She continued: "Well, then, I think it's a mistake to play on the child's emotions as you do; Joan's not so staid and quiet as she seems. You may not realize how deeply she feels things, but she feels them horribly deeply—when you do them. I've watched you together and I know. You've done it for years, Mrs. Ogden, perhaps unconsciously, I don't know, but for years Joan has had a constant strain on her emotions. She loves you in the only way that Joan knows how to love, that is with every ounce of herself; there aren't any half tones about Joan, she sees things black or white but never grey, and I think, I feel, that she loves you too much. Oh, I know that what I'm saying must seem inexcusable, perhaps even ridiculous, but that's just it: I think Joan loves you too much. I think that underneath her quiet outside there is something very big and rather dangerous; an almost abnormally developed capacity for affection, and I think that it is this on which you play without cease, day in and day out. I feel as if you were always poking the fire, feeding it, blowing it until it's red hot, and I can't think it's right, Mrs. Ogden, that's all; I think it will be Joan's ruin."
"Elizabeth!"
"Wait, Imustspeak. Joan is brilliant, you know that she's brilliant, and that she ought to do something with her life. You must surely feel that she can't stay here in Seabourne for ever? She must—oh! if I could only find the right words—she must fulfil herself in some way—either marriage or work, at all events some interest outside of and beyond you. She's consuming herself even now, and what will she do later on? Yet, how can she come to fruition if she's drained dry before she begins to live at all? I don't know how I dare to speak to you like this, but I want your help. Joan is such splendid material; don't let her worry about you as she does, don't let her see that you are not a happy woman, don't let herspendherself on you!"
She paused, her knees shook a little, she felt that in another moment she would begin to cry, and emotions with her came hard.
Mrs. Ogden blanched. So it had come at last! This was what she had always known would happen; Elizabeth had dared to criticize her handling of Joan. She felt a blind rage towards her, a sudden longing to strike her. The barriers went down with a crash, primitive invectives sprang to her lips and she barely checked them in time. She choked.
"You dare to say this, Elizabeth?"
"I love Joan."
"What!"
"I love Joan, and I must save her, Mrs. Ogden."
"You? How dare you suggest that the child is more to you than she is to me; do you realize what Joan means to me?"
"Yes, it's because I do realize it——"
"Then be silent."
"I dare not."
Mrs. Ogden stamped her foot. "Youshallbe silent. And understand, please, that you will leave us when your notice expires; but in the meantime you will not interfere again between Joan and me, I will not tolerate it! I refuse to tolerate it!" She burst into a violent fit of weeping.
Elizabeth grew calm at the sight of her tears. "I am going to ask you to reconsider your decision to dismiss me," she said. "I want to go on teaching Joan, I shall not accept my notice to leave unless you give it me again, which I hope for my sake you will not do; what I have said, I have said from a conviction that it was my duty to speak plainly." Then she played skilfully in self-defence. "You see, Joan simply adores you."
Mrs. Ogden sobbed more quietly and became attentive. Elizabeth pressed her advantage home; she could not endure to lose Joan, and she didn't intend to lose her.
"Can't you see that Joan's love for you is no ordinary thing, that it's the biggest thing about her, that it is her, and that's why everything you do or say, however unintentional, plays on her feelings to an abnormal extent?"
Mrs. Ogden drew herself up. "I hope," she said stiffly, "that I'm quite capable of judging the depth of my child's affection. But I shall have to think over your request to remain with us, Elizabeth. I hardly think——" she paused.
"I am anxious to stay," said Elizabeth simply.
"Whether you stay or go, I consider that you owe me an apology."
"I'll give it very gladly, for a great deal that I've said must have seemed to you unwarrantable," Elizabeth replied.
Mrs. Ogden was silent. She longed to tell Elizabeth to go now at once, but her rage was subsiding. Colonel Ogden was still ill and governesses were not to be found easily or cheaply in Seabourne, at least not with Elizabeth's qualifications. There were many things to consider, so many that they rushed in upon her, submerging her mind in a tide of difficulties—perhaps, after all, she would accept the apology for the moment, and bide her time, but forgive Elizabeth?Never!
Elizabeth left the room. "She won't dismiss me," she thought, "I'm cheap, and she won't find anyone else to take my post at my salary; but I shall have to be more careful in future, it won't do to play with cards on the table. I behaved like an impetuous fool this afternoon. What is it about Joan that makes a fool of one? I shall stop on here until Joan breaks free—I must help her to break free when the time comes."
That night when the doctor called to see the colonel, Mrs. Ogden asked him to examine Joan.
"My governess is rather inclined to overwork the child," she told him, "but I don't think you will find much wrong with her."
Joan, dutifully stripping to the waist, was sounded and pronounced by the doctor to be in practically normal health. Too thin and a little anæmic, perhaps, and the heart action just a little nervous, but Mrs. Ogden was assured that she had no grounds for anxiety. The doctor advised less study and more open air; he patted Joan's shoulder and remarked comfortingly that he only wished all his patients were such healthy specimens. Then he gave her a mild nerve tonic, told her to eat well and go to bed early, shook hands cordially with Mrs. Ogden and departed.
COLONEL OGDEN was convalescent.
Every morning now when it was fine he went out in a bath chair, dragged by a very old man. The dreadful bend of the old man's shoulders as he tugged weakly with his hands behind him, struck Joan as an outrage. The old man shuffled too, he never seemed able to quite lift his feet; she wondered how many pairs of cheap boots he wore out in the year. It was the starting of the bath chair that was particularly horrible, the first strain; after that it went more easily. Muffled to the eyes and swathed in rugs, his feet planted firmly on the footstool, his hat jammed on vindictively, Colonel Ogden sat like a statue of outraged dignity, the ridiculous leather apron buttoned over his knees. Above his muffler his small blue eyes tried hard to glare in the old way, but the fire had gone out of them, and his voice coming weakly through the folds of his scarf, had already acquired the irritable whine of the invalid. Mrs. Ogden would stand, fussy and solicitous, on the steps to see him off, sometimes she would accompany him up and down the esplanade, adjusting his cushion, tucking in his rug, inquiring with forced solicitude whether he felt the wind cold, whether his chest ached, whether his heart was troublesome. The colonel endured, puffing out his cheeks from time to time as though an explosion were imminent, but it never came, or at least if it did come it was such a melancholy ghost of its former self as to be almost unrecognizable. And very deaf, a little rheumy in the eyes, and terribly bent in the back, the old bath-chair man tugged and tugged with his head shot forward at a tortoise-like angle, the dirty seams standing out on the back of his neck.
