Chapter 6 Proprietary Funds

ESSENTIALS OF ACCOUNTING FOR

GOVERNMENTAL AND NOT-FOR-PROFIT
ORGANIZATIONS 12TH EDITION COPLEY
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Chapter 6 Proprietary Funds

True/False Questions

1. Proprietary funds use the modified accrual basis of accounting.

Answer: False

2. Enterprise Funds and Internal Service Funds are part of the larger category of
Proprietary Funds.

Answer: True

3. Internal Service Funds account for activities that produce goods or services to be
provided to outside customers on a cost reimbursement basis.

Answer: False

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Chapter 6 Proprietary Funds

4. Enterprise funds are used to account for activities similar to those engaged in profit-
seeking businesses.

Answer: True

5. Financial statements for proprietary funds are prepared using the economic resources
measurement focus.

Answer: True

6. Budgetary comparison schedules are not required for proprietary funds.

Answer: True

7. An enterprise fund should be used when the government has a policy to establish fees to
cover the costs of providing services for an activity.

Answer: True

8. An enterprise fund should be used when debt is back solely by fees and charges

Answer: True

9. An enterprise fund should be used when a legal requirement exists that the cost of
providing services are to be recovered through fees or charges.

Answer: True

10. Proprietary Funds use the accrual basis of accounting.

Answer: True

11. Enterprise funds are reported in the fund-basis statements only.

Answer: False

12. Internal Service funds are reported in the fund-basis statements only.

Answer: False

13. Activities that produce goods or services to be provided to other departments or other
governmental units on a cost-reimbursement basis are accounted for by enterprise funds.

Answer: False

104
Chapter 6 Proprietary Funds

14. The excess of assets over liabilities of proprietary funds is termed “Net Position.”

Answer: True

15. Enterprise funds use the economic resources measurement focus and accrual basis of
accounting

Answer: True

16. An enterprise fund is required if there is a legal requirement that the cost of providing
services for an activity, including capital costs, be recovered through fees or charges.

Answer: True

17. An internal service fund is required whenever an activity is funded by fees or charges
from other government departments.

Answer: False

18. Unlike enterprise funds, it is frequently desirable for internal service funds to operate at
a profit.

Answer: False

19. The most numerous and important enterprise services rendered by local governments are
public utilities.

Answer: True

20. The term “proprietary funds” includes enterprise and internal service funds.

Answer: True

21. Proprietary funds use the economic resources measurement focus and modified accrual
basis of accounting.

Answer: False

22. Fund-basis financial statements prepared for proprietary funds include the Statement of
Net Position, Statement of Revenues, Expenses, and Changes in Fund Net Position, and
the Statement of Cash Flows.

Answer: True

105
Chapter 6 Proprietary Funds

23. Proprietary funds do not record capital assets, depreciation on those capital assets, and
long-term debt.

Answer: False

24. Investment pools are an example of an activity that may be accounted for in an internal
service fund.

Answer: False

25. Cash flow statements of proprietary funds must use the direct method for recording cash
flows from operations.

Answer: True

26. Municipal solid waste landfills, when accounted for as proprietary funds, record a
liability for closure and post-closure care costs; recording expenses on a units of
production basis.

Answer: True

27. The Proprietary Fund Statement of Net Position may choose whether to classify assets
and liabilities between current and long-term.

Answer: False

28. When estimating uncollectible accounts, an enterprise fund will record a debit to Bad
Debt Expense and a credit to Accumulated Provision for Uncollectible Accounts.

Answer: False

29. Impact fees charged to real estate developers are recorded in an enterprise fund as
capital contributions, a nominal account that will increase Net Position, but is reported
separately in the statement of Revenues, Expenses and Changes in Fund Net Position.

Answer: True

30. Post-closure costs are recorded in a solid waste landfill enterprise fund at the present
value of estimated future costs.

Answer: False

31. Long term liabilities of an enterprise fund are reported in the proprietary fund statement

106
Chapter 6 Proprietary Funds

and in government-wide statements.

Answer: True

32. Capital assets constructed by an internal service fund are recorded in a capital projects
fund.

Answer: False

33. The Proprietary Fund Statement of Revenues, Expenses, and Changes in Fund Net
Position must include a performance indicator, such as operating income.

Answer: True

34. GASB requires that the reconciliation of income and cash flows from operations starts
with operating income.

Answer: True

35. FASB requires that the reconciliation of income and cash flows from operations starts
with operating income.

Answer: False

36. The four categories on the Statement of Cash Flows for a proprietary fund are operating,
non-capital financing activities, capital and related financing activities, and investing
activities.

Answer: True

37. An Enterprise Fund has an indefinite life.

Answer: True

38. The Balance Sheet and the Statement of Revenues, Expenditures, and Changes in Fund
Balances are required for Proprietary funds.

Answer: False

39. Proprietary funds are required to have a Statement of Revenues, Expenses, and Change
in Fund Net Position, a Statement of Net Position, but not a Statement of Cash Flows.

