, and the prospect of a daughter-in-law pleased her gregarious temperament. Then too, she was glad that Ben, whom his father and brother despised for lack of virility, should have been the first to marry after all.

As she bustled from the stone-paved yard this evening, and called up the long passage, her heart, though she hardly knew it, was softened to the thought of her Ben's little child.

"Polly, Alice, Gert, come on some of you. Give me a hand wi' t'table, now."

From the draughty darkness came a gust of song and laughter.

"Who, who, who, who, who were you with last night? 'Twasn't your sister, 'twasn't your ma! Ah, ah, ah, ah, a--ah, ah! ah!"

The voices rose to a shrill crescendo, accompanied by the screeching gasps of Bob Wither's concertina, and the tramp of nailed boots on the floor.

Mrs. Todd opened the door of the back room, releasing a flood of lamplight and tumultuous clamour.

"Come on, you lazy good-for-nowts. Put down yon thing, for goodness' sake, Bob. Alice, where's Gert? Feeding pigs this time o' day? What, how often did I tell you that ye'll never make a farmer by gettin' up to feed stock ower' nights? Be off now, some on ye, to see if light cart's come yet. Hurry and get gone, then you'll get back."

They scattered under her genial despotism.

"I'll help, Ma. Where's forks?"

The kitchen rang to the clatter of pots, of tongues and the shouted refrain of their song, "Who were you with last night?"

Thus Muriel, who had clambered down stiffly from the dog-cart, and dragged her suit-case along the unlighted corridor, came suddenly upon a scene of firelit tumult and huge gaiety. Connie pushed open the kitchen door and marched in. The noise stopped. Every one looked at the new-comers.

"Well I never! If you're not here already and no one ever heard you! Connie, did Sam go to loose out for you? So this is Muriel? My, aren't you wet! You're not as big as your sister, are you? Take after your mother likely. Here, Mat, where are your manners? Dolly, Alice!"

"Pleased to meet you," said Dolly pertly.

Alice set a saucer cheese-cake on the table, nodded at Muriel, and took from her pocket a bundle of crochet that never left her. Some women take to crochet as others do to cigarettes. Alice, flicking at hers with unsteady fingers, was hiding herself from any possible embarrassment. Her thin face bent above her work.

"Where's Ben?" asked Connie abruptly.

"Didn't he come to help you down? There now! Well, he must be up in fold yard. You'd better go and get your wet things off. Go on. Take her up, Connie. Polly go and help carry Muriel's bag. Connie, get a dry pair o' stockings on for Heaven's sake. We can't have you catching cold, at all events." This with an uncontrollable wink at Muriel.

"When did Ben go out?" asked Connie stubbornly, ignoring her mother-in-law's injunctions.

"I don't know. When did he go, Mat?"

"Half an hour. He went to help Sam." Alice the land girl raised her face for a minute from her crochet to give her information, then thrust it down again. It was a thin, freckled face, with long fair lashes and a sharp up-tilted chin. Muriel found herself standing and facing Alice, while the rain dripped from her coat on to the white scoured floor.

"Go along with you now, messing up my floor!" cried Mrs. Todd, and shooed them vigorously from the kitchen.

"Well," remarked Connie, as they stood together at last in the large square room to which she had brought Muriel. "And what do you think of it all?"

Muriel looked round the bare walls, papered with a grotesquely botanical pattern and texts on strips of cardboard. The wind blew the texts backwards and forwards against the wall. It drove the lace window-curtains out into the room, and sent the carpet rippling in long waves across the floor. Through the window she could see nothing but a veil of twilight rain.

"How can I say what I think of it till I've seen some more?" she temporized, pulling off her wet coat and pushing the hair out of her eyes. "It's all frightfully different from what I expected. The front of the house is so grim, and yet, when you come to the back and see all those jolly people---- They seem to enjoy life, Connie. And then Mrs. Todd. She may be a bit of a Tartar, but I like her eyes. And then, there's Ben's father, and old Mrs. Todd, aren't there?"

Connie laughed bitterly, "Oh yes. There's my respected father-in-law _and_ old Mrs. Todd. I wonder if you'll like _her_ eyes?"

"Why not? Oh, Connie, you ought to take your wet things off. Now, at once."

"I'm all right." Connie pulled off her oilskin and felt the sleeve of her woollen coat below. "I'm quite dry." But she sat down on the bed and began to unlace her boots.

"Why shouldn't I like old Mrs. Todd's eyes?" persisted Muriel.

"Oh, she gets on my nerves. She sits in her chair in that awful little room and looks and looks and looks. She looks right through you, Muriel. She sees just everything. All the things you ever thought or did or--anything.

"They say she's got the 'sight'--you know, second sight. I think she's just uncanny. And she's so frightfully old, you know. Not like a person at all--like a tree, all twisted. And then she's always nibbling things, little bits of biscuit and soft sweets and things. Like a mouse. And then her bright eyes. Ugh!"

"But then, do you see her much?"

"No, thanks! I keep out of her way. But she sees me. She never misses anything. Oh, dear me, no! and she knows all about--all about Ben and me. It's awful, Mu. Sometimes I think I'll have to kill her or run away or something."

"How do you mean? She knows all about Ben and you? Every one here does, don't they?" said Muriel slowly. She had understood from Mr. and Mrs. Hammond that the Todds had accepted Connie's position as regrettable but without alternative.

"Oh, yes, in a way they know. The girls don't exactly, but they suspect. Mu, it's awful. We used to have such jolly times, singing in the back room and going off to concerts at Follerwick camp, and all that. Now it's awful. I'm out of it all. They hardly talk to me, and we all used to laugh at Ben, and they don't know what to make of it. And old Mrs. Todd hates me, and the old man's mad. He's got religious mania or something and he's quite potty. Mrs. Meggie's all right, but nobody cares much what she says except Ben, and he's still more scared of his father." Connie's bootlaces dropped from her hands and she sat forward, huddled on the edge of the bed, staring at her sister.

"I don't see that they have any right to hate you," cried Muriel hotly. "After all--it was their precious son--who----"

Connie's blue, miserable eyes darted a quick glance at her sister's face, then dropped again to her boots.

"Oh, yes, I know, but you could hardly expect them to remember that."

She kicked off her boots and sat with her feet in their black woollen stockings swinging from the bed.

"Every one hates me," she said miserably. "Mr. Todd thinks I'm a judgment from hell fire or something, because he was a bit wild when he was young. And Alice--well, to tell the truth, I think that Alice was in love with Ben and she'll get her knife into me whenever she can. She's as jealous as anything. And Mrs. Todd's a bit queer because she's so fond of Ben and is afraid I shan't make him happy. She knows I'm going to get him away from this place too as soon as the war's over and we can get a farm. Oh, it's no picnic I can tell you."

Muriel was apparently engaged upon fastening the front of her velveteen dress. Really she was thinking about Connie. "I mustn't be sentimental. Connie evidently pities herself quite enough. She's not really displeased because Alice is jealous. And Mrs. Todd is kind, I'm sure. Mother said I hadn't to let her harrow my feelings. Connie always did make the most of her own sufferings." She fastened a press hook below the brown fur edging of her dress and asked quite casually:

"But Ben, of course he stands up for you?"

"Oh, Ben would be all right. But he's frightened of his father, and Alice worries him, and it's rotten living on here in this house. You never get away from them all for a minute, and tea's the worst. They all sit there round that big table and they eat and eat. And I've got to sit there and feel that they're looking at me and thinking things, an' nudging each other if I've got a headache. And then they all go giggling and carrying on in the back room and I've got to sit about with Mrs. Meggie. And I can't go into the farm because it's such hard work, and it's such beastly weather. And you never see anyone. Oh, I'm so bored and bored and bored!"

"It'll be better when the baby's come. You'll have lots to do then."

"I don't know. Sometimes I just get scared. I wish I was going home to have it. It's awful here. Ben gets fed up with me because I'm not so jolly as I used to be. He doesn't say anything, but I know. Why didn't he come and meet us to-night, I'd like to know? Oh, they just treat me here as if I was dirt. They think it's an honour for me to have married into their beastly family. The Todds! who live in the kitchen, and Mrs. Meggie was a barmaid, and--well, look at this room! You see what they're like."

"I don't. I haven't seen them all yet. I haven't even seen Mr. Todd."