But though Colonel Ogden required a great deal of attention now that the nurse was gone, his wife's immediate anxiety regarding him was relieved, which gave her the time to brood constantly over Joan. The girl was seldom from her thoughts, she began to loom even larger than she had done before in her mother's life, to appear ten times more valuable and more desirable, now that Mrs. Ogden felt that a serious rival had declared herself. Elizabeth's words burnt and rankled; she rehearsed the scene with the governess many times a day in her mind and went to sleep with it at nights. She felt Elizabeth's personality to be well-nigh unendurable; she could never look at her now without remembering the grudge which she must always bear her, though a veneer of civility was absolutely necessary, for she did not intend to lose her just yet. She told herself that she kept her because she was still too tired to look for a successor, who must be found as soon as she recovered from the strain of the colonel's illness; but in her heart of hearts she knew that this was not her reason—she knew that she kept her because she was afraid of the stimulus to Joan's affection for Elizabeth that might result from an unconsidered action on her part. She was afraid to let Elizabeth go and afraid to let her stay, afraid of Elizabeth and mortally afraid of Joan.
She watched the girl with ever increasing suspicion, and what she saw convinced her that she was less responsive than she used to be. Joan had grown more silent and more difficult to understand. Now, the mother and daughter found very little to say to each other; when they were together their endearments were strained like those of people with a guilty secret. Yet even now there were moments when the mother thought that she recognized the old Joan in the almost exasperated flood of affection that would be poured out upon her. But she was not satisfied; these moments were of fleeting duration, spoilt by uncertainty, by lack of comprehension. There was something almost tragic about these two at this time, bound together as they were by a subtle and unrecognized tie, struggling to find each for herself and for the other some compensation, some fulfilment. But if Mrs. Ogden was deceived, even for a moment, her daughter was not. Joan knew that they never found what they sought and never would find it now, any more. She could not reason it out, she had nothing wherewith to reason, she was too young to rely on anything but instinct, but that told her the truth.
The Horror was still with her; she wanted to love Mrs. Ogden, she felt empty and disconsolate without that love. She longed to feel the old quick response when her mother bent towards her, the old perpetual romance of her vicinity. She was like a drug-taker from whom all stimulant has been suddenly removed; the craving was unendurable, dangerous alike to body and mind.
Now began a period of petty irritations, petty tyrannies and miseries. Mrs. Ogden watched! She was gentle and overtired and pathetic, but oh! so terribly watchful. Joan could feel her watching, watching her, watching Elizabeth. Things happened, only the merest trifles, yet they counted. One day it was a hat, another a pair of shoes or a pattern of knitting wool. Perhaps Elizabeth would say:
"Put your black hat on this afternoon, Joan; it suits you." Then Joan would look up and see Mrs. Ogden standing inside the dining-room door.
"Joan!"
"Yes, dearest?"
"I dislike you in that hat, put the blue one on, darling."
A thousand little unexpected things were always cropping up to give rise to these thinly veiled quarrels. Even Milly began to feel uncomfortable and ill at ease, but with I characteristic decision she solved the problem for herself.
"I shan't stay here when I'm bigger, Joan; I shall go away," she announced one day.
Joan was startled; the words made her uneasy, they reopened the eternal question, presenting a new facet. She began to ask herself whether she too did not long to go away, whether she would want to stay at Seabourne when she was older, and above all whether she loved her mother enough to stay for ever in Seabourne. They were sitting in the school-room, and Joan's eyes sought Elizabeth, who answered the unspoken thought. She turned to Joan with a quick, unusual gesture.
"Joan, you mustn't stay here always either."
"Not stay here, Elizabeth? Where should I go?"
"Oh, I don't know; to Cambridge perhaps, and then—oh, well, then you must work, do things with your life."
"But, Mother——"
Elizabeth was silent. Joan pressed her.
"Elizabeth, do you think Mother would ever consent?"
"I don't know; you have the brain to do it if you choose."
"But suppose it made her unhappy?"
"Why should it? She'll probably be very proud of you if you make good—in any case you'll have to leave her if you marry."
"But it might—oh! can't you see that it might make her unhappy, dreadfully unhappy?"
"What do you feel about it yourself, Joan; are you ambitious, I mean?"
Joan was silent for a moment, then she said: "I don't think I am really ambitious. I mean I don't think that I could ever push everything aside for the sake of some big idea; I hate being hurt and hurting, and I think you've got to do that if you're really ambitious; but I want to go on working, frightfully."
"Well, you'll probably get through your exam, all right."
"And if I do, what then?"
"Then your Oxford Local, I suppose."
"Yes, but then?"
"Well, then we shall have to consider. I should think Cambridge for you, Joan—though I don't know; perhaps Oxford is better in some respects." She paused and appeared to reflect.
Joan looked at her fixedly. She thought: "This is said to me in direct opposition to Mother; it's being said on purpose. Elizabeth hates her and I ought to hate Elizabeth, but Idon't!"
RICHARD BENSON came home towards the end of August after a visit to friends in Ireland. To Elizabeth's disappointment, Joan showed no pleasure at his return. However, it appeared that Richard had not forgotten her, for Mrs. Benson wrote insisting that she and Elizabeth should come to luncheon, as he had been asking after them.
They went to Conway House on the appointed day. Joan was acquiescent, she never offered much opposition to anything at this time unless it were interference with her self-imposed and ridiculous cramming. After all it was a pleasant luncheon, and Elizabeth, at all events, enjoyed it.
Joan thought: "I'm glad she looks happy and pleased, but I wish they'd asked Mother; I wonder why they didn't ask Mother?" Her mother's absence weighed upon her. Not that Mrs. Ogden had withheld a ready consent, she was glad that her girls had such nice neighbours, but Joan knew instinctively that she had felt hurt; she was beginning to know so much about her mother by instinct. She divined her every mood; it seemed to her to be like looking through a window-pane to look at Mrs. Ogden, and the view you saw beyond was usually deeply depressing. Mrs. Ogden had smiled when she kissed her good-bye, but the smile had been a little rueful, a little tremulous; it had seemed to say: "I know I'm not as young as I used to be, I expect they find me dull." Joan wondered if they did find her dull, and her heart ached.
She was thinking of her now as she tried to eat. Richard, more freckled and blunt-faced than ever, talked and joked in a kind of desperation; it seemed to him that something must be seriously wrong with Joan. Mrs. Benson's keen eyes watched the girl attentively, and what she saw mystified her. She took Elizabeth into the drawing-room after lunch, having first ordered Richard and Joan into the garden. When she and Elizabeth were alone together she began at once.
"What on earth's the matter with Joan, Elizabeth?"
"I don't know—why? Do you think she looks ill?"
"Don't you?"
"Yes."
"I was quite shocked to-day. I always feel interested in that child, and I should be dreadfully anxious if she belonged to me."
"Well, she's at a difficult age, you know."
"Oh, my dear, it's more than that; have you been letting her work too hard?"
"Oh!" said Elizabeth violently, "I'm sick to death of being asked that; of course she works too hard, but it isn't that, it's——"
"Yes?" queried Mrs. Benson.
"It's—oh! I don't know, Mrs. Benson, I can't put it into words, but it's an awful responsibility, somehow; I can't tell you how it worries me." Her voice shook.