Answer: False

107
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 And Nancy giggled that churches weren't much in her line, but she
wouldn't mind a walk.
Then Miles Buchanan bore off Freda Mason, and her two brothers
wrangled for the right to escort Mrs. Farrell, a charming girl, who was
staying with the Warings. The company scattered into couples and
quartettes. Muriel still sat on her log, playing with a strand of long coarse
grass, and hating picnics.
She saw neither the budding woods nor the delicate cream of
primroses upon the banks. She saw only the ignominy of her own
position, and with averted head she dug her fingers into the soft turf as
couple after couple vanished through the trembling curtain of foliage.
She was glad that her mother was not there to see her shame, and yet this
probably only meant a short respite, because Mrs. Waring was certain to
betray, as she had done before, the curious solitude of Mrs. Hammond's
daughter.
From the other side of the abandoned meal she could hear Delia's
careless voice:
"Well, you can lie and smoke in the sun if you like, Godfrey. The
grass is wet, and you are growing fat from idleness, but I don't care. I,
the only Socialist among you, am going to celebrate Primrose Day
properly and pick primroses. Coming too, Muriel?"
No wonder that Delia was unpopular, monopolizing Godfrey all
through lunch, and then abandoning him to smoke his pipe alone. The
sheer wanton waste of it appalled Muriel. She shook her head.
"No, thank you," she said, shivering a little at her courage. To have
gone with Delia would have been to put an end to her misery, but it
would also have been a confession of defeat.
Delia went, and Muriel was left alone upon her log. Bobby Mason,
defeated by his brother in the contest for Mrs. Farrell, was pretending to
do something scientific to the fire, and Mrs. Marshall Gurney was
directing the repacking of the luncheon baskets. She looked round the
clearing, then beckoned Bobby majestically to her side.
"Go and make yourself agreeable to the Hammond girl, for goodness'
sake," she commanded. "We want to hold a committee meeting here."
Muriel could feel the young man approaching her. She guessed why
he had come. She was half crying with shame and weariness.
"Like to see the jolly old church, Miss Hammond?"
Dumbly she nodded. They too went.
The young birches curtsied round them. A delicate earthy scent of
ferns and leaf mould and wet grass rose to their nostrils. Muriel saw and
felt nothing, but she heard Bobby Mason say:
"Been to Burley Woods before, Miss Hammond?"
"No. Have you?"
"Er—no."
There was a pause.
"Going to play golf this year, Miss Hammond?"
"No. I don't think so. Are you?"
"No—er, in the office you know. Men like myself haven't much
time."
"I suppose not."
The silence grew more gloomy.
Muriel rehearsed to herself the coming interview with her mother.
"And what did you do, dear?"
"Oh, I went for a walk to see an old church with Bobby Mason."
"Oh. That was nice, I expect. That boy's coming on, I think. They say
that he's doing very well in his father's office," followed by a swift look
at Muriel's face, and a reflection that the Masons were quite successful
timber merchants even if the boys were reputed to be a little brainless.
Muriel did so much want to make her mother happy.
The silence oppressed them like a heavy weight. It grew fecund with
other silences. They walked through the springing woods.
It was like that all the afternoon.
Then, when they had returned to the clearing and had finished tea,
Delia returned. Godfrey Neale had gone to find her and they appeared
together. Her eyes shone. Her thin cheeks glowed with colour. An elfish,
secretive smile of happiness quivered on her lips, and her hands were full
of primroses and great sprays of beech leaves.
"Did you have a good time?" asked Phyllis Marshall Gurney
wistfully.
Delia nodded. She was standing to eat her tea, for the rest had
finished. A thick slab of cake replaced the primroses, and she and
Godfrey swooped upon the last of the tartlets.
Muriel climbed into the waggonette, and sat still, hating Delia.
Somewhere in the woods that day had lurked happiness and beauty and
gay liberty. Delia, who cared for no one, who was selfish, had been free
to find them. And Godfrey Neale had followed her unsought.
She was talking to him now, softly under cover of the rattling of the
wheels, only Muriel with an effort could hear stray fragments of their
conversation. Delia was scolding him about some girl.
 "My dear Godfrey, you are as tenacious of your rights over a
practical stranger as you are over your own tenants. The girl probably
forgot you months ago."
The carriage jolted on. Bobby smoked moodily. His duty for the day
had been done. Adelaide chatted with her cousin. Delia was talking
again. "You think too much of your unconquerable charm. You won't be
fit to speak to until quite three women have refused to marry you."
Godfrey pulled placidly at his pipe. He appeared to enjoy her
lecturing, as people do who prefer to have their personality criticized
rather than ignored.
Muriel thought that she understood. "They're talking about Clare,"
she said to herself. "And he doesn't know that she's engaged." She felt
glad that she knew something which neither Delia nor Godfrey knew.
She was no longer powerless, but armed. She could, if she would, make
a difference to the lives of these two Olympians. She, Muriel, could one
day say to Godfrey Neale, "Do you know that my friend, Clare
Duquesne, is going to be married?" He would take notice of her then.
She still felt proud, though chilled and stiff, as she climbed out of the
waggonette, and said good-bye to Mrs. Marshall Gurney.
When Delia Vaughan suggested, "I'm going your way. Shall we walk
together?" she answered with indifference, as though she were
accustomed to such offers.
"Well, and how do you like living at Marshington?" asked Delia as
they left the yard.
"Very much, thank you," she answered primly.
"Good, what do you do with yourself all day?"
"I help my mother. We have been very busy with the Nursing Club
lately. And I sew a good deal. And I study music and astronomy."
"Music and astronomy?" The vicar's daughter looked at her in
genuine surprise. "How delightfully mediæval that sounds! But why
astronomy? You can't study it in Marshington properly, can you? Do you
mean it seriously? Are you going to college or somewhere?"
Muriel shook her head. "Oh, no. I could not go away. My mother and
father need me at home. I just do a little reading on my own."
Delia looked wonderingly at her small, secret face. "Look here," she
began, "you can't go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on a
thing, and it's a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no use waiting
till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is a coward's way
of shifting responsibility on to some one else. Reading at Marshington!
It's only a sort of disguise for the futility of life here. I know. I've tried
it."
She was warming up to her favourite topic. Her dark eyes glowed
above the trailing boughs of beech. Muriel, unaccustomed to exhibitions
of strong feeling, looked coldly at her.
"Do you seriously intend to stay here all your life?" asked Delia. "To
wash dishes that the next meal will soil, to arrange flowers that will
wither in a week, to walk in fear and trembling of what Mrs. Marshall
Gurney will say, although you know quite well that she hasn't got the
intelligence to say anything worth saying?"
Intelligence? Muriel remembered how once she had suggested to
Aunt Beatrice that she would like to go to college, and Aunt Beatrice had
replied, "Well, dear, it isn't as if you were as clever as all that, is it?" And
reluctantly Muriel, with the memory of the elusive mathematics prize
before her, had had to admit that she was not as clever as all that.
"We can't all be clever," she said, without much joy in the thought.
"Clever? who said that we all had to be clever? But we have to have
courage. The whole position of woman is what it is to-day, because so
many of us have followed the line of least resistance, and have sat down
placidly in a little provincial town, waiting to get married. No wonder
that the men have thought that this is all that we are good for."
Muriel looked at her with grave distaste. She knew what her mother
had to say about the suffragettes.
"Because I happened to be an idealist," remarked Delia, with the
solemnity of twenty-two addressing eighteen, "Marshington could never
forgive me. It could not forgive me for thinking my education
incomplete unless I sought it beyond the councils of Marshington
matrons. I happened to think that service of humanity was sometimes
more important than respectability. I valued truth more highly than the
conventional courtesies of a provincial town, while Marshington spends
half its time in sparing other people's feelings in order that it may the
more effectually ruin their reputations."
Muriel remembered hearing what Delia had said to Mrs. Cartwright
over the Nursing Club accounts. She felt interested but uncomfortable.
She had never been to a college debating society, and was unaccustomed
to hearing what she called rudeness defended on principle. Also, she
distrusted all this talk, feeling that she could be an idealist, too, without
making so much fuss about it.
