CHAPTER VII

“So long as we know not what it opens, nothing can be more beautiful than a key.”

THE short June days soon came to an end, and Muriel found them none too short, for warmth can only be enjoyed by the luxurious, and her life at present was anything but that.

If one plunged into the work and life of the people it needed strength both of will and body to carry one through its disillusions.

There was nothing in the least exciting in the work before her—it was merely very hard. Occasionally it was true the great opportunity would arise, as it had done in the case of poor Liz. But next to their extraordinary infrequency came the swiftness with which all the greatness evaporated: their very sins were so matter-of-fact, and the larger elements in life were taken so unpicturesquely that they seemed shorn of their solemnity, and then strangely robbed of all “the trailing clouds” of mystery. When a widow spoke of her dead husband as “’E made a beautiful corpse, ’e did—yer ought to er seen ’im, miss,” the word died on her lips, and to look at a dead baby as being “one less mouth to feed,” jarred on all her tender notes of sympathy by the crudity of its truth.

Muriel wrote to Gladys, who, strange to say, had come to see her alone, not once but often, that she had never known “death could be vulgar before;” and, though she felt very worried at the thought of shutting up the club for three months, she confessed to herself her heart rose at the thought of the long, easy luxury of house-parties, country days, and even a glimpse of the sea. People, too, who said a little more—and meant a little less—she looked forward to meeting with a positive sense of rest. Clear black and white were rather glaring she thought, and how life was mellowed by a little mist! Jack Hurstly had never been to see her. She had heard of him occasionally from Gladys.

Sir Arthur wished her to come at once to Blacklands, a house in a beautiful vicinity, not too far from the conveniences of life; and towards the end of July, very tired and fagged, Muriel packed up her things to go. There were many good-byes to be said, but they were all over now with the exception of Liz—Liz and the baby. She had not seen either of them lately. As she knocked at the door she heard the long, fretful wail of a sick child, and then the ungracious tones of a woman’s voice.

“Ah, it’s you, is it?” she added shrilly as Muriel entered. “I thought you had given us the slip. No, I ain’t been comin’ to the club, nor I don’t mean to—nor Dick neither, we ’ave ’ad enough of it, we ’ave.”

Muriel showed no surprise. She sat down and looked at the poor little baby tossing disconsolately on its mother’s lap.

“Isn’t he well?” she asked.

“No, ’e ain’t,” said Liz more gently; “’e do take on somethink hawful in this ’eat. ’E cries all night, and Dick won’t come nigh ’im. I’d a been a deal better off without ’im, that’s what I’d a been. What’s the use o’ a ’usband who drinks all ’e earns? ’E don’t do _me_ no good, and I don’t do ’im no good—we’re better apart.” She looked at Muriel viciously in her increasing anger and fear, turning on the first object she met.

“You’re very tired, Lizzie,” she said gently, “and very hot. Have you been sitting up all night with baby?”

“I don’t keep no nurse!”

“Poor little thing,” said Muriel, holding out her arms for it; “poor little dear.”

“’E’ll crease your pretty skirt.” Muriel laughed.

“Now, tell me,” she said, “what do you mean about Dick. Is he really taking to drink?”

Lizzie forgot her resentment and poured out her troubles, and so again the woman in Muriel conquered. Yet she knew that there would be no gratitude for what she did. Lizzie only envied her—“her pretty frock.”

She wrote to her uncle promising to go down the next day. Muriel arrived at Blacklands to be met by the footman and a carriage. The trappings of a luxury she had spurned seemed at present very grateful to her. They belonged, she realized, to a class of things one does not actually need, and yet seems to miss more than even the necessities. As she drove comfortably through the village she was possessed by a complete set of new faculties. All her old fund of light-hearted laughter sprang again within her; her quick, observant eyes (which she had used more lately to ignore than to observe) found beauties at every turn. She felt a desire to sketch two cottages half lost in honeysuckle planted with the most perfect effect of naturalness under the old tower of the ivy-covered church. The churchyard seemed the most perfectly restful thing she had ever seen. She longed to pick the hedge flowers; to let the wind blow about her hair, with no restraining erection to keep it in place; to walk barefoot across the cool, green fields; to hunt for birds’ nests in the wood; to climb the hills at sunset time—in short, a passion of longing to come near to Nature held her; to forget all the many inventions of the clever, brutal, unscrupulous mind of man; to be once, for however little time, one with the world as “God has made it.” She found herself taking off her gloves, and at that moment the carriage swept up the drive of a large old house, with an exterior too ancient to be quarrelled with, and an interior too full of the best of modern “improvements” to be in the least appropriate.

Gladys was standing on the steps. She held Muriel in her arms. On the younger girl’s face there was an almost passionate welcome, and she tried to hide her eagerness in laughter, chatting in graceful snatches over a thousand little nothings as the two girls went to their rooms. “Did Muriel know that there was no one there but themselves?—everybody was coming down to-morrow. Yes, that abominable little flirt, Edith le Mentier, and her husband with his exquisite stupidity, a cloak which covered all his other sins—in the eyes of his wife at least. Mary Huntly, too, not Tom—he couldn’t. These business men really worked; but Muriel was a business woman, wasn’t she—the dear Muriel.” Muriel declared she only worked for the sake of enjoying laziness. They went down to tea. “That doctor, too,” Gladys continued, “with an advanced sister with red hair, cigarette and a bull-dog—at least I think it’s a bull-dog.”

“Of course it is,” laughed Muriel. “You must retain something, however far you advance, and the bull-dog does that for you.”

“The doctor overworked, you know; and the sister’s devoted. Then there’s Captain Hurstly, of course!”