Mrs. Benson patted her hand reassuringly. "Whatever it is, it's got on your nerves too, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth looked at her a little startled. Yes, it had got on her nerves, it was horribly on her nerves and had been for weeks. She longed to talk frankly and explain to this kind, commonplace woman the complicated situation as she saw it, to ask her advice. She began: "Joan's got something on her mind——" Then stopped.
"But of course she has," said Mrs. Benson.
"And she's growing—mentally, I mean. Oh, and physically too——"
"They all do that, Elizabeth."
"Yes, but—I don't understand it; at least, yes, I do understand it, only I can't see my way."
"Your way?"
"Yes, my way with Joan."
"Can't you try to rouse her? She seems to me to be getting very morbid."
"No, she's not—at least not in the way you mean. Don't think I'm mad, but Joan gives me such a queer feeling. I feel as though she'd been fighting, fighting, fighting to get out, to be herself, and that now she's not fighting any more, she's too tired."
"But, my dear child, what is it all about?"
"I think I know, in fact I'm sure I do, and yet I can't help her. I want her to go away from here some day, I want her to have a life of her own. Can't you see how it is? She's so much her mother's favourite—they adore each other."
Mrs. Benson did not speak for a little while, then she said: "I don't know Mrs. Ogden very well, but I think she might be a very selfish mother; but then, poor soul, she hasn't had much of a life, has she?"
Then Elizabeth let herself go, she heard her voice growing louder, but could not control it.
"I don't care, she has no right to make it up to herself with Joan. Joan's young and clever, and sensitive and dreadfully worth while. Surely she has a right to something in life beyond Seabourne and Mrs. Ogden? Joan has a right to love whom she likes, and to go where she likes and to work and be independent and happy, and if she can't be happy then she has a right to make her own unhappiness; it's a thousand times better to be unhappy in your own way than to be happy in someone else's. Joan wants something and I don't know what it is, but if it's Mrs. Ogden then it ought not to be, that's all. The child's eating her heart out and it's wrong, wrong, wrong! She dare not be herself because it might not be the self that Mrs. Ogden needs. She wants to go to Cambridge, but will she ever go? Why she's even afraid to be fond of me because Mrs. Ogden is jealous of me." She paused, breathless.
Mrs. Benson looked grave. "My dear," she said very quietly, "I sympathize, and I think I understand; but be careful."
Elizabeth thought: "No, you don't understand; you're a kind, good woman, but you don't understand in the least."
Aloud she said: "I'm afraid I seem violent, but I'm personally interested in Joan's possibilities, she's very clever and lovable."
Mrs. Benson assented. "Why not encourage her to come here more often," she suggested. "She and Violet are about the same age, and Violet's nearly always here in the holidays. Richard and Joan seemed to get on very well last year. Oh, talking of Richard; you know, I suppose, that he insists upon being a doctor?"
Elizabeth laughed. "Well, as long as he's a good doctor I suppose he won't kill anyone!" They both smiled now as they thought of Richard. "His father's furious," Mrs. Benson told her, "but it's no good being furious with Richard; you might as well get angry with an oak tree and slap it."
"Does he work well?"
"Oh, I believe so; you wouldn't think it to look at him, would you? but I hear that he's rather clever. Anyhow, he's a perfect darling, and whatdoesit matter whether he's a doctor or a cabinet minister, so long as he's respectable!"
"Will he specialize eventually, do you think?"
"He wants to, if he can get his father to back him."
"Oh, but he will do that, of course. Does Richard say what he wants to specialize in?"
Mrs. Benson smiled again. "He does," she remarked with mock grimness. "He says he means to specialize in medical psychology—nerves, I believe is what it boils down to.Canyou see Richard as a nerve specialist, Elizabeth?"
"Well, if having no nerves oneself goes to the making of a good nerve doctor, I should think he would succeed."
"He tells me he's certain to succeed, my dear; he takes it as a matter of course. If you could see the books he leaves about the house! Do you know, Elizabeth, I'm almost afraid for my Richard sometimes; it would be so awfully hard for him if he failed to make good, he's so sure of himself, you know. And it's not conceit; I don't know what it is—it's a kind of matter-of-fact self-confidence—it's almost impressive!"
Richard and Joan were walking up and down the path by the tennis lawn; they looked very young and lanky and pathetic, the one in his eagerness, the other in her resignation. Joan, as she listened to the enthusiastic sentences, wondered how anyone could care so much about anything.
He was saying: "It's ripping the feeling it gives you to know that you can do a thing, and to feel that you're going to do it well."
"But how can you be certain that you will do it well?" Joan inquired.
"I don't know, but one is certain—at least, I am."
"Will you live in Seabourne when you've taken your degree?"
"Good Lord, no, of course not! No one who wants to get on could do anything in a place like this!"
"It's not such a bad place," she protested. She felt an urgent need to uphold Seabourne just then.
"It's not a bad place for old people and mental deficients; no, I suppose it's not."
"But your mother isn't old and she isn't mentally deficient."
"Of course not; but she doesn't stick here. She goes up to London for months on end sometimes; besides, she's different!"
"I don't see how she's different. How is she different from my mother, for instance? And my mother never gets away from Seabourne."
It was on the tip of his tongue to say: "Oh! but she is different!" but he checked himself and said: "Well, perhaps some people can stick here and remain human; only I know I couldn't, that's all."
She longed to ask him about Cambridge, but she felt shy; his self-confidence was so overpowering, though she liked him in spite of it. It struck her that he had grown more self-confident since last Christmas; she remembered that then he had been dreadfully afraid of being "bottled "; now he didn't seem afraid of anything, of Seabourne least of all. She wondered what he would say if she told him her own trouble; it was difficult to imagine what effect her confidences would have on him; he would probably think them ridiculous and dismiss them with an abrupt comment.
"I suppose," she said drearily, "some people have to stick to Seabourne."
"There's no 'have to,'" he replied.
"Oh, yes, there is; that's where you don't know. Look at Elizabeth!"
"Elizabeth doesn't have to stay here; she's lazy, that's all that's the matter with her."
Joan flared at once: "If you think Elizabeth's lazy you can't know much about her; she's staying on here because of her brother. He's delicate, and he can't live alone, and he needs her; I think she's splendid!"
"Rot! He isn't a baby to need dry nursing. If Elizabeth had the will I expect she'd find the way. If Elizabeth stops here it's because she's taken root, it's because she likes it; I'm disappointed in Elizabeth!"
"Shehatesit!" said Joan with conviction.
He turned and stared at her. "Then why in heaven's name——" he began.
"Because everyone doesn't think only of themselves!" She was angry now; she had not been angry for so long that she quite enjoyed the excitement. "Because Elizabeth thinks of other people and wants to be decent to them, and doesn't talk and think only of her own career and of the things that she wants to do. She sacrifices herself, that's why she stays here, and if you can't understand that it's because you're not able to understand the kind of people that really count!"
