"I hope Elizabeth was not much burnt," she forced herself to say.
Joan sat up. "It's her hands," she answered unsteadily.
Mrs. Ogden kissed her. "You must lie down for a little; this thing has been a great shock, of course, and I think you've been very brave."
Joan submitted readily enough; she was thankful to get away; she wanted to lie on her bed in a darkened room and think, and think and think.
The days that followed were colourless and flat. Joan took to wandering about the house, fidgeting obviously until the hour arrived when she could get away to Elizabeth.
On the whole Elizabeth seemed glad of her visits, Joan thought. No doubt she was dull, lying there alone with her hands on a pillow in front of her. The nurse went out every afternoon, and Joan was careful to time her visits accordingly. But it seemed to the girl that Elizabeth had changed towards her, that far from opening up new fields of intimacy Elizabeth's condition had set up a barrier. She was acutely conscious of this when they were alone together. She felt that whatever they talked about now was forced and trivial, that they might have said quite different things to each other; then whose fault was it, hers or Elizabeth's? She decided that it was Elizabeth's. Her hurried visits left her with a feeling of emptiness, of dissatisfaction; she came away without having said any of the clever and amusing things that she had so carefully prepared, with a sense of having been terribly dull, of having bored Elizabeth.
Elizabeth assured her that the burns were healing, but she still looked very ill, which the nurse attributed to shock. Joan began to dislike the nurse intensely, without any adequate reason. Once Joan had taken some flowers; she had chosen them carefully, remembering that one part of Elizabeth loved bright flowers. It had not been very easy to find what she wanted, and the purchase had exhausted her small stock of money. But when she had laid them shyly on the bed Elizabeth had not looked as radiantly pleased as she had expected; she had thanked her, of course, and admired the flowers, but something had been lacking in her reception of the offering; it was all very puzzling.
Mrs. Ogden said nothing; she bided her time and secretly recorded another grudge against Elizabeth. She was pleased with a new scheme which she had evolved, of appearing to ignore her. Acting upon this inspiration, she carefully forbore to ask after her when Joan came home, and if, as was usually the case, information was volunteered, Mrs. Ogden would change the subject. Colonel Ogden was not so well, and this fact gave her an excuse for making the daily visit to Elizabeth difficult if not impossible. The colonel needed constant attention, and a thousand little duties were easily created for Joan. Joan was not deceived, she saw through the subterfuge, but could not for the life of her find any adequate excuse for shirking the very obvious duty of helping with the invalid.
When she was not kept busy with her father, her mother would advise her to study. She had been in the habit of discouraging what she called "Elizabeth's cramming system," yet now she seemed anxious that Joan should work hard, reminding her that the examination was only two weeks distant, and expressing anxiety as to the result. Colonel Ogden made no secret of his preference for his younger daughter. It was Milly's company that he wanted, and because she managed cleverly to avoid the boredom of these daily tasks, the colonel's disappointment was vented on Joan. He sulked and would not be comforted. At this time Mrs. Ogden's headaches increased in frequency and intensity, and she would constantly summon Joan to stroke her head, which latter proceeding was supposed to dispel the pain. Joan felt no active resentment at what she recognized as a carefully laid plot. Something of nobility in her was touched and sorry. Sometimes, as she sat in her mother's darkened bedroom stroking the thin temples in silent obedience, she would be conscious of a sense of shame and pity because of the transparency of the deception practised.
In spite of Mrs. Ogden, she managed to see Elizabeth, who was getting better fast; she was down in the study now, and Joan noticed that her hands were only lightly bandaged. She asked to be allowed to see for herself how they were progressing, but Elizabeth always found some trifling excuse. However, it was cheering to know that she would soon be back at Leaside, and Joan's spirits rose. Elizabeth seemed more natural too when they were able to meet, and Joan decided that the queer restraint which she had noticed in the early days of her illness had been the outcome of the shock from which the nurse said she was suffering. She argued that this in itself would account for what she had observed as unusual in Elizabeth's manner. She had told her why the daily visits had ceased to be possible, explaining the hundred little duties that had now fallen to her share, and Elizabeth had said nothing at all. She had just looked at Joan and then looked away, and when she did speak it had been about something else. Joan would have liked to discuss the situation, but Elizabeth's manner was not encouraging.
Elizabeth had told her that the servant had died of her burns; according to the doctor it had been a hopeless case from the first, and Joan realized that, after all, Elizabeth's courage had been in a sense wasted. She looked at her lying so quietly on the sofa with her helpless hands on their supporting pillow, and wondered what it was in Elizabeth that had prompted her to do what she had done; what it was in anyone that occasionally found expression in such sudden acts of self-sacrifice. Elizabeth had tried to save a life at the possible loss of her own, and yet she was not so unusual a creature so far as Joan could judge, and the very fact that she was just an everyday person made her action all the more interesting. She herself appeared to set no store by what she had done; she took it for granted, as though she had seen no other alternative, and this seemed to Joan to be in keeping with the rest of her. Elizabeth would refuse to recognize melodrama; it did not go with her, it was a ridiculous thing to associate with her at all. There had been a long article in the local paper, extolling her behaviour, but when Joan, full of pride and gratification, had shown it to her, she had only laughed and remarked: "What nonsense!"
But Joan had her own ideas on the subject; she neither exaggerated nor minimized what Elizabeth had done. She saw the thing just as it was; a brave thing, obviously the right thing to do, and she was glad that Elizabeth should have been the person to do it. But quite apart from this, the accident had been responsible for starting a train of thought in the girl's mind. She had long ago decided that she wanted to make a career, and now she knew exactly what that career should be. She wanted to be a doctor. She knew that it was not easy and not very usual; but that made it seem all the more desirable in her eyes. She thought very often of Richard Benson, and was conscious of wishing that he were at home so that she could talk the matter over with him. She was not quite sure how Elizabeth would take her decision, and she expected opposition from her mother and father, but she felt that Richard could and would help her. She felt that something in his sublime confidence, in his sublime disregard for everything and everybody, would be useful to her in what she knew to be a crisis in her life. She scarcely glanced at her books; the examination was imminent, but she knew that she would not fail.
When at length the great moment arrived it found Joan calm and self-possessed; she breakfasted early and took the train for a neighbouring town in which the examination was to be held. The weather was oppressive, the atmosphere of the crowded room stifling, seeming to exude the tension and nervousness of her fellow competitors; yet, while recognizing these things, she felt that they were powerless to affect her. She glanced calmly over the examination paper that lay upon her desk; it did not seem very formidable, and she began to write her answers with complete assurance.
On her return home that evening she went in to see Elizabeth for a few moments. She found her more perturbed and nervous than she could have conceived possible. Joan reassured her as best she could and hastened on to Leaside. Her mother also seemed anxious; something of the gravity of the occasion appeared to have affected even Mrs. Ogden, for she questioned her closely. Joan wondered why they lacked confidence in her, why they seemed to take it for granted that she would have found the examination difficult; she felt irritated that Elizabeth should have entertained doubts. She had always expressed herself as being certain that Joan would pass, yet now at the last moment she was childishly nervous; perhaps her illness had something to do with it. Joan wished for their sakes that the examination could have been completed in one day and the result made known that first evening, but for herself she felt indifferent. What lay ahead of her was unlikely to be much more formidable than what she had coped with already, so why fear? She smiled a little, thinking of Richard Benson—was she, too, growing conceited—was she growing rather like him?
