CHAPTER XIII

“This world’s judgment cries ‘Consequences,’ and leaves it to a higher court to take account of Aims.”

IT was decided that one more effort should be made to rescue Muriel Dallerton.

Mary Huntly, persuaded by her husband, wrote asking her for two days early in the season.

Cynthia peremptorily ordered her to go, and she went.

The weather in the opening charm of June would to most people have been better spent in the country; only London lovers felt the greater charm of the full, bright season set in the green freshness of the Park.

There was a ball the first night, and Muriel danced in a dream of delight at the old easy ways, and all the beauties of sight and sound and sense. Gladys was away on a visit, so the return to civilization was marked by no jar of severed friendship.

A day spent on the river with one of those groups, where each one knows his neighbor well enough for associations to make past pleasures present ones, and yet not too deeply to be able to play lightly on the surface of personalities, made Muriel thirsty for more. It is true that there were strained relationships even there, though hidden with a cultivated ease; but she refused to see them, and let herself be soothed into a fairyland of fancies.

Mary had arranged as a climax a tea-party in the gardens.

“Of course,” she said apologetically, “one knows they aren’t private, but it’s the best place in the world to wander, if only on that account. Wandering I always think the chief charm of tea out-of-doors; it’s a compensation for one’s hair being blown about and the butter melting.”

“It all depends on having the right person to wander with,” suggested her companion.

“Well, but what are all our social efforts but an attempt to find the right person—and then wander?” laughed Mrs. Huntly. “It’s the magic lottery that makes London seasons, and keeps up house-parties——”

“And finally limits one to a wedding ring,” interrupted one of the group.

“Or charms one away from the limits!” ventured a daring young man to Muriel. She felt vaguely uncomfortable, these children of light played so near the brink of things.

“I don’t think I quite know what you mean,” she said gravely.

“He doesn’t mean anything,” said Mary Huntly shortly. The young man turned to someone with whom he needn’t explain. Muriel wondered whether she would enjoy wandering in the gardens. “At any rate I shall not have the right person,” she thought.

When the afternoon came the overpowering youthfulness of spring danced in her veins, and made it easy for the unpleasant to pass from her mind. She was with a little group who had not yet separated to wander, when she saw a woman whom she had known crossing the grass at a little distance from where they sat.

“Why, there is Sally Covering,” she cried. “It seems years since I have seen her!” There was a moment’s awkward silence. Muriel looked in astonishment from one to the other. They all began to talk in the way of people who wish to ignore an impossible moment. Alec Bruce, who was one of the party, asked her an irrelevant question, but she brushed it aside.

“I am going to speak to her,” she said.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Alec. They spoke rapidly, and Muriel felt the color rush to her face. She felt annoyed with herself for speaking at all; but now that she had spoken she would not be a coward, so she walked the intervening space, and came up with the woman.

“Mrs. Covering! you haven’t forgotten me?” she cried. The woman started at the sound of her name, and turned sharply. She was painted more than a little, and inartistically. She gave a queer little laugh as she took Muriel’s outstretched hand.

“Dear me, no!” she said; “I am not the one who forgets, Miss Dallerton.” Muriel held her hand and looked into her eyes.

“I suppose you will think me very rude to stop you like this!” she said; “but I should like so much to talk to you a few moments, if you are not engaged.”

Mrs. Covering withdrew her hand. She was embarrassed, puzzled, and a trifle defiant.

“I cannot think what you wish to say to me, Miss Dallerton,” she answered; “but I am quite at your disposal for the next few minutes.”

They walked together in silence for a moment, Muriel searching for the right word. She remembered the woman’s story now. She had left her husband, and made what the set she lived in called the “dreadful break.” Muriel could not quite remember with whom; but people did not talk to her much about that kind of thing, and she had only heard the outlines of the story. What Muriel finally did say was not in the least what Mrs. Covering expected.

“You have never been to see me,” she said, “in my new home.”

“Oh! I don’t see people now,” said Mrs. Covering, with some bitterness; “I have got out of the habit.”

“Mrs. Covering,” said Muriel, “I should like to be able to contradict a report about you. Will you give me leave?” Mrs. Covering made an attempt to remain defiant.

“Really, Miss Dallerton,” she began, “I cannot conceive——” But as she looked at the girl’s honest, tender eyes her lips quivered. “It’s no use,” she said. “Please let us say good-bye here. It was very good of you to speak to me.”

“But it isn’t true?” said Muriel. Mrs. Covering looked back to where through the trees her old acquaintances in ostentatious conversation pretended not to be watching them.