"Oh, he's mad. He's gone quite potty. He reads the Bible all day and talks like a lunatic. Ben says he's not so frightfully poor really. They've done badly since his accident and all that, but he's got a lot of land. There's a little farm over at Fallowdale that's let out to tenants. If he'd let Ben and me go there----"

She leant forward, biting her nails, a singularly unattractive figure in her sagging skirt and the old crimson jersey that she had worn at Marshington. Muriel deliberately went to her case and drew out a clean handkerchief from her lavender-scented satchel. Part of her mind was conscious of a satisfactory contrast between her own trim orderliness and Connie's abandoned self-commiseration. Part of her thoughts were dazed with a sad wonder. Was this the ennobling power of suffering and tragedy, this nauseating muddle of petty resentment and self-pity? Wasn't it really rather a waste of time and energy to try to help people as impossible as Connie?

She stood with her face towards the window, a pucker of thought between her brows.

Suddenly from the bed came a little cry. "Oh, Mu, Mu! I am so awfully glad you've come. I know you'll help me. You will help me, won't you? I've been so beastly miserable!"

Muriel capitulated.

Her position in this household might be most unpleasant, and Connie might not be an easy person, but at least she had appealed to Muriel. Somebody wanted her. Somebody needed her.

She returned to the bed and opened her arms wide. Tear-stained but comforted, Connie tumbled in. They sat there until Mrs. Todd called up the stairs:

"Come along, girls. Tea's ready."

"Oh, Connie," cried Muriel, "and I've never let you tidy!"

"Oh, Lord, and there's such a song and dance if we're late. For goodness' sake go down and say I'm coming."

Go down? All alone! into that formidable crowd of quite strange people? Muriel hesitated. Then the courage of her new resolve returned to her.

"Oh, well, I suppose I shall have to do harder things than this if I'm really going to help Connie," she reflected.

With her head high and her eyes shining she felt her way down the uneven stairs.

The battle of Thraile had begun.

XXX

It was not going to be easy, but then Muriel was not quite sure that she wanted ease. She found herself at last comforted by a situation that demanded from her action, prompt action. That was what she found so terribly difficult, the action on her own initiative. Thraile was alarmingly different from Marshington, where nearly all judgments could be obtained ready-made from social conventions or from Mrs. Hammond. At Thraile nobody seemed to care what she did except Connie, and Connie as a councillor was worse than useless, for between moods of sullen silence, boisterous humour and hysterical despair she had lost even her very moderate supply of common sense.

For a fortnight Muriel stayed on at Thraile, watching and talking and thinking, thinking, thinking. She had tramped over the dark moor before the house; she had wandered down the farm that fell away behind it, acre after acre of drab stubble and harsh grass land, to the swirling waters of the Fallow. But whether she trod the sheep-tracks girdled with frost, or sat in the stuffy parlour listening to the endless tale of Connie's woe, the same conviction urged her.

She would have to speak to William Todd.

Last night she had written to her mother:

You see, the position here for Connie really is intolerable. Mr. Todd, the cripple, really rules this house. He loves Matthew; but because he considers him to have been "born in sin" he doesn't think it right to love him, and makes up for it by hating Ben, who has always been rather weak and sickly. Or else he just pretends to hate him, and really loves them both. I cannot say, for he is a queer man. Every one is terrified of him, though the girls think that he's quite mad. Anyway the point is that Ben and Connie are unhappy here and ought to get away. The farm girls suspect things and make jokes about Connie. Mr. Todd and Matthew both bully Ben. Ben and Connie are never alone together for a minute except at night. They are getting frightfully self-conscious and always under a sort of restraint which must be bad for them. Mr. Todd has a little farm at Fallowdale, quite a nice little house, which he was going to give to the first son that married. Now he says that Ben can't be trusted away from him at Thraile. I am sure that if Ben and Connie could get away together, they would be happy. Ben really seems to be very fond of her. I am going to speak to Mr. Todd myself, but, if he won't listen, I do wish that you or Father could do something. And couldn't we take Connie into a nursing home for when the baby comes? It's not that they are unkind to her here, and they make her as comfortable as they can, and she need do no housework unless she likes. It's only that they ought not to be here with all these people.

I am so sorry about your cold and father's indigestion, and I quite understand how busy you are about the luncheon party. I would come home and help you with it, but I really don't feel that I can leave here just yet, please, if you can do without me. If Mrs. Cartwright worries you about the Jumble Sale again, do tell her that Mr. Vaughan specially told me that we could not have the Parish Room until February 14th because of the Red Cross Exhibition. It is very nice of you to say you miss me, and you do understand why I'm staying on, don't you?

Please give my love to Father. Your loving daughter, MURIEL.

P.S.--Can't you get Aunt Beatrice for the luncheon?

She simply could not help writing her letter. It was the nearest approach that she could make to asking for the advice that she so sorely needed. It brought her into touch with homely and familiar things before she plunged irrevocably into the deep waters of her own decision.

She had sat wrapped up in her thick grey cloth coat in the bare chilliness of her bedroom, reading and re-reading the neat, small handwriting that always looked as though it might be going to say something interesting and that never did. She felt about it as soldiers feel about letters written on the eve of an advance. From a strange place she stretched out her hands to grasp, perhaps for the last time, at the safety of the known world.

But she had not posted the letter. Re-read in the cold light of early morning criticism, she had decided that it promised more than her feeble courage might perform. A scrupulous mental honesty had made her recognize her weakness long ago. "I am going to speak to Mr. Todd," she wrote, but nobody should read the words till she had spoken.

All the same, the last letter from Mrs. Hammond, one of a resigned but plaintive series, had to be answered. That was just as well, for it set a limit at last to Muriel's procrastination. The postman came to Thraile at six o'clock, leaving the letters and taking away with him any written by the household. If Muriel could only end that awful interview before six, she still might post her letter to her mother.

On paper it had seemed so simple; but then on paper and to Mrs. Hammond it would have been impossible to do justice to the atmosphere of Thraile. Those were two terrible people, sitting in the small front parlour; the old lady mumbling and rustling from the arm-chair by the fire, whose bright unseeing eyes could yet see everything; the cripple lying stretched before the window, his fiery spirit slowly burning through his mutilated body, until it seemed that it must quite consume all that was mortal and regain the liberty it proudly craved.

It was all very well pretending that she did not mind. For nearly an hour that afternoon, Muriel had walked along the steep moor road with Connie, listening to the angry emphasis of her reiterated words. To comfort her, Muriel had said, "All right, I'll speak to him." She did not add that for nights now she had dreamed of the approaching interview, had seen herself standing in the bright stuffiness of that over-heated room, confronting the fierce relentlessness of those piercing eyes, feeling her own gentleness driven away in blind surrender out into the whirling darkness of the passage. And supposing that she made things worse? Supposing that he resented her interference? That he himself had been thinking of sending Ben to Fallowdale, but perversely changed his mind at Muriel's blundering suggestion?

Standing in the corridor she pressed her thin hands against her face. As though she could feel through the door the repulsion of his violence, she shrank against the wall. His fierce tongue probed her softness; his strength had outraged her submission; his independence, exaggerated almost to insanity, bruised and bewildered her well-tutored mind. "He's mad. He's mad," she thought. "Better not go at all than break down in the middle."

From inside the parlour the cuckoo-clock piped suddenly five hollow notes. "Five o'clock. If I mean to post that letter I must go in now--now."

She went forward and tapped at the door.

She had been in before several times with Mrs. Todd, but always had retreated as soon as courtesy made possible. Never before had she been in alone.

The room now seemed to float in liquid firelight. Upborne upon the flickering flood she could see here a jar of delicate gilt and ivory beneath a fiery glass bubble; there the corner of a polished picture-frame; a wool worked footstool, the basket of sewing that Mrs. Meggie had left on the table. Slowly the quivering movement steadied before her eyes, and from the dancing shadows the solid bulk of old Mrs. Todd's chair rose like an island, and there by the window she saw William Todd.

He lay as usual gazing out across the moor, his hawk-like profile outlined against the melting silver of the wintry sun that flowed between dark banks of hill and sky. All the Todds had sharp features and noses hooked almost to a deformity, but sickness had emaciated a naturally lean face, until William Todd was terrible enough to see.

Muriel closed the door very quietly, and went across to the couch in the window. Even when she stood beside him, he did not seem to see her, but lay as still as the furniture or the dark moor. The room was silent. Only the light flames rustled like the restless wings of a bird imprisoned in the hearth and the old woman nibbled and mumbled in her sleep. Far, far away from Marshington was this firelit parlour. Muriel spoke timidly.

"Please, Mr. Todd, can I speak to you a minute?"

"Evidently. You see that. Ah cannot get away."

A certain broadening of the vowels betrayed William Todd's county, but he spoke with a readiness unusual among the tongue-tied farmers of the Riding, and possessed a command of language won from long reading of the Bible, dog-eared theological tracts, and a surprising quantity of the more easily acquired English classics.