THE usual time elapsed and then Joan knew she had passed her examination with honours. There was a grudging pride in Mrs. Ogden's heart in spite of herself, and even the colonel revived from his deep depression to congratulate his elder daughter. Joan was happy, with that assured and peaceful happiness that comes only to those who have attained through personal effort; she felt now very confident about the future, capable of almost anything. It was a red-letter day with a vengeance, for Elizabeth was coming back to Leaside that same afternoon to take up her work again. She would not have heard the news, and Joan rejoiced silently at the prospect of telling her. She pictured Elizabeth's face; surely the calm of it must break up just this once, and if it did, how would she look? There were flowers on the school-room table; that was good. Mrs. Ogden had put them there to celebrate Joan's triumph, she had said. Joan wished that they had been put there to welcome Elizabeth back. The antagonism between these two had never ceased to worry and distress her, not so much on their behalf as because she herself wanted them both. At all times, the dearest wish of her heart was that they should be reconciled, lest at any time she should be asked to choose between them. But on this splendid and fulfilling morning no clouds could affect her seriously.
The hours dragged; she could not swallow her lunch; at three o'clock Elizabeth would arrive. Now it was two o'clock, now a quarter past, then half past. Joan, pale with excitement, sat in the schoolroom and waited. Upstairs, Milly was practising her violin; she was playing a queer little tune, rather melancholy, very restrained, as unlike the child who played it as a tune could well be; this struck Joan as she listened and made her speculate. How strange people were; they were always lonely and always strange; perhaps they knew themselves, but certainly no one else ever knew them. There was her mother, did she really know her? And Elizabeth—she had begun to realize that there were unexpected things about her that took you by storm and left you feeling awkward; you could never be quite certain of her these days. Was it only the shock of the illness, she wondered, or was it that she was just beginning to realize that there was an Elizabeth very different from that of the schoolroom; a creature of moods, like herself?
Somewhere in the house a clock chimed the hour, and as it did so the door-bell rang. Joan jumped up, she laughed aloud; how like Elizabeth to ring just as the clock was striking, exactly like her. The schoolroom door opened and she came in. She was a little thinner perhaps, but otherwise the great experience seemed to have made no impression on her outward appearance.
"Elizabeth, I've passed with honours!"
Elizabeth was midway between the door and the table; she opened her lips as if to speak, but paused.
"I knew you would, Joan," was all she said.
Somewhere deep down in herself, Joan smiled. "That's not what you wanted to say," she thought. "You wanted to say something very different."
But she fell in with Elizabeth's mood and tried to check her own enthusiasm. What did it matter if Elizabeth chose to play a part, she knew what this news meant to her; she could have laughed in her face.
"But what really matters is that you've come back," she said.
"Yes, I suppose that is what really matters," replied Elizabeth, her calm eyes meeting Joan's for an instant.
"Oh, Elizabeth, it's been too awful without you, dull and awful!"
"I know," she answered quietly.
"And suppose I'd failed you, Elizabeth, suppose I'd failed in the examination," Joan's voice trembled. "Suppose I had had to tell you that!"
"I should still have been coming back."
"Yes, I know, and that's all that really matters; only it's better as it is, isn't it?"
"You would never fail me, Joan. I think it's not in you to fail, somehow; in any case I don't think you'll fail me." She hesitated—then, "I don't feel that we ought to fail each other, you and I."
She took off her hat and coat and drew off her gloves with her back turned; when she came back to the table her hands were behind her. She sat down quickly and folded them in her lap. In the excitement of the good news and the reunion, Joan had forgotten to ask to see her hands.
"Where's Milly?" said Elizabeth.
Joan smiled. "Can't you hear? She's at her fiddle."
Elizabeth looked relieved. "Don't call her," she said. "Let me see your examination report." Joan fetched it and put it on the table in front of her. For a moment or two Elizabeth studied it in silence, then she looked up.
"It's perfectly excellent," she remarked.
In her enthusiasm, she picked up the paper to study it more closely, and at that moment the sun came out and fell on her hands.
Joan gasped, a little cry of horror escaped her in spite of herself. Elizabeth looked up, she blanched and hid her hands in her lap, but Joan had seen them; they were hideously seamed and puckered with large, discoloured scars.
"Oh, Elizabeth—your hands! Your beautiful hands! You were so proud of them——"
Joan laid her head down on the table and wept.
After supper that night Joan took the plunge. She had not intended doing it so quickly, but waiting seemed useless, and, besides, she was filled with a wild energy that rendered any action a relief. Colonel Ogden was dozing over the evening paper; from time to time he jumped awake with a stifled snort; as always the dining-room smelt of his pipe smoke and stale food. At Joan's quick movement he opened his eyes very wide; he looked like an old baby.
She began abruptly, "Mother, I want to tell you that I'm going to study to be a doctor."
It was characteristic of her to get it all out at once without any prelude. Mrs. Ogden laid down her knitting, and contrary to all expectations did not faint; she did not even press her head, but she smiled unpleasantly.
She said: "Why? Because Elizabeth has burnt her hands?"
It was the wrong thing to say—a thoroughly stupid and heartless remark, and she knew it. She would have given much for a little of the tact which she felt instinctively to be her only weapon, but for the life of her she could not subdue the smouldering anger that took hold of her at the moment. She never for an instant doubted that Elizabeth was in some way connected with this mad idea; it pleased her to think this, even while it tormented her. The mother and daughter confronted each other; their eyes were cold and hard.
"What's that?" said Colonel Ogden, leaning a little forward.
Joan turned to him. "I was telling Mother that I've decided on a career. I'm going in for medicine."
"Forwhat?"
"For medicine. Other girls have done it."
Her father rose unsteadily to his feet; he helped himself up by the arms of his chair. Very slowly he pointed a fat, shaking finger at his wife.
"Mary, what did I tell you, what did I tell you, Mary? This is what comes of Henrietta's iniquitous will. My God! Did I ever think to hear a girl child of fifteen calmly stating what she intends to do? Does she ask my permission? No, she states that she intends to be a doctor. A doctor, my daughter! Good God! What next?" He turned on Joan: "You must be mad," he told her. "It's positively indecent—an unsexing, indecent profession for any woman, and any woman who takes it up is indecent and unsexed. I say it without hesitation—indecent, positively immodest!"
"Indecent, Father?"
"Yes, and immodest; it's an outrageous suggestion!"
Mrs. Ogden took up her knitting again; the needles clicked irritatingly. Once or twice she closed her eyes, but her hands moved incessantly.
"Joan!" She swallowed and spoke as if under a great restraint.