"But of course," continued Delia, "women in Marshington are not
expected to have Ideals, only sex."
 Muriel knit her brows. Sex conveyed to her merely a synonym for
gender, masculine, feminine or neuter. She sought for more familiar
ground.
"I certainly am not going to college, because my mother needs me at
home. I am not unhappy here. Some of us have to stay at home. I have
my duty too," she added stiffly.
Delia looked at her, a queer sidelong glance below her long lashes.
Then she laughed a little. "And I am being properly called to order for
pursuing my selfish ambitions while you are following the path of
virtue?"
They had come to the Vicarage gate, and stood below the budding
trees.
"Well, well," smiled Delia, "I hope that you will be happy. I suppose
that it's no good arguing. But for goodness' sake stay with your eyes
open. Remember, there's only one thing that counts for a girl in
Marshington, and that is sex success. Turn and twist how you will, it
comes to that in the end. The whole of this sort of life is arranged round
that one thing. Of course it's an important thing, but it's not the only one.
If that's what you are after, stay by all means, and play the game. But if
you can't play it well, or if you really care for anything else, clear out,
and go before it is too late."
She opened the gate of the Vicarage garden, and stood for a moment
looking down at Muriel.
To her surprise Muriel answered her gravely, with a wistful obstinacy
that stiffened her slim, small figure as though for some great act of
courage.
"It's all right to talk, Miss Vaughan, but we all have to do what we
think right, haven't we? And some of us can't choose. We have to take
life as it comes. I don't see why I shouldn't be doing just as much my
duty here as you where you are." Then, feeling that she was not being
very explicit, she added, "I hope that you will be very happy at
Cambridge."
"Thank you," said Delia with equal gravity. Then quite suddenly she
laughed. "That's the second time you've snubbed me, Muriel, you strange
child. Good-bye. Don't hate me too much."
She held out her hand, then with a flutter of bright green leaves she
had vanished, lithe as a wood nymph, queer, graceful, and confusing.
Muriel walked home, thinking of Clare and Godfrey, Delia and
college, and the meaning of sex-success.
 When she arrived home, she found her mother coming from her
father's room with an empty tray. The happy, satisfied expression that her
face wore rarely transfigured her. She looked charming as a girl when
she smiled at her daughter and said: "Well, dear, did you have a good
time?" And Muriel replied, "Yes, thank you, mother. Bobby Mason took
me to see the old church at Ribbleswaite."
That night she stood before her bedroom window and pulled back the
curtains that Mrs. Hammond liked her to keep drawn. ("It looks so bad,
dear, to see an uncurtained bedroom window. Even if people can't see
anything, they always think that they can.") There were no stars in the
deep sky, but from the darkness of the garden rose the thin and
unmistakable breath of the spring. Muriel stood with outstretched arms
holding back the curtains.
Down there in the valley lay the wonderful, perilous, grown-up
world, holding its carnival of adventure and romance.
She pitied Connie, a child who was still at school.
She pitied Delia, who was, after all, still at college, which was only a
kind of glorified school.
She thought of herself, holding the key to Godfrey Neale's happiness
or sorrow, she alone, who knew that Clare was going to be married. She
was sorry for Godfrey, who, she was sure, had fallen in love with Clare;
but the thought of her power was more exciting to her than pity.
Oh, lovely, rich, full, adventurous life, teeming with experience,
glowing with beauty, hurry, hurry, hurry! Let me come to you and learn
your secret, in your strange carnival of love and tears!
The soft wind fanned her cheeks as though it were the breath of life
itself. She sank upon her knees, holding out her arms to the heavy
darkness of the sky.
Down in the valley, the lights of Marshington winked at her, one by
one.
 BOOK II
MRS. HAMMOND
J , 1914—S , 1915
 XIV
Against the car the wind hurled the challenge of a thousand angry
spears of rain. With blow after blow they assailed the leather hood, only
to break and fall helplessly to the streaming road.
"What a night for a dance," groaned Mrs. Hammond. "If I had known
what it was going to be like, I really shouldn't have come, though I hate
to disappoint you."
But even if she had known, she must still have come, and not only
because she hated to disappoint the girls. For matters at Miller's Rise
were growing desperate. Morning after morning Mrs. Hammond had
come downstairs to find her daughters confronting her like the outward
and visible sign of an inward and spiritual failure, Connie always bored
and restless, Muriel becoming yearly more prim and silent. It was 1914
already, and nothing done. Adelaide Waring's husband at York earned
£2,000 a year. Nancy Cartwright was now Nancy Buchanan, and even
Daisy Parker, as Daisy Weathergay, lived in a little corner house along
the Avenue, and kept a nice little maid, and paid calls, and shopped down
the village street with one of those painted wicker baskets on her arm.
Of course there was Dr. McKissack. Surely, surely he must mean
something. If only one were more certain of Connie. If only that queer,
reckless strain in her nature would not make her do unconventional
things that men disliked. She was so like Arthur, and yet in a woman,
somehow, it did not do to be like Arthur. In the darkness of the car, Mrs.
Hammond's face grew weary, thinking of bitter things. Her troubles were
not confined to the spinsterhood of her daughters.
The car lurched and jolted round a corner into the mean street that
crouched before the Kingsport thoroughfares.
"Muriel, I do wish that you would not tread on my shoe," complained
Connie. "You know that they're my best ones. It isn't as if I could get a
new pair any day."
"I'm sorry. I didn't see."
"No. You never do see. Mother, why can't we have an allowance? I'm
sick of this beastly dependence upon Father. It's all to gratify his vanity.
He'll take us in to Kingsport to buy a rotten hat, like when he bought my
velour before Christmas, and I was simply pining for new furs. It's just to
hear us say thank you, and to feel how generous he is."
"Oh, Connie, I've told you before that I have done my best. Don't let
us start the discussion all over again."
 "It's all very well, but if you'd only let me go on that chicken farm
with Hilda there wouldn't have been any need to discuss it."
"And you wouldn't have been going to a dance to-night either. You
know quite well that you would never have made it pay. We don't want
to start all that again, surely."
They were passing through the main streets now, and the lamps
looked through into the warm stuffiness of the car.
"At any rate," said Mrs. Hammond, calling up her courage, "it is
going to be a nice dance." She had said that so many times. "You did say
that the doctor was coming, didn't you, Connie?"
"He said he might." Connie's manner was off-hand, but in the
darkness her face softened, and her brown eyes glowed with expectation.
She didn't care twopence for the little Scotch doctor, she told herself;
but she was sick, sick, sick of Miller's Rise. She was sick of dressing up
her fine young body, which nobody cared to see. She was sick of living
through the long months of the year all on top of Muriel and her mother,
sick of scenes with her father, because he would neither let her go away
nor give her the allowance that she considered necessary. And she was
sick of her mother's fretful hints and of her father's stupid chaffing. She
was weary of cinema romances, where true love always triumphed. She
was weary of Marshington reality where her school friends and
neighbours smirked at her above their diamond half-hoops, or simpered
at her over piles of trousseau lingerie. At twenty-one she had smiled
when other girls talked about proposals; at twenty-two she had blushed
and answered irritably; at twenty-three she had lied shamelessly and
shrieked her noisy, jolly laugh. At twenty-four she would have no further
need to lie.
She pushed back a curl of springing hair, and tried to imagine
married life with Hugh McKissack. The wind enfolded the car in the
fierce caress of brushing wings, tumultuous as love, as love, thought
Connie. "Love," she whispered to herself, "Love, love, love," as though
by an incantation she could call it to her.
There was a sentence in The Romance of Emmeline by Sylvia
Carlton, that had sung itself into her seeking mind.
". . . And as he approached her, her heart beat faster. In all that
crowded room they were alone. He only took her hand, but his eyes
caressed her, and youth and spring, sweet with laughter, clamorous with
birdsong, leapt from the loneliness to meet them. Their formal greeting
sang like a passionate poem, and in the shadows of her eyes he saw the
amorous darkness of the perfumed night."
 "Hugh McKissack," thought Connie, remembering the way in which
his kind, short-sighted eyes peered through his glasses. Could men ever
make you feel like that? Godfrey Neale, Freddy Mason, Captain
Lancaster whom they had met at Broadstairs. She let a procession of
"possibles" pass through her mind. At least if Hugh loved her he would