"I wanted to talk to you about Connie," Muriel continued. "You know that when--when she had--to--to----"

"To marry my son to save her own name from the disgrace that justly followed her own action. Well?"

This was not a promising beginning, but at least it seemed to Muriel, that, considering his own record, he was being a little unfair.

"Well," she said, more hotly than she had intended. "I don't see myself that it was such an awful thing to do. After all, many people don't even marry."

"Because the many have sinned, does that excuse the guilt of one? I think not."

This was dangerous ground. Muriel shifted her position. It was too late now for retreat. She spoke hastily.

"I didn't come to talk to you about whether Connie sinned or not. I don't pretend to judge such things. What I do feel is that somebody ought to tell you that living on here is being frightfully bad for them. They're never really alone together for a minute. Every one whom they see and every one where they go reminds them of what they once did. People laugh and sneer--and--oh, it's terrible. You can't see it of course, or you'd have known, I'm sure, how impossible it is."

"Please go on. This is no doubt very interesting."

"It isn't interesting, Mr. Todd, really. It's horrible. Oh, do let them go away. Please let them go. You've got a farm at Fallowdale, haven't you?"

No answer came to her from the shadows. Fearfully she continued:

"Well, why don't you let Ben farm it? Let them go off and live together, make a fresh start all on their own. I'm sure they could be happy. Connie loves farming, and they'd have the baby. Oh, I know you'd find they'd be far happier. Just those two, where they could forget what a bad start they'd made. It's cruel, it's just cruel to make that one mistake an ever-living shame to them because other people smile and sneer and insinuate, people who are probably every bit as bad but just more careful. How can they be happy like this?"

She stopped, amazed by her own temerity. Beyond the moor the last silver gleam of sunlight lay like an outstretched sword between the dark embrace of hill and sky. William Todd lay watching it for a long time before he moved. Then he said slowly:

"You seem to set great store by happiness."

She was surprised. Eagerly she tried to see his face through the growing shadows as she said:

"I do, I do. Surely it's the right of people to be happy!"

"Really? To think o' that now! Are you happy?"

"I?" Three months ago she had told herself that she was the most miserable of frustrated women, but to a stranger she would have laughed nervously and answered, "I'm all right." Somehow at Thraile and to this madman, one spoke the truth if possible. She answered thoughtfully. "I'm not sure. No, I don't think I'm happy. I've never really had any of the things I wanted most. I've never done anything I meant to do. I'm a failure, I suppose. Nobody needs me . . ."

"Well?" He cut short the flow of self-revelation, so alien to Muriel's usual habit. "And do you think that I am happy? or Meggie, my wife? or my mother there? Do you think that God Himself is happy? What then do you expect for your sister and my son, eh?"

She could answer this, but her speech came stumblingly.

"But if we see any way to make people happy. . . . They have a right to all possible happiness. Now if Ben and Connie could go to your farm at Fallowdale, they might forget--everything, and just be--happy."

"You think that they have a right now to be happy, having sinned. I tell you, young woman, that I too sinned when I was young, and walked wildly before the Lord after the lusts o' my own flesh. And I too thought to cover the wickedness o' my ways from the sight o' men by asking the Lord's blessing on a union made in hell. But the Lord is righteous and in Him is no shadow of turning. He laid upon me the blessing of this judgment. I had desired with the desire of the flesh for my own lusts, and with the desire of the world for my ambitions. The Lord took away from me the means of all fulfilment. He laid His hand upon me, and I lie here while others reap what I have sown. I lie here while my own sons bring forth the fruits of destruction. The Lord is just. He gave, and He hath taken away. Blessed be His name."

"I know you've suffered," she cried softly, "but, because you are unhappy, do you think that you have the right to make them suffer? After all, it's a tremendous responsibility to undertake the Lord's judgments without His wisdom. I thought that you were keeping Fallowdale from Ben because you couldn't afford to let him have a separate farm, or because you were afraid he couldn't manage it; but if it's just because you think he ought to suffer as you suffered. . . ."

"Did I speak o' suffering for myself? You seem to have a queer notion of the ways o' things. Do you think that I could make your sister happy if I wanted to, or Ben the godly man I would ha' had him be? From their own hearts and deeds comes their own misery."

"Yes, but really, Mr. Todd," persisted Muriel desperately. "Really and truly living here makes it all worse. It's estranging them."

"Their shame estranges them."

"It's making Connie bitter. She's getting to despise Ben because the girls laugh at him."

"That is part of their punishment."

"It's not. It's not. Why should they be punished? And why should you do it?" She drew a deep breath and felt as though all winter's storms passed over her as she said, "It's like a sort of pride to you. You think that because the Lord punished you in a special way you sinned some great, particular sin. I don't believe that it was a great sin and probably your accident was nothing but an accident, and you've been brooding and brooding until you think that you had a dispensation of providence specially made for you, so now you are going to make one for somebody else. I hate your religion or whatever you call it if it gives you the right to make other people miserable!" She broke off, suddenly appalled at her own arrogance. This was what people did if they spoke out of character. They always went too far. Oh, it was this queer, terrible place that made every one behave unlike themselves! If Connie had never come to Thraile, nothing would ever have happened, she was certain.

She stood in the dark room, waiting for him to destroy her.

She had to wait for a long time.

The clock ticked. The fire rustled. From the old woman's chair broke little snatching sounds of difficult breath. Her asthma was troubling her in her sleep.

At last Muriel heard the slow voice of William Todd. Again his gentleness amazed her.

"I rec'lect when I was a lad that I thought I knew pretty well everything worth knowing. My father went t'chapel and my mother went to church, and I'd have naught to do with either. So you hate my religion, eh? Now, I wonder if ye know at all what my religion is? Mebbe ye think ah've just got a kind o' spite against my son and your sister and ah justify it by the cloak of righteous disapproval, eh? That ah've just lain here fashing myself over my own soul and forgetting the right sense o' the great wisdom o' the children of this world. Is that it?"

She did not answer because she could not. She had said more than enough. Her mind was a dry husk, empty, blown before the wind of his strange spirit.

"Ye'd better sit down. Ah've had to listen to you say your piece. Now mebbe ye'll listen to me for a bit. You took it upon yourself to hate my religion. Ah misdoubt if you know what you're talking about." He paused, as though he sought a difficult word. "There is only one thing that matters, and that is the vision of the spirit. Men are poor things at best, but there's one power that dignifies them, and that's the sight o' something greater than this world. Folk nowadays are apt to call it truth or Science or whatnot. I call that glory God. We are born in sin and reared in wantonness, and there are those of us to whom no light is shown. We worship false gods most of our time. Our bodies and our pride and the opinion of our fellow men; but to the Elect there comes a day when they see, though through a glass darkly, the shadow o' that light."

"Well?" murmured Muriel.

"The Lord has said, 'Thou shalt have none other god but me,' but we can only worship what we know, and to all men the light is not vouchsafed, so that they worship false gods thinking them to be the true. Ah'm telling you, though ye'll forget it, and mebbe ye'll never understand, that the most precious gift to man is just this vision of his God. And once he has seen, then he must never rest. I remember when I was farmin' how always the moors were pressing on these lands. They never sleep, if we do. Ye may build your walls high, an' weed and dig, but slowly by night creep up the gorse an' heather, an' who's to say 'an enemy hath done this'? 'Tis the same wi' vision. Once ye have seen, there's never sittin' down and waiting for the Lord to come to you again. All foolishness an' rioting, all chambering an' wantonness comes in between a man and his own sight. Purity is a matter o' the spirit you may say, and what is a man's body that he be so mindful of it? In the body we live, and from the body we die, and a man can give his body mastery over his immortal soul; but the things o' the body come like wind and weather between a man and his clear spirit. For it is hard enough for any man to see the light, and harder yet to keep it burning clear. And if your light be darkness, then is man robbed of God. The last betrayal and the ultimate unworthiness is the defilement of the vision."

He paused, it seemed to be for a long time. Then he said: "I cannot let it be as though my son had never sinned. Wouldn't it be far easier for me to say, 'It doesn't matter. It was a little thing'? To say as you say, 'Well, he married her,' as if it made amends to God to hide your own wrong from the eyes o' men? I let him marry her, because it did no good to keep them from each other, and he would. But if my own son will use his own body as an instrument of pleasure, and thinks that as long as he gives his name to the child he does no ill, I'll not be still. If all this happiness you prate of were but the gratification o' their lusts ah'd say no more. But till he's shamed to his soul at what he's done, ah will not let him go."