"Yes, Mother?"
"If you were a boy I would say this to you, and since you seem to have chosen to assume an altogether ridiculous masculine role, listen to me. There are things that a gentleman can do and things he cannot; no gentleman can enter the medical profession, no Routledge has ever been known to do such a thing. Our men have served their country; they have served it gloriously, but a Routledge does not enter a middle-class profession. I wish to keep quite calm, Joan. I can understand your having acquired these strange ideas, for you have naturally been thrown very much with Elizabeth, and Elizabeth is—well, not quite one of us; but you will please remember who you are, and that I for one will never tolerate your behaving other than as a member of my family. I——"
The colonel interrupted her. "Listen to me," he thundered. In his anger he seemed to have regained some of his old vitality. "You listen to me, young woman; I'll have none of this nonsense under my roof. You think, I suppose, that your aunt has made you independent, but let me tell you that for the next six years you're nothing of the kind. Not one penny will I spend on any education that is likely to unsex a daughter of mine. I'll have none of these new-fangled woman's rights ideas in my house; you will stay at home like any other girl until such time as you get married. You will marry; do you hear me?That'sa woman's profession! A sawbones indeed! Do you think you're a boy? Have you gone stark, staring mad?"
"No, I'm not mad," Joan said quietly, "but I don't think I shall marry, Father."
"Not marry, and why not, pray?"
She did not attempt to explain, for she herself did not know what had prompted her.
"I can wait," she told him. "It wouldn't be too late to begin when I'm twenty-one."
He opened his mouth to roar at her, but the words did not come; instead he fell back limply in his chair. Mrs. Ogden rushed to him. Joan stood very still; she had no impulse to help him; she felt cold and numb with anger.
"I think you've killed your father," said Mrs. Ogden unsteadily.
Joan roused herself. She looked into her mother's working face; they stared at each other across the prostrate man.
"No," she said gravely, "it's you, both of you, who are trying to kill me."
She went and fetched brandy, and together they forced some between the pallid lips. After a little he stirred.
"You see, he's not dead," said Joan mechanically. "I'll go for the doctor."
When the doctor came he shook his head.
"How did this happen?" he inquired.
"He got angry," Mrs. Ogden told him.
"But I warned you that he mustn't be excited, that you ought not to excite him under any circumstances. Really, Mrs. Ogden, if you do, I won't answer for the consequences."
"It was notIwho excited him," she said, and she looked at Joan.
Joan said: "Will he die, Doctor Thomas?" She could hear herself that her voice was unnaturally indifferent.
The doctor looked at her in surprise. "Not this time, perhaps; in fact, I'm pretty sure he'll pull round this time, but it mustn't happen again."
"No," said Joan, "I understand; it mustn't happen again."
"Quite so," said the doctor dryly.
IN the two years that elapsed before Joan's seventeenth birthday nothing occurred in the nature of a change. Looking back over that time she was surprised to find how little had happened; she had grown accustomed to monotony, but the past two years seemed to have been more monotonous than usual. The only outstanding event had been when she and Milly joined the tennis club. Mrs. Ogden did not encourage her daughters to take part in the more public local festivities, which were to a great extent shared with people whom she considered undesirable, but in this case she had been forced to yield to combined entreaties.
The tennis club meant less after all to Joan than she had anticipated, though she played regularly for the sake of exercise. The members were certainly not inspiring, nor was their game challenging to effort. They were divided into two classes; those who played for the sake of their livers and those who played for the sake of white flannels and flirtation. To the former class belonged General Brooke, a boisterous player, very choleric and invariably sending his balls into neighbouring gardens. His weight had increased perceptibly since the colonel's illness; perhaps because there was now no one to cause him nervous irritation. When he played tennis his paunch shook visibly under his flannel shirt. The latter class was made up principally of youths and maidens from adjacent villas. To nearly every member of this younger generation was supposed to belong some particular stroke which formed an ever fruitful topic for discussion and admiration. Mr. Thompson, the new assistant at the circulating library, sprang quickly into fame through volleying at the net. He was a mean player and had an odious trick of just tipping the ball over, and apologizing ostentatiously when he had done it. There was usually a great deal of noise, for not only was there much applause and many encouraging remarks, but the players never failed to call each score. Joan played a fairly good game, but contrary to all expectation she never became really proficient. Milly, on the other hand, developed a distinct talent for tennis, and she and young Mr. Thompson, who was considered a star player, struck up a friendship, which, however, never penetrated beyond the front door of Leaside.
At fifteen Milly was acutely conscious of her femininity. She was in all respects a very normal girl, adoring personal adornment and distinctly vain. The contrast between the two sisters was never more marked than at this period; they made an incongruous couple, the younger in her soft summer dresses, the elder in the stiff collars and ties which she affected. In spite of all Mrs. Ogden's entreaties Joan still kept her hair short. Of course it was considered utterly preposterous, and the effect in evening dress was a little grotesque, but she seemed completely to lack personal vanity. At seventeen she suggested a well set-up stripling who had borrowed his sister's clothes.
The life of the schoolroom continued much as usual. Mrs. Ogden, now two years older and with an extra two years of the colonel's heart and her own nervous headaches behind her, had almost given up trying to interfere with Joan's studies. She went in for her examinations as a matter of course, and as a matter of course was congratulated when she did well, but the subject of her career was never mentioned; it appeared to have been thrust into the background by common consent. Elizabeth looked older; at times a few new lines showed on her forehead, and the curious placidity of her mouth was disturbed. Something very like discontent had gathered about the firmly modelled lips.
But if Joan was given more freedom to study, she was to some extent expected to pay for that freedom. Seabourne could be quite gay according to its own standards; there were tennis and croquet parties in the summer and a never-ending chain of whist drives in the winter, to say nothing of tea parties all the year round. To these festivities Joan, now seventeen, was expected to go, and it was not always possible to evade them, for, as Mrs. Ogden said, it was a little hard that she should have to go everywhere alone when she had a daughter who was nearly grown up.
The Loos gave a garden party at Moor Park. Poor Joan! She felt horribly out of place, dressed for the occasion in a muslin frock, her cropped head, crowned by a Leghorn hat, rising incongruously from the collarless bodice. Sir Robert thought her a most unattractive young woman, but his wife still disagreed with him. She had always admired Joan, and now the fact that there was something distinctly unfeminine about the girl was an added interest in her hostess's eyes. For Lady Loo, once the best woman to hounds in a hard riding hunt, had begun to find life too restful at Moor Park. She had awakened one day filled with the consciousness of a kind of Indian summer into which she had drifted. Some stray gleam of youth had shot through her, filling her with a spurious vitality that would not for the moment be denied. And since the old physical activity was no longer available, she turned in self-defence to mental interests, and took up the Feminist Movement with all the courage, vigour and disregard of consequences that had characterized her in the hunting-field. It was a nine-days' wonder to see Lady Loo pushing her bicycle through the High Street of Seabourne, clad in bloomers and a Norfolk jacket, a boat-shaped hat set jauntily on her grey head. It is doubtful whether Lady Loo had any definite ideas regarding what it was that she hoped to attain for her sex; it certainly cannot have been equality, for in spite of her bloomers, Sir Robert, poor man, was never allowed to smoke his cigar in the drawing-room to the day of his death.