They stopped and faced each other in the path; her eyes glowered, but his were twinkling though his mouth was grave. "If you're talking at me, Joan," he said solemnly, "then you may spare your breath, because you see I know I'm right; I know that even if Elizabeth is splendid and self-sacrificing and all the rest of it, she's dead wrong to waste it on that little dried up brother of hers. She ought to get out and do something for the world at large, or if she can't rise to that then she ought to do something for herself.Ithink it's a sin to let yourself get drained dry by anyone, I don't care who it is; that wasn't the sort of thing God gave us our brains for; it wasn't why He made us individuals."
Joan interrupted him: "But Elizabeth isn't drained dry; she's the cleverest woman I know."
"Yes, now, perhaps."
"She always will be," said Joan coldly.
He felt that he had gone too far; he didn't want to quarrel with her.
"I'm sorry," he said humbly. "It's my fault, I suppose. I mean I daresay I'm selfish and self-opinionated, and perhaps I'm not such great shakes, after all. Anyhow, you know I'm awfully fond of Elizabeth."
Joan was pacified. "One does get fond of her," she told him. "She's so calm and neat and masterful, so certain of herself and yet so awfully kind."
He changed the subject. "I'm swatting at Cambridge," he announced.
"Are you?"
He heard the interest in her voice and wondered why his casual remark had aroused it.
"Yes; when I've taken my science degree I shall go up to London for hospital work—and then "—he gave a sigh of contentment—"I shall get my Medical—and then Germany. You ought to go to Cambridge, Joan."
"Is it expensive? Does it cost much?" she asked him.
"Well, that depends. Why, are you really going?"
She hesitated. "Elizabeth would like me to."
"Oh, yes, she was there, wasn't she? Well, you won't be there when I am, I'm afraid; we'll just miss it by a year."
"I don't suppose I shall go at all."
"Why not?"
"Oh, lots of reasons. We're poor, you know."
"Then try for a scholarship."
"I'd probably fail if I did."
"Why on earth should you fail; you're very clever, aren't you?"
She began to laugh. "I don't know if I'm what you would call clever; you see you think yourself clever, and I'm not a bit like you. I like working, though, so perhaps I'd get through."
Elizabeth, coming towards them across the lawn, heard the laugh and blessed Richard.
IT is strange in this world, how events of momentous importance happen without any warning, and do not, as is commonly stated, "Cast their shadows before." Moreover, they reach us from the most unexpected quarters and at a time when we are least prepared, and such an event dropped out of space upon the Ogden household a few days later.
The concrete form which it took was simple enough—a small business envelope on Colonel Ogden's breakfast tray; he opened it, and as he read his face became suffused with excitement. He tried to get up, but the tea spilt in his efforts to remove the heavy tray from his lap.
"Mary!" he shouted, "Mary!"
Mrs. Ogden, who was presiding at the breakfast table, heard him call, and also the loud thumping of the stick which he now kept beside the bed. He used it freely to attract his family's attention to his innumerable needs. She rose hastily.
Joan and Milly heard the quick patter of her steps as she hurried upstairs, followed, in what seemed an incredibly short time, by her tread on the bedroom floor, and then the murmur of excited conversation. Joan sighed.
"Is it the butter or the bacon?" queried Milly.
Milly had come to the conclusion that her parents were unusually foolish; had she been capable of enough concentration upon members of her family, she would have cordially disliked them both; as it was they only amused her. At thirteen Milly never worried; she had a wonderful simplicity and clarity of outlook. She realized herself very completely, and did not trouble to realize anything else, except as it affected her monoideism. She was quite conscious of the strained atmosphere of her home, conscious that her father was intolerable, her mother nervous and irritating, and Joan, she thought, very queer. But these facts, while being in themselves disagreeable, in no way affected the primary issues of her life. Her music, her own personality, these were the things that would matter in the future so far as she was concerned. She had what is often known as a happy disposition; strangers admired her, for she was a bright and pretty child, and even friends occasionally deplored the fact that Joan was not more like her sister.
Upstairs in the bedroom the colonel, tousled and unshaven, was sitting very bolt upright in bed.
"It's Henrietta!" he said, extending the solicitor's letter in a hand which shook perceptibly.
"Your sister Henrietta?" inquired Mrs. Ogden.
"Naturally. Who else do you think it would be?—Well, she's dead!"
"Dead? Oh, my dear! I am sorry; why, you haven't heard from her for ages."
Colonel Ogden swallowed angrily. "Why the deuce can't you read the letter, Mary? Read the letter and you'll know all about it."
Mrs. Ogden took it obediently. It was quite brief and came from a firm of solicitors in London. It stated that Mrs. Henrietta Peabody, widow of the late Henry Clay Peabody, of Philadelphia, had died suddenly, leaving her estate, which would bring in about three hundred a year, to be equally divided between her two nieces, Joan and Mildred Ogden. The letter went on to say that Colonel and Mrs. Ogden were to act as trustees until such time as their children reached the age of twenty-one years or married, but that the will expressly stated that the income was not be accumulated or diverted in any way from the beneficiaries, it being the late Mrs. Peabody's wish that it should be spent upon the two children equally for the purpose of securing for them extra advantages. The terms of the letter were polite and tactful, but as Mrs. Ogden read she had an inkling that her sister-in-law Henrietta had probably made rather a disagreeable will. She glanced at her husband apprehensively.
"It means——" she faltered, "it means——"
"It means," shouted the colonel, "that Henrietta must have been mad to make such a will; it means that from now on my own children can snap their fingers under my nose; it means that I have ceased to have any control over members of my own family. A more outrageous state of affairs I never heard of! What have I ever done, I should like to know, to be insulted like this? Why should this money be left over my head? One would think Henrietta imagined I was the sort of man to neglect the interests of my own children; she hasn't even left the income to me for life! Did the woman wish to insult me? Upon my word, a pretty state of affairs! Think of it, I ask you; Milly thirteen and Joan fifteen, and a hundred and fifty a year to be spent at once on each of 'em. It's bedlam! And mark you, I am under orders to see that the money is spent entirely upon them; I, the father that bred them, I have no right to touch a penny of it!" He paused and leant back on his pillows exhausted.
Through the myriads of ideas that surged into her brain Mrs. Ogden was conscious of one dominating thought that beat down all the others like a sledge-hammer: "Joan—how would this affect Joan?"
She tried to calculate hastily how much she could claim for the children in her housekeeping; she supposed vaguely that Elizabeth's salary would come out of the three hundred a year; that would certainly be a relief. Then there were doctors and dentists, clothes and washing. Somewhere at the back of her mind she was conscious of a faint rejoicing that never again would she have to shed so many tears over current expenses, and a faint sense of pride in the knowledge that her daughters were now independent. But, though these thoughts should have been consoling, they could not push their way to the foreground of her consciousness, which was entirely occupied at that moment by an immense fear; the fear of independence for Joan. Colonel Ogden was looking at her; clearly he expected her to sympathize. She pulled herself together.
"After all, James," she ventured, "it's a great thing for Joan and Milly, and it will make a difference in our expenses."
He glared. "Oh, naturally, Mary, I could hardly expect you to see the situation in its true light; I could hardly expect you to realize the insult that my own sister has seen fit to put on me."