"Oh, but he is ashamed!" she cried, striking her hands together with the force of her sudden sight. "They are ashamed, but of the wrong thing. They're ashamed not because they did wrong, but because they were found out. They must go away from this place to forget that. Please let them go. You'll see. Talk to Connie if you like. She does not understand you. Only let them go. If not----"

"Well?"

"I'll have--I'll have--I'll make my father come again and force them from you."

The man on the couch laughed at her. "Do ye think your father could do ought about it? While I mean Ben to stay here, here he'll stay. He married Connie because ah gave him leave. The boy's no man yet, and he's been living in sin. It must be as the Lord wills, I only wait upon His guidance."

His voice became suddenly flat with weariness.

"Go now and ask my wife to come to me."

She felt her way to the door and knew that she was defeated. She had done nothing, less than nothing. What could she do against the fires that consumed that fierce, relentless cripple? He puzzled her. He puzzled her. Her father had found him shrewd and grasping, well able to strike a good bargain. Her mother had found him strange but interesting, a self-educated man of unusual refinement for his environment. And she--surely he was sincere? He _felt_ sincere. Yet, what was one to do for Connie?

She groped her way towards the kitchen door that thrust a bar of light across the blackness of the passage.

The postman leant against the table, a slab of saucer-custard in his hand, a mug of tea beside him. She remembered now her letter to her mother. What use was there to send it? They would never understand. She delivered her message to Mrs. Todd, and received in return a letter addressed to "Miss Constance Hammond, Miller's Rise, Marshington," readdressed to The High Farm, Thraile. The envelope was crushed and dirty, and bore the foreign service stamp. She carried it to the room where Connie lay upon her bed, reading a novel.

"Letters?" she asked sleepily.

"One--forwarded from Marshington. That's all." Muriel retreated to her own room, sick and weary with defeat. She had done nothing, nothing. She had helped neither Connie nor herself. She felt that she hated William Todd.

XXXI

Connie did not come downstairs at tea-time.

"She'll be tidying herself after lying down," said Muriel.

"She'll be crying over a letter from an old sweetheart," laughed Dolly.

Matthew winked at his brother. "There, Ben, lad, off ye go and see what's up wi' your wife. You'll have t'keep an eye on her letters now. Connie always was one for the lads. No followers!"

"Shame on you, Mat. Give over now," soothed Mrs. Meggie, pouring out the tea from a great brown pot. "You'll be bringing home a wife yourself one of these days, and then you'll laugh with the other side of your face. Well, Muriel, since you're the greatest stranger, bacon, cake or ham?"

Muriel gazed at the characteristic profusion. She was thinking of William Todd and the terrifying strangeness of the front parlour.

"Ham, please--a very little," she said.

"Muriel's lost her appetite because she hasn't had a letter too," jeered Dolly.

Alice said nothing. She lifted her heavy-lidded eyes to Ben's red face and sat watching him. Ben bent his head above his cup, drinking great gulps of tea.

"I found an old ewe on her back i' forty acre," he remarked to change the subject.

"Not one o' the cross-breds?" asked Mat with interest.

"Or was it our old friend Agatha?" interposed Gertie.

"Agatha? Who was Agatha?" asked Muriel. Her head ached and she wondered why Connie did not come downstairs, but she knew that tea-time at Thraile was a convivial meal and that "moping" was against the rules.

Dolly explained to her with avidity. "Last spring at Follerwick Camp an old bird called Agatha Anderson brought a concert affair down to give improving music to the fellows. You never saw such an old geezer! She had sort of woolly white curls round a long solemn face, just like a sheep. Well, one night Connie was coming back from Follerwick and right halfway across the moors she heard a sheep bleating, for all the world just like old Agatha. It had got strayed and hurt its leg, and was sort of huddled on a bank like the old platform. So she got up and brought it along with her and we called it Agatha."

"Brought it home? All by herself? Wasn't it heavy?" asked Muriel without interest. Surely Connie had had time now to do her hair. Wasn't she feeling well? Muriel knew how much she hated those Thraile meals. Perhaps at the last moment she had taken fright.

Polly was giggling. "By herself? I ask you? Our Con walk home from Follerwick by herself? Not 'arf! Ben, you were with her, weren't you, when she found Agatha?"

"No, I wasn't," said Ben stiffly.

"Oh, well then--it was one of the other fellows. Bill or Tubby or----"

"Wasn't it Eric Fennington?" asked Alice very quietly. She picked up her cup and drank, her light eyes never leaving Ben's flushed face.

Eric Fennington? To Muriel the name was not quite unfamiliar. "Who was Eric Fennington?" she asked, but without much interest, because she felt as though the powers of darkness were behind her locked away in the front parlour, and she was afraid.

"Eric Fennington," explained Dolly volubly, "was one of the lads all right. You bet he was! He was one of the officers at Follerwick Camp, two pips up, and a great flame of Connie's. I thought you'd know him. She said she met him at Kingsport, knew him well at home. My word, he was a knut! D'you remember when he hired a car and took us to the Movies at Scarshaven, Alice? And that time he put the alarm clock in the Major's box and it went off during the third act of 'Romance' with an awful row--just when that curate was beginning to carry on!"

"Old Eric's married, isn't he?" asked Matthew heavily.

"Married or engaged or something. It was you who saw that bit in the paper, wasn't it, Alice? Anyway he's in Mespot."

"Just as well, Ben, eh?" laughed Matthew. Ben rose, his mouth still full of pie. "Where you going, lad?"

"Up t'see why Connie don't come down," interposed Mrs. Meggie. "That's a good fellow."

Muriel watched him shamble from the room, an uncouth figure, part boy, part man. This overgrown weakling whom Connie had married, how had he done it? What had induced Connie to--to--Muriel wondered for the hundredth time how it had come about. Had she been sorry for him? Surely he cared for her. There was in his manner a hint of wistfulness, of manhood undeveloped. Had the craving for self-assertion forced him to madness, aping the passion of a man without a man's self-mastery? Connie had said that he had over-mastered her. It was difficult, watching him now retreat before his family's rough humour, to imagine him mastering anyone, even himself.

He did not return soon. Muriel sat through the long meal uneasily. What was happening upstairs? Had William Todd, as a result of her interview, sent for Connie, and was he convicting her again of sin? Poor Connie! Finally, when tea was cleared, Muriel climbed to Connie's room. The staircase was dark. Only a glimmer of starlight from the narrow window guided her. She paused outside her sister's door and called. No answer came. She opened the door. No light came from the room. She was about to go downstairs again, when the shadow by the bedside quivered suddenly. She stared into the darkness.

"Connie!" she said softly. "Connie, what are you doing there? Where's Ben?"

"Is that you, Muriel?" The voice made her start violently. "It's not Connie. It's me--Ben. Come in and shut t'door."

"Ben! What's the matter? Where's Connie?" A shrill little quiver of fear crept to her voice. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"

"Aw--come in and shut the door," he repeated. His voice terrified her. It was as though a dead man spoke. "Connie isn't here. She's gone."

"Gone? Gone where? I don't understand."

"She's gone to do herself in."

"Ben, what do you mean?" Oh, if only there was a light! The darkness pressed in suddenly upon her face and choked her.

"She's gone to do 'erself in. And I don't care. I wouldn't ha' stopped her anyway. She'd gone before I came upstairs. I expect she's gone down to the Fallow. She once said she would."

"Do you mean," said Muriel quietly, "that you think she's gone to--to kill herself? Oh, but what nonsense, Ben. Why should she? What nonsense! How dare you talk such wicked nonsense!" She stretched out her hand for the brass bed-post and stood there clinging to its solid comfort. "It's nonsense, nonsense. Connie--kill herself? Now--when I've just made things----"

"It's not nonsense," Ben said heavily. "I'll show you a letter."

"Letter? Letter? Did Connie write a---- Oh, for goodness' sake get a light and don't talk in riddles."

The bed creaked. Somewhere from the darkness moved a blacker darkness yet. She heard Ben's laboured breathing.

"Oh, be quick! Be quick!"

If they stood in the dark another minute she would scream.

Ben stumbled across the room. She heard him fumbling on the mantelpiece. Something fell against the fender with a light, splintering crash.

"I can't find matches," growled Ben.

"Oh, you idiot!" It was incredible that two people in such dire consternation should be tortured because they couldn't find the matches. It made her terribly angry, with a cold fury that she had not known before.

Ben was cursing softly in the darkness.

"I'll go and get some----" said Muriel.