take her away. "Let now thy servant depart in peace," thought Connie
foolishly, "according to thy word. For my reproach hath been taken away
from me. . . ." She felt strangely happy and yet urged by a strong desire
to cry.
"Muriel, just see if that window is quite shut. There is such a
draught."
"We're just there," said Muriel, peering through the rain-smeared
glass, and wondering if she would be able to catch Mrs. Cartwright in the
cloak-room to ask about the nursing subscriptions. Muriel's life had
centred largely round the Nursing Club, ever since Mrs. Potter Vallery
had taken up the Fallen Girls' Rescue Work, and Mrs. Hammond had
abandoned the Club for her committee.
"Is there an awning up? I do hope that there is. Where is my bag,
girls?"
The cars crawled forward, spilling their burdens of satin and furs and
gleaming shirt fronts on to the damp red felt below the awning. As the
Hammonds passed, a girl in a rain-soaked hat trimmed with wilting
plumes called from the dingy group watching on the pavement:
"Good evening, Mrs. 'Ammond, 'opes you enjoy yourself!"
"Who was that girl?" asked Muriel, slipping off her cloak.
Her mother frowned. "One of the girls who used to be at St.
Catherine's. They have no business to come and waste their time
watching the people arriving at a dance. We got her into a decent
situation too."
Muriel, who liked to see pretty things herself, thought, "Now that is
just the sort of thing that I should have thought that those girls would
have liked to do." For the streets of Kingsport on a winter evening were
curiously devoid of colour, and the procession of pink and mauve and
lemon-coloured cloaks gleamed like the lights from a revolving lantern
down the pavement.
Connie murmured with a hairpin in her mouth, "What awful cheek."
Being unconventional in her own behaviour at times through lack of self-
control, she had little patience for other people who had suffered from an
aggravation of the same offence. Muriel, whose behaviour was always
scrupulously regulated, had more sympathy to spare for the exceptional.
All the same, she did not know very much about St. Catherine's. Her
mother would never let her go near the Home. It was not nice that
unmarried girls should know about these things. Muriel, whose mind was
singularly incurious, accepted without question the convention that only
substantially married women could safely touch their fallen sisters. Her
mother, Muriel heard, was most zealous in their cause, so firm, so
sensible, so economical upon the House Committee. It had been her
work upon that committee that had brought her to the notice of the
Bishop. There was no doubting her ability. Better leave such work to her,
thought Muriel; yet, as she clasped a bangle over her white glove in the
cloak-room, the girl's eyes haunted her, mocking from the rain. Beyond
this room with its cosy fire, beyond the decorous safety of Miller's Rise,
lay a world of tears and darkness, of sudden joy and hopeless ruin.
Muriel shivered, then followed Connie and her mother from the room. It
was, at least, another world.
In the door-way they met Mrs. Waring, still slim and elegant in pale
grey satin.
"Ah, I'm so glad that you were able to come," she smiled. "And the
girls. How nice; Adelaide has brought a few friends of Sydney's from
York. I must introduce them to you. There's an Eric Fennington and Tony
Barton, such dear boys and devoted to Adelaide. She's so popular in
York, you know. Naughty girl, I tell her that Sydney will be jealous if she
always has a trail of young men following her about. And then, what will
the unmarried girls do if staid matrons like her monopolize all the men?"
Mrs. Hammond smiled gently. "Ah, well, you know. There are still
just a few men left in Marshington. We are not all as adventurous as
Adelaide, going to York. But then, of course, a different generation——"
She glanced across the room to the goodly paunch and receding hair of
Sydney Rutherford, who was earning £2,000 a year and who looked
every penny of it. Then she broke off. "Oh, there is Mrs. Potter Vallery. I
promised to keep her in countenance as the only woman here in a last
year's dress."
Only since her acquaintance with Mrs. Potter Vallery had Mrs.
Hammond dared to say nasty things to the Marshington ladies. The
relief, after so many years of restraint, was immense. She crossed the
room, leaving Mrs. Cartwright, whom Muriel had just released from
contemplation of the Nursing Club, Class A. Subscribers, to keep Mrs.
Waring company near the door.
"Poor Rachel Hammond is growing quite thin, isn't she?"
 "Yes," murmured Mrs. Waring into her fan. "Running after
Honourables is hard work. And then, of course, they say"—Mrs. Waring
dropped her voice—"that Arthur Hammond——" She shrugged her
shoulders.
"Well, poor woman! poor woman! I hope it's not true. I dare say that
she feels Marshington relaxing." Mrs. Cartwright's good humour led her
always to attribute human trouble to the defects of impersonal locality. It
saved her from having to blame people. "I'm sure that I haven't been well
all this winter. I did think of going to Buxton in the spring, but Mrs.
Marshall Gurney says that it didn't do her a scrap of good."
"But I don't think that it was for a change of air so much as a change
of scene that Annabelle went to Buxton."
"Scene?"
"Scene. For Phyllis and for herself. An exclusive view of the Weare
Grange becomes a little tiring after a time. I dare say that Mrs.
Hammond may try for a change soon, but I rather think that she has the
more staying power." Having tried the waiting game herself and
abandoned it, Mrs. Waring felt that she had a right to find amusement in
a contest that had once engaged almost the whole of Marshington, but
which had now, she considered, been reduced to the final round.
Meanwhile, having secured her smile from Mrs. Potter Vallery, Mrs.
Hammond reviewed her daughters' programmes. She had grown
accustomed to these early arrivals, followed by a determined search for
partners, while she shepherded stray young men gently up to her waiting
girls. She did it well, and also contrived to achieve a reputation for
introducing men to other people's daughters; this was one of her more
clever strokes of statesmanship. To-night she felt that her burden might
be easier. For some time things had been working up to a climax. Well, if
Connie went before Muriel, what matter?
"Let me see, Muriel, was it the first waltz or the fifth that you were
going to have with Godfrey Neale? The fifth? That's right. And Connie,
let me see, where was it you said that Dr. McKissack promised to meet
us?"
"He never exactly said," Connie began.
"He's over there, talking to that girl in green. They've just come in,"
said Muriel.
"I expect that he's waiting for us; I'll go and tell him that we've
come." As Mrs. Hammond crossed the room, she was thinking, "Dickie
Weathergay proposed to Daisy at the Tennis Dance . . . Hugh McKissack,
Dr. McKissack, my son-in-law. A very old Scotch family. I only hope
that Connie keeps her hair tidy for once. A doctor. A professional man."
But when the tender smile curved her lips as she approached the young
man, it was because she had thought for a moment of her husband.
Dr. McKissack turned with a slight flush to face her greeting. Being
not entirely shameless, the memory of many Sunday night suppers
oppressed him. But he was a Scotchman, and wanted to marry, and had
no private means, and cold saddle of mutton had been welcome.
"Ah, Mrs. Hammond, good, good. And how are ye? Glad you were
able to come." Seeing her pretty, waiting face, he felt more nervous than
was reasonable. But he was a man of courage. Had he not been, he never
could have enjoyed his saddle of mutton. "I want to introduce you to my
fiancée. I think that you know Miss Hemmingway."
Mrs. Hammond, who did not know the daughter of a retired grocer,
bowed. She even continued to smile. "Of course. I am so pleased to meet
you at last. Naturally I remember having seen you at dances and things
for years, haven't I? But we've never really managed to meet."
She was even able to search out Mrs. Cartwright, and to remark
casually:
"Seen the latest couple? That Hemmingway girl and Dr. McKissack?
He's just told me that they are engaged."
Mrs. Cartwright nodded comfortably. "Yes, it's been coming on for a
long time, I understand. I'm so glad for her sake, poor girl. People
haven't been very nice to her."
"Well, I had never come across her before, but, considering who she
is, I thought that she seemed quite a nice sort of girl. Most suitable, I
think. I know the doctor a little. Used to entertain him when he first came
here."
"Yes. I know how good you always are to the boys," Mrs. Cartwright
said without irony. Because she had a charitable mind, Mrs. Hammond
found her restful; but when she had left the shelter of her disarming
simplicity, and found herself surrounded again by Warings, Parkers and
their friends, her courage almost failed her. She had needed it so often
lately. The infamy of it! The graceless, wicked ingratitude! All that cold
chicken and salmon, and the saddles of mutton. Besides, she had liked
the little man. She had thought that he liked her. She could have sworn
that he liked her. Connie. Her small, tightly gloved hands locked round
her fan. She felt tired and suddenly old; but there could be no respite for