Lady Loo's shrewd eyes studied Joan with amusement; she took in at a glance the short hair and the wide, flat shoulders.
"Will you ever let it grow?" she asked abruptly.
"Never," said Joan. "It's so little trouble as it is."
"Quite right," said her hostess. "Now why on earth shouldn't women be comfortable! It's high time men realized that they ain't got the sole prerogative where comfort is concerned." She chuckled. "I suppose," she remarked reflectively, "that people think it's rather odd for a young woman of your age to have short hair. I suppose they think it's rather odd for an old woman like me to bicycle in bloomers; but the odd thing about it is that they, the women I mean, should think it odd at all. It must be that all the centuries of oppression have atrophied their brains a little, poor dears. When they get equal rights with men it'll make all the difference to their outlook; they'll be able to stretch themselves."
"Do you think so, Lady Loo?" said Mrs. Ogden. "I should never know what to do with that sort of liberty if I had it, and I'm sure Joan wouldn't."
Lady Loo was not so sure, but she said: "Well, then, she must learn."
"I think there are many other things she had better learn first," rejoined Mrs. Ogden tartly.
Lady Loo smiled. "What, for instance? How to get married?"
Mrs. Ogden winced. "Well, after all," she said, "there are worse things for a girl than marriage, but fortunately Joan need not think of that unless she wants to; she's got her——" she paused—" her home."
Lady Loo thought. "You mean she's got you, you selfish woman." Aloud she said: "Well, times are changing and mothers will have to change too, I suppose. I hear Joan's clever; isn't she going todosomething?"
Joan flushed. "I want to," she broke in eagerly.
Mrs. Ogden drew her away and Lady Loo laughed to herself complacently.
"Oh! the new generation," she murmured. "They're as unlike us as chalk from cheese. That girl don't look capable of doing a quiet little job like keeping a house or having a baby; she's not built for it mentally or physically."
At that moment a young man came across the lawn. "Joan!" he called. It was Richard Benson.
Joan turned with outstretched hands in her pleasure. "I didn't know you were in England," she said.
"I got back from Germany last week. It's ripping your being here to-day."
He shook hands politely with Mrs. Ogden and then, as if she did not exist, turned and drew Joan after him.
"Now then," he began, "I want to hear all about it."
"All about what? There's nothing to tell."
"Then there ought to be. Joan, what have you been doing with yourself?"
"Nothing," she answered dully, and then, quite suddenly, she proceeded to tell him everything. She was surprised at herself, but still she went on talking; she talked as though floodgates had been loosed, as though she had been on a desert island for the past two years and he were the man who had come to rescue her. He did not interrupt until she fell silent, and then: "It's all wrong," he said.
She stood still and faced him. "I don't know why I told you; it can't be helped, so there's no use in talking."
His keen grey eyes searched her face. "My dear, it's got to be helped; you can't be a kind of burnt sacrifice!"
She said: "I sometimes think we're all sacrifices one to the other; that's what Elizabeth says when she's unhappy."
"Then Elizabeth's growing morbid," he remarked decidedly. "It's the result of being bottled."
At the old familiar phrase she laughed, but her eyes filled with tears.
"Richard," she said, "it's utterly, utterly hopeless; they don't mean it, poor dears, but they can't help being there, and I can't help belonging to them or they to me. If I worry Mother, she gets a batch of nervous headaches that would move a stone to compassion. And her cough takes several turns for the worse. But if I worryFather, and make him really angry, the doctor says he'll die of heart disease, and I know perfectly well that he would, he's just that kind of man. What do you suggest, that I should be a parricide?" She smiled ruefully. "I ought to go up to Cambridge next year, if I'm to be any good, and then to the hospitals in London, but can you see what would happen if I were to suggest it, especially the latter part of the programme? I don't think I'd have to carry it out to kill my father, I think he'd die of fury at the mere idea."
"He'll die anyhow quite soon," said Richard quietly. "No man can go on indefinitely with a heart like his."
"That may be," she agreed, "but I can't be a contributory cause. There's one side of me that rages at the injustice of it all and just wants to grab at everything for itself; but there's another side, Richard, that simply can't inflict pain, that can't bear to hurt anything, not even a fly, because it hurts itself so much in doing it. I'm made like that; I can't bear to hurt things, especially things that seem to lean on me."
"I understand," he said. "Most of us have that side somewhere; maybe it's the better side and maybe it's only the weaker."
"Tell me about yourself," said Joan, changing the subject.
"Well, this is my last year at Cambridge, you know, and then the real work begins—Joan, life's perfectly glorious!"
She looked at him with interest; he had not changed much; he was taller and broader and blunter than ever, but the keenness in his grey eyes reminded her still of the bright inquiring look of a young animal.
"Look here," he said impetuously, "I'll send you some medical books; study as well as you can until you come of age, and then—cut loose! Ask Elizabeth to help you, she's clever enough for anything; and anyhow I won't send things that are too difficult at first, I'll just send something simple."
Her eyes brightened. "Oh, will you, Richard?"
"You bet I will. And, Joan, do come over more often, now I'm home, then we can talk."
"I will," she promised, and she meant it.
They had scarcely met for two years, for Richard had spent most of his vacations abroad; there was little in common between him and his father. His decision to take up medicine had shocked Mr. Benson, but he was a just man in spite of the fact that he completely failed to understand his younger son. He and Richard had thrashed things out, and it had been decided that Richard's allowance should continue until he had taken his medical degree, after which his father would make him a present of a lump sum of money to do as he liked with, but this was to be final, and Richard was well content. His self-confidence never failed. He talked Joan over with his mother that evening.
"She's an awfully jolly girl," he said.
Mrs. Benson demurred at the adjective. "Jolly is hardly the way I should express her," she replied. "I think she's a solemn young creature."
"No wonder," he said hotly. "Her life must be too awful; a mother who's an hysteric, and a father——" He paused, finding no words adequate to describe Colonel Ogden.
Mrs. Benson laughed. "Oh, Richard! You never change. Don Quixote tilting at windmills—and yet you're probably right; the girl's life must be rather hard, poor child. But there are thousands like her, my son."
"Millions," he corrected bitterly. "Millions all over England! They begin by being so young and fine, like Joan perhaps; and, Mother, how do they end?"
"But, Richard dear, I'm afraid it's the lot of women. A woman is only complete when she finds a good husband, and those who don't find one are never really happy. I don't believe work fulfils them; it takes children to do that, my dear; that's nature, and you can't get beyond nature."
"No," he said. "You're mostly right, and yet they can't all find husbands—and some of them don't want to," he added reflectively.
"Joan will marry," said Mrs. Benson. "She ought to let her hair grow."