"Really, James," said Mrs. Ogden angrily, stung into retort by this childish injustice, "I understand perfectly all you're saying, but I do think you ought to be grateful to Henrietta. I certainly am, and even if you don't approve of her will, I don't see that there's anything to do but to look on the bright side of things."
"Bright side, indeed!" taunted the colonel. "A pretty bright side you'll find developing before long. Not that I begrudge my own children any advantages; I should think Henrietta ought to have known that. No, what I resent, and quite rightly too, is the public lack of confidence in me that she has been at such pains to show; that's the point."
"The point is," thought Mrs. Ogden, "whether Joan will now be in a position to go to Cambridge. This business will play directly into Elizabeth's hands." Aloud she said: "Am I to tell the children, James?"
"You can tell them any damn thing you please. If you don't tell them they'll hear about it from somebody else, I suppose; but I warn you fairly that when you do tell them, you can add that I intend to preserve absolute discipline in my household, I'll have no one living under the roof with me who don't realize that I'm the master."
"But, my dear James," his wife protested, "they're nothing but children still; I don't suppose for a moment they'll understand what it means. I don't suppose it would ever enter their heads to want to defy you."
She turned and left the room, going slowly downstairs. The children were still at breakfast when she reached the dining-room. As they looked up, something in their mother's expression told them of an unusual occurrence; it was an expression in which pride, apprehension and excitement were oddly mingled. Mrs. Ogden sat down at the head of the table and cleared her throat.
"I have very serious news for you, children," she began. "Your Aunt Henrietta is dead."
The children evinced no emotion; they had heard of their Aunt Henrietta in America, but she had never been more than a name. Mrs. Ogden glanced from one to the other of her daughters; she did not quite know how to explain to them the full significance of the news, and yet she did not wish to keep it back. Her maternal pride and generosity struggled with her outraged dignity. She felt the situation to be quite preposterous, and in a way she sympathized with her husband's indignation; she was of his own generation, after all. Yet knowing him as she did, she felt a guilty and secret understanding of Henrietta Peabody's motive. She told herself that if only she were perfectly certain of Joan, she could find it in her to be grateful to the departed Henrietta. She began to speak again.
"I have something very important to tell you. It's something that affects both of you. It seems that your Aunt Henrietta, apart from her pension, had an income of three hundred pounds a year, and this three hundred a year she has left equally divided between you. That means that you will have one hundred and fifty pounds a year each from now on."
Her eyes were eagerly scanning Joan's face. Joan saw their appeal, though she did not understand it; she left her place slowly and put her arm round her mother.
Milly clapped her hands. "A hundred and fifty a year and all my own!" she cried delightedly.
"Shut up!" ordered Joan. "Who cares whether you've got a hundred and fifty a year or not? Besides, anyhow, you're only a kid; you won't be allowed to spend it now."
"It isn't now," said Milly thoughtfully. "It's afterwards that I care about."
Mrs. Ogden ignored her younger daughter. What did it matter what Milly felt or thought? She groped for Joan's hand and squeezed it.
"I think I ought to tell you," she said gravely, "that your father is very much upset at this news; he's very much hurt by what your aunt has done. I can understand and sympathize with his feelings. You see he knows that he has always been a good father to you, and it would have been more seemly had this money been left to him, though, of course, your father and I have control of it until you each become twenty-one years old or get married."
Something prompted her to make the situation quite clear to her children. She had another motive for telling them, or at all events for telling Joan, exactly how things stood; she wanted to know the worst at once. She knew anything would be more endurable than uncertainty as to how this legacy would affect Joan.
The children were silent; something awkward in the situation impressed them; they longed to be alone to talk it over. Mrs. Ogden left the room to interview the cook; she had had her say, and she felt now that she could only await results.
As the door closed behind her they stared at each other incredulously. Joan was the first to speak.
"What an extraordinary thing!" she said.
Milly frowned. "You are queer; I don't believe you're really pleased. I believe you're almost sorry."
"I don't know quite what I am," Joan admitted. "It seems to worry Mother, though I don't see why it should; but I have a feeling that that's going to spoil it."
"Oh, you always find something to spoil everything. Why should it worry Mother? It doesn't worry me; I think we're jolly lucky. I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to talk to Doddsie this very day about going to the Royal College of Music."
Joan scented trouble. Would Milly's little violin master side with her when he knew of his pupil's future independence?
"You'd better look out," she warned. "You talk as though you had the money now. Father won't agree to your going up to London, and anyhow you're much too young. For goodness' sake go slow; one gets so sick of rows!"
Milly smiled quietly; she felt that it was no good arguing with Joan; Joan was always apprehensive and on the look-out for trouble. Milly knew what she wanted to do and she intended to do it; after all, she reckoned, she wouldn't remain thirteen years old for ever, and when the time came for her to go to London to London she meant to go, so there was no good fussing. A glow of satisfaction and gratitude began to creep over her; she thought almost tenderly of Aunt Henrietta.
"Poor Aunt Henrietta!" she remarked in a sympathetic voice. "I hope it didn't hurt her—the dying, I mean."
Joan looked across at her sister; she thought: "A lot you really care whether it hurt her or not!"
The front door bell rang; they knew that decided ring for Elizabeth's, and leaving the table they hurried to the schoolroom. Elizabeth was unpinning her hat; she paused with her arms raised to her head, divining some unusual excitement. She looked at Joan, waiting for her to speak. Joan read the unvoiced question in her eyes. But before she could answer, words burst from Milly's lips in a flood; Elizabeth had heard all about it in less than a minute, including all Milly's plans for the future. During this recital Elizabeth smiled a little, but her eyes were always on Joan's face. Presently she said:
"This will help you too, Joan."
Joan was silent; she understood quite well what was meant. Elizabeth had put into words a feeling against which she had been fighting ever since her mother had told her the news—a triumphant, possessive kind of feeling, the feeling that now there was no valid reason why she should not go to Cambridge or anywhere else for that matter. She looked at Elizabeth guiltily, but there was no guilt in Elizabeth's answering smile; on the contrary, there was much happiness, a triumphant happiness that made Joan feel afraid.
AFTER all, the novelty of the situation wore off very quickly. In a few weeks' time the children had got quite accustomed to the thought of a future hundred and fifty a year; it did not appear to make any difference to their everyday lives. To be sure an unknown man arrived from London one day and remained closeted with Colonel Ogden for several hours. The children understood that he had come from the solicitors in order to discuss the details of their inheritance, but what took place at that interview was never divulged, and they soon ceased to speculate about it.
Could they but have known it the colonel had raged at considerable length over what he considered the gross insult that his sister had put upon him. It had been revealed to him as he read the will that a direct slight had been intended, that Henrietta had not scrupled to let him know, with as much eloquence as the legal phraseology permitted, that she was sorry for her nieces, and that she knew a trick worth two of making them dependent on their father for future benefits. The lawyer from London did not appear to see any way out of the difficulty; he had been politely sympathetic, but had in the main contented himself with pointing out the excellence of the late Mrs. Peabody's investments. The estate could be settled up very quickly.