“Why of course?” said Muriel quietly.

“Oh, well——” Gladys stopped, “don’t you want him?”

“No, my dear, I don’t.”

“Your uncle thought——”

“Oh, when he thinks,” laughed Muriel, lifting her shoulders.

“And there’s a friend of his——”

“My uncle’s?”

“Silly!—Captain Hurstly’s—a Sir Somebody Bruce.”

“Alec?” suggested Muriel, quietly selecting some seed-cake. “I know him well.”

“Do you?” said Gladys, “I scarcely know him at all. What did you think of him?” Her little air of indifference was beautiful. Muriel sighed.

“He’s like the rest,” she said wearily. “Splendid, capable, broad-shouldered and—useless. I think if I were a man like that I should use my talent as a good shot for personal purposes; it would seem to me less wasteful.”

“Oh, but, Muriel, we girls we’re none of us any better. You, dearest, you’re different. And in America I was different too. There’s so little strain in being happy there—so little waste in pleasure. The rush of life, its width and lack of limits, is a continual occupation; but here there are too many women. Some of them must be old maids. It’s like the game of musical chairs. They none of them, you see, want to be left out, so they take the first place vacant. They have an eye on their opportunities; they make efforts to attain, and a masterly mamma backs them. When you come to think of it—their training, their suppression! You can’t wonder they take their first opening. But for women to be hunters—forgive the naked, cruel term, darling—is repulsive. Oh, if I had a daughter I should drown her, or bring her up to something more worth living for!”

She walked about the room putting this and that to rights. The housemaid had done it before her, but the quick, nervous movements delivered her of the tension she seemed under.

“Something’s very badly wrong,” thought Muriel, and aloud she suggested the garden.

The birds were making twilight magical on the velvet lawn. They sat breathing in the soft, rich air, heavy with the scent of summer flowers, too utterly at peace with Nature and the restful spell she can throw at moments over the most tortured hearts to do more than hush themselves into silence.

Muriel was the first to speak. She remembered long afterwards how startling her voice sounded.

“You have something to ask me?”

“Ah!—no, no.”

“Something to tell me?”

“It’s hard—oh, Muriel, dearest—dearest, it’s hard!” cried Gladys.

“Hard things are sometimes better shared,” said Muriel.

“The hardest and the dearest sometimes can’t be,” Gladys sighed. “What can I do?” she added miserably. “It’s so old and stale, just the eternal wrong situations Nature pulls about so, or man gets twisted into! Mary, my cousin, you know, wants me—wants me to marry. I’m dependent on her, you see, since father failed in the States. They had me educated in England, and they ruined that for me—the steady setness that might have helped me now—by the wildest three years in America. Sixteen!—and their world without barriers, where everybody wants you to have a good time! No, I’m not crying—not for that. It lasted three years, and after the smash they sent me here. Mary doesn’t know what to do with me. I’m not her sort—I’m always getting into scrapes. I seem to have got into the nursery again, where there is nothing but corners. I’m in leading strings to a—maid. There’s only one way out of my nursery, Mary says—Muriel, it’s open now—but I almost think I’d rather throw myself out of the window than make use of it.”

Muriel looked at her. “And is there no other door?” she asked gently.

“Ah! not mine—somebody else’s, and—they’ve got the key.”

“Where does it lead to?” Muriel asked.

“I—I don’t know. The most beautiful place in the world, I fancy; but if it was a wilderness it would be the only way for me!” Timidly Gladys put out her hands, and Muriel held them, drawing the girl closer to her. She asked with wonderful mother-eyes the question no words could draw from her.

“Yes,” she said at last, “people made a mistake when they thought the world was large. It’s very small—one woman’s heart can hold the whole of it.”

“Muriel,” the other gasped, “Muriel, do you care for him?”

“For Alec Bruce, dear child? No!” Suddenly her hands grew cold, a fear seized her, cutting her breath short and making the silence strangely empty. “You don’t mean him?” she asked very slowly as if she were just learning to talk. The girl shook her head. “You mean Jack Hurstly?” pursued Muriel gently inexorable. The girl caught her hands away and covered her face.

“Oh, Muriel! Muriel!” she sobbed. “I don’t—I don’t care for him.”

“Neither do I,” said Muriel very coldly.

“Don’t you?—don’t you?” the girl exclaimed, her eyes shining like stars through a cloud. “Then, oh, dearest—my dearest, give me the key!”

Muriel stood quite still smiling. She felt as if she were having a photograph taken; she must not move; she must try to look pleasant—that’s what they call it. She was still so long that Gladys looked up in wonder. The elder girl drew her into her arms.

“It will be sure to come out well,” she murmured. Then aloud: “Little darling, you have always had the key—mine was only a skeleton one, and, Gladys, I never could have used it.” The girl clung to her shivering with joy.

“Then, after all, you do care for him a little?” Muriel said tenderly. Gladys lifted up her eyes. They seemed much older—they were so happy and so sure.

“I told you there was only the one way—the one way in all God’s earth for me. I think I should have thrown myself out of the window if you hadn’t given me the key!”

“Oh, don’t!” cried Muriel half sobbing.

Gladys smiled. “Dearest, you don’t understand—you see you don’t care for him as I do!” she said.

“No,” repeated Muriel very slowly and carefully, “I don’t quite understand—you see I don’t—don’t care for him. Do you know, little dear, it’s getting rather chilly. Hadn’t we better go in and dress for dinner?”

“Oh, to think of dinner!” laughed Gladys. “How we do mix things, don’t we? It’s too terribly material.”

But of the two she had the better appetite. Muriel had never lied before, and she found it very tiring.