He burst out laughing. "Bless you, you old darling," he exclaimed. "It's what's inside the head that decides those things, not what's outside it!"
She took his hand and stroked it. "I'm glad I had you," she said.
He stooped and kissed her cheek. "So am I," he told her. They wandered into the garden, arm in arm.
"It's lovely here," he said. "But it's not for me, Mother; I don't think lovely things were meant for me, so I must make the ugly ones beautiful somehow."
"My dear, you've chosen an ugly profession; and yet the healing of the sick is beautiful."
"I think so," he said simply.
Presently she said: "I want to talk to you about Lawrence."
"Fire away! You don't mean to tell me that Lawrence has been sowing anything like wild oats? Your voice sounds so serious."
"No, of course not, you goose; can you see Lawrence knee-deep in a field of anything but—well—the very best Patna rice?" They laughed. "No, it's very far from wild oats—I think he's fallen in love with Elizabeth."
"With Elizabeth? But, good Lord! Lawrence hates clever women!"
"I know; he always said he did, and that's what makes it so astounding; and yet I'm sure I'm right, I can see it in his eye."
Richard whistled. "Will she have him, do you think?"
"I don't know. Elizabeth is not an ordinary woman; sometimes I think she's rather strange. I love her, but I don't understand her—she's not very happy, I think."
"Will Lawrence make her happy, Mother?"
She paused. "Well—he'll make her comfortable," she compromised.
They laughed again.
"Poor old Lawrence," he said. "He's the best fellow in the world, but quite the very dullest; I can't think how you produced him, darling."
"I can't think how I produced you!" she retorted.
DURING the weeks that followed, Joan managed to visit the Bensons on every available opportunity, or so it seemed to her mother. Mrs. Benson, lavish in invitations, encouraged the intimacy between Joan and Richard, and watched with amusement the rather pathetic and clumsy efforts of her elder son to win Elizabeth. Mrs. Ogden searched her heart and found no consolation. She had very little doubt that Joan and Richard were falling in love; they were very young of course, especially Joan, but she felt that Joan had never really been young, that she was a creature with whom age did not count and could not be relied upon to minimize or intensify a situation. She became retrospective, looking back into her own dim past, recalling her own courtship and mating. The burning days of Indian sunshine, the deep, sweet-smelling Indian nights with their melodramatic stars, the garden parties, the balls, the picnics, and the thin young Englishmen who had thought her beautiful; she remembered their tanned faces, serious with new responsibilities.
She remembered the other English girls and her own sister Ann, with their constant whispers of love and lovers, their vanities, their jealousies, their triumphs and their heart-breaks. She, too, had been like that, whispering of love and lovers, dreaming queer, uneasy dreams, a little guilty, but very alluring. And then into the picture came striding James Ogden, a square young man with a red moustache and cold, twinkling blue eyes. They had danced together, and almost any man looked his best in the full dress uniform of the Buffs. They had ridden in the early mornings, and James was all of a piece with his Barb, a goodly thing to behold. He had never troubled to court her properly, she knew that now. Even then he had just been James, always James, James for all their lives; James going to bed, James getting up, James thinking of James all day long. No, he had not wasted much time on courtship; he had decided very quickly that he wanted to marry her and had done so. She remembered her wedding night; it had not been at all like her slightly guilty dreams; it had been—she shuddered. Thinking back now she knew that she herself, that part of her that was composed of spirit, had been rudely shaken free, leaving behind but a part of the whole. It had not beenhernight, but all James's, a blurred and horrible experience filled with astonished repugnance.
Then their married life in the comfortable bungalow; after all, that had had compensations, for Joan had come as a healer, as a reason, an explanation. She had found herself promoted to a new dignity as a young married woman and mother, the equal of the other married women, the recipient of their confidences. Ann had married her chaplain, now a bishop, but Ann neither gave nor received confidences, she had become too religious. By the death of their father the two sisters had found themselves very much alone; they were stranded in a strange, new continent with strange, new husbands, and Mary Ogden would have given much at that time could she have taken her secret troubles to her sister. But Ann had discouraged her coldly, and had recommended prayer as the only fitting preliminary to marital relations.
Then another man had come into her life, quite different from James; a tall man with white hair and a young face. Unlike James, he took nothing for granted; on the contrary, he was strangely humble, considering his brilliant career. He was James's very good friend, but he fell in love with James's wife; she knew it, and wondered whether, after all, what men called love was as gross and stupid and distasteful as James made it. She let him kiss her one night in the garden, but that kiss had broken the spell for them both; they had sprung apart filled with a sense of guilt; they were good, conventional creatures, both of them. They were not of the stuff that guilty lovers are made of. But in their way they were almost splendid, almost heroic, for having at one time bidden fair to throw their prejudices to the wind, they had made of them instead a coat of mail.
Mrs. Ogden searched her heart; it ached, but she went on prodding. What would happen to Joan if she married—did she love Richard? Did she know what it meant? What was her duty towards the girl, how much should she tell her, how much did she know? She had been afraid of Joan going to Cambridge. She laughed bitterly; what was Cambridge in comparison to this? What was anything in comparison to the utter desolation of Joan in love, Joan giving herself utterly to another creature! She felt weak and powerless to stop this thing, and yet she told herself she was not quite powerless; one thing remained to her, she could and would tell Joan the facts of her own married life, she would keep back nothing. Yet she would be careful to be just, she would point out that all men were not like James, and at the same time make it clear that James was, as men go, a good man. Was it not almost her duty to warn Joan of the sort of thing that might happen, and to implore her to think well before she took an irrevocable step? Yes, she told herself, it was a duty too long delayed, a duty that must be fulfilled at once, before it was too late.
As Mrs. Ogden came to her momentous decision, Richard was actually proposing to Joan. They stood together in the paddock beyond the orchard, some colts gambolled near by. He went at it with his head down, so to speak, in the way he had of charging at things.
He said, seizing her astonished hand: "Joan, I know you only come here to pick my brain about medicine and things, but I've fallen in love with you; will you marry me?"
She left her hand in his, because she was so fond of him and because his eyes looked a little frightened in spite of his usual self-confidence, but she said:
"No, I can't marry you, Richard."
He dropped her hand. "Why can't you?" he demanded.
"Because I don't feel like that," she told him. "I don't feel like that about you."
"But, Joan," his voice was eager, "we could do such splendid things together; if you won't have me for myself will you have me because of the work? I can help you to get away; I can help you to make a career. Oh, Joan, do listen! I know I could do it; I'll be a doctor and you'll be a doctor, we'll be partners—Joan, do say 'Yes.'"
She almost laughed, it struck her that it was like a nursery game of make-believe. "I'll be a doctor and you'll be a doctor!" It sounded so funny; she visualized the double plate on their door front: "Doctor Richard Benson," and underneath: "Doctor Joan Benson." But she reached again for his hand and stroked it gently as if she were soothing a little brother whose house of bricks she had inadvertently knocked down.
"I'm not the marrying sort," she said.