Joan was conscious that she had changed somehow, and was working with a new zest. She realized that whereas before her aunt's death she had worked as an antidote to her own unhappiness, she was now working for a much more invigorating purpose, working with a well-defined hope for the future. The examination for which she had slaved so long now loomed very near, but she was curiously free from apprehension, filled with a quiet confidence. Her brain was clearing; she slept better, ate better and thought of Mrs. Ogden less. She felt quite certain that she would pass, and the nearer the examination came the less she worked; it was as though some instinct of self-preservation in her had asserted itself at last. Elizabeth encouraged her new-found idleness to the full; it was a lovely autumn, warm and fine, and together they spent the best part of their days on the cliffs. Milly rejoiced in the general slackness; it gave her the time she needed for practising her violin. Sometimes she would go with them, but more often now Elizabeth let her off the detested walks, wanting to be alone with Joan.
Joan was surprised to find that she was gradually worrying less about her mother, that it seemed less important, less tragic when Mrs. Ogden complained of a headache. With this new-found normality her affection did not lessen; on the contrary, she ceased to doubt it, but together with other things it had begun to change in quality. It seemed to her as though she had acquired an invisible pair of scales, on to which she very gently lifted Mrs. Ogden's words and actions.
Sometimes, according to her ideas, Mrs. Ogden would be found wanting, but this neither shocked nor estranged her, for at other times her mother would give good measure and overflowing. But this weighing process was not romantic; it killed with one blow a vast deal of sentimentality. Joan began to realize that Mrs. Ogden's cough did not necessarily point to delicate lungs, that her headaches were largely the outcome of a worrying disposition, and occasionally a comfortable way out of a difficult situation; in fact, that Mrs. Ogden was no more tragic and no more interesting, and at the same time no less interesting, than many other people.
A new factor entered into Joan's life at this period, and may have been responsible for partially detaching her interest from her mother. Joan had begun to mature—she was growing up. It was impossible to study as she had done without gradually realizing that life offered many aspects which she did not understand. It would have been unlike her to dismiss a problem once she had become conscious of it. This new problem filled her with no shyness and no excitement, but she realized that certain emotional experiences played an immensely important part in the universal scheme. She had been considering this for some time, gradually realizing more and more clearly that there must be a key to the riddle, which she did not possess. It was not only her books that had begun to puzzle her—there were people—their lives—their emotions—above all their unguarded words, dropped here and there and hastily covered up with such grotesque clumsiness. She felt irritated and restless, and wanted to know things exactly as they stood in their true proportion one to the other. She shrank from questioning her mother; something told her that this ought not to be the case, but she could not bring herself to take the plunge. However, she meant to know the truth about certain things, and having dismissed the thought of questioning Mrs. Ogden she decided that Elizabeth should be her informant.
There was no lack of opportunity; the long warm afternoons of idleness on the cliffs encouraged introspection and confidences. Joan chose one of these occasions to confront Elizabeth with a series of direct questions. Elizabeth would have preferred to shirk the task that her pupil thrust upon her. Not that the facts of life had ever struck her as repulsive or indecent; on the contrary, she had always taken them as a matter of course, and had never been able to understand why free discussion of them should be forbidden. With any other pupil, she told herself, she would have felt completely at her ease, and she realized that her embarrassment was owing to the fact that it was Joan who asked. She fenced clumsily.
"I can't see that these things enter into your life at all, at the present moment," she said. "I can't see the necessity for discussing them."
But Joan was obdurate. "I see it," she replied, "and I'd like to hear the truth from you, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth knew that she must make up her mind quickly; she must either refuse to discuss these things with Joan, or lie to her, or tell her the truth, which was after all very simple, and she chose the latter course. She watched the effect of her words on her pupil a little apprehensively, but Joan did not seem disturbed, showing very little surprise and no emotion.
That long and intimate talk on the cliffs had not left Joan unmoved, however; underneath the morbidity and exaggerated sensitiveness of her nature flowed a strong stream of courage and common sense. The knowledge that Elizabeth had imparted acted as a stimulant and sedative in one; Joan felt herself to be in possession of the truth and thus endowed with a new dignity and new responsibility towards life. She began to put everyday things to the touchstone of her new knowledge, to try to the best of her ability to see them and people in their true proportion, and then to realize herself. Material lay near her hand for this entrancing study; there was Elizabeth, for instance, and her mother. Shyly at first, but with ever growing courage, she began to analyse Mrs. Ogden from this fresh aspect, to select a niche for her and then to put her in it, to decide the true relativity which her mother bore to life in general. Joan, although she could not have put it into words, had begun to realize cause and effect. Mrs. Ogden did not suffer by this analysis, but she stood revealed in her true importance and her true insignificance, it deprived her for ever of the power of imposing upon her daughter. If she lost in this respect she gained in another, for Joan's feelings for her now became more stable and, if anything, more protective. She saw her divested of much romance, it is true, but not divested of her claim to pity. She saw her as the creature of circumstances, as the victim of those natural laws which, while being admirably adapted for the multitude, occasionally destroyed the individual. She realized as she had never been able to realize before the place that she herself held in her mother's life; it was borne slowly in upon her that she represented a substitute for all that Mrs. Ogden had been defrauded of.
A few months ago such a realization would have tormented her, would have led to endless self-analysis, to innumerable doubts and fears lest she in return could not give enough, but Joan's mind was now too fully occupied for morbidity, it was busy with the realization of her own personality. She knew herself as an individual capable of hacking out a path in life, capable, perhaps, of leading a useful existence; and this knowledge filled her with a sense of importance and endeavour. She found herself able to face calmly the fact that her mother could never mean to her what she meant to her mother; to her mother she was a substitute, but she, Joan, was not conscious of needing a substitute. She did not formulate very clearly what she needed, did not know if she really needed anything at all except work, but one thing she did know and that was that her mental vision stretched far beyond Seabourne and away into the vistas of the great Untried.
Things were as they were, people were as they were, she was as she was and her mother was as she was. And Elizabeth? Elizabeth she supposed was as she was and that was the end of it. You could not change or alter the laws that governed individual existence, but she meant to make a success of life, if she could; her efforts might be futile, they probably would be; nevertheless they were worth making. She concluded that individual effort occasionally did succeed, though the odds were certainly against it; it had failed in Mrs. Ogden's case, and she began to realize that hitherto it had failed in Elizabeth's; but would Elizabeth always fail? She saw her now as a creature capable of seizing hold of life and using it to the full. Elizabeth, so quiet, so painfully orderly, so immaculately neat, and in her own way so interesting, suddenly became poignantly human to Joan; she speculated about her.