her. Already the orchestra was groaning and wailing before the first
dance. The girls must have partners. Connie must be told without being
upset. It was difficult to tell with Connie. She rather liked to make a
scene, like Arthur, but without his faculty for success. Mrs. Hammond
drew the soft feathers of her fan across her aching forehead, and went
into the ball-room.
Adelaide Rutherford was leading her young men across the floor.
Now if only Connie were sensible and had a fairly full programme, she
might still carry things off. She certainly looked well to-night, and one of
Adelaide's young men from York, while talking to Gertrude Larkinton,
seemed continually to be watching Connie's gay blue dress. Supposing
that Connie, unconscious of the doctor's perfidy, were keeping dances for
him? She must be told, and told quickly. Muriel, who did not mind,
would do it best, but Muriel was talking to Rosie Harpur. That was one
of Muriel's irritating habits. People might begin to think of them
together, as poor Rosie Harpur and poor Muriel Hammond. Failure is so
contagious.
"Muriel, dear, just a moment."
"Yes, Mother?"
"Is she—do you know whether she has been keeping any dance for
Dr. McKissack?"
"Several, I think."
"You've got to tell her, now, that he's engaged to that Hemmingway
girl." Her voice quivered fiercely. "It's disgraceful. Disgraceful."
Muriel's mouth twisted into a small, cold smile. "It's not the first time
that it's happened. Are you surprised?" Being used to these reverses, she
was hardly interested. The little doctor was just one of the many men
who had come to their house, and gone. Then she saw that her mother
had been surprised. Pity as usual froze her to stiff shyness, though she
wanted then to carry Mrs. Hammond away home and kiss her better, for
she had looked for a moment as small and defenceless as a hurt child.
But Mrs. Hammond was not a hurt child. She braced herself for battle.
"We must tell Connie." She had seen the young man from York leave
Gertrude Larkinton to ask Adelaide some question, looking all the time
in the direction of Connie's blue dress. If only Connie could have this
little piece of flattery to soothe her directly she had been told about the
doctor, like a chocolate after the dose, it might just save the situation.
Mrs. Hammond hurried to her daughter.
"Connie, you'll never guess." They must take it lightly. "Such a piece
of news, isn't it, Muriel?"
"Oh, I suppose so. Dr. McKissack and that Hemmingway girl are
going to be married," remarked Muriel without enthusiasm.
 Adelaide was leading the young man across the room. Connie started
and looked up.
"How did you hear?" she asked quickly.
"He told me now. She's here. In the green dress."
They waited for a time that seemed to be years long, while the first
notes of "The Pink Lady" summoned couples from their seats. Then
Connie's shrill laugh rang out.
"So you've only just heard? You know, he told me days ago."
Adelaide was there with her young man.
"Hullo, Addie, how's the world with you?"
"I am very fit, thanks, and I want to introduce you to Mr. Fennington,
or rather, he wants to be introduced to you. He's been pestering me all
the evening."
Adelaide smiled indulgently. Out of her plenty she could afford to
throw an occasional partner to the Hammond girls.
Mrs. Hammond and Muriel withdrew, well pleased.
"No partner for this one, dear? Oh, well, that's that. I wonder why she
never told us, though? She'll be all right this evening, I think. That young
man meant business. And what about you?"
"Oh, I'm all right. Don't worry about me."
What need to worry about her, about anyone? Muriel sat against the
wall, her brooding eyes fixed on the kaleidoscope of colour before her.
Two years ago, she would have smiled uncomfortably over her fan,
pretending to wait for a non-existent partner. But now she was tired of
pretence. The world was like that. There were always some people who
danced and some who sat by the wall, watching until the candles
guttered in their sockets, until the dancers wearied of encircling arms,
until the bleak, grey light peered through the curtained window. Muriel
was just one of those. That was all.
Connie passed, dancing with the young man from York, her red head
high, her eyes bright. Which was Connie, one of the dancers, or one of
those who watched? It was hard to tell about Connie. Nobody might ask
her to dance, and yet, and yet, Muriel could not somehow picture Connie
sitting by the wall. But to go forward on one's own was against the rules
of the game. And never was game more hedged about with rules than
this which women played for contentment or despair.
These were silly thoughts. Nobody was asking Muriel to be
contented or desperate. She was simply being sentimental because the
little Scotch doctor, who was nothing to the Hammonds, had become
engaged. Her next partner, Mr. Mullvaney from the Bank of England,
had come across the room to claim her.
The dance passed much as other dances. Muriel's partners were
scattered but reliable. Connie seemed to be more than usually happy.
Everywhere that Mrs. Hammond looked, she seemed to see the bright
hair and laughing face of her younger daughter. Then, after supper, the
strange thing happened.
Muriel's waltz with Godfrey Neale had come, the waltz that he
unfailingly offered her. Godfrey liked regularity and tradition. They had
waltzed sedately, and now sat on a plush-covered sofa in the corridor,
silent as usual, for they had little enough to say to one another. Even the
excitement of thinking that she really was dancing with Godfrey Neale
had left Muriel. He had been too long the goal of Marshington
maidenhood.
She wished that the passage were not so draughty, and that she did
not feel so dumb.
Suddenly from behind a screen along the passage, rang out a clear,
shrill laugh. A resounding kiss shattered the silence more boldly than a
cannon shot. There followed the sound of a slap—bare flesh on flesh. A
voice called, broken with laughter, "Oh, you naughty boy!"
Muriel and Godfrey sat up. Such things simply did not happen in
Marshington ball-rooms.
Muriel always remembered the stiffening of Godfrey's figure. He
hated so emphatically all that sort of thing. And yet, she herself
shuddered with fear. For she thought that she had recognized the voice.
In another moment the orchestra would play. The next dance would
begin. Probably the couple might emerge from behind the screen. It
couldn't have been Connie. She was sometimes rather silly, but she
would never do a thing like that. All the same, it was not safe to wait
until she was sure.
Muriel never knew whether she ran away because she did not want
Godfrey Neale to know, or because she did not want to know herself.
She always tried to hide unpleasant truths for as long as possible.
"Isn't there rather a draught here?" she asked. "Shall we be strolling
back?"
They went, and Muriel thrust misgivings from her mind.
As she undressed that night, her mother came to her.
"I think that Connie's all right now, don't you?"
The misgivings returned. Had Connie cared?
"Oh, quite all right, I think, mother."
 What business had Muriel with misgivings? Mrs. Hammond was
pitifully tired and needed to be reassured.
"Well, good night, then, dear. We needn't have worried, need we?
Really, I'm very glad that it has turned out like this. He is rather a
commonplace young man."
"Oh, I never thought that there was anything in it."
The memory of Connie's face before she had laughed returned to
Muriel. Yet she could not have cared for him, not Connie, for that little
man.
"Well, then, it all went off very nicely."
"Very. Good night."
The door closed. Her mother's soft slippers padded away down the
passage, and Muriel went to bed. But through the early morning darkness
her thoughts strayed in drowsy confusion, and she saw again the
glittering ball-room, and heard that horrible laugh from behind the
screen, and saw, though she had forgotten them during the curious
evening, the mocking eyes of a girl in the rain-dark street.
 XV
It had all happened so quickly that Muriel found no time to readjust
her thoughts to the hurried sequence of events, Delia's engagement,
Connie's queerness about it, and the invitation to tea at the Vicarage.
"Go by all means," Connie had said. It was a wet day, and she could
not even play golf, and nobody had asked her out, and she was bored. "If
you like to be patronized all over about this Twentieth Century Reform
League, or whatever it is that Delia runs, go by all means. But don't
expect me."
"Didn't Mrs. Cartwright say that he was quite a distinguished man?"
Mrs. Hammond murmured dreamily. It was hard that Delia should not
only have defied Marshington, but have defied it with success, moving
steadily from college to a secretaryship in London, and from this to the
organization of the Twentieth Century Reform League. Mrs. Hammond
could not approve of the Reform League, but she had to admit that the
list of Vice-Presidents impressed her. And now, here was this Martin
Elliott added to Delia's triumphal procession through life. She sighed,
aware that she had never thought before of Delia with such toleration.
The girl might be unpleasant, but she was not negligible. Perhaps Muriel
had been wise to maintain with her that queer, half wistful, half
antagonistic friendship.
"His book, Prosperity and Population, is supposed to have
revolutionized sociology," said Muriel.