"God knowswhatyou are, then!" he burst out rudely. Then his eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, Richard!" she implored, "don't stop being my friend, don't refuse to help me just because I can't give you what you want."
Now it was his turn to laugh ruefully. "You may not be the marrying sort," he said, "but you're a real woman for all that; you look at things from a purely feminine point of view."
"Perhaps I do," she acquiesced. "And that means that I'm being utterly selfish, I suppose; but I need your friendship—can I have it?"
"Oh, I suppose so," he said with some bitterness. "But you won't really need it, you know, for you never mean to break away."
She flushed. "Don't say it!" she exclaimed. "I forbid you to say it!"
"Well," he told her, "if you mean to, it's time you began to get a move on. If you won't take me, then for God's sake take something, anything, only don't let Seabourne take you."
On the way home Joan told Elizabeth. They stopped and faced each other in the road.
"And you said——?" Elizabeth asked.
"I said 'No,'" replied Joan. "What did you think I'd say?"
"No!" said Elizabeth, and she smiled. Then, "I wonder if you'll be surprised to hear that I had a proposal too, last week?"
Joan opened her lips but did not speak. Elizabeth watched her.
"Yes," she said. "I had a proposal from Lawrence. It seems to run in the family, but mine was very impressive. I felt it carried the weight of the whole Bank of England behind it. It sounded very safe and comfortable and rich, I was almost tempted——" She paused.
"And what did you say, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth came a step nearer. "I said I was too busy just now to get married; I said I was too busy thinking of someone I cared for very much and of how they could get free and make a life of their own."
"You said that, Elizabeth?"
"Yes. Does it surprise you? That's what I said—so you see, Joan, you mustn't fail me."
Joan looked at her. She stood there, tall and neat, in the road; the dust on her shoes seemed an impertinence, as though it had no right to blemish the carefully polished leather. Her eyes were full of an inscrutable expression, her lips a little parted as though about to ask a question.
"If it's devotion you want," said Joan gruffly, "then you've got all I've got to give."
There was a little silence, and when Elizabeth spoke it was in her matter-of-fact voice. She said, "I not only want your devotion but I need it, and I want more than that; I want your work, your independence, your success. I want to take them so that I can give them back to you, so that I can look at you and say, 'I did this thing, I found Joan and I gave her the best I had to give, freedom and——'" she paused, "'and happiness.'"
They turned and clasped hands, walking silently home towards Seabourne.
Mrs. Ogden was watching from the dining-room window as she often watched for Joan. Her pale face, peering between the lace curtains, had grown to fill the girl with a combined sense of irritation and pity. She called Joan into the room and closed the door. Joan knew from her mother's manner that something was about to happen, it was full of a suppressed excitement. Without a word she led Joan to the sofa and made her sit beside her; she took the girl's face between her two cold hands and gazed into her eyes.
Then she began. "Joan, darling, I want to talk to you. I've wanted to have a serious talk with you for some time. You're not a child any longer, you're nearly a woman now; it seems so strange to me, for somehow I always think of you as my little Joan. That's the way of mothers, I suppose; they find it difficult to realize that their children can ever grow up, but you have grown up and it's likely that you'll fall in love some day—perhaps want to marry, and there are things that I think it my duty to tell you——" She paused. "Facts about life," she concluded awkwardly.
Her conscience stirred uneasily, she felt almost afraid of what she was about to do, but she thrust the feeling down. "Itismy duty, I'm doing it for Joan's sake," she told herself. "I'm doing it for her sake andnotfor my own."
Joan sat very still, she wondered what was coming; her mother's eyes looked eager and shy and she was a little flushed. Mrs. Ogden began to speak again in quick jerks, she turned her face slightly aside showing the delicate line of her profile, her hands moved incessantly, plaiting and unplaiting the fringed trimming on her dress.
"When I was not very much older than you, in India," she went on, "I was like you, little more than a child. I was not clever as you are—I never have been clever, my dear, but I was beautiful, Joan, really beautiful. Do you remember, you used to think me beautiful?" The voice grew wistful and paused, then went on without waiting for a reply. "I had no mother to tell me anything, and what I learnt about things I learnt from other girls of my own age; we speculated together and came to many wrong conclusions." Another pause. "About the facts of life, I mean—about men and marriage and—what it all meant. Men made love to me, dearest, they admired your mother in those days, but their love-making was restrained and respectful, as the love-making of a man should be to a young unmarried girl, and——" she hesitated, "it told me nothing—nothing, Joan, of what was to come. Then I met your father, I met James, and he proposed to me and I married him. He was good looking then, in a way—at least I thought so—and a wonderful horseman, and that appealed to me, as you may guess, for we Routledges have always been fond of horses. Well, dear, that's what I want to tell you about—not the horses, my married life, I mean."
She went on quickly now, the words tumbled over each other, her voice gathered volume, growing sharp and resentful. As she spoke she felt overwhelmed with the relief that came with this crude recital of long hidden miseries. Joan watched her, astonished; watched the refined, worn face, the delicate, peevish lips that were uttering such incongruous things. Something of her mother's sense of outrage entered into her as she listened, filling her with resentment and pity for this handicapped and utterly self-centred creature, for whom the natural laws had worked so unpropitiously. She thought bitterly of her father, breathing heavily on his pillows upstairs, of his lack of imagination, his legally sanctified self-indulgence, his masterful yet stupid mind, but she only said:
"Why have you told me all this, dearest?"
Mrs. Ogden took her hand. "Why have I told you? Oh, Joan, because of Richard Benson, because I think you're falling in love for the first time."
Joan looked at her in amazement. "You think that?" she asked.
"Well, isn't it so? Joan, tell me quickly, isn't it so?"
"No," said Joan emphatically, "it isn't. Richard asked me to marry him to-day and I refused."
Mrs. Ogden burst into tears; her weeping was loud and unrestrained; she hid her head on the girl's shoulder. "Oh, Joan—my Joan——" she sobbed. "Oh, Joan, I am so glad!"
Now she did not care what she said, the years of unwilling restraint melted away; she clung to the girl fiercely, possessively, murmuring words of endearment. Joan took her in her arms and rocked her like a child. "There, there!" she whispered.
Presently Mrs. Ogden dried her eyes, her face was ugly from weeping. "It's the thought of losing you," she gasped. "I can't face the thought of that—and other things; you know what I mean, the thought of your being maltreated by a man, the thought that it might happen to you as it happened to me. You see, you've always seemed to make up for it all, what I missed in James I more than found in you. I know I'm tiresome, my darling, I know I'm not strong and that I often worry you, but, oh Joan, if you only knew how much I love you. I've wanted to tell you so, often, but it didn't seem right somehow, but you do understand, don't you, my darling? Joan, say you understand, say you love me."
Somewhere in the back of Joan's mind came a faint echo: did she love her? But it died almost immediately.
"You poor, poor darling," she said, "of course I understand, and love you."
RICHARD was faithful to his promise. Large brown paper parcels of books began to arrive from Cambridge; Joan and Elizabeth studied them together. The weariness of the days was gone for Joan; with the advent of her medical books she grew confident once more, she felt her foot already on the first rung of the ladder.