She stumbled frantically along the passage. From the room shared by the land-girls came a flood of light, flowing out across the passage. Alice was sitting beside the lamp, darning a stocking.

Muriel looked at her with wonder. People were still darning stockings then? What a funny way Alice's hair grew back from her ears, with little silvery tufts along her neck. You could see them in the lamplight quite distinctly. What had she come for? Oh, the matches.

"Please, Alice, have you any matches?"

Alice looked up. "My! What a start you gave me! Matches? No. I had to borrow Mrs. Todd's! Why don't you get Connie's? She bags all my matches."

On then to her own room she must go. Hours, interminable hours stretched between her and the horrible nightmare of Ben's voice. Her own matches lay on the candlestick by her bed where she had left them. She lit the candle with shaking fingers, then ran again down the long corridor. The draught plucked at her candle flame; it fluttered ruddily within the pink screen of her hand.

She came back to Connie's room.

"Ben! Ben! Where are you?"

She set the candle down by the disordered bed. The little flame shook itself, quivered and then stood gallantly upright, showing the flower-decked walls, the coarse white counterpane, all heaped and crumpled, and Ben's white face--blank and passive, staring at her from beside the mantelpiece.

"Where's that letter?" asked Muriel.

As though in a trance he came forward and handed her a sheet of flimsy paper, pencil written. She glanced at it.

"This isn't from Connie! What do you mean? Where's Connie? What have you done with her?"

"Read yon," said Ben.

After one glance at his set face, she read:

Dear old girl,

There ain't no flies round Christmas time in Blighty, but there's jolly well nothing else in this old hole. It's as hot as--well any place we specially used to think of as being hot. I say, Kiddo, who's been having you on that I'm engaged? Your stately letter--written by the way some time in August--has been chasing me across the desert sands and under the deodar and all the rest of it until it knocked the portals of my heart (Good that? What?) about--well may be--two months ago. Who sprung that yarn on to you about Cissie Bradfield? It's old Ernest, my brother, she collared. They were married last July. I can't think how you made the mistake because Alice knows Cissie and knew all about it. If you'd asked her she could have told you. We have the same initials of course. Honest, Kiddo, I'm no hand at letter writing and time dashes by here, but you're barking up the wrong tree this time. You must know that you are the only girl in the world as far as I am concerned. Rumour hath it that in another two months we may get leave and then what about another room at Scarshaven Hotel and you "on a visit to your friends at Buxton," eh? I'm not the marrying sort you know, but sometimes I think that when this war's over, I'd like to settle down. How would the idea of being Mrs. E. F. seem to you, old girl? Not much in your line, what? Anyway don't forget me, Yours to a cinder, ERIC.

She read twice through this strange production, straining her eyes to decipher the crude, boyish writing. Then she looked at Ben. "I don't understand, what does it mean?" she said.

"Don't you? Don't you? Ay, but you do. You Hammonds, you're all alike, you, you----"

She gazed at him with open-eyed amazement. The boy whom she had thought of as a poor thing became instead a sneering raging fury. Completely beyond self-control, he turned upon her.

"You and your snivelling mother, coming down and weeping piety and her daughter's honour; and your bullying rip of a father, damn him! I bet you're all the same. You know jolly well what this all means. 'What about another room at the Scarshaven Hotel,' eh? And then she comes whining and sobbing to me and saying I must marry her because I've ruined her life! She and her honour. How do I know how many more Erics she's fooled on with? Blast her! Curse her!"

His weak face was distorted by rage. The candlelight danced on the red rims of his swollen eyes and on his trembling hand upraised as if he would strike Muriel.

She still sat on the edge of the bed, quite quietly. Her mind refused to register any thought but the name of her sister, Connie, Connie, repeated again and again without significance.

Ben dropped his hand. "She taunted me. She said I was no man. She pretended that she knew nowt o' this sort o' thing. She told me that she'd carried on with other fellows, just a bit, just playing like. And there was I, cursing myself because I'd done it. Calling myself a black sinner when I had no call to marry her, not even a farm o' my own yet, and all the time she was just laughing at me, fooling me. And I've been feeling myself under a heavy burden o' sin, with my guilt an' hers upon me, an' not daring to go round to chapel, and feeling the hand o' the Lord upraised against me. She led me on. She led me on. Let her drown now. Let her drown. I reckon she'll not swim long i' Fallow, and her burden o' guilt will weigh her down."

Muriel stared at him. "Ben. You've lost your head. It mayn't mean all that. She's your wife."

"She betrayed me. She betrayed me." He dropped his face into his hands and sat with quivering shoulders on the bed by Muriel's side. "She's shamed me. And I meant to prove myself a man." He began to sob, bitter grinding sobs that tore him with grief for his shamed manhood. "Ah never had a wife. Ah never had one. She fooled me. Ah've been fooled all my life. Ah've been fooled by God an' fooled by her. There's no faith left."

"Ben. Pull yourself together. You've got no right to accuse her till you know. When did she go? Are you sure she left the house? Which way would she take?"

He raised his haggard face and jeered at her. "Go an' find her. You're scared o' the dark, aren't you? Go an' find her corpse knocking about i' Fallow like an old sow drowned last Martinmas. Go on. Get out o' way." His voice rose to the shrill note of hysteria. "Get out o' here! This is my room. What are you doing in my room--you----"

He called her a name that she had never heard before. She turned to run, and saw him towering above her, fantastic in the candlelight. As she ran, she heard his voice behind her, calling, "Run, Muriel! Run! It's nice and cold in t'river."

The echo of his laughter drove her down the passage.

Outside the kitchen door she paused. The firelight, the call of cheerful voices beckoned her. From the back room came the shouted chorus of a song.

"If you were the only girl in the world And I were the only boy."

The desire to tell some one, to find a sane and comforting adviser in this world gone mad, urged her almost irresistibly. She would go and tell Mrs. Todd. She would tell Mat. They would help her to look for Connie.

"Nothing else would matter in this world to-day, We would go on loving in the same old way."

She laid her hand upon the latch of the door.

If she told, they would all follow her. They would all know what had happened to Connie. They would all know what Connie had done.

She had to tell. She could not bear alone this dreadful burden of responsibility.

If she went now either she would find Connie, reason with her and bring her back, or else it would be too late for any one to help Connie, too late for any army of lanterns, swinging down the hill, to pierce those dark waters of the Fallow.

"There would be such wonderful things to do I would say such wonderful things to you!"

A chair shrieked against the paved floor. Somebody was going to leave the room. If she told now, it would be a betrayal. She must go alone.

With a little choking cry she turned and fled.

The bolts were stiff and heavy, but when she had dragged them aside the wind tore at the door and hurled it open. The frail strength of her shoulder could not push it back. She let it swing.

Along the flagged yard, down the two steps and into the strip of narrow garden Muriel ran. Oh, but she must hurry, hurry, hurry, or it would be too late. The garden path was steep and slippery. A thaw had set in, and the ground under her thin shoes was wet and yielding. Once she leapt aside as a white cat darted out at her from the potatoes. Once her serge skirt caught on a stunted gooseberry bush.

Out through the wicket gate and on to the field road ran Muriel. The first field was a grass pasture; she remembered that. It led straight down, with the bottom gate a little to the right. If only she had stopped to find a lantern! It was quite dark now. The stars were veiled by tattered shreds of cloud. She could not see the road before her feet, but only feel the short, uneven turf, and the steady sloping of the long hill. If she faced down hill she would find the way.

The high heel of her shoe caught in a rut, and she fell headlong, her cheek against the chill, wet turf. Even as she lay there for a second, dazed and breathless, something moved from the shadows at her side, and with a little shriek of horror she remembered that in this field wandered the cows and horses.

She sprang up, never heeding the pain of her wrenched ankle or the mud clinging to her skirt. Every breeze that touched her hot cheeks was now the fiery breath of bulls; every clump of furze the dark form of a furious stallion. Blindly sobbing she ran, while the strong wind seized her and blew her kindly down the shadowed hill.

Almost before she hoped for it she found the wall. But the gate? The gate. Standing to regain her bearings, she heard the dull thud of feet tramping behind her down the hill.

The wind whistling on her neck came like the breath from a bull's nostrils. Clutching at the rough stones, bruising her knees and her thin elbows, she scrambled up the wall.

By this time she did not know whether she was running to save her own life or her sister's. The black arms of the trees swept over her, their wild heads tossing, tangling the vagrant stars. Their branches creaked; their twisted fingers snatched at her, caught at her hair and scratched her face, only to swing back again with mocking lightness. The trees terrified her. At any minute they must come down upon her. She heard the sharp splintering of the wood; the rush of branches like a mighty sea; the vast arms that embraced her, dragging her down, down as they fell faster, faster and the great weight overwhelmed her.