"The warden of a slum settlement," Connie sneered. "She's welcome
to him. Still, it's surprising really that she's caught anything. She must be
over thirty, and that skinny figure of hers and then all those stories about
her being a suffragette, and going to prison. It's just the kind of thing that
all nice men hate."
So Connie, in spite of Mrs. Hammond's protests, had refused Delia's
half-smiling invitation to meet Mr. Elliott at tea at the Vicarage, and
Muriel found herself walking down the road alone. She felt strangely
excited, because of the absurd though insistent feeling that there existed
between her and Delia some tie. It was as though Delia in her London
office, looking up from the work which her brilliant, courageous mind
directed, might think of Muriel in Marshington, living her drab
ineffectual life among tea-parties, and nursing accounts and faded
dreams, and might say to herself, "There, but for the grace of God, goes
Delia Vaughan." Most successful people, thought Muriel sadly, have a
shadow somewhere, a personality sharing their desires, and even part of
their ability, but without just the one quality that makes success.
"All the same, I was right," she told herself fiercely. "I had to look
after Mother. I had no choice. It was not my fault, but theirs. People don't
choose."
She stopped to unfasten the bars of the big Vicarage gate. It had been
wet all day, and the garden was musical with the manifold noises of the
rain, of the murmuring runnels through the clean washed pebbles of the
drive, of the ceaseless rustle of water in the branches. All the spring
garden sang with youth and promise. The crocus chalices had
overflowed. Here and there the wind had overturned their brimming
cups, showering their burden to the grass below, in a mystical
communion of earth and rain.
Muriel stood by the gate, listening and looking. As though this were
the last hour that she would look on beauty, she opened her heart eagerly
to scent and sound and colour. The deep significance of the spring
oppressed her. Beyond the sodden trees, a firelit window glowed like a
jewel of warm liquid light. Undoubtedly that was where Delia now sat
with her lover.
Muriel had no part in the silent movement of nature's slow
regeneration. Delia, who had striven in the artificial world of books and
men and jangling rules of government, was now to be akin to wind and
water, obedient to an older law than man's. She had won the best from
both worlds, because she had been selfish. Wise, fortunate, beloved
Delia! Was there no justice in life's scheme of things?
Muriel, who had neither success nor love, nor any great emotion,
moved forward slowly, a small grey figure beneath the dripping trees.
Delia opened the door for her.
"Did you get wet? You must be washed away." She was a new
creature, thought Muriel, gentler, saner, with an indefinable bloom of
happiness that lent to her real charm. "If I had known that you were
going to walk, I should have told that idle creature Godfrey Neale to call
for you with his car."
"Father does not like us to use our car when it's wet. I did not know
that Godfrey Neale was coming." She had not met him since that dance
in Kingsport when the girl had laughed. She did not want to meet him
now, when she had intended to forget everything except her sympathy
with Delia's happiness.
They entered the comfortable, book-lined room, splashed with liquid
firelight. The chairs and tables and people seemed to float as in a fiery
sea. She could see nothing clearly until Delia followed her with a lamp.
"Father, Martin, Miss Hammond. Muriel, this is Martin. Godfrey
Neale you know."
The room seemed to be full of books, tea-cups, and men. Mr.
Vaughan smiled blandly through his spectacles. Godfrey rose and bowed
beautifully. Then Muriel found herself shaking hands with Martin Elliott.
He was not at all as she had expected him to be, ironic, lean and
scholarly. She stared openly at the short, stocky man, dressed like the
shabbier kind of farmer, and smiling at her from a broad humorous face.
His untidy hair stood up on end, his tie was crooked, giving a curious
effect below his unexpectedly pugnacious mouth and chin, so that he
always looked as though he had just emerged from a street row, which
indeed, more frequently than most people, he had. Altogether the effect
of him was so surprising that Muriel forgot her manners.
He bore her scrutiny for a moment. Then he turned to Delia.
"Delia, she doesn't like me. She doesn't like me a bit."
"I'm not surprised. You look like a perfect hooligan. Have you been
arguing with Father again? Muriel, don't mind them. Clear some books
off that seat and sit down."
"But I do like him," exploded Muriel, not sitting down, because she
found nowhere to sit, except a pile of formidable looking volumes
crowned by an ink-pot.
"Delia, you are a shocking hostess," remarked the vicar mildly,
handing Muriel his own plate and a half-eaten scone with the well-
intentioned vagueness that characterized his dealings with all such
mundane objects as tea-things and collar-studs.
"Sorry, Muriel. It's all right, Father." Delia quietly transferred the
scone to its rightful owner, cleared a seat for Muriel and passed her a
clean plate. "Muriel's used to me. I scandalized her years ago, when I
told her that she was wasted in Marshington, and she came prepared for
an uncomfortable afternoon."
"My dear, how arrogant of you to say such things to Miss
Hammond," reproved the vicar, stirring his tea absently. "That's so like
all these strenuous young people who call themselves reformers, isn't it,
Neale? They think all activity except their own a waste of time. They
forget that if every one thought as they did, they would be out of work."
"Think, think!" cried Delia, laughing. "We don't expect them to think
at all. That would be hoping for too much."
"Delia wants to teach people so many things," continued the vicar
calmly. "She is certain that human nature can be rendered perfectible by
parliamentary institutions. I am an old man. And I have written three
standard textbooks upon parliamentary institutions. And I should hesitate
to put into the minds of my parishioners anything but some simple and
final expression of wisdom like the Gospels."
"Of course you are right as far as you go, sir," broke in Martin Elliott,
obviously resuming some hot but interrupted argument. "My contention
was simply that in a district like the Brady Street area in Bethnal Green
people cannot understand the Gospels; and in a case like that to sell all
that you have and give it to the poor simply is unsound economics. Don't
you agree with me, Neale?"
"I'm afraid it's not much in my line." Godfrey was sitting upright in
his chair, glowering a little, as he always did if the conversation passed
beyond his sphere of interest.
"Muriel is the person to argue with on economics—and on morals,"
interposed Delia. "Try her, Martin. She has the mind of a mathematician.
She ought to have been on the staff of the Statistician instead of giving
sewing-classes in Marshington."
Martin Elliott crossed to Muriel's side. "How much am I to take
seriously from that madwoman? Do you really take sewing-classes? I
think that must be rather interesting, because all teaching is rather fun, I
think, don't you? If only one's pupils are kind to one; but sewing must be
more satisfactory than most things, because you can actually see the
work growing under your fingers."
"I know what you mean. But I don't really do much sewing."
"You read then?"
"Not much now. I used to, but the books in the Kingsport libraries are
all so much alike, and one gets out of the way of ordering other things."
She spoke diffidently. It was incredible that a man should really want
to talk to her about herself. Men talked about motors, or their own
insides, or hunting.
Martin Elliott smiled at her. "Have you found that too? Don't you
think about the books in most circulating libraries that they are nearly all
the wrong way round. Short stories with happy endings and long stories
with sad ones. Quite wrong."
"Why that?"
"Ah, surely the short story should end with tragedy, for only sorrow
swoops upon you with a sudden blow. But happiness is built up from
long years of small delightful things. You can't put them into a short
story."
 It was true. Muriel looked across at Delia sitting by the tea-table in
her red dress. She thought, "This is what he means. Years of sitting by
Delia in a firelit room full of books and talking pleasant nonsense.
Friends who know what you mean and speak your own language. Rain-
washed gardens when the birds call. Work that's fine and hard and
reaches somewhere. Marriage, such as theirs will be. Children, perhaps,
and laughter that they share. You can't put all those into a short story."
She felt cold and dull, shut out from a world of small delightful
things. She made no answer, sitting with her chin on her hand, while the
talk flowed round her, talk of books, and socialism, and plays, and
people that they knew, and what you ought to take on a walking tour, and
whether Sir Rabindranath Tagore should have won the Nobel prize, and
school care committees. (They weren't really any use, Mr. Vaughan said.)
And all the time she felt herself being drawn to Martin Elliott by
surprised delight. She was at home at last, among people who spoke her