“Well, anyway,” she said, “I was honest enough to leave my husband; if I hadn’t I might be over there now with your friends.” Muriel took her hand. She knew that sometimes the human touch does more than the work of words.

“Will you come to me?” she said. “Will you promise to come to me when you want help? That you will want help I feel sure; for you are sad already, and you can’t help being more sad. Only don’t get desperate. Come to me, and we will find some way out of it together!”

“I’m not sad!” said Mrs. Covering quickly. “I don’t see why you should think so. I’m happy—absolutely happy! Can’t you see how happy I am?” She bit her lip to keep it from quivering. “And as for there being an end—Oh, Miss Dallerton, there isn’t an _end_ for a woman like me, there’s only—a new beginning!”

“And that you will try with me?” said Muriel with an insistence that she herself could scarcely understand.

“The ten minutes are up,” said Mrs. Covering trying hard to smile, “and I have an appointment. If it is ever possible I will come to you, Miss Dallerton—at any rate I shall never forget that you asked me. But I do not think I shall come.”

She walked quickly away, and Muriel watched her in silence. She remembered that people had said Sally Covering was the best-dressed woman in London. She was still—for it is rarely that the little things change. We don’t forget to put on gloves because our heart is broken. Muriel felt a passion to be alone. Alone in this world of green, robbed for the moment of its fresh beauty; alone to face the problem that rose in inexorable, dark power in society as well as in the slums—the problem which seems ever the same unrelenting enemy of joy and health and the beauty of life, and attacked the vital principles of all she believed in and hoped for. It was very difficult to go back to the group of merry idlers, dancing like butterflies over a precipice—butterflies intent on hiding from the unwary that there _is_ a precipice.

The buzz of talk increased as she drew near them. One lady put up her lorgnette and looked at her as if she were some new invention, and then turning said in a perfectly audible voice: “The paragon of virtue approaches, but I don’t see the lost sheep!” The group dispersed and left Muriel for a moment with her hostess.

“Oh, Muriel, how _could_ you do such a thing?” wailed Mary Huntly. “People must draw a line somewhere, you know. They may swallow the slums, but for _you_—before their very eyes——”

“To speak to an old friend,” said Muriel quietly. “Mary, you can’t blame me. It’s terrible! terrible! But just because it is, one can’t let it pass!” Mary shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s hopeless to argue with you, child,” she said. “Yet even you must see that if people _will_ do such things, they must be ignored for the sake of society at large.”

“Society at large,” said Muriel bitterly, “which has caused the trouble, must protect itself from its own victims, I understand, Mary.”

“But what would you have one do?” said Mary Huntly. “What good did your speaking to her do?”

“It showed her that one cared,” said Muriel. “Too late, I am afraid, in her case. But one must give them a chance to come back, or at least see where they have gone, and wake them up to the horror of it! If you leave them to wake up too late for themselves, they will only fall into a deeper horror!”

“A woman of that sort,” said Mrs. Huntly “is incorrigible—simply incorrigible, Muriel.”

“Oh, Mary, you don’t mean that, I know. If it was some one you loved you would try to help her!”

Mrs. Huntly turned with relief to welcome Dr. Grant. There was a positive pleasure in her greeting. It put an end to an unpleasant situation. The only thing in life that Mrs. Huntly was afraid of was an unpleasant situation.

“Here’s your doctor, child,” she said in an undertone; “do go and wander.” Muriel accepted the proposition almost willingly.

Geoff looked this afternoon so strong and unconventional—not even a frock-coat could make a man-about-town out of him. Not that he in the least answered her problem. He would probably have refused to discuss it with her, and would certainly have disagreed with her in his conclusions; and yet there was something in the strong, sound spirit of the man infinitely refreshing to her after the cruel butterflies.

It was with a new sense of trust and confidence in him that she wandered in the gardens. She realized at last that the parting of the ways had come between her old friends and her new life. Before she had been happy with them because her eyes were shut, now she saw beneath all that seemed gay and delightful a horror of selfishness, hardness and wrong.

Mrs. Covering never came to her; but whenever she felt a longing to return to the old life the thought of her face and the knowledge of what the day’s wanderings had shown her came back with the same bitterness.

She knew that the man with whom Mrs. Covering had made “the dreadful break” would soon be received back into society again.

Mothers with marriageable daughters do not ask too many questions if the woman disappears—and the woman always disappears.

There were times when Muriel almost envied Mary her faith in the incorrigible—it relieved her of so much responsibility.