There she would lie crushed and bleeding on the hill-side, and Connie would lie deep below the swirling waters of the Fallow.

She dared not risk the trees. She scurried towards the centre of the field, stumbling blindly among the turnips. Twice she struck her foot against them, falling and recovering herself.

Her breath came now in painful sobs. Across her chest lay a sharp bar of iron that hurt her as she breathed. The wind through her silk blouse whipped her shoulders.

Oh, she would never find her way. Why hadn't she brought a lantern? Why hadn't she told the others? What madness sent her alone, running wildly down these dreadful fields? And when she reached the river, if Connie were not there, what could she do!

A rope, stretched straight across her way, nearly flung her down again. Panting, she felt along it. A rough net--a net. Her mind, unaccustomed to the ways of farming, refused to register its use. She forced it down with both her hands and stepped across it.

As she paused, it seemed as though again she heard those footsteps following; but perhaps they only were the beats of her own heart. She started forward.

A worse nightmare than ever laid hold upon her. She was surrounded by a moving horror. Soft formless things pushed up against her knees, her waist. Each way she stumbled, they bore down upon her. The starlight showed her just a dim, pale sea heaving waist-high all round her, before the wild clouds swept across the one patch of clear sky and left her blind with panic and the dark.

She could bear no more. Perils of darkness, perils of tempest, perils of bulls and wild living things she had withstood. Even the peril of Ben's frenzied face and uplifted hand had not appalled her. But this heaving horror engulfed her. She must fall.

She put out one hand and touched rough, soft wool; a familiar cry rang out beside her, "Baa-a-ah!" another followed. Echo followed echo across the sheepfold. She turned and pushed her way out from among the clustering flock, regaining the assurance of the road. The trees might swoop above her. Her feet might slip beneath her, but the road was sure. On and on she ran, though now she knew no longer the object of her running. Through one gate, then another, then another, and the woods closed down upon her. The path grew steeper. A light rain blew in her face like wave-flung spray. She did not notice it. The bushes caught at her. The branches tore her hair. Then, suddenly, quite close beside her, she heard the rushing of the river.

She remembered why she had come, and stood quite still to listen.

"Connie!" she shouted. "Connie! Connie! Connie!"

Parallel with the river ran a narrow path. It wound up Fallowdale for several miles until it crossed the Pilgrim's Bridge at Barwood. Up this path Muriel ran, the tangled woods on her left hand, the river on her right. Without a gleam the water swirled beside her, now dashing angrily against the stones, now sliding deep and dark between the banks.

"Connie! Connie! Connie!" called Muriel. The wind snatched at her futile little voice. The river drowned it. The high trees mocked her, clashing their long arms together.

"Connie! Connie!" she sobbed. The pain in her bruised ankle throbbed unceasingly. Her hands were torn. Her knees hurt. She felt forlorn and utterly defeated.

"Connie! Connie!"

Along the path before her, something moved.

"Connie!"

The figure stopped. It hesitated, then started forward. A twig snapped in the darkness. Then, though the river ran silently here the noise of it rose like a flood, thundering in her ears.

"Connie, darling! Stop! I want to tell you something."

She dared not run too quickly. A false step, and she might feel those ice-cold waters close above her head. If she delayed, though, she might hear the splash of Connie's final plunge.

"Oh, Connie, please don't go so fast. I can't keep up. Please stop."

In the dark, Connie turned to face her.

"Muriel--what do you want? Why have you come?" With a sudden sharp anguish, "Have you got my letter?"

"Your letter? Your letter? No. Ben's got your letter."

"Ben? Of course he has! Of course. Oh, isn't that like you, Muriel! You come down here to me, but you let Ben have the letter! I might have known. Here I've been telling myself that perhaps you'd find it and not say anything and just come down here, and now--I might have known!"

"But Ben found it first. What could I do?"

"Of course he did. He would. Oh, now for Heaven's sake go home. I'm sick of you. Can't you leave me alone just for a minute? What do you want? Why did you follow me? Go back. Go back, I tell you."

"No, no. I can't leave you here. You mustn't--you--you'll make yourself ill."

"Ill? Shall I?"

Muriel dared not move. If she advanced one step she feared lest Connie, mad with recklessness, should plunge into that dreadful river. And if Connie did jump in, what could she do? Connie was heavy. The river was so deep, and Muriel could not swim. She became dazed with panic.

"Connie, dear. Connie, come home. It's terrible for you out here in the dark. Come back with me. It's all right. I won't leave you."

"If you come a step nearer," cried Connie's furious voice, "I shall jump straight into the river. So there!"

Suddenly the absurdity of the situation struck Muriel. Here she was. Here was Connie. If Connie chose to drown herself, Muriel was completely powerless to stop her, because she was so small and Connie so much stronger.

At the realization of her impotence, Muriel's self-control gave way. She flung up her head and laughed, peal after peal of helpless laughter.

It was the last sound that Connie had expected.

"What's the matter? Are you mad? That's right then, laugh away! I suppose that you think it's funny that I should have made a mess of my whole life. I can be in hell if I like, and all that you can do is to stand there and laugh. I suppose that you read Eric's letter and saw that he--that he would have married me--Eric. Eric."

Muriel stopped laughing and came forward, laying her small hand on her sister's arm. Connie seemed to be unaware that anyone was touching her.

"Oh, it's damned funny, isn't it? I wonder that I don't laugh myself. You never thought at Marshington that your respected sister was anyone's mistress, did you? Only once, I tell you. I thought that he would marry me. I'd heard they would. I was fed up, and at least it was worth trying. It was that little fiend Alice who ruined me. Of course she liked him, but she kidded us that it was Ben she cared about. Ben. Ben! Come to think about it, we might ha' known that she was fooling us. Who'd care for Ben, with his great gawky body, Ben the big soft idiot! I ask you! That's my husband, Muriel. Good joke, isn't it? I swore to love, honour and obey that thing, because Alice told me Eric had married Cissie Bradfield and showed me a newspaper cutting, and I was green enough to believe her. Oh, she was clever. My God, she was clever. I'd just been home on leave, you know, that time we met Delia on Kingsport Station. I was happy then. I thought he cared. Then I came back here and Alice told me--showed me the cutting. He was just going to Mespot too. I wrote. He never answered." She stopped, choking.

"Never mind that now, Connie, dear," Muriel said timidly. "Come back with me. You'll get so wet."

Connie shook off her hand and went on speaking. It was as though, having decided to tell the truth at last, she could not stop.

"If I'd been cheap with one, I'd be cheap with all. There'd be no end to my cheapness. If Eric had had me and didn't want me, then Ben, who wanted me, should have me. Oh, I was wild, I didn't care. I didn't care what happened. Muriel, you don't know. You'd never been like that, stuck there in Marshington, longing to get away, every one round you getting married. It wasn't as if I hadn't tried other things. I wanted to chicken farm; I wanted to go away and do just anything. But Mother wouldn't let me. It was just men, men, men, and make a good match."

She shivered violently. The rain was now sweeping in great gusts along the valley. It splashed from the bare branches on to their heads. Slowly they began to walk along the path.

"Well--I didn't make a good match. Look at Godfrey Neale. When I was a kid I used to think him wonderful. Then Hugh McKissack. Mother made me think I liked him and that he would marry me. Look how he fooled us both. Then Eric came----"

Connie's voice mingled with the rushing of the river and the rustling rain among the trees. She lifted her head and spoke into the darkness, taking no heed of Muriel.

"He wasn't much of a fellow perhaps, in lots of ways, but he was a jolly sight better than lots of the men we used to meet. And I wanted so much to be married. He said his father wouldn't let him marry till he'd become a proper chartered accountant. He was still articled or something when I met him that night at the Kingsport dance. Hugh McKissack had just turned me down. Oh, I was desperate. I flirted with him. He said I was a sport. We--we got on. Oh, you won't understand. When I went to stay with Betty Taylor at York, I met him again. I went there so that I could meet him. Chase him? Who'd taught me to chase men? Of course I did. Don't all women? Hadn't mother? Then he said I didn't care for him. I wasn't going to show him at first, so he said 'Prove it.' I--you don't know. I thought he'd slip away just like the rest of them. I said I'd prove it. We went away to Scarshaven together for three days, before I went to Buxton to the Marshalls. You thought I was there, and nobody found out. I thought he'd marry me. If anything went wrong, he said he'd see me through. There was a time, just once, on Scarshaven station when he came to meet me, I thought I couldn't do it. Then he smiled. Oh, you--you--you don't know what it's like to love a man! I couldn't turn him down."

