Complete Short Stories (VMC) Read Online Free

that from the interest she takes in your clothes, for instance.’ This was true, had puzzled Hester and now was made to shame her.
    Muriel opened the door suddenly upon this scene of tears and sherry. Hester, to hide her face, turned aside and put up her hand to smooth her hair.
    ‘Miss Graveney’s address,’ Muriel said. She stood stiffly in front of Robert’s desk while he searched through a file. She did not glance at Hester and held her hand out to take the address from Robert before he could bring it from the drawer.
    ‘Thank you, dear!’ She spoke in her delicately amused voice, nodded slightly and left the room.
    Outside, she began to tremble violently. Misery split her in two – one Muriel going upstairs in fear and anger, and another Muriel going beside her, whispering: ‘Quiet! Be calm. Think later.’
    Hester, with her new trimness, was less touching. She lost part of the appeal of youth – the advantage Muriel could not challenge – and won instead an uncertain sophistication – an unstable elegance, which only underlined how much cleverer Muriel was at the same game.
    Muriel’s cleverness, however, could not overcome the pain she felt. She held the reins, but could barely keep her hands from trembling. Her patience was formidable. Robert had always remarked upon it since the day he had watched her at work upon her own wedding cake. There were many things in her life which no one could do as well as she, and her wedding cake was one of them. She had spent hours at the icing – at hair-fine lattice-work, at roses and rosettes, swags and garlands, conch-shells and cornucopias. She had made of it a great work of art, and with a similar industry, which Robert only half-discerned and Hester did not discern at all, she now worked at what seemed to her the battle for her marriage.
    Conceived at the moment of meeting Hester, the strategy was based on implanting in the girl her own – Muriel’s – standards, so that every successthat Hester had would seem one in the image of the older woman, and every action bring Muriel herself to mind. Patience, tolerance, coolness, amusement were parts of the plan, and when she had suddenly said: ‘Of course you are in love with Robert,’ she had waited to say it for days. It was no abrupt cry of exasperation, but a piece of the design she had worked out.
    Before Hester could reply, Muriel stressed the triviality of such a love by going on at once to other things. ‘If I were a young girl again I should have a dark dress made, like a Bluecoat Boy’s – a high neck and buttoned front, leather belt, huge, boyish pockets hidden somewhere in the skirt. How nice if one could wear yellow stockings too!’
    She rested her hand on her tapestry-frame and forced herself to meet Hester’s eyes, her own eyes veiled and narrowed, as if she were considering how the girl would look in such a dress.
    Hester’s glance, as so often in the innocent party, wavered first. She had no occupation to help her and stared down at her clasped hands.
    Muriel began once more to pass the needle through the canvas. Diligently, week by week, the tapestry roses blossomed in grey and white and blood-colour.
    ‘Don’t you think?’ she asked.
    She swung the frame round and examined the back of the canvas. It was perfectly neat. She sat sideways in her chair, with the frame-stand drawn up at one angle. Her full skirt touched the carpet – pink on crimson.
    ‘Why do you say that?’ Hester asked. ‘What makes you say it?’ She sounded as if she might faint.
    ‘Say what?’
    ‘About Robert.’ Her lips moved clumsily over the name as if they were stung by it, and swollen.
    ‘Robert? Oh, yes! Don’t fuss, dear girl. At your age one has to be in love with someone, and Robert does very well for the time being. Perhaps at
every
age one has to be in love with someone, but when one is young it is difficult to decide whom. Later one becomes more stable. I fell in love with all sorts of unsuitable