And meanwhile the examination drew nearer. Now it was Elizabeth who grew nervous and restless, and Joan who supported her; it was extraordinary how nervous Elizabeth did grow, she could neither control nor conceal it, at all events from her observant pupil. Joan began to understand how much it meant to Elizabeth that she should do well, and she was touched. But she herself could not feel any apprehension; she seemed at this time to have risen above all her doubts and fears. It is possible, however, that Elizabeth's perturbation might in time have reacted on her pupil had fate not interposed at the psychological moment.
SURELY the last place in the world where anyone would have expected to meet a tragedy was in the High Street of Seabourne. There never was a street so genteel and so lacking in emotion; it was almost an indecency to associate emotion with it, and yet it was in the High Street that a thing happened which was to make a lasting impression on Joan. She was out with Elizabeth and Milly early one afternoon; they were feeling dull, and conversation flagged; their minds were concentrated on innumerable small commissions for Mrs. Ogden. It was a bright and rather windy day, having in the keen air the first suggestion of coming winter. The High Street was very empty at that hour, and stretched in front of them ugly and shabby and painfully unimportant. Hidden from sight just round the corner, a little bell went clanging and tinkling; it was the little bell attached to the cart of the man who ground knives and scissors every Thursday. A tradesman's boy clattered down the street on a stout unclipped cob, a basket over his arm, and somewhere in a house near by a phonograph was shouting loudly.
Then someone screamed, not once but many times. It was an ungainly sound, crude with terror. The screams appeared to be coming from Mrs. Jenkins's, the draper's shop, whither Elizabeth was bent; and then before any of them realized what was happening, a woman had rushed out into the street covered in flames. The spectacle she made, horrible in itself, was still more horrible because this was the sort of thing that one heard of or read of but never expected to see. Through the fire which seemed to engulf her, her arms were waving and flapping in the air. Joan noticed that her hair, which had come down, streamed out in the wind, a mass of flame. The woman, still screaming, turned and ran towards them, and as she ran the wind fanned the flames. Then Elizabeth did a very brave thing. She tore off the long tweed coat she was wearing, and running forward managed somehow to wrap it round the terrified creature. It seemed to Joan as though she caught the woman and pressed her against herself, but it was all too sudden and too terrible for the girl to know with any certainty what happened; she was conscious only of an overwhelming fear for Elizabeth, and found herself tearing at her back, trying to pull her away; and then suddenly something, a mass of something, was lying on the pavement with Elizabeth bending over it.
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder. "Are you there, Joan?" The voice sounded very matter of fact.
Joan sprang to her side. "Oh, Elizabeth!"
"I want you to run to the chemist and tell him what's happened. Get him to come back with you at once; he'll know what to bring, and send his assistant to fetch the doctor, while I see to getting this poor soul into the house."
Joan turned to obey. A few moments ago the street had been practically empty, but now quite a throng of people were pressing forward towards Elizabeth. Joan shouldered her way through them; half unconsciously she noticed their eager eyes, and the tense, greedy look on their faces. There were faces there that she had known nearly all her life, respectable middle-class faces, the faces of Seabourne tradespeople, but now somehow they looked different; it was as though a curtain had been drawn aside and something primitive and unfamiliar revealed. She felt bewildered, but nothing seemed to matter except obeying Elizabeth. As she ran down the street she saw Milly crying in a doorway; she felt sorry for her, she looked so sick and faint, but she did not stop to speak to her.
When she returned with the chemist the crowd was denser than ever, but all traces of the accident had disappeared. She supposed that Elizabeth must have had the woman carried into the shop.
Inside, all was confusion; somewhere from the back premises a child wailed dismally. A mass of unrolled material was spread in disorder upon the counter, behind which stood an assistant in tears. She recognized Joan and pointed with a shaking finger to a door at the back of the shop. The door opened on to a narrow staircase, and Joan paused to look about her; the old chemist was hard on her heels, peering over her shoulders, his arms full of packages. A sound reached them from above, low moaning through which, sharp and clear, came Elizabeth's voice:
"Is that you, Joan? Hurry up, please."
They mounted the stairs and entered a little bedroom; on the bed lay the servant who had been burnt. Elizabeth was sitting beside her, and in a corner of the room stood Mrs. Jenkins, looking utterly helpless. Elizabeth looked critically at Joan; what she saw appeared to satisfy her, for she beckoned the girl to come close.
"We must try and get the burnt clothes off her," she said. "Have you brought plenty of oil, Mr. Ridgway?"
The chemist came forward, and together the three of them did what they could, pending the doctor's arrival. As they worked the smell of burnt flesh pervaded the air, and Mrs. Jenkins swayed slightly where she stood. Elizabeth saw it and sent her downstairs; then she looked at Joan, but Joan met her glance fearlessly.
"Are you equal to this?"
Joan nodded.
"Then do exactly what we tell you."
Joan nodded again. They worked quickly and silently, almost like people in a dream, Joan thought. There was something awful in what they did, something new and awful in the spectacle of a mutilated fellow-creature, helpless in their hands. Into Joan's shocked consciousness there began to creep a wondering realization of her own inadequacy. Yet she was not failing; on the contrary, her nerve had steadied itself to meet the shock. After a little while she found that her repulsion was giving way to a keen and merciful interest, but she knew that all three of them, so willing and so eager to help, were hampered by a lack of experience. Even Mr. Ridgway's medical knowledge was inadequate to this emergency. Apparently Elizabeth realized this too, for she glanced at the window from time to time and paused to listen; Joan knew that she was waiting in a fever of impatience for the doctor to arrive. The woman stirred and moaned again.
"Will she die?" Joan asked.
Elizabeth looked at the chemist; he was silent. At last he said: "I'm afraid she's burnt in the third degree."
Joan thought: "I ought to know what that means, but I don't."
Then she thought: "The poor thing's suffering horribly, she's probably going to die before the doctor comes, and not one of us really knows how to help her; how humiliating."
At that moment they heard someone hurrying upstairs. As the doctor came into the room they stood aside. He examined the patient, touching her gently, then he took dressings from his bag. He went to work with great care and deftness, and Joan was filled with admiration as she watched him. She had no idea who he was; he was not the Ogdens' doctor, this was a younger man altogether. Then into her mind flashed the thought of Richard Benson. She wondered why she had laughed at Richard when he had talked of becoming a doctor. Was it because he was so conceited? But surely it was better to be conceited than inadequate!
The doctor was unconscious of her scrutiny; from time to time he spoke to Elizabeth, issuing short, peremptory orders. Elizabeth stood beside him, capable and quiet, and Joan felt proud of her because even in this extremity she managed somehow to look tidy.
"I think I've done all that I can, for the moment," he said. "I'll come again later on."
Elizabeth nodded, her mouth was drawn down at the corners and her arms hung limply at her sides. Something in her face attracted the doctor's attention and his glance fell to her hands.
"Let me look at your hands," he said.
"It's nothing," Elizabeth assured him, but her voice sounded far away.
"I'm afraid I disagree with you; your hands are badly burnt, you must let me dress them." He turned to the dressings on the table.