She stopped and clung to Muriel, who could only hold her tightly, murmuring silly words of comfort, neither shocked nor grieved, but gently pitiful. "Poor Connie. Oh, poor Connie!"

"Then the war came. He was sent up to Follerwick. I stuck it at home for a bit. I tried once to get through to see him, but I couldn't arrange it easily. I saw that if I stayed at home I never should get away without being found out. Then he told me about Thraile. The Todds were advertising for land-girls. I'd always liked outdoor things, and I was mad to come. You know the row we had at home. Then Mother heard that the Setons were doing land-work. How I blessed those girls. So she gave me her blessing too and off I went. Oh, but I was happy. You don't know. I'd never been happy like that before. He was at Follerwick and I at Thraile. We used to go for concerts and things, and I'd meet him and go off for long walks on the moors. We didn't do anything that you'd call bad. Somehow when it was so easy, we did not want to in the same way. We were like kids. We'd race up and down hill hand in hand. He'd come and sit sometimes on the old sheep trough when I was cleaning turnips and we'd talk. It was all as easy as the beasts and flowers and things. I dun'no. We were just great pals. We didn't talk of marriage or anything. That didn't matter. Then I came on leave." Her voice hardened. "When I got back that Alice told me he'd had to go off suddenly to Aldershot. He didn't write--or, if he did, she got hold of the letters. Possibly he didn't write. He wasn't the pen-scratching kind. Then the news of his wedding came, and the newspaper cutting.

"Oh, I think I went mad. I do really. You see--I'd been fooled so often. I wanted to hurt every one, myself most of all. And Ben was always hanging round. I hadn't noticed him while Eric was there. But after--after I heard about Cissie I used to tease Ben, just to spite him and myself. I said he wasn't a man. I--Oh, I led him on. He was such a great, green, religious baby, terrified of his father. Then I made him--do it."

Her hands clutched at her sister's arm. Her dragging step moved onward, and her toneless voice talked on and on, taking a bitter satisfaction in the telling.

"When I found out that I was going to have a baby, I was scared. I told you that they turned me out. They didn't. I ran away. Father found that out after he came down to Thraile that day. Really, he was awfully decent to me. He seemed to understand. But at first the Todds were awful. That terrible old man. Only Ben was decent. I believe he was fond of me. Funny, wasn't it? He thought he'd sinned black sin for me, and made me sin, and he must make it up to me. And then, while I was waiting for the wedding, that was a queer time. I used to pretend that it was Eric I was going to marry. Honest I did. I quite enjoyed it. Even when we got here, married, it might not have been so bad. Do you know," she said reflectively, "I believe that if I'd never known Eric I'd have been content with Ben. He's a dud of course, but he'd do anything for me. It's nice to have someone who'd sell their souls for you, until they think they've sold it. That was just it. Old William Todd would never let Ben alone. He was always on at him. If we could have gone away together. . . . Well, I used to think we would go and get a farm and settle down. I like children too. Then--to-day." It was Connie's turn to laugh now.

"I say, if there's a God, mustn't he have a jolly time laughing over the things that come too late? Here's a priceless joke now--me married to Ben, and a kid coming, and Eric ready to marry me when he comes home. Ben's child! Ben's child! And it might have been Eric's!" The laughter turned again to choking sobs. Breaking suddenly from Muriel's arms, Connie collapsed on the bank and crouched there, crying softly.

"I meant to kill myself. I knew I might funk it though. I always do. I put that letter where Ben would see it and know what had happened. So I could never go back to him. I thought I'd settle it for good and all. And I'd hurt Ben too. He'd been so stupid. The more beastly I was to him, the more patient he was with me. Rather like you, Muriel. Oh, you patient people! I bet you're responsible for half the suicides that happen. He was so proud to think I'd marry him too! He--me!"

Muriel knelt beside her on the wet stones. "Get up, Connie. You'll be ill. Get up. It's so wet."

That was all she could say, silly futile things.

"Ill? Oh, Muriel, you are a fool. Don't you see, I can't go back? I can't go anywhere. Oh, my God, I haven't got the pluck to kill myself, and there's nowhere in the world for me to live! You're a beauty, you are. You always turn up when it's too late to help. What shall I do? I don't want to die."

"We'll go away together. Listen. Listen. I'll make Father let us have some money. He's fond of you. If Ben turns you out, he'll pay. I can get work now in war-time too. We'll both go away. We'll--Oh, what's that?"

A light, swinging between the trees, gleamed suddenly round the angle of the rocks. A yellow splash of lantern light moved along the path. Through the rain came the sound of running footsteps.

"Who's that? Who's that?"

Her voice was sharp with fear.

"Is that Muriel?"

Connie's hand gripped her like a vice. Connie screamed in sudden terror.

"Muriel, it's Ben. Don't let him hurt me! Don't!"

Muriel stood up. "Ben, what do you want?"

The lantern swayed and stopped. In that moment Muriel thought that Ben had come to kill his wife.

"Is Connie there?"

"Yes." Connie's voice was calm now.

"Ben, you shan't hurt her," cried Muriel.

"I shan't hurt her." She could hear that he too was now calm. The voice that spoke from the darkness was a man's voice. "Connie, I want to ask you something."

"Well?" Still she was defiant. "What do you want?"

"When did you last see--yon--yon fellow?"

"Eric Fennington?"

"Ay."

"In the summer. Before I went on leave, but----"

"I thowt so. You fooled me properly, didn't you?"

"But----" Connie rose slowly to her feet. She stood now facing her husband. He raised the lantern and flashed it full upon her. "Ben," she said.

"Have ye anything to say? Ye laughed an' mocked at me. Ye treated me like a boy without pride, or honour. Then, when yon fellow let ye down, you found that I was man enough to give his child my name." He spoke now without bitterness. His steady, even voice was strange to them. They stood before him, afraid of his new dignity. Then Connie said:

"Ben, that's not true."

"Eh?"

"I--I saw Eric in the summer, but it was--in March when we--when we went together. The only time, I swear."

"And when is the child coming?"

"April."

"Is yon true, Muriel?"

"Yes."

"How many lovers did yer have before this--officer fellow?"

"Eric, only Eric."

"Is yon true, Muriel?"

"Yes, Ben, I am sure of it."

They waited, while in the darkness Ben received back his lost honour. When he spoke again it was with a shy confidence.

"Oh, well, I reckon ye'd better come home out o' t'wet, Connie. I wanted ye to kill yourself at first, and then I thought mebbe I'd better let you speak for yourself first. But if yon's false, what you've told me----"

"It's not."

He sighed wearily. "Oh, well, best come home, Connie."

"Do--do the others know?"

"Nay. An' they won't. This is our affair. T'letter's in my pocket. I'll burn it an' fake some tale. Coom on, Connie. I----" He had forgotten Muriel. They were alone together in a world new made.

"I want my child," said Ben.

They turned; he put his hand on her arm, and they went up the path together.

Muriel stood alone beside the river; then she too moved forward, following the lantern's light.

XXXII

The situation having been lifted again out of Muriel's hands, she did not for some time contest the way in which it was being handled. For the space of one evening, Ben seemed to have attained to manhood. So much the better for Ben. So much the better for Connie. So much the worse perhaps for Muriel, who was again left with no one in life having great need of her. Directly Connie was better, Muriel meant to go home. For Connie, not unnaturally, was ill. The evening's escapade had resulted in a severe chill, caught, she explained, because while going for a walk to cure her headache, she had fallen and wrenched her ankle, and lain in the rain until Ben and Muriel found her.

Well, she would soon be better. 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. She brushed her own torn skirt and Connie's, and carried trays upstairs for Mrs. Todd, who, with three invalids and the large family to manage, still remained imperturbably cheerful. Then, somehow, quite without Muriel realizing their importance, several things happened very quickly; the doctor's second visit; Ben driving off into the rain to Follerwick; her mother's arrival by the evening train.

Muriel stood in the room once shared by Alice, Gert and Polly, fingering silver jars upon the roughly stained dressing-table, and wondering how her mother always contrived to carry an atmosphere of Marshington drawing-rooms into the most incongruous surroundings.

"I can't understand it. I can't understand it," repeated Mrs. Hammond, methodically unwrapping her slippers from her linen shoe bags. "You say that she went out in the rain . . ."

"It wasn't raining when she _went_ out," explained Muriel for the second time. "It began to rain later--after she had fallen."