own language, even though the things of which they spoke were strange.
She felt as though after many years she had returned to her own country.
But she never spoke.
Then she became aware that her thoughts had slipped away from the
conversation altogether, and that Delia was teasing Godfrey, and that he
was protesting, half uncomfortable, half amused, because he could never
become really angry with the vicar's daughter.
"Now, look here, D—Delia. That's not true."
An impish spirit had seized upon Delia.
"Oh, yes, it is, isn't it, Muriel? Godfrey's never yet proposed to any
girl because he knows that he'd be accepted, and if he had to marry that
would upset his habits. Godfrey dear, you don't realize how much you
hate to be upset."
"You know t—that's untrue."
"No, no, no. You're afraid that you won't be able to afford both a wife
and hunters, and you prefer the hunters. Martin, Godfrey is one of those
people who pretend to cultivate the earth in order that they may destroy
its creatures. He is that odious relic of barbarism, a sporting farmer."
"I—I'm not a farmer," stammered Godfrey.
It was a shame, thought Muriel. Delia had no right to tease him so.
How he must hate being chaffed in front of her.
"Then if you aren't a farmer, you are simply a social parasite, and
your existence would not be tolerated in any ordinary, sane society. Oh, I
don't mean that you aren't very much tolerated to-day, because this
society is neither ordinary nor sane. But when Martin and I and the
Twentieth Century Reform League have been at work for a score of
years or so, say seventy-five . . ."
She rattled on, foolishly, happily, teasing him with the kindest smile
in the world on her thin face. But Godfrey was not happy. His sense of
humour had become atrophied from want of use. He did not understand
Delia's fooling, and to him the incomprehensible was the unpleasant. He
passed from boredom to indignation, and yet felt too much his old debt
of friendship to show indignation before Delia's lover. He was not going
to have the fellow think him jealous.
Muriel watched him and, as she watched, she too grew indignant
with Delia. It was unlike the vicar's daughter to go so far, but she had
always said that Godfrey needed teasing. All the same, it wasn't fair. She
took him at a disadvantage, and he really hated it. Muriel leaned forward,
quiet but resourceful.
"Delia," she interposed unexpectedly, "I do wish you'd tell me, for
we hear nothing up here, what do they really think in London about the
Irish Question?"
Now Godfrey really did know something about the Irish Question.
He had once been asked to stand as the Conservative member for the
Leame Valley Division, and although he had rejected the offer, as he
always rejected the unknown at this time, yet a faintly political flavour
still clung to his mental palate.
He drew a deep breath, like a diver emerging from the sea, then,
slowly, with solemnity, he began to contradict Delia's picturesque but
unorthodox opinion on the Irish Question.
Not, however, until he was seated again in his small covered car
driving back to the Weare Grange did he recover his usual composure.
Muriel had been tucked in at his side by Delia, to be dropped at the gates
of Miller's Rise. The familiar feel of brakes and wheel, and the smooth
running of the little car, reminded Godfrey that there was a sane and
ordinary world in which to live. He sighed comfortably.
"I don't think that that fellow Elliott has improved Delia much. She
tries to show off a bit, I think."
"Oh, no. It isn't that. She's just happy, and when Delia's happy she
talks nonsense."
"All very well for her to be happy at other people's expense,"
Godfrey grumbled. He was enjoying himself now. The car responded to
his touch, and the Hammond girl responded to his mood. The world was
all right.
 "Oh, I know that she teases. But one doesn't mind, because you know
all the time what a splendid person she is. I do hope that Mr. Elliott will
make her happy. But I think that he will."
Godfrey liked girls who stuck up for one another. She had her wits
about her too, the little mouse of a thing. The Irish Question! He had
given Delia as good as she gave about the Irish Question. Delia was a
clever woman, but when women got on to politics it just showed. Now
Muriel Hammond showed her good sense by keeping quiet when there
was a subject which she did not understand. On the whole, he liked quiet
girls. Besides, there was another reason why he should feel rather
tenderly towards Muriel Hammond.
"You've not been to see us for a long time," he said.
"No. It is a long time," said Muriel dreamily, thinking of Martin
Elliott, and what life might be like, if one could meet such men as he.
"Not since that time Clare stayed with us, and Connie tried to ride your
horse, and it ran away with her."
"No." The car jerked forward under Godfrey's hands. He did
remember, ah, how he remembered, the turn of her head, the laughter in
her eyes, her clear, triumphant voice. "Yes. I remember, of course. Clare
Duquesne." He liked to say her name again. "By Jove, what years ago,
and what kids we were!" He turned the car carefully in to the winding,
elm-shadowed drive of Miller's Rise. "Do you ever hear from her now, at
all?"
"No. I haven't heard for years. She married, you know. A Spaniard.
They went to live in South America. I have not heard since, but I should
think that the life there would suit her. She loved warmth and sunshine
and gaiety. He was rich, I believe, and musical too. I don't know much
more, but I should think that she would be happy. You somehow can't
imagine Clare unhappy."
"No. You can't." He was bringing the car to the circle of gravel
before the door. She could not see his face, but something told her that he
had been profoundly moved. She became immensely sorry for him and
yet glad that he had loved Clare, glad that he had not forgotten. His
faithfulness belonged to her romantic dreams of him, when she had been
a child, and had worshipped with the rest of Marshington. "If by any
chance you should see her again, or be writing," he said very slowly,
trying to control his stammer, "you might remember me to her, and say
that I—I hope that she's very happy."
The car had stopped before the pillars of the porch. Muriel
unwrapped herself from the rugs.
 "If I ever am writing, I will," she said. "Thank you for the ride. The
car runs beautifully."
"Yes, she's not a bad old perambulator, is she? Are you keen on cars?
Would you care to come out for a spin in her in better weather?"
"Thank you. I should like it very much."
It was the first time that a man had asked her to come for a ride in his
car. She felt the occasion to be immense.
As they shook hands in the rain, he held her small glove for just the
fraction of an inch longer than was necessary. She forgot to ask if he
would care to come inside.
"Good-bye, and thank you."
"So long, and we must fix up a day for a run, a fine day."
She passed into the house.
"Well, dear," said Mrs. Hammond, "did you have a nice party?"
"Yes."
"You're back early, aren't you? Did I hear a car just now?"
"Yes. Godfrey Neale brought me back."
"Oh." Mrs. Hammond smiled. She was tired, and the day had been
difficult for many reasons. Muriel knew this. She felt the passion of
admiring pity for her mother, which was always her strongest emotion
over any person.
"He has asked me to go for a ride in his new car, some day soon," she
remarked indifferently.
Mrs. Hammond threaded the needle that she was holding.
"Well, dear, that will be nice, won't it?" was all that she said, but as
Muriel turned to leave the room she looked at her, and for a moment they
waited, smiling a little at each other.
 XVI
The War came to Marshington with the bewildering irrelevance of all
great catastrophes. It came also at a most upsetting time for Mrs.
Hammond. Really, it was vexatious when everything was just going so
nicely. Connie had settled down with quite good grace to the prospect of
calling upon Mrs. McKissack, née Hemmingway. Two visits to old
school friends at Buxton and Harrogate had sufficed to cure her wounded
vanity. As for Muriel, of course it was too early to say anything definite,
but Mrs. Hammond had confided in poor Beatrice that really, you know,
Godfrey Neale was showing her an uncommon amount of attention. Ever
since April, or was it March? those motor rides, that party at the Weare
Grange, all spoke of possibilities.
"After all, he is really quite young yet, only about thirty. And with
his temperament and his social position he would naturally go slowly.
That was the mistake that Mrs. Marshall Gurney made. She would hurry
him, and he grew frightened. By the way, I hear that she is taking Phyllis
to Germany to learn music or something. Very wise, I think."
Aunt Beatrice nodded, approving Mrs. Marshall Gurney's double
wisdom. Music was a sovereign remedy for broken hearts, and foreign
travel would add distinction to an already pretty and taking girl. Her
absence, however, would leave the field clear for Mrs. Hammond, by a
process of elimination. Well, that did not show that she was stupid, but
only that she knew when she had been fairly beaten. Rachel had been
wonderful again, but then Rachel always was. It was impossible to
believe that in the end she ever could be beaten.
And then the War came, right into the very middle of the tennis
tournament.
Of course, as it happened, the tournament was not going to be quite