At this time Elizabeth strove for Joan as she had never striven before. Joan did not guess how often her friend sat up into the small hours of the morning struggling to master some knotty point in their new studies. How she wrestled with anatomy, with bones and muscles and circulatory systems, with lobes and hemispheres and convolutions, until she began to wonder how it could be possible that anyone retained health and sanity, considering the delicate and complicated nature of the instrument upon which they depended. A good many of the books dealt with diseases of the nerves and brain, and Joan found them more fascinating and interesting than she had imagined possible. Poor Elizabeth had some ado to keep pace with her pupil's enthusiasm. She strained every nerve to understand and be helpful; she joined a library in London and started a line of private study, the better to fit her for the task in hand. She gloried in the difficulties to be surmounted, and felt that this work was invested with a peculiar significance, almost a sanctity. It was as though she were helping Joan towards the Holy Grail of freedom.
At the end of six months Elizabeth paused for breath, and together the two students reviewed their efforts. They were very well pleased with themselves and congratulated each other. But in spite of all this Elizabeth was dissatisfied and apprehensive at moments. She told herself that she was growing fanciful, nervy, that she was hipped about life and particularly about Joan, that she needed a change, that she had been overworking recklessly; she even consulted their text books with a view to personal application, only to throw them aside with a scornful exclamation. Theories, all theories! Those theories might conceivably apply to other people, to Mrs. Ogden for instance, but not to Elizabeth Rodney! She was not of the stuff in which neurosis thrives; she was just a plain, practical woman taking a plain, practical interest in, and having a plain, practical affection for, a brilliant pupil. But her state of mental unrest increased until it became almost physical—at last she broke——
"Joan!" she exclaimed irritably one day, flinging a text book on to a chair, "what, in Heaven's name, are we doing this for?"
Joan looked up in bewilderment. "Out of scientific interest, I suppose," she ventured.
"Interest!" Elizabeth's eyes gleamed angrily. "Interest! Scientific interest—yes, that's it! I'm sitting up half the night out of mere scientific interest in a subject that I personally don't care a button about, except inasmuch as it affects your future. I'm trying to take a scientific interest in the disgusting organs of our disgusting bodies, to learn how and why they act, or rather how and why they don't act, to read patiently and sympathetically about a lot of abnormal freaks, who as far as I can see ought all to be shut up in a lunatic asylum, to understand and condone the physical and mental impulses of hysterics, and I'm doing all this out of scientific interest! Scientific interest! That's why I'm slaving as I never slaved at Cambridge—out of pure scientific interest! Well, I tell you, you're wrong! I don't like medical books and I particularly dislike neurotic people, but it's been enough for me that you do like all this, that you feel that you want to be a doctor and make good in that way. It's not out of scientific interest that I've done it, Joan; it's because of you and your career, it's because I'm mad for you to have a future—I've been so from the first, I think—I don't care what you do if only you do something and do it well, if only you're not thrown on the ash-heap——" She paused.
Joan felt afraid. Through all the turbulent nonsense of Elizabeth's tirade she discerned an undercurrent of serious import. It was disconcerting to find that Elizabeth could rage, but it was not that which frightened her, but rather a sudden new feeling of responsibility towards Elizabeth, different in quality from anything that had gone before. She became suddenly aware that she could make or mar not only herself but Elizabeth, that Elizabeth had taken root in her and would blossom or fade according to the sustenance she could provide.
"It's you,you, Joan!" she was saying. "Are you serious, are you going to break away in the end, or is it—am I—going to be all wasted?"
"You mean, am I going to leave Seabourne?"
"Yes, that is what I mean; are you going to make good?"
"Good God!" Joan exclaimed bitterly. "How can I?"
"You can and you must. Haven't you any character? Have you no personality worthy to express itself apart from Seabourne. No will to help yourself with? Are you going to remain in this rut all the rest of your life, or at least until you're too old to care, simply because you've not got the courage to break through a few threads of ridiculous sentiment? Why it's not even sentiment, it's sentimentality!" Her voice died down and faltered: "Joan, for my sake——"
They stared at each other, wide-eyed at their own emotions. They realized that all in a moment they had turned a sharp corner and come face to face with a crisis, that there was now no going back, that they must go forward together or each one alone. For a long time neither spoke, then Joan said quietly:
"You think that I'm able to do as you wish, that I'm able to break through what you call 'the threads of sentimentality,' and you despise me in your heart for hesitating; but if you knew how these threads eat into my flesh you might despise me less for enduring them."
Elizabeth stretched out a scarred hand and touched Joan timidly; her anger had left her as suddenly as it had come, she felt humble and lonely.
"You see," she said, "I'm a woman who has made nothing of life myself and I know the bitterness that comes over one at times, the awful emptiness; but if I can see you happy it won't matter ever again. I don't want any triumphs myself, not now; I only want them for you. I want to sit in the sun and warmth of your success like a lizard on an Italian wall; I want positively to bask. It's not a very energetic programme, perhaps, and I never thought I'd live to feel that way about anything; but that's what it's come to, you see, my dear, and you can't have it in you to leave me shivering in the cold!"
Joan clung to the firm, marred hand like a drowning man to a spar; she felt at that moment that she could never let it go. In her terror lest the hand should some day not be there she grew pale and trembled. She looked into Elizabeth's troubled eyes.
"What do you want of me?" she asked.
"If I told you, would you be afraid?"
"No, I'm only afraid of your taking your hand away."
"Then listen. I want you to work as we are doing until you come of age, then I want you to go to Cambridge, as I've often told you, but after that—I want you to make a home with me."
"Elizabeth!"
"Yes, I have a little money put by, not very much, but enough, and I want you to come to London and live there with me. We could jog along somehow; I'd get a job while you studied at the hospital; we'd have a little flat together, and be free and very happy. I've wanted to say this to you for some time and to-day somehow it's all come out; it had to get said sooner or later. Joan, I can't stand Seabourne for many more years, and yet as long as you're here I can't get away. I tell you there are times when I could dash myself to bits on the respectable mud-coloured wall of our house, when I could lay a trail of gunpowder down the middle of the High Street and set light to the fuse, when I could hurl Ralph's woollen socks in his face and pull down the plush curtains and stamp on them, when I could throw all the things out of the study window, one by one, at the heads of the people on the parade, when I could—oh, Joan!—when I could swim a long way out to sea and never come back; I nearly did that once, and then I thought of you and I came back, and here I am. But how long will you make me stay here, Joan? How long shall I have to endure the sight of you growing weaker instead of stronger, as you mature, and some day perhaps the sight of you growing old and empty and utterly meaningless, with all the life and blood sucked out of you by this detestable place, when we might get free and hustle along with life, when we might be purposeful and tired and happy because we mean something."
Joan got up.
"Listen," she said. "When I'm twenty-one Iwillgo to Cambridge and after that I shall come to you in London; we'll find a little flat and be very happy, Elizabeth."