"I can't help thinking, dear, that there was some grave irresponsibility. Knowing how careless she is, you never ought to have let her go out alone. It never should have happened--and then--since, Muriel, why didn't you see that a second opinion was called in?"

"We didn't think that she was so ill.--Dr. Merryweather----"

"Oh, Dr. Merryweather! A North Riding country practitioner--really, Muriel. But of course, dear, you never had any initiative, had you? Well, it may be all right now."

With gentle efficiency, Mrs. Hammond took control of the situation. Never had her conduct been more completely admirable. She had found her younger daughter seriously ill with pneumonia, her elder daughter in a strange condition of nervous paralysis, an impossibly inconvenient house, and a family complicated by the most uncomfortable relationships. Almost at once she made her influence felt. Muriel found herself shrinking into the shadows. She never remembered afterwards how she passed her time in that house grown hushed with concentrated anxiety. Once she remembered meeting Ben upon the landing. His face was drawn and grey. She remembered his long feet in their drab worsted stockings and the silly appeal in his light grey-blue eyes.

"Muriel," he had said in a hoarse whisper, "she ain't going to die, is she?"

"No, of course she isn't," Muriel answered irritably. How could she die, now that everything had just been put right? Of course she wasn't going to die!

He twisted the smooth knob at the top of the staircase. "She mustn't die," he whispered again. "I couldn't stand that, I tell you I couldn't." He cast a sidelong glance down stairs towards the passage where the door of the front parlour stood open. "Father says that it'll be the judgment of God upon our wickedness if she does die."

"What does he know about it? She won't die."

"I can't bear it," he repeated, his mouth agape, his eyes that nature had intended to be meek and kind staring ahead with a sad, unnatural concentration. "I couldn't abide to think of her dying in her sin."

"You don't think that at all. She's not in sin--any more than I am. You're talking nonsense. She's going to get well. And in April your baby will be born. And Mr. Todd will let you both go off to Fallowdale." She nodded at him reassuringly, as one nods to a child, and then went upon her quiet, mouse-like duties.

Three more days passed. A nurse had come from Hardrascliffe. Mrs. Hammond sat up half the night, and Muriel the other half. Mrs. Hammond wore a white apron over her pretty dresses. Her cool fingers had been denuded of their rings, but their little pink nails shone like jewels. The farm girls all had lost their heads and hearts to her. They wondered how on earth a dowdy little thing like Muriel, and a big jolly girl like Connie, could have had such a duck of a mother. Mrs. Todd treated her with cheerful and unimpressionable independence. Muriel followed her submissively, like a scolded child, knowing herself to be in disgrace, and yet never hearing a word of the reproach that she knew her mother felt.

Connie, she found inarticulate and pathetic, only occasionally cross and difficult. Most of the time she seemed to be uncannily obedient.

Once in the early morning, when Muriel was so sleepy that she had to hold her head right forward, so that it would not fall back against her chair, Connie's queer, grating whisper roused her.

"Mu----"

"Yes."

"It would be a queer thing if I was to die after all--wouldn't it?"

"Don't be silly. You aren't going to die."

"I don't want to. I want to have the baby. I'd like to have a house of my own, and a little Ford car, so that Ben and I could run in to Hardrascliffe for week-ends."

"Of course you will."

"Don't let me die, Mu."

"There's no question of your dying."

But she did not get better quickly. One night her temperature raced up, and she began to talk dangerous nonsense about Eric, while Muriel endeavoured to keep her mother from the room, and Mrs. 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. Connie had been preserved so miraculously through two crises--God could not really have let her die.

She wandered round the silent house, very weary but yet more bored, wishing that she could even join the nurse's secret ministration up in Connie's bedroom, rather than have this desolating feeling of no purpose. Then Mrs. Todd, with practical kindness, set her to wash up breakfast plates, with a significant nod to Gertie--"Muriel is going to be taken bad next if we don't look out." And afterwards Mrs. Hammond, with a dignity of self-control that astonished every one but Muriel, called her upstairs and gave her letters to write, and began to discuss details of the funeral.

Mr. Hammond was in London. He could not reach Thraile until Tuesday morning, even by travelling all night. Mrs. Hammond therefore had to make her own arrangements--the funeral to be at Follerwick, the letters to all relations, the notices to the Yorkshire papers.

"Have you been to see Mr. Todd, since----?" asked Mrs. Hammond, delicately pressing down the flap of an envelope.

"No, Mother, why?"

"Well, dear. I do think that one of us ought to go to him. Just to show that we--that, well, I do think that we ought. And I don't feel----" Bravely she pushed aside her tears with a small handkerchief.

Muriel walked slowly down the stairs. The little parlour was flooded with afternoon sunlight. Through the uncurtained window, Muriel could see the moors frozen to hard, black beauty, cold as stone beneath the cold, clear light.

William Todd was lying by the window. Ben, a forlorn and uncouth figure in his ill-fitting black clothes, sat on the chair beside him, his large red hands upon his knee.

Muriel came into the room quietly and shut the door. She wished that she knew what was the right thing to say.

"I am very sorry, Mr. Todd," she said at last, feeling that somehow it was what he should have said to her.

"You are sorry. Your sister is dead. My son tells me that she did not die unrepentant. I am glad. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. When men shall say Peace, and all things are safe, then shall sudden destruction come upon them, as sorrow came upon a woman travailing with child, and they shall not escape."

"No," answered Muriel, "I suppose not." But she thought all this to be irrelevant. She felt sorry for Ben, who sat there with bent, dumb bewilderment, but she did not know what to say. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry that the baby for whose sake he had forgiven Connie had never been born. She only said: "Ben has been splendid, Mr. Todd, all through her illness. I am sure that you will understand far more than I---- Do be--please be--nice to him."

The cripple's bright eyes seemed to pierce her brain.

"Shall not the Lord deal justly with his own? You tried to save your sister from the punishment of man; but a greater than man had judged before you. But, thank God, her death has not been quite unfruitful. My son, my son has even seen the error of his ways."

William Todd turned his face to the young man. A queer twisted tenderness broke for a minute the clear lines of his face. Then it hardened again. His son sat without movement, his eyes upon the carpet.

"Ay. That's so," he murmured dully.

The old lady by the fire nodded and smiled at Muriel, nibbling a pink sweet. She was happy because she had outlived her grandson's wife.

Ben followed Muriel from the room.

"How much does your father know?" asked Muriel.

"Nay. I don't know. He's said nowt but what he knew before. But he is right. The destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that forsake the Lord shall be consumed. It was for the ungodliness o' my soul, he says, the Lord took my wife and my child."

He raised his head with a smile of ghastly pride, as though consoled by the Lord's impressive punishment of his offence.

"Ben!" cried Muriel, no longer sorry. "You don't really think like that. You can't think like that." Connie and miserable sinners simply could not live together in the same thought. Connie was a person, intensely alive, wilful and foolish, made for enjoyment and companionship. She was not an instrument of God sent for the punishment of any man's misdeeds.

Ben stared at her foolishly. Then without a word he passed her by and stumbled up the stairs.

Next morning Mr. Hammond came. He saw Muriel in the hall.

"Where's Rachel?" he asked.

"Upstairs, Father. I'll show you."

He followed her, stepping softly up the winding stair. Mrs. Hammond stood in the doorway. On her face was an expression of relief, anxiety, tenderness. Now that he had come, she wanted nothing more.

Muriel watched her father enfold her mother in his great arms. She, the imperturbable, the gently adamant, gave herself up to his rough mastery, and found rest there. Neither of them noticed Muriel.

"There, there, little woman," he said softly, stroking her bowed silver head with his large hand. "It's all right. It's all right. Poor Connie. You did your best. You did everything, little woman, I know. You've been wonderful."

She let him treat her like a child. Before him alone she lost her perfect self-command. Muriel saw this with the jealous perception of the onlooker. "They don't want me," she told herself, and went downstairs.

On the morning of the funeral came the wreaths, piles and piles of them, colder than the snow now white along the moorland. Their sickly smell filled the stone house. "It is the smell of death," thought Muriel.

The land-girls stole about, red-eyed, admiring, with _crêpe_ bands round the arms of their tunics.

Dolly lifted a card.

"Oh, come and look at this," she whispered to Gert. "With deepest sympathy from Colonel and Lady Grainger."

Mrs. Hammond, black-veiled and pathetic, entered the hall. They all fell back respectfully. She leaned above the lilies, touching their waxen trumpets with a gentle finger. She also lifted the card.

"Oh, Muriel, how kind of them!" she cried softly. "How very, very kind."

But Muriel went away and cried bitterly because Connie was dead, and now she had not even a sister left who needed her.