She held out her hands obediently, and Joan noticed for the first time that they were injured. The realization that Elizabeth was hurt overwhelmed her; she forgot the woman on the bed, forgot everything but the burnt hands. With a great effort she pulled herself together, forcing herself to hold the dressings, watching with barely concealed apprehension, lest the doctor should inflict pain. She had thought him so deft a few minutes ago, yet now he seemed indescribably clumsy. But if he did hurt it was not reflected on Elizabeth's face; her lips tightened a little, that was all.
"Anywhere else?" the doctor demanded.
"Nowhere else," Elizabeth assured him. "I think my hands must have got burnt when I wrapped my coat round her."
The doctor stared. "It's a mystery to me," he said, "how you managed to do all you did with a pair of hands like that."
"I didn't feel them so much at first," she told him.
The doctor called Mrs. Jenkins and gave her a few instructions; then he hurried Elizabeth downstairs into the little shop, leaving her there while he went to find a cab.
Joan stood silently beside her; neither of them spoke until the fly arrived, then Joan said: "I shall come home with you, Elizabeth."
"I'll send in two nurses," said the doctor. "Your friend here will want help too."
Joan gave him Elizabeth's address.
During the drive they were silent again, there didn't appear to be anything to say. Joan felt lonely; something in what had happened seemed to have put Elizabeth very far away from her; perhaps it was because she could not share her pain. The fly drew up at the door; she felt in Elizabeth's coat pocket for her purse and paid the man; then she rang. There was no one in the house but the young general servant, who looked frightened when she saw the bandaged hands. Joan realized that whatever there was to do must be done by her; that Elizabeth the dominating, the practical, was now as helpless as a baby. The thought thrilled her.
They went slowly upstairs to the bedroom. Joan had been in the house before but never in that room; she paused instinctively at the door, feeling shy. Something told her that by entering this bedroom she was marking an epoch in her relations with Elizabeth, so personal must that room be; she turned the handle and they went in. As she ministered to Elizabeth she noticed the room, and a feeling of disappointment crept over her. Plain white painted furniture, white walls and a small white bed. A rack of books and on the dressing-table a few ivory brushes and boxes. The room was very austere in its cold whiteness; it was like Elizabeth and yet it was not like Elizabeth; like the outward Elizabeth perhaps, but was it like the real Elizabeth? Then her eyes fell upon a great tangle of autumn flowers, standing in a bright blue jar on the chest of drawers; something in the strength and virility of their colouring seemed to gibe and taunt the prim little room; they were there as a protest, or so the girl felt. She wondered what it was in Elizabeth that had prompted her to choose these particular flowers and the bright blue jar that they stood in. Perhaps Elizabeth divined her thoughts, for she smiled as she followed the direction of Joan's eyes.
"A part of me loves them, needs them," she said.
Very gently Joan helped her to undress; it was a painful and tedious business. Joan noticed with surprise that Elizabeth's clothes were finer than Mrs. Ogden's; it gave her a pleasure to touch them. Her nightgown was of fine lawn, simple in design but very individual. Strange, oh! strange, how little she really knew Elizabeth. She looked entirely different with her hair down. Joan felt that in this new-found intimacy something was lost and something gained. Never again could Elizabeth represent authority in her pupil's eyes; that aspect of their relationship was lost for ever; and with it a prop, a staff that she had grown to lean on. But in its place there was something else, something infinitely more intimate and interesting. As she helped her into bed, she was conscious of a curious embarrassment. Elizabeth glanced at the clock; it was long past tea-time.
"Good Heavens, Joan, you simply must go! And do see your mother at once, and tell her what's happened. Do go; the nurse will be here any moment."
Joan stood awkwardly beside the bed; she wanted to do something, to say something; a lump rose in her throat, but her eyes remained dry. She moved towards the door. Elizabeth watched her go, but at that moment she was conscious of nothing but pain and was thankful that Joan went when she did.
MRS. OGDEN had been waiting at the dining-room window and ran to open the front door as Joan came down the street. The girl looked worn out and dispirited; she walked slowly and her head was slightly bowed as she pushed open the gate.
Mrs. Ogden, who had heard from Milly of the accident, had not intended to remonstrate at Joan's prolonged absence. On the contrary, while she had been waiting anxiously for her daughter's return, she had been planning the manner in which she would welcome her, fold her in her arms; poor child, it was such a dreadful thing for her to have seen! As the time dragged on and Joan did not come a thousand fears had beset her. Had Joan perhaps been burnt too? Had she fainted? What had happened, and why had Elizabeth not let her know?
Milly's account had been vague and unsatisfactory; she had rushed home in a panic of fear and was now in bed. Her sudden and dramatic appearance had upset the colonel, and he too had by now retired to his room, so that Mrs. Ogden, who had longed to go and ascertain for herself the true state of affairs, had been compelled to remain in the house, a prey to anxiety.
At the sight of her daughter safe and sound, however, she temporarily lapsed from tenderness. The reaction was irresistible; she felt angry with Joan, she could have shaken her.
"Well, really!" she began irritably, "this is a nice time to come home; I must say you might have let me know where you were."
Joan sighed and pushed past her gently.
"I'm so sorry," she said, "but you see there was so much to do. Oh, I forgot, you haven't heard." She paused.
"Milly has told me; at least, she has told me something; the child's been terrified. I do think Elizabeth must be quite mad to have allowed either of you to see such a horrible thing."
"Elizabeth put out the fire," said Joan dully.
"Elizabeth put out the fire? Whatdoyou mean?"
"She wrapped the woman in her coat and her hands got burnt."
"Her hands got burnt? Where is she now, then?"
"At home in bed; I've just come from her."
"Isthatwhere you've been all these hours? I see, you've been home with Elizabeth, and you never let me know!"
"I couldn't, Mother, there was no one to send."
"Then why didn't you come yourself? You must have known that I'd be crazy with anxiety!"
Joan collapsed on a chair and dropped her head on her hand. She felt utterly incapable of continuing the quarrel, it seemed too futile and ridiculous. How could her mother have expected her to leave Elizabeth; she felt that she should not have come home even now, she should have stayed by her friend and refused to be driven away. She looked up, and something in her tired young eyes smote her mother's heart; she knelt down beside her and folded her in her arms.
"Oh, my Joan, my darling," she whispered, pressing the girl's head down on her shoulder. "It's only because I was so anxious, my dearest—I love you too much, Joan."
Joan submitted to the embrace quietly with her eyes closed; neither of them spoke for some minutes. Mrs. Ogden stretched out her hand and stroked the short, black hair with tremulous fingers. Her heart beat very fast, she could feel it in her throat. Joan stirred; the gripping arm was pressing her painfully.
Mrs. Ogden controlled herself with an effort; there was so much that she felt she must say to Joan at that moment; the words tingled through her, longing to become articulate. She wanted to cry out like a primitive creature; to scream words of entreaty, of reproach, of tenderness. She longed to humble herself to this child, beseeching her to love her and her only, and above all not to let Elizabeth come between them. But even as the words formed themselves in her brain she crushed them down, ashamed of her folly.