Elizabeth looked straight into her eyes with a cold, searching scrutiny. "Is that a promise, Joan?"
"Yes, it's a promise."
Joan's medical studies went almost unnoticed by Mrs. Ogden, whose mind was occupied with more pressing worries. Milly had suddenly announced her intention of going to the Royal College of Music, and her master had backed her up; there had been a scene, recriminations. The colonel had put his foot down and had not on this occasion had a heart attack, so that the scene had been painfully prolonged. In the end he had said quite bluntly that there was no money for anything of the kind. This had surprised Mrs. Ogden and had made her feel vaguely uncomfortable; she began to remember certain documents that James had asked her to sign lately; he had told her that they concerned the investment of the children's money. And then, to her who knew him so well, it was all too evident that something was preying on his mind; she fancied that recently there had been more in his morose silences than could be accounted for by ill-health. He had grown very old, she thought.
Milly had not stormed, nor did she appear to have gone through much mental perturbation; in fact she had smiled pleasantly in her father's face. It never occurred to her for one moment that she would not get her own way in the end; it hardly seemed worth worrying about. She did not believe that there was no money to send her to the College; she told Joan afterwards that this sort of remark was on a par with all the rest of the lies their father told when he did not wish to be opposed.
"After all," she said, "there is my hundred and fifty a year, and of course I should take a scholarship. It's only Father's usual tactics, and it's all on a par with him to like the feeling of holding on to my money as long as he can; he thinks it gives him the whip hand. But I'm going up to the College, and I'm not going to wait until I'm twenty-one. I shall manage it, you'll see; I'm not in the least worried about it really; if necessary I shall run away."
But Mrs. Ogden was not so confident; she questioned her husband timidly.
"James, dear—of course I understand your not wishing Milly to go to the College at her age; she's only a child, that in itself is a reason against it; but to say there's no money! Surely, dear——"
He cut her short. "At the moment there is not," he said gruffly.
"James!"
"Oh, what is it, Mary?"
"I ought to understand. Am I spending too much on the household? Surely I haven't bought Milly too many new clothes, have I, dear? I thought perhaps that hundred and fifty a year of hers would have gone a long way towards helping her expenses in London; they say she'd certainly take a scholarship, and there's no doubt she has very real talent. With Joan it's different. I don't consider that she has very marked talent in any particular direction; she's an all round good student and that's all; but Milly is certainly rather remarkable in her playing, don't you think so?"
The colonel did not answer for a full minute, and when he spoke a pleading note had come into his voice, a note so unusual that his wife glanced quickly at him.
"Mary, it's these doctors and things, this damned long illness of mine has been the very deuce. If it hadn't been for that money of Henrietta's I don't know where we'd have been, but I'm not the man to spend my children's money on myself." He drew himself up painfully and his face flushed. "No, Mary, if Henrietta wished to make me feel that I'd no right to it, I wouldn't touch a penny that I couldn't pay back. If the damned unsisterly old devil is able to understand anything at all in the next world, I hope she understands that!"
"But, James, have we borrowed some of the children's money?"
"A little," he admitted. "We've had to. After all, the children would be in a bad way without their father. I consider it my duty to keep myself alive for their sakes. Where would you all be without me?" he concluded with some return of his old manner.
Mrs. Ogden looked at him; he was a very broken man. A faint pity stirred in her, a faint sense of shock as though there were something indecent in what she was now permitted to see. She had been little better than this man's slave for over twenty years, the victim of his lusts, his whims, his tempers and his delicate heart, the peg on which to hang his disappointments, the doormat for him to kick out of the way in his rages. She had lost youth and hope and love in his ungrateful service; at times she almost hated him, and yet, now that the hand was weakening on the reins, now that she realized that she could, if she would, take the bit between her teeth, she jibbed like a frightened mare; it was too late. There had been something in his almost humble half-explanation that brought his illness home to her as no fits of irritability or silence could have done.
"Never mind, my dear," she said gently; "you've done everything for the best."
He looked at her with frightened eyes and edged nearer.
"I've done what I hope was for the best," he said uncertainly. "Some of their money we had to take to keep going. I didn't want to tell you that funds were pretty low. I suppose I ought to have told you not to spend so much on clothes, but—oh, well, damn it all! A man has his pride, and I hated to have to touch a penny of Henrietta's money after the way she treated me; God knows I hated it! It must come all right, though. I've changed some of the investments and put the money into an excellent concern that I heard about quite by chance through Jack Hicks—a mine out in Rhodesia—they say there's a fortune in it. Mary, listen and do try to understand; it's a new mine and it's not paying yet, that's why we're short at the moment, but it ought to begin paying next year, and by the time the children come of age it'll be in full swing. It paid for a bit, jolly well, of course, otherwise I wouldn't have put the money into it, but I hear they're sinking a new shaft or something, and can't afford any dividends just at present. It's only a matter of time, a few months perhaps. There can't be a question about it's being all right; I realize that from what Jack told me. And then, as you know, Mary, I always fancy myself as a bit of an expert in mineralogy. From what I can see the children ought to get a fortune out of it; don't suppose they'll be grateful to me though, not likely, these days. Of course you understand, Mary, that I didn't depend entirely upon my own opinion. If it had been our own money I shouldn't have hesitated, for I've never found any one whose opinion I'd rather take than my own on financial matters; but being the children's money I went into it thoroughly with Hicks, and between us we came to the conclusion that as an investment it's as safe as the Bank of England."
"I see," said Mrs. Ogden, trying to keep all traces of doubt from her voice. She did not see in the least and, moreover, gold mines in Rhodesia reminded her unpleasantly of some of her poor brother Henry's ventures, but her head felt suddenly too tired to argue. "Shall I economize?" she asked him.
He hesitated. "Well, perhaps——" His voice shook a little, then he pulled himself together. "No, certainly not," he said loudly. "Go on just as you are, there's no reason whatever to economize in reasonable expenditure. Of course this crack-brained scheme of Milly's is quite another matter; there's no money for that sort of thing and never will be, as I told Joan pretty plainly when she began expounding her theories of a career. But in all reasonable matters go on just the same."
He reached out his hand and took hers, patting it affectionately. "I think I'll go to bed," he said. "I feel rather tired."
Milly had hit upon a course of action diametrically opposed to her real feelings, which were placid and a little amused. She intended to go to London, and it occurred to her that the best way to achieve this might be to make herself dispensable; at all events it was worth trying. She therefore sulked and wept to an abnormal extent, and took care that these fits of weeping should not go unobserved. Whenever possible she shut herself up with her violin, ignoring the hours of meals. Her family became alarmed and put a tray outside her door, which she mostly left untouched, having provided herself with a surreptitious supply of rolls and potted meat. Her father looked at her glumly, but through his angry eyes shone an uneasy, almost wistful expression, when forced to meet his favourite daughter face to face. At the end of a fortnight he could bear it no longer and began to make tentative efforts at reconciliation.
"That's a pretty dress you have on, Milly; going out to give the neighbours a treat?"