such an event as usual, for Godfrey Neale had gone camping with the
Territorials at Kaling Moor, and Connie had sprained her wrist and could
not play. But still it was the Annual Tennis Tournament and that was no
small thing.
The day after it had opened was the 3rd of August, and people began
to feel uneasy. Just as the Hammonds were preparing for supper, Mr.
Hammond rang up from Kingsport to say that he was waiting for the last
train to pick up any more news that might be coming through.
"Particularly trying of him to-night," said his wife, "because I've got such
a nice little duck." After all, every one knew that nothing really would
happen. There had been scares before.
The evening was close and, even up at Miller's Rise, oppressive.
"Wouldn't it be rather nice to walk down to the village after supper
and see if we could buy a paper?"
So, after supper, they went.
Aunt Beatrice said that she never had liked Germans, so stuffy, that
sleeping with the feather beds on top of them, and then the way they
bought all that cooked meat and sausage stuff at shops.
All the way down to the village, she said that she had always known
that the Parkers' German governess had been a spy.
The village street was strangely unfamiliar in the half light of the
summer evening. Unexpected shadows and whisperings moved and
rustled in the quiet air. Little knots of people stood round the open
doorways of shops that should have been shut long ago. Noises, from
down the road, the horn of a motor-car, the call of children at their play,
broke in upon the stillness. With significant reiteration, a dog in a far-off
farm-house barked persistently.
"Go into the Ackroyds', Muriel, and see if you can get an evening
paper. I want to talk to Mrs. Cartwright. There's that bazaar on the 4th."
The paper shop was small and very crowded. It smelt of paraffin
from the swinging lamp above the counter. Muriel watched two great
moths flapping with unbelievable clumsiness against its flyblown globe.
She pushed her way to the counter. The proprietor, a meek little man
with a fierce black moustache, stood shaking his head nervously. "The
ultimatum expires to-night at midnight," he said hoarsely. "That's a very
serious thing. A very serious thing." Then he saw Muriel. "Good
evening, Miss Hammond."
"Have you any papers left?"
"I'm sorry, miss, I'm very sorry. I always like to oblige anyone from
Miller's Rise. You might get one at the station perhaps."
He bobbed with forlorn little curtsies, pulling at his moustache,
apologizing for the inconvenience of a European situation for which he,
as the agent through which Marshington must see the world, felt a
personal responsibility.
"Oh, well." Muriel turned to go.
An old woman in a man's cap, who for some inexplicable reason had
planted herself on a chair by the counter, looked up at her.
"War's bloody hell," she remarked mildly. "Ah'm telling you God's
truth. Two o' my lads went i' South Africa. Bloody hell. That's what it
is."
She rose and hiccoughed unsteadily from the shop, the little crowd
making way for her ungainly figure.
Unaccountably stirred by this brief encounter, Muriel left the shop,
her mind wounded and yet quickened by the old woman's words. It was
as though in her obscenity, she had been a foretaste of something to
come, something sinister and violent.
The village street lay wrapped in the grey twilight of a dream.
Bloody hell. Bloody hell. She saw the hell of a child's picture book,
gleaming with livid flame. The blood smell faintly nauseating, like a
butcher's shop on a hot day. Across the road, Connie and her mother
talked to Mrs. Cartwright. "It's all over the village," Mrs. Cartwright was
saying. "Mr. Marshall Gurney has telegraphed, and telegraphed, and can't
get any answer through. They say that he is nearly mad with anxiety. If
the war is declared against us, they're sure to be murdered."
"Nonsense," said Mrs. Hammond. "You don't murder people
nowadays, even if there is a war on. The Marshall Gurneys will be all
right, though I always did say that it was a mistake to go off abroad like
that. It doesn't somehow belong to those kind of people."
Muriel looked at the four of them, and at their eager absorbed faces
as they talked about the Marshall Gurneys. Yet somehow she felt as
though her mother were not anxious so much as jealous, jealous because
it was Mrs. Marshall Gurney and not herself who was enjoying the
unique distinction of becoming involved in a European crisis. That
Kaiser, whom every one in England was reviling, might turn Mrs.
Marshall Gurney's failure into victory.
 XVII
Mrs. Hammond was right.
The ultimatum expired. Great Britain and Germany assumed a state
of war; and the Marshall Gurneys, miraculously unmurdered, returned to
Marshington in triumph. The news of their escape through Switzerland
outrivalled, at hurried and informal tea-parties, the problem of food
shortage, the departure of the Territorials to join the camp near
Scarborough, and the possibility of a German invasion. It was even
rumoured that Phyllis had received a letter from Godfrey Neale
congratulating her upon their escape, and that she, with the glamour of
adventure like a bloom upon her youth, might yet warm up the tepid
interest that her charms had once inspired.
After a spring and summer of reviving hope, Mrs. Hammond found
herself facing the autumn of 1914 from much the same position as she
had faced it in 1913.
Oh, when one was young and success was one's own to make or lose,
then life was easy! But for a wife and mother whose success depended
upon other people, then came the heart-breaking years. Of course the
War must be over soon, and things would settle down to their normal
condition, but meanwhile it was hard to see Mrs. Marshall Gurney
becoming President of the Belgian Refugee Committee, while Phyllis,
who had nothing like Muriel's ability for handling figures, was made
treasurer of the Junior Red Cross Association, and went daily into
Kingsport in her becoming uniform.
At the end of November they stood in the gloom of the unlit station,
watching the 5th Yorkshire Guards entrain for Aldershot—well, if it was
not Aldershot, it was somewhere in the South and so much nearer to the
German guns. There was no particular reason why the Hammonds
should have gone to see them. They knew no one besides Dickie
Weathergay, Daisy's husband, and the station was cold and draughty. Mr.
Hammond had stayed in late at the Kingsport Club as usual, but Mrs.
Hammond was determinedly patriotic. In spite of discomfort she stood
now with her girls among a crowd of curious, laden figures, distorted by
their burdens out of all semblance to the human form. It was the world of
a dream, when even the corporeal presence of such everyday people as
Dr. and Mrs. Parker and Colonel Cartwright became part of a dim and
dreamlike darkness. The crowd shuffled and jolted, appearing
unexpectedly from the dense shadows into a circle of faint lamplight that
flickered intermittently on bayonets and badges.
Mrs. Hammond was suffering from indigestion, the result of
fragmentary and scrambled meals. The meals at Miller's Rise had not
been hurried because nobody had time to eat them slowly, but because it
hardly seemed to be patriotic in those days to sit down comfortably to
enjoy them. Mrs. Hammond, dreading the secret murmurings about her
husband, dreading the pity which could destroy more effectively than
enmity the position which she had won, determined to kill pity by
admiration for her patriotism. She stood in the darkness, while passing
soldiers lurched into her, and knocked sideways her fur-trimmed toque.
This must all be endured as part of the campaign. She felt her courage,
born from her supreme passion, riding triumphantly above fatigue and
pain.
"It would be nice if there were somewhere to sit down," she
murmured, but without complaint. "Is that Daisy over there?"
Muriel, who had been standing all day in the newly instituted Red
Cross Depot, shifted her weight from one aching foot to the other, and
remarked:
"I'm so sorry. There are no seats," as though it were her fault. She
added, "Yes, that's Daisy, in the blue cloak."
Daisy Weathergay stood just within the circle of lamplight. She was
not travelling South with her husband because her baby was expected in
December, but she had come to the station to say good-bye to him, and
stood beside the 1st class carriage. Her small, flower-like face was
upturned. Her close-fitting hat shaded her eyes, but the light fell on her
soft little nose, and the sensitive outline of the mouth and chin.
"Isn't she splendid?" murmured little Miss Dale, who had burrowed
her way to Muriel's side through the crowd like a small mole. "So brave!
Not a tear! Like all these splendid, heroic women, whom one reads about
in the papers. I never knew what it was to be so proud of my country
before."
The wind uplifted for a moment Daisy's brave, blue cloak. She
seemed to float, borne high upon a wave of heroism. Dickie's red,
comely face leaned towards her from the carriage window.
"A symbol of Womanhood," murmured Miss Dale tearfully.
The whistle blew. A feeble, fragmentary cheer rose from the
watchers on the platform as the train moved slowly, cleaving a line
between the moving faces at the windows, and the crowd that stood
below. And still Daisy waited, her small figure bent